Chaotic Potentiality: A Patristic Assessment of the

Ontological Implications of a Cosmos Created from

Nothing

By Dimmtri Christou

In the beginning of a chapter devoted to the dogma of creation ex-nihilo in the significant

work Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, philosopher of religion and

theologian William Lane Craig explains: “For the author of Genesis 1, no preexistent

material seems to be assumed, no warring gods or primordial dragons are present—only

God […]”1 Craig concludes that Genesis 1 speaks plainly of the universe coming into

being in the temporal sense in which the universe came into existence, sometime ago in

the finite past, from nothing. Ironically the noted atheist, theoretical physicist and

cosmologist, Laurence M. Krauss, has recently argued that the universe came into being

from nothing as well. However in his most recent work, A Universe from Nothing,

Krauss, albeit contradictorily, argues: “[…] quantum gravity not only appears to allow

universes to be created from nothing—meaning, in this case, I emphasize, the absence of

space and time—it may require them.”2

1 J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig. ‘Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.’ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 554.2 Laurence M. Krauss. ‘A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing.’ (Atria Books, 2013), p. 168.

For Craig, God is the efficient cause of the universe. Yet, for Krauss, quantum

gravity is the efficient cause of the universe. While both scholars cannot be

simultaneously correct, and while both scholars have argued in favour of their distinctive

positions regarding the subject matter, such arguments remain outside of the scope of this

article. However what is of key interest to this article are the details that aren’t shown

attention in professional debate and literature published by prominent Christian

apologists on the dogma of creation. Hence, this article will gauge a Patristic

interpretation of the Christian dogma of creation ex-nihilo and so attempt to fill the hole

that various apologists sometimes tend to dig.

Specifically by analyzing a Patristic interpretation of creation ex-nihilo, this article

will assess what the dogma discloses regarding the nature and autonomy of the Creator,

with reference to the dignity of matter, and the spatio-temporal confines of creation.

Firstly this article will endeavour to analyze Philo of Alexandria’s view of the nature of

God and his relationship to the universe. Subsequent to analyzing Philo of Alexandria’s

view of creation, Ss Athanasius and Maximus the Confessor will also be gauged for their

particular contributions to the three aforementioned questions raised which will remain as

the key hermeneutic for this article in scrutinizing the dogma of creation ex-nihilo.

1. Early Witness to the Dogma of Creation Ex-Nihilo

The dogma of creation from nothing (La. ‘creatio ex nihilo’) explains that the universe

came into being from non-being. However, it is believed the universe did not merely

come into being from nothing. For according to the classical metaphysical formulation,

being cannot be derived from non-being. For nothing just is no-thing and so lacks causal

power—from nothing, nothing comes.3 Rather, God, the One, or Prime Mover, is

generally understood to be the efficient and first cause of the universe’s existence and so

is understood as its fundamental origin.

In contrast with the later dogma of creation ex-nihilo expounded upon by Christian

thinkers, the ancient Greek philosophers prior argued for the inverse—specifically, that

independent of God’s creative activity, matter is by nature eternal.4 Still, an early attempt

at synthesizing Hellenistic thought with the Hebrew scripture is found in the works of

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE. – 50 CE). Philo, acting as a bridge between Hellenistic

and Hebraic thought, historically preceded Christian writers. Yet in the history of ideas,

Philo’s mindset and contribution possesses uniqueness as well as illustrates a degree of

coherency between that of mystical Mosaic thought with that of Hellenic philosophical

principles. In particular, Philo’s approach and contribution to the proposition of creation

ex nihilo presents a dualistic function, where a reciprocal relationship between Mosaic

thought in context of Hellenic philosophical and scientific categories are commonly

displayed by their harmonious utilization.

3 Arguments for God as efficient and first cause of the universe appear in a variety of forms. The most popular form of the argument at present is the Kalam cosmological argument. For a full treatment of the Kalam cosmological argument, see: Wiliam Lane Craig’s & James D. Sinclair’s article, ‘The Kalam Cosmological Argument.’ Pp. 101-202, published in: ‘The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.’ (Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009). 4 See: Aristotle, Metaphysics III, 4, 999b, 8., wherein Aristotle argues: “that generation should take place from nothing” is an axiomatic impossibility. Still independent of the aforementioned reference, Aristotle’s argument is as follows: the existence of matter is contingent upon pre-existing matter. The nature of matter then just is to be a substratum from which the existence of matter is derived. Hence, matter could only come into existence from being acted upon—namely, the reduction to actuality of potency—by pre-existing matter and so matter’s existence being derived presupposes the eternity of matter.

Hence understanding Philo’s approach and model of creation as distinctive in its

own unique respect from that of the Middle Platonists remains as a key principle toward

analyzing the Alexandrian’s contributions. In light of Philo’s distinctive methodology,

Paul Blowers explains that for, “[…] Philo, the Mosaic Law and the law of nature are

thoroughly bound up with each other.”5 One should expect then to discover a view of

creation in Philo’s literature that, rather than being monolithic in nature, expresses a

holistic understanding of the cosmos, where creation is not purely gauged as a

hierarchical tree of the varying degrees of being but instead is experienced as a celestial

organism imbued with intrinsic value and so of inimitable soteriological worth and

meaning—thus differentiating Philo from strict Middle Platonic thought while

demonstrating the effect of the dualistic function of Mosaic thought with Hellenic

philosophical principles. That said, this article will now gauge Philo’s model of creation

before analyzing the Patristic sources focusing on creation ex-nihilo.

For Philo God so drastically transcends creation that he is considered wholly

distinct from it.6 Specifically as Philo argues, “God is not only devoid of peculiar

qualities, but he is likewise not of the form of man…”7 such that God is “[…] free from

distinctive qualities.”8 9 Following Philo’s argument, God being devoid of qualitative

properties of being, properties which are appropriate to composite objects (e.g., objects

5 Paul Blowers. ‘Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety.’ (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 46.6 Cf. Ibid., p. 48.7 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 1.36.8 Philo, Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 55.9 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.36

composed of form and matter), necessitates the conclusion that one is incapable of

exhaustively and positively speaking about the essence of God. Certainly qualitative

predications imply positive knowledge of a being’s essence, which with respect to God

for Philo is a priori impossible as God is utterly ontologically distinct from all created

being. Though paradoxically for Philo only God is capable of speaking positively of

himself for only God possesses positive knowledge of his own nature.10

Nevertheless, as God is wholly other from creation, Philo’s creation framework, as

derived from Plato’s Timaeus, argues that God himself is not responsible for the creation

of the universe but rather it is the Logos instead, the divine second principle, who is the

causal basis of the universe’s being.11

The Logos is, as Philo interprets, considered as the Idea of Ideas.12 As the Idea of

Ideas, the Logos is understood as the exemplar of all being, imbuing his imprint upon all

things created through him (the thought being here the perceptible world came into

existence from the mind of God by way of its archetypal seal and model).13

Consequently, the Logos derives the derivatively functional role as an ontological bridge

between the terrestrial realm of being and the celestial realm of being, meaning as

Blowers explains that the Logos is “[…] the intersection of God’s transcendence and

immanence…”14 All the same, the Logos is considered the fundamental agent

10 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.20611 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.9612 Philo, Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat, 75-76.13 Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 25.14 Paul Blowers. ‘Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety.’ (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 49.

responsible for the existence of the universe, being as such the imperishable Form of

wisdom comprehensible only to the intellect.

Accordingly, Philo believed that the corporeal world is eternally being formed by

virtue of the agency of the Logos.15 In this respect, Philo denies that matter is a pre-

existent principle and so divine insofar as matter existed eternally alongside God. On the

other hand, Philo also denies that creation possessed a temporal beginning. Instead, for

Philo, it is by the act of God’s thinking that God simultaneously and eternally creates as it

is by God’s eternal thoughts that all particulars—including the intelligible world—

receive their essential existence relative to their distinctive nature. Thus God did not at

some point of time begin to create the world but instead has been “eternally applying

himself to its creation.”16 17

Of particular importance, as this article lightly touched upon prior and as Blowers

points out, is the fact that Logos for Philo operates as a salvific compass for “worthy

souls” precisely as mediator of creation. As such, the Logos as the mediating principle for

the existence of the universe doesn’t merely create and so retain a static relationship with

the cosmos from eternity but rather dynamically orients the person to “ultimate perfection

in the Creator’s bosom.”18

2. Early Christian witnesses to the Dogma of Creation Ex Nihilo

15 Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 134. 16 Philo, De Providentia, 1.7.17 Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 7.18 Paul Blowers. ‘Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety.’ (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 51.

Turning now to the varying Christian witnesses regarding the dogma of creation from

nothing, we will first begin our assessment by analyzing St Athanasius the Alexandrian’s

contribution to the dogma of creation from nothing before gauging St Maximus the

Confessor. Specifically St Athanasius’s argument against the pagans found in the works

On the Incarnation and Against the Gentiles will be addressed within the following

section so as to answer the questions pertaining to God’s autonomy and nature and the

spatial-temporal confines of creation.

In St Athanasius’s works Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation,19 creation

from nothing is referred to almost indefinitely. Creation from nothing is alluded to on

almost every page by the Alexandrian, so much so that one can see manifestly as to why

the dogma of creation from nothing possesses cornerstone status for the great Bishop’s

cosmological, Christological, and anthropological understanding of reality.

Though, in turning specifically to St Athanasius’s distinctive contribution to the

dogma of creation, we find in chapter two of On the Incarnation St Athanasius’s

argument against the Platonist notion of the eternal nature of matter. In particular the

Bishop of Alexandria begins by elucidating the Platonic understanding of the cosmos,

which St Athanasius details as stating that “[…] God is not able to make anything unless

matter preexisted, just as a carpenter must already have wood so that it may be used.” 20

While the Platonic notion of the eternal nature of matter as described by St Athanasius is

19 For the purpose of this article Fr. John Behr’s translation of ‘On the Incarnation’ (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011) will be utilized. 20 St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 2.

false for varying reasons, St Athanasius argues against the notion by stating that to say

God creates from preexistent matter is to accredit weakness to God:

They do not realize that saying such things is to impute weakness to God: for if he is

not himself the cause of matter, but simply makes things from pre-existent matter,

then he is weak, not being able without matter to fashion any of the things that exist,

just as the weakness of the carpenter is certainly his inability to make any required

thing without wood. According to the argument, unless there were matter, God

would not have made anything. … And if this is so, as they thus have it, according

to them God is only a craftsman and not himself the cause of matter. He could in no

way be called “Creator,” if he does not create matter, from which created things

come into being.21

St Athanasius’s argument is a simple one. Essentially St Athanasius is arguing that by

admitting God creates from preexisting material a priori presupposes that God lacks, or is

devoid of, the causal power to create from nothing. For according to the Platonist

understanding of matter God would simply be proficient in arranging and forming rather

than creating. Yet to suggest that God does not create from non-being but rather forms or

arranges preexistent material is to suggest that God is substantially deficient in kind for St

Athanasius. That is insofar as God by virtue of his creative activity and power does not

differ from the artisan or carpenter, as the carpenter is limited to the confines of the

material that surrounds him, God would then likewise be restrained in his creative

capacities. Indeed God’s creative capability would be univocal to that of contingent

beings according to the Platonist notion, though as St Athanasius explains this is false for

an artisan shapes and is a “shaper” of objects while distinctly God creates and is

“Creator” of objects.21 St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 2.

Thus by limiting God’s creative power to preexistent matter one would be

restricting God’s sovereignty and omnipotence over creation. Further by suggesting that

God arranges or shapes preexistent material one would be suggesting that God is

restricted in his will by the goods that surround him. For St Athanasius matter is

contingent and so its existence is conditional upon the creative will of God. Hence both

of the aforementioned difficulties presented by the Platonist notion of matter appear as

metaphysically nonsensical to St Athanasius. Still, for St Athanasius “God is not weak,

but from nothing and having absolutely no existence God brought the universe into

being…”22 such that God’s omnibenevolence necessitates in his causal activity not only

ontological priority in relation to created objects but as well an unrestrained will that is

not determined or affected by the features of eternally preexistent objects.

All the same God does not simply create for the sake of creating insofar as the act

of creating merely typifies some exercise in unconditional power for St Athanasius.

Instead God creates out of his intrinsic goodness from nothing. St Athanasius explains:

“But the God of all is good and exceeding noble by nature—and therefore is kind. For

one that is good can grudge nothing: for which reason he does not even grudge existence,

but desires all to exist, as objects of his loving-kindness.”23

The created world’s existence and simultaneous subsistence is contingent upon the

love of God and so cannot be understood merely as an exercise in sheer power—that the

mere fact that the world possesses being for St Athanasius presupposes the loving

22 St Athanasius, On the Incarnationi, 2. 23 St Athanasius, Against the Gentiles, 41.

goodness of its creator. Likewise the world’s being contingent upon the love of God

discloses that material objects are inherently incapable of sustaining their own existence,

therefore demonstrating the conditional nature of matter. As Khaled Anatolios succinctly

explains,

So seeing that all created nature according to its inherent structures is in flux and subject to dissolution, and in order to prevent this happening and the universe dissolving back into nothing, he made everything by his own eternal Word and brought creation into existence. He did not abandon it to be tempest-tossed through its own nature, lest it run the risk of again lapsing into nothingness. But being good, he governs and establishes the whole world through his own Word who is himself God, so that creation, enlightened by the governance, providence, and ordering of the Word, may be able to remain secure, since it participates in the Word who is truly from the Father and is helped by him so as to exist.24

That said, for St Athanasius matters returns from where it first came. “For the nature of

created things,” as the Alexandrian explains, “inasmuch as it is brought into being out of

nothing, is of a fleeting sort, and weak and mortal, if composed of itself only.”25

Finally in turning to St Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 7,26 this article will

attempt to answer the final question before concluding; namely, what does the dogma of

creation ex nihilo disclose regarding the dignity of matter.

For St Maximus, understanding the logoi of all created beings in all of their

cosmic plurality just is to understand the essential principle underlying the nature of a

particular being. As St Maximus explains: “When we learn the essential nature of living

24 Khaled Anatolios. ‘Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought’. (Routledge, 2004), pp. 40-41.25 St Athanasius, Against the Gentiles, 41.26 For the purpose of this article Paul Blowers’s & Robert Louis Wilken’s translation (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003) of St Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 7 will be utilized.

things, in what respect, how, and out of what they exist, we will not be driven by desire to

know more.”27 The essential nature—that is the logoi as such—therefore present a causal

structure as well as a universal teleology, in which all material objects that exist possess a

distinctive characteristic relative to their nature. That said, the logoi do not appear as a

spontaneous categorization or mere metaphysical explanation for the variety of beings

that exist but rather present the purposed incarnate imprint of the Logos, who just is the

exemplar cause of all being such that all being possesses as a causal effect a distinctive

essential principle analogous to its archetype. As St Maximus puts it, he who knows the

Logos would know that the Logos is many logoi. For all things that come to exist do so

in relation to the Logos since he is the “beginning and cause of all things.”28

Consequently as essential principles, the logoi of creation disclose, as Blowers

states: “the exemplary pattern for the unfolding of the “actual” or historical creation.”29

The dignity of matter in light of the cosmological pattern of logoi as such demonstrates

an image of creation endowed with teleological features that not only disclose the

relational manifestation of the object with its creator but also its final end. Since the

logoi of creation disclose the actualization of certain events in creation as being

actualized through the Logos, Blowers explains that “[…] the Logos incarnates or

embodies himself in the logoi “simultaneously” from beginning to end, his hidden

27 St Maximus, Ambiguum 7, [1077A].28 St Maximus, Ambiguum 7, [1077C].29 Paul Blowers. ‘Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety.’ (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 162.

presence in them assuring the eschatological fulfillment of their protological purpose.”30

St Maximus elucidates upon this notion stating:

Since each person is a “portion of God” by the logos of virtue in him, as the argument has shown, whoever abandons his own beginning and is irrationally swept along toward non-being is rightly said to have “slipped down from above”, because he does not move toward his own beginning and cause according to which and for which and through which he came to be made.

Therefore since all matter is created in such a way to possess an essential principle matter

as a consequence possesses not only an intelligible form but soteriological worth that is

teleologically explicated through its distinctive logoi.

3. Conclusion

This article has endeavored to understand the Patristic background to the dogma of

creation ex nihilo. Subsequent to gauging Philo of Alexandria’s distinctive view of

creation wherein at the eternal instant God thinks so too does he create, St Athanasius’s

contribution as well as St Maximus’s contribution to the dogma of creation from nothing

has been analyzed. St Athanasius’s contributions, being unique in their own respect,

present the reader with an understanding of creation that doesn’t simply finds its resting

place in offering a refutation against the Platonic belief that the world has existed from

eternity. Similarly, St Maximus’s contribution to the dogma of creation from nothing

presents the reader with a metaphysically holistic understanding of reality that finds its

intrinsic intelligibility through the embodiment of the Logos in creation.

30 Cf. Ibid., 163.

4. Bibliography:

1. J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig. ‘Philosophical Foundations for a Christian

Worldview.’ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003)

2. Laurence M. Krauss. ‘A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than

Nothing.’ (Atria Books, 2013)

3. Paul Blowers. ‘Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early

Christian Theology and Piety.’ (Oxford University Press, 2012).

4. Philo, Legum Allegoriarum.

5. Philo, Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis.

6. Philo, Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat.

7. Philo, De Opificio Mundi.

8. Philo, De Providentia.

9. Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit.

10. St Athanasius, On the Incarnation.

11. St Athanasius, Against the Gentiles.

12. Khaled Anatolios. ‘Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought’. (Routledge, 2004). 13. St Maximus, Ambiguum, 7