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Frances Young
6
hoc. at. and The Trinitarian Faith, T. &T. Clark 1988.
* See Gerhard May, Schopfungausdem Nichts, De Gruyter 1978; following H.-F. Weiss,
Untersuchungen tur Kosmolagie des hellenistischen andpleastinischenjudentums, 1966.
B
Pace Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, Duckworth 1983.
* See May, Op. ciL p. 23. This 'apparent natural logic' leads Walter Eichrodt to
attribute an absolute beginning to the Priestly authors of Genesis 1: 'In the Beginning:
a Contribution to the Interpretation of the First Word of the Bible',firstpublished in
Israel's Prophetic Heritage: Essays in honor of James Muilenburg, ed. Bern hard W. Anderson
and Walter Harrelson; New York 1962; republished in Creation in the Old Testament, ed.
Bern hard W. Anderson, Issues in Religion and Theology 6, SPCK1984. However, the
article is addressing the fact that Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages, notably
Rashi, have understood the text as meaning, 'In the beginning, when God .. .' so as
to harmonise the first verse with the chaotic primitive state ofthe earth in v. 2.
142 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
(iv) the lack of emphasis on the idea in early Christian
literature of the first and early second centuries, contrasted
with its general acceptance by the beginning of the third
century.
There are some apparent references to the idea, despite
these sweeping generalisations, but their significance depends
upon their interpretation. They will be surveyed at a later
stage. Meanwhile let us examine the material that indicates
positive adoption of the idea.
Tertullian provides the clearest expression of the alternatives:
God did not create out of himself, nor out of eternal co-
existing matter. So if it was neither out of God's self nor out of
something, it must have been out of nothing. These alterna-
tives had been set up and answered differently, it seems, by
Hermogenes, a Second Century Christian universally described
as a Platonist, and against whom Tertullian was writing (Adversus
Hermogenem).
Theophilus had reached the same conclusion somewhat
earlier, also, it seems, in opposition to Hermogenes, though
this is not explicitly the case in the texts which have survived.
In the AdAutolycumll. 4, he criticises Plato for regarding matter
as uncreated and therefore equal to God, arguing for God's
unique 'sovereignty' (though monarchia could mean some-
thing more like 'solefirstprinciple'). A human artisan creates
out of pre-existent material, suggests Theophilus; so there is
nothing remarkable about God doing likewise. The power of
God is evident by his makingwhatever he wants exoukonto-n, out
of the non-existent.
So Theophilus and Tertullian were both confronting Hel-
lenistic assumptions. Tertullian was also confronting Gnostic
views, as indeed Theophilus probably was, though not obvi-
ously in the context where we find his comments. Second
Century apologetic, together with the struggle against gnosti-
cism, apparently provides the context in which the issue
explicitly arises and a clear 'theory' exoukonto-nemerges: even
Gamaliel was arguing with a philosopher*. It cannot simply be
assumed that creation 'out of nothing' is Judaeo-Christian
tradition, though the Jewish stress on the unique sovereignty
of God would make it a natural step to take once the issue was
raised.
CREATIO EX NIHILO 143
The alternative hypotheses opposed, 'out of the divine self
or 'out of matter', indicate a self-conscious differentiation.
Speaking very generally one may say that gnostics took the
Platonic view of a 'recalcitrant' medium to the extreme of
suggesting that matter was evil. But they opened up the
possibility of matter not being eternal but coming into exist-
ence, by claiming it was produced by the fallen Demiurge. The
dualism was no longer an ontological dualism with permanence,
but a radical dualism resulting from a fall — their real interest
being in the problem of evil and salvation from it. Gnosticism
also raised the possibility of the universe emerging by emanation
from the divine and by a fall away from its perfection. This is
the context of Tertullian's clear statement of the alternatives
and his choice of the only one that made sense of the notion
of God inherited from Judaism and the Jewish scriptures.
Indeed, i t helped that such a notion had verbal if not theoretical
anticipation in the tradition.
So let us turn to these anticipations and the problem of their
interpretation.
1. The first reference to creation out of nothing, it is often
claimed, is found in 2 Mace. 7.28:
First of all you have to believe that there is one God, who
has founded and organised the universe, and has brought
the universe out of nothing into existence.
Similar confessions in Justin and Irenaeus have suggested it
belongs to the Rule of Faith.
Ehrhardt couples with Maccabees these early Christian
references, and offers the same interpretation, drawing at-
tention to the strong tendency of early Christianity to think of
the world as 'passing away'.15 This approach is no more con-
vincing here than before, but that does not mean that the
parallel in Maccabees, and our discussion of it, is irrelevant.
For given that Justin clearly thought in terms of the Platonist
picture, this confession does notrepresent a 'theory' displacing
the Platonist view, and must be understood as already suggested.
The thrust of early Christianity is in the direction of a 'new
creation' being born out of the old, and cosmogony was not at
the forefront. Neither Hermas nor indeed Aristides clearly
distinguished between creating and 'world-building'.
G. May further surveys early anti-gnostic literature like the
Pastoral Epistles. Here the goodness of creation is insisted on,
but there is no interest at all in how or from what God created.
The assumption generally seems to have been that creation
meant ordering without further speculation. The absence of
the idea of creation exouk onto-n, especially if it was, as is often
supposed, an established Jewish doctrine, is far more re-
markable than the sparse ill-defined cases where the language
is apparently used.
Certainly, the Jewish sense of God's sovereignty and al-
mighty power does figure in the tradition from which the
'orthodox' stream of Christianity began when confronted with
the questions of the Second Century, and in that context the
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo became the natural implicate (cf.
Gamaliel II above). Theophilus indicates that resistance to an
14
'Nothing', Theology TodayvoL xxxix (1982), pp. 275-289.
CREATIO EX NIHILO 147
nothing is simply a logical consequence of the alternatives
pcsed by Hermogenes. It is a way of affirming the dependence
and contingency of creation, and the free gracious act of God
in creation arising from no necessity. The latter point about
necessity was fundamentally important as against the 'auto-
matic', or 'necessary', emanations posited by gnosticism, as
was the idea that the Logos was not an emanation but the
Reason of God himself becoming active in creation, revelation
and redemption. But the point for our purposes is this: the
function in Christian theology of the doctrine of creation out
of nothing lies in the consequent dependence and contin-
gency of creation, and the question of the 'content' expressed
in the verbal formulation is inappropriate. That does not,
however, remove the fact that later there is considerable
ambivalence in the use of the idea by Athanasius, not to
mention Augustine.
However, this discussion of meaning raises the question of
Basilides and his possible priority in developing the doctrine.
The conclusion that Second Century debates with Gnosticism
and philosophy about origins (archai, first principles) pro-
vided the context in which this doctrine was formulated, has
also been reached by G. May. May argues, however, that the
idea is first to be found in Basilides.
Basilides, according to Hippolytus (Irenaeus' evidence is
different), is atypical among Gnostics in seeing the 'high God'
as the ultimate creator rather than a lesser demiurge, and
rather than positing emanations, he speaks of the non-existent
God producing a non-existent world out of the non-existent.
What is produced seems to be a world-seed from which all
future developments automatically come about. May suggests
that the driving force of Basilides' logic is his notion of radical
transcendence, his via negativa, his critique of human analo-
gies — the ultimate God is not an anthropomorphic world-
builder. At first hearing this seems like Theophilus, and May
opens up the possibility of a Syrian tradition influencing both,
though with little conviction. The logic of Basilides' thinking
makes it more likely he arrived at the idea himself, he suggests.
Basilides therefore must be credited with the priority. Here, it
seems, is thefirstthinker to formulate the idea of creatioexnihib.
May's suggestion cannot be sustained, however. The sheer
148 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
There was a time, says he, when there was nothing; not
even the nothing was there, but simply, clearly, and
without any sophistry there was nothing at all. When I say
'there was', he says, I do not indicate a Being, but in order
to signify what I want to express I say, says he, that there
was nothing at all (Ref. VII.20.2).15
FRANCES M. YOUNG
Department of Theology
University of Birmingham
POB363
Birmingham B15 2TT
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