CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
One creator: ut sapiens architectus et maximus rex SSS Irenaeus' account of the divine Intellect declares God's undivided unity and universal goodness. It ends with the distinction between God who makes and man who is made, between God who does good and man to whom good is done. Man, found in God, will always be advancing to God. This movement defines the economy of salvation which begins with creation.
Creation is a difficult concept, for it uses the notion of causation outside the process of the world whence that notion derives and wherein it makes sense. We speak of causes in order to understand the relation between parts of the world; to lift the idea outside the world and apply it to the undifferentiated whole is a strange move, rather like asking, 'Is this man a foot?' Yet the question "Why does anything exist?' has long been taken seriously. Monotheism, especially in its Judaeo-Christian form, declares God to be sole cause of all that is.
How can sense be made of this kind of causation?
TWO ANALOGIES — WISE ARCHITECT
AND SOVEREIGN KING
The making of a universe differs from the making of a cake, yet accounts of creation commonly set out steps which are more culinary than conceptual. Irenaeus begins with two images which have been used to relate the world to one first cause. The architect/builder produces order from disorder. The monarch/magician produces by word, will and power. The two images may conflict — one presupposes matter and the other does not. Both are found in the final form of the Genesis narrative. The formless void is brought isl
Economy into order by the commands which begin 'let there be light!' Yet too many cooks have taken these analogies as alternative recipes and accuse early Christian thinkers of not seeing a problem. In Theophilus and Irenaeus what begins as a precaution, to prevent analogies from clashing, ends as a breakthrough.
God as architect/master-builder bestows the order which displays his agency, and God as king gives the command which is the cause of all that is. The first analogy depends on the order and beauty of the universe which inspire belief, but implies the existence of unformed matter and conflicts with belief in one first-principle.
God can deliver us from infinite regress only if there is no second ultimate entity beside him. Even if he created the unformed matter first, and then brought order from chaos, could he allow the existence of unformed chaotic stuff which was unworthy of his creative wisdom? Simultaneity is the only option fex.monotheism, and that is supplied by the second analogy of royal command: God spoke and it was so.
Irenaeus uses the royal command analogy against Gnostic dualism, drawing on scripture and philosophy.
In scripture this analogy takes over in the Psalms, and John insists, 'apart from him nothing came into being'. 'Creation from nothing' has for Paul a place which is more than cosmological. The great antitheses of Romans
4:5, 17, Justificatio impr, resurrectio mortuorum, creatio ex nthilo, point to the heart of the gospel and of monotheism.'
S.onr
SOVEREIGN KING
The one God creates by sovereign will and word. Either the supreme being who contains all things formed all creation by his will, or an unlimited number of creators and gods must be posited, none of whom is God because they are all contained within a larger whole (2.1.5).
God's will, not any angelic action, is the cause of the world (2.2.3).
He does not need external instruments; his own word is suitable and efficient for the formation of all things. The Gospel tells us
(Jn 1:3) that all things were made by his word. Genesis and the ' They suggest that Christian faith begins in the middle with justification, then goes back to creation and on to resurrection.
Psalms of David make the same point (2.2.5). 'He spoke and it was; he commanded and it stood firm' (Ps. 33:9). 'He spoke the word and they (the heavens) were created' (Ps. 1 48:5). Alone he did this for there are no lesser gods or angels mentioned at the beginning
(Gen. 1:1) (2.2.6). It is he who gave life and length of days (Ps. 21:4); we live, not of ourselves, but by the grace of God (2.34.3).
For early Christian writers there is one omnipotent God, alone unbegotten and first cause of all things (4.38.3). Everything owes its existence to him (4.20.6).* He is the sole source of all good things
(1.12.2; 4.11.2). Himself uncreated, without beginning or end and in need of nothing, entirely sufficient to himself, he is to all other things, the cause of their being (3.8.3).
God is omnipotent, first, in the sense that all other things depend on him for being (3.20.2). His containing of all things is the source of their being (4.20.6). Secondly, God is omnipotent in that what he does is dependent on his will alone. Because he is the sole source of being? he makes things of his own free will (2.1.1).
He makes, disposes and perfects all things freely, by himself and of his own power, so that the substance of all things is not matter but is his will. He who alone made all things is alone omnipotent.
The pronoun 'himself' makes the same point.° We have here not merely the primitive Christian determination to understand God as the 'living lord of the world',' but an appropriation of philosophical terms to exclude other possible causes from the making of the world.
Thirdly, God does not need matter as human makers need it.
He calls into existence the matter with which he works, when it previously did not exist (2.10.4). Fourthly, he did not need angelic helpers for he had his own hands, the son and the spirit through whom and in whom he made all things freely and of his own accord
(4-7-4; 5-1-3).
2 Omnibus proestat esse.
3 potentissimus omnium deus, quique omnibus ut sint praesttit.
4 qui continet omnia et omnibus esse praestat.
5 'He is alone God, lord, founder, father and container of all things.' The adjective 'alone' is applied to God five times in this sentence.
© Ipse fabricator, ipse conditor, ipse inventor, ipse factor, ipse dominus omnium.
7 Bonwetsch quotes Seeberg to this effect; G. N. Bonwetsch, Die Theologie des Lrendus
(Giitersloh, 1925), 55-
Economy For the Gnostics, creation is troublesome because a good God seems to have created a world in which there is evil. Therefore they set God at a distance from the world by creating a hierarchy and generally distinguishing between the creator and the highest God.
Marcion, as Tertullian reports, claims that since evil is bad, the god who uses it cannot be good. The true god works through his word alone (Marc. 4.9.7).
The first objection to Gnostic/Marcionite teaching lay in its attribution of the work of creation to an inferior angel or god.
Irenaeus pointed to the testimony of all scripture that the one and only God had made all things by his word (2.27.2; 1.10.3), and that this God is both just and good (3.25.2). God must have the power to judge in order to be God (3.25.2). It is he who has given power to earthly authorities (5.24.2) who ensure peace in the world
(4.30.3). In the end his justice will reward therighteous in a renewed creation.
Creation begins God's economy of salvation. It has a beginning in time but is not confined to the past. God fulfils his continuous plan of salvation with the help of his creation, got in spite of it (5.18.1), and receives of his own in the bread and wine of the eucharist
(4.17.5), which gives to our bodies the hope of resurrection (4.18.5).
All creation serves the end of human salvation, when tribulation kneads us into bread fit for the banquet of the king (5.28.4). Pagan persecutors are useful to the righteous, just as the stalk is needed for wheat to grow and straw is useful to the refinement of gold
(5.29.1). The shape of the world must pass away so that the wheat may be gathered into the granary and the straw thrown into the fire
(4.4.3). Irenaeus' constant refrain is that God has made all things for man so that man might reach fullness of stature and length of days (5.5.1).
Millennial hope is part of Irenaeus' defence of creation. In the first stage the world restored to its original excellence will be placed at the service of the righteous (5.32.1). It is the shape of this world, not the substance of creation, which will pass away, so that a renewed humanity may converse in a way which is forever new (5.36.1). This renewed earth is something which man has never known because paradise was in the fourth heaven (2.30.7). It will produce in great abundance. The promise
One creator
will be realised and will confirm God's visible control of all creation.® 3.2.2
ENCLOSING, NOT ENCLOSED
This formula expresses the ultimacy of God as first cause and his immediacy as he holds creation in his grasp. Against the Gnostic position Irenaeus argues philosophically for the necessity of a first cause and the universal simultaneity of his action. Irenaeus applies against Gnostic dualism, the formula 'enclosing, not enclosed'. His argument runs as follows:
God who has nothing above or after him is the only God, only lord, only creator, only father. His oneness implies that he contains all things and that all things were created by his command (2.1.1).
It is necessary that the Pleroma (fullness) should contain all things in his vastness and that he should not be contained.
There cannot be anything beyond him for three reasons:
(a) that would mean that the Pleroma lacked something which is a contradiction; (b) God's alleged relation to the thing beyond him would imply that he had a beginning, middle and end; (c) he would be limited and enclosed by what is outside him.
The Gnostic father/pleroma is enclosed by another mighty being which is greater than he because the container is greater than the contained.
The greater is stronger, more sovereign and therefore God.
Either the greater Pleroma/2, which is beyond the lesser Pleroma/1, contains Pleroma/1 and is contained by Pleroma/1, or there is an infinite distance between Pleroma/1 and Pleroma/2. If the second alternative is true, there is a third immensity Pleroma/3 whichis greater than and contains Pleroma/1 and Pleroma/2.
This fails because of infinite regress. If Pleroma/3 has its beginning above, and its end below what it contains, then it must have limits at the sides where new existences begin. The endless proliferation leads away from God to the non-existent.
For Marcion, as for the Valentinians, the same argument for a higher good is infinitely repeatable.
To sum up, either one being contains and creates all according to his own will, or there is a limitless plurality of creators and gods who begin and 8 E. Norelli, 'Paix, justice, intégrité de la création: Irénée de Lyon et ses adversaires', Lrén
64,1 (1991), 40.
Economy end from each other on every side, are contained and therefore not God.?
Creation must occur within God's territory, otherwise God will be enclosed by what is beyond him (2.2.2).'°
Gnostics would have understood the kind of argument which Irenaeus uses for they were prepared to claim that God encloses all.!' Their monism was explicit. This was not consistent, claimed Irenaeus, with their assertion that creation is like a stain on the garment of the All. A pictorial simile cannot evade the well-constructed argument which Irenaeus brings
(2.4.2).
Book 2 of Against herestes contains the most condensed argument of the whole work. In 2.31 Irenaeus returns to sum up his arguments against the Gnostics: his first concern has been to argue for a creator God who is not shut up and restricted by something beyond him and who is one and one only, not a member of a series.
BIR
ONE CREATOR, NO REGRESS
Irenaeus says that he has proved in Book 1 that there is one God, a creator who is not the fruit of any defect but prior to all things.
9 On the bureaucratic fallacy see above, section 2.4 and note 41. re A similar argument is found in the contemporary Platonism of Pseudo-Aristotle's de
Melisso Xenophane Gorgia ('Aristotelis qui fertur de Melisso Nenophane Gorgia libellus', ed. H. Diels; translation in Aristotle, Complete works, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton, 1995)). Also see discussion, W. R. Schoedel, 'Enclosing, not enclosed: the early Christian doctrine of God', in Early Christian literature and the classical intellectual tradition, FS for R. M. Grant, ed. W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (Paris, 1979), 78-80. God must rule and not be ruled (de Melisso Xenophane Gorgia 3.977427), for if there were two or more he would cease to be 'mightiest and best of all' (3.977424). Both Melissus (1.947a11) and Xenophanes
(3.977b6) argue, it is claimed, against any limits on the One (cf. Melissus fr. 5—6). Nor can the One be finite in the sense of having a beginning, middle and end (3.977b4; cf.
Melissus fr. 2-4).
Melissus also uses the argument for oneness which rejects the possibility of a void between the One and the Many, Zeno's paradox (frag. 3) that the many would have to be both limited and unlimited, depends on the need for something between entities which could be multiplied endlessly. Irenaeus seems closer to the infinite One of Melissus than to either the limited sphere of Parmenides or the One of Xenophanes, which is neither limited nor unlimited (cf. de Melisso Xenophane Gorgia 3.97763).
The Gospel of Truth speaks of him who encloses every place, but is not enclosed by anything. In this writing, Sophia and Demiurge, who are pivotal for Valentinian dualism, are nowhere to be found. See Schoedel, 'Enclosing', 80-1, where there is extended reference to the work of S. Arai, Die Christologie des Evangelium Veritatis (Leiden, 1964).
One creator By There is nothing above him and nothing after him (2.1.1). Indeed this is the first and most important axiom of true belief.
One God is creator of heaven and earth and all things in them.
The creator is not an unhappy accident in a plan which went astray.
His will is supreme and he freely created all that is. His oneness and his universality go together, for the only God, lord, creator, father, alone contains all things. Oneness further implies that he alone commands all things into existence (2.1.1).
Oneness implies fullness. We have seen that God, as fullness or pleroma, contains all things in his immensity which has no beginning, middle or end to its infinity (2.1.2). Here Irenaeus is formed by the theology of Ephesians, which derives from the principle, 'One
God and father of all, who is above all, in all and through all' (Eph.
4:6). Creation by one creator is a precondition of recapitulation within the body of Christ and recapitulation is a precondition of salvation (2.2.6). Those in error do not believe that God is powerful or bountiful enough to create matter because they are ignorant of the power of a divine essence. Absurdly, they believe that their mother produced matter from her tears and perspiration, her passions and her sorrow (2.10.3). Irenaeus uses four strong adjectives to repudiate the theory that the intention of errant aeons produced the matter of creation: such a belief is incredible, fatuous, impossible, inconsistent (2.10.4).
Omnipotence implies oneness. 'The chief objection to multiple creators is that they lead to an infinite regress. If the Valentinians introduce a third kind of existence to separate the pleroma from what is beyond it, infinite regress follows (2.1.3). The same objection applies to Marcion's second god. Moving beyond one God
(or pleroma) necessitates further gods (or pleromata) (2.1.4). Similar problems arise from belief in a void beyond the pleroma (2.3 and 2.4) or from the demiurge's need for a pattern from which to work. For if the demiurge needed a pattern and took it from things above as formed by Bythos, from what pattern did Bythos shape the pleroma, and so on?
Either the creator God used his own internal 'intention' as a pattern for creation, or we must go on asking for the origin of the higher pattern (2.16.1). Typically, Basilides has 365 successive heavens (2.16.2).
Economy 3.3.1
WISE ARCHITECT — WORD AND PLAN
Irenacus perceives that the word of the king and the rational plan of the architect are joined because word is reason. God caused all things by his word and needed no assistance from angels. He himself in himself, in a way which we cannot describe, predestinated all things, formed them as he pleased, giving harmony to all things, assigning them their own place. He gave different natures to beings spiritual, celestial, angelic, animal, aquatic and terrestrial, because he endowed a nature suitable to the kind of life assigned to them
Q°2-4).
The word within humans joins word and plan. The view that angels and creator were ignorant of the supreme God is absurd when all rational creatures know of him. For his invisible essence is mighty and confers on all a profound mental intuition and perception of his most powerful, omnipotent vreatness. Although no one knows father but son, all know one fact at least because reason, implanted in their minds, moves them and reveals to them that there is one God, lord of all (2.6.1).
Even the demons know of the over-arshing existence of God and, like every creature, they tremble when his name is invoked,
Just as all the subjects of the Roman emperor, however distant and unseen he may be, live in awareness of his rule (2.6.2). Moreover, those outside the community of Christian faith join in the universal consent to a belief that God is creator. Men of ancient times praise the one God who is maker of heaven and earth: the prophets remind us of this truth and heathen learn it from the creation which reveals him who formed it (2.9.1).
Creation is not foreign to the God above all, for he formed things various and diversified by his own word, in his own territory and as he pleased, since he was maker of all things, as a wise architect and sovereign king (2.11.1).
In contrast to the rationality of the divine plan the Gnostic myth shows no place for reason. The Valentinians put 'idea' before 'mind' when it is obvious that this cannot be the logical order.'?
Their drama is reminiscent of Antiphanes, a comic poet, whose '* "The stoicheia doctrine of some Pythagoreans and Platonists showed a rational procession from the One and the Two.
One creator
Theogony is nearer to truth. This is the genre into which they fit.
Gnostics merely change names in what is everywhere performed in theatres (2.14.1). They also produce an irrational patchwork of philosophers' opinions, mixing Thales, Anaximander and irreligious Anaxagoras (2.1 4.2).'3 Yet it is acknowledged that Gnostics, for all their use of 'philosophical concepts and schemes', claimed a higher source of truth than argued reason. Being super-rational, they did not use philosophers' concepts but words. They sought to 'learn up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere', for, as ever, "he meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.' Consequently it is right to conclude that 'A rational approach ... was not to be achieved on the basis of gnostic presuppositions.''5
Irenaeus believes he has shown, so his summary claims (2.30.9), by numerous and very clear arguments, that God made all things freely of his own power, that he arranged and finished them, so that his will is the substance of all things. One only God who created all things, alone omnipotent, the only father who founded and formed all things 'by word of his power' (Heb. 1:3), he fitted and arranged all things by his wisdom. He who cannot be contained, himself contains all things.
The plan of creation flows into the plan of the divine economy in history. The same God who is just and good formed man, planted paradise and made the world; then he sent the flood and saved
Noah, chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, gave the law, spoke to the prophets, sent Christ and the apostles, called the church
(2.30.0).
All sources of truth are 'united in declaring the creator's glory.
Whether the source be apostles, the teaching of the lord, prophets, dictation of apostles or ministration of law, all praise one and the same being, God and father of all (2.35.4). For all things were made by one and the same father who adapts things visible and invisible to the natures and tendencies of the material. In short, all
'3 As noted above in chapter 2, Irenaeus has inherited a tradition which comes through Anaxagoras.
'4 W._S. Gilbert, 'Patience', The Savoy Operas (London, 1932), 164.
15 G. May, Schopfung aus dem Nichts (Berlin, 1978), 120; ETT, creatio ex mhilo (Edinburgh, 1994),
118.
Economy things have been made neither by angels, nor by any other power, but by God the father alone.
Bg 2
WISE ARCHITECT — THE CONFIGURATION
OF CREATED THINGS
It is safer and more accurate to confess the truth: the creator who formed the world is the only God and there is none besides him who received from himself the model and figure of things which have been made. Weary with impious and circuitous description, we are compelled at some point or other, to fix our minds on some one and to confess that from him came the configuration of created things. From himself God found the model and form (exemplum et figurationem) of created things. (2.16.3)
In the divine plan, all things are made and fitted by God for a purpose, not connected by fanciful numbers like thirty (as Gnostics claim), but with existence and reason. Doctrine does not come from numbers, but numbers come from the system of doctrine. Created things derive their being from the one underived God, not vice versa (2.25.1).
Created things are opposite and inharmonious in themselves. As a modern poet says:
All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim, He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.'® As the lyre has many and opposite notes but one unbroken melody arises from the intervals (i.e. differences) between notes, we do not divide the world but, says Irenaeus, we prove the judgement, goodness and skill shown in the whole work. We listen to the melody, praise the artist, admire the tension of some notes, attend to softness of others and discern sounds between these extremes, the special character and purpose of each, and the cause of variety; at the same time we hold to our rule that there is one artist and one God
(2.25.2).
'© Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'Pied Beauty'. Poems and prose of G. M. Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner
(Penguin Books, 1953), 30.
One creator
Man is infinitely inferior to God, for he cannot have a plan of all things as God does. The limits of the human mind contrast with the infinity of the divine Intellect. Man is not uncreated, not coexistent with God as is the divine word; but he may now, through God's supreme goodness, receive the beginning of creation, and gradually learn from the word, the dispensations of God who made him
(2.25.3). Therefore man should not try to go beyond God. Rather, he should come near to God through love not knowledge. It is better not to know why a single part of creation was made, but to believe in God and to continue in his love, for his love is the life of man (2.26.1).
There are some who always want to discover more than their masters. An analogy to Gnostic inquiry may be proposed.
One could count human hairs and search for the reason why each human has a different number, a different size of head, and so on, and then found a sect on the achievement. Or one could count the sparrows which are caught (because God knows why so many were caught today, so many yesterday) and thus delude oneself and form a sect with others of like mind
(2.26.2).
God's providence gives each thing its nature, rank and number.
There is nothing accidental, but everything is appropriate to the divine way of thinking, which produces the proper causes of each kind (2.26.3). Gnostics who claim to be above the 'psychic' creator should prove superiority by their deeds not by mere words
(2.30.2). For what have they achieved which is comparable to the heavens, earth, stars, lights of heaven, confining circles, rains, frosts and snows in their suitable season and special climate? How have they ordered the opposition of heat or dryness or formed rivers, fountains, flowers, trees, the variety of animals, rational and irrational, 'all adorned with beauty'? We see innumerable objects governed by the power, wisdom and greatness of the God who made them as well as the existences above heavens
(2.30.3).
The Gnostic supreme god is above the creator. Yet how can an unproductive god be higher than one who is productive? If one has two tools, one in constant use and the other idle and useless, how can one claim the second to be superior (2.30.5)?
Economy 3.4
PLOTINUS'? ARGUMENT FOR A GOOD CREATOR
The same arguments which Irenaeus uses are found in Plotinus, who had no interest in Christian authority; this proves that they spring not from authoritarian discipline but from independent concern for truth. They show that the challenge of Gnosticism was against a culture, not a church.' It is wrong to claim, as Gnostics do, that the soul produced the world through a defect or moral failure, for these terms cannot apply to the perfection of universal soul (Enn. 2.9.4).
Plotinus attacks the Gnostic negative account of the world and its maker (Enn. 2.9.3—5). He insists that the universal soul and the universe are good (Enn. 2.9.7, 8), that providence overrules the injustice of the world, and that Gnostics do not transcend the heavens
(Enn. 2.9.9). Fallen Sophia and the demiurge are simply part of an absurd drama:
SS Then they form an image of the image somewhere here below, through matter or materiality . .. and produce what they call the Maker, and make him revolt from his mother and drag the universe which proceeds from him down~o the ultimate limit of i images. Thaman who wrote this just meant to be blasphemous! (Enn. 2.9.10) To begin with, if Wisdom did not descend but merely shone into darkness, she did not decline (Enn. 2.9.11). Nor can the relation of soul and matter through images make sense. "Then how did matter, when it was illumined, make images of the soul kind, instead of bodily nature?' (Enn. 2.9.11). A maker of the universe who is derived from matter and image is a nonsense; 'but, over and above the fact that this is pure fiction, how does the making work? They say this comes first, and another after that, but they speak quite arbitrarily' (nn. 2.9.11). Through ignorance of the nature of things they neglect the first things and indulge in 'the melodrama of the '7 'This does not mean that there is total identity between the complex ideas of Plotinus and Irenaeus. It means, as in the previous chapter (2.4), that they used similar argument against Gnostics on this point. They shared also a belief that the creator could never abandon his material creature and a predilection for the metaphor of light. However, their preoccupation, against Gnosticism, with truth and argument is confirmed by the disparity between their views on other matters and between the circumstances in which they were placed. See J. M. Rist, 'Plotinus on matter and evil', Phron 6 (1961), 154-66;
D. O'Brien, Théodicée plotinienne et théodicée gnostique (Leiden, 1993).
One creator
terrors, as they think, in the cosmic spheres, which in reality "make all things sweet and lovely" (cf. Pindar, Olympians 1.48) for them'
(Enn. 2.9.13). They tried to subject the cosmic powers by spells and incantations and did not acknowledge that diseases come from physical causes (Enn. 2.9.14).
Gnostic otherworldliness leads to immorality whereas Platonic otherworldliness leads to good morals. For the end of Gnostic fantasy is the despising of the world and moral values: 'this doctrine censures the lord of providence and providence itself still more crudely (than Epicurus) and despises all the laws of this world and the virtue whose winning extends back through all time'
(Enn. 2.9.15).
Those who claim higher knowledge should display the first signs of knowledge by correcting their conduct to conform to the divine nature, which they claim, 'for that nature is aware of nobility (kalon) and despises the pleasure of the body' (Enn. 2.9.15). Itis remarkable that Gnostics have never produced a moral treatise and indicate a persistent indifference to virtue. They may claim to 'look to God' but they are able at the same time to indulge in pluriform, pleasurable passions (Znn. 2.9.15). However, there is no way to God without virtue: 'God, if you talk about him without true virtue, is only a name' (Enn. 2.9.15).
Goodness does not fit with despising the universe and the gods.
How does God care providentially for the Gnostics alone? He is present to all and to the universe in some way. Ifhe is absent from the universe he will be absent from the Gnostics so that they cannot speak of him.
> For providential care is much more of wholes than of parts, and the participation in God of that universal soul, too, is much greater. Its existence, and its intelligent existence, make this clear. For who of those who are so mindlessly highminded in looking down on it 1s as well ordered or has as intelligent a mind as the All? (Enn. 2.9.16)
There is no way in which a rational man can grasp the intelligible universe and not grasp its reflection in this world. 'For how could there be a musician who sees the melody in the intelligible world and will not be stirred when he hears the melody in sensible sounds?
Or how could there be anyone skilled in geometry and numbers
Economy who will not be pleased when he sees right relation, proportion and order with his eyes?' He who sees the beauties of this world will wonder at them and at their source (En. 2.9.16). The similarity with Irenaeus is here uncanny and points to a perennial challenge.'
Beyond the bulk of the visible universe we grasp the force of the intelligible archetype, where the force of God holds the beginning, middle and end of the whole in his power.
The presence of God in the world is marked by beauty in physical and in ethical forms. Those who cannot see these things are intellectually blind: 'they have no contemplation, then, and hence no God. For the beauties here exist because of the first beauties.'
(Enn. 2.9.17). To go on to higher beauty does not imply insult to lower beauties. For anything that is wholly beautiful is dominated by beauty within. Gnostics are like people who criticise the house they live in and denigrate its builder. The philosopher speaks well of the builder and of the house which he will not always need. 'While we have bodies we must stay in our houses, which have been built for us by a good sister soul which has great power to work without any toil or trouble' (Enn. 2.9.18). Instead of clashing or yielding to pleasures and sights 'as we draw near to th©completely untroubled state we can imitate the soul of the universe and of the stars, and, coming to a closeness of resemblance to them hasten on to the same goal and have the same objects of contemplation' (Enn. 2.9.18).
3.5
GOD NEEDS NOTHING!'
The attribute 'in need of nothing' (#dént9O¢) is widely affirmed of God in the ancient world.'° Irenaeus includes the same claim in his rule of faith. The creator of all needed no help from any angels or powers outside him, for God has no need 'but through his word and spirit he makes, disposes, governs all things and grants them their existence' (1.22.1 ff). Only God is free from need (3.8.3).
'8 A challenge which is posed, by the success of the deaf musician, in the recent novel,
Vikram Seth, An equal music (London, 1999).
"9 A. Orbe, Espiritualidad de san Ireneo (Rome, 1 989), 45-89.
*° From the Sophist Antiphon (Aletheia 98), Plato (Tim. 33d, 34d), Plutarch (Lives, Aristides and Cato 4), Stoics (ap. Stobaeum 1.1.39), Lucretius (De rerum natura 2.64.6-50), Philo,
Plotinus, Corpus Hermeticum, Alcinoos, Apuleius, Sallustius, to 2 Maccabees 14:35, Acts
17:24 and Clement of Alexandria (str. 5.11.75.2—4), God's transcendence above all need is declared. Orbe, Espiritualidad, 45-6.
One creator
On the other hand, Irenaeus attacks the common claim of heretics that God needs help in the work of creation,?' that spirit can have no dealing with matter, and that therefore intermediaries are needed in creation. On the contrary, Irenaeus claims that God has his own hands (son and spirit) and attacks opponents who deny that God the spirit (as distinct from the psychic demiurge) can create the world and form man. The contrary claim that God needs intermediaries may spring from two different grounds: either he is too exalted to reach the world or he is too inadequate to produce a world.*? If the God of the old testament is separated from the God of the new, then the creator will appear inferior. He is limited, needs man and the world, is a blind instrument, psychic, subject to human passions. He makes and conserves the material world subjecting it through law and prophets. He remains ignorant of the dispensation which he serves, of the economy of the spirit, of the true God. He is as far distant from the true God as he 1s from humans.
Irenaeus insists on one first principle, on the identity of creator and maker with the father, the God of spirit, the true transcendent God who needs nothing and depends on no one. In creating and fashioning the world God shows a free and positive disposition, which leads to the deification of the creature (homo/plasma).
The creator establishes the dispensation wherein 'everything 1s directed to raise man to the condition of "god" in communion with life itself'.23 The God of the old testament is declared to be free from need. Yahweh never wants for anything, while man wants perpetually.*4 3.6.1
CREATIO EX NIHILO: CONCEPT WITHOUT
FORMULA (JUSTIN)
Some have thought that creatio ex nihilo is not to be found in the old testament, in Judaism or in earliest Christian thought, where
2 Orbe, Espiritualidad. 48.
22 Thid., 49.
3 Tbid., 88-9.
24 Tbid., 89. Orbe continues (g1—1 23) with an excellent exposition of 'God makes, man is made' which links creation and anthropology.
Economy creation is the production of things from unformed matter.*° This notion, it is claimed, is found as late as Justin (7 apol. 10.2;
59-15; 67.7).2° Such a claim rests on the failure to recognise the two models of king and architect and the failure to distinguish between words and concepts (5.13.2). The concept of creation from nothing can be found without the formula and the formula can be found without the concept. Accounts of creation can only be understood in the context of their total argument, in a conceptual not a culinary manner.'/ Justin's account has been misunderstood through the failure to distinguish words and concepts.?® The cosmos (dialogue with Trypho
5,4; Plato, Tim. 41 ab) is transitory but kept in being by the will of God. Justin's axiom (dial. 5.4—6) is that there can be only one unoriginated or unbegotten (agenneton) being, from which it follows that the soul is originate and transitory. A forzori the same argument would have to apply to matter. 'For what is unoriginated is similar to, equal to, the same with, what is unoriginated .
. and consequently there are not many things which are unoriginated'; wearied by unending-regress, the mind fixes on one_unoriginated cause of all (dial. 5). Yet we find the claim concerning Justin: 'in his explicit statements about matter he seems to consider it an eternal, uncreated substratum of the cosmos. One gets the impression that for Justin the idea that the creation of the world must have resulted from matter given in advance was so self-evident that he saw no problem in t.'79
*S In this brief account I have drawn on the excellent essay of J. Fantino, 'L'origine de la doctrine de la création ex nihilo. A propos de l'ouvrage de G. May', RSPhTh 80,4 (1996),
589-602. The work of G. May, Schopfung aus dem Nichts, ET Creatio ex nihilo, remains of fundamental value because he has shown the fascination of the problem and the advance made by Basilides.
This does not mean, as we shall see, that Justin could have believed in a dualism of God and matter. He insisted that there was only one unbegotten first-principle of all things. See discussion in Osborn, Justin Martyr, 46-9.
From Paul (Rom. 4) and the whole of scripture, early Christian writers took their doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. There was one God, unique in power. Cf. Clement of Alexandria,
'Everything takes place at the same time as he commands it. It follows from his bare intention to give a gift that the gift is fully made' (paedagogus 1.6.26). 'What he wills is thereby real and the name for this reality is the world' (paed. 1.6.27). See E. Osborn, The philosophy of Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge, 1957), 32-3.
28 May, Schopfung, 125, ET 123.
*9 Thid., 126, ET 124. My italics.
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If one looks to concepts rather than to words, one receives a different impression; it is clear that Justin would never have considered the concept of unoriginated matter because it contradicted his central belief about God, the sole unoriginated. One cannot get around this point by isolating the account of matter from the rest of Justin's thought. 'So when Justin presupposes an eternal material as the stuff of creation, this conception'° simply has the function of explaining how the creation of the world was possible; Justin obviously cannot but represent it as only the formation of a material substratum. Beyond that the doctrine of uncreated matter plays no part in his thinking.'3
Justin's use of the architect/builder model includes an apologetic move (1 apol. 10). He is anxious to show his pagan readers that they have common beliefs with Christians. Our teachers, the prophets, gave to Plato the claim that God, having changed formless matter, made the world. Moses the first prophet, older than any Greek writer, tells how in the beginning, the spirit moved on the water and God said 'Let there be light.' From this, Plato, and those who agree with Plato, and we ourselves have learned that the whole world was made out of the substance of which Moses spoke and which the poets call Erebus. The agent of creation was the word of God. Plato also learnt that the creator made the sign of x (chz) on the universe (1 apol. 60). In baptism we are born again through the name of God, the father and lord of the universe (7 apol. 61); on Sunday we celebrate the first day on which God changed darkness and matter to make the world. We acknowledge too the day when our saviour rose from the dead.
Justin here merely adumbrates (through resurrection and baptism) the image of the monarch who has no need beyond himself* and who acts directly and without process. However, matter does not imply dualism, especially when Irenaeus joins the king with the master builder. Matter is produced and ordered without interval.
Unformed matter is part of a series which has been swept into one 3° Note the fatal confusion of concepts with words and the slide from 'seems to' and 'gets the impression' to 'presupposes'. May shows great integrity by leaving enough clues to challenge his argument and display the vitality of the problem. My italics.
3! May, Schopfung, 127, ET 125.
3? As Justin says in 7 apol. 10 in the immediate context of a reference to creation from matter, and elsewhere.
Economy by the power of God. Why does Justin not make this point?: first, because none of his parallels between pagan and Christian beliefs — from necromancy to the ascension of the sons of Jupiter, or the healing miracles of Aesculapius or Perseus' virgin birth
(1 apol. 18-22) — suggests an identity between pagan and Christian accounts; second, because it was wrong to talk about what God did before creation.
3.6.2
CREATIO EX NIHILO: FORMULA WITHOUT
CONCEPT (BASILIDES)
Basilides,°3 it has been claimed, is the first Christian theologian who teaches creatio ex nihilo: 'God 1s non-being because he is above being, the cosmos pre-existing in the world seed is non-being because it has still to be realised in time and space (cf Hippolytus, Refutatio
Vil 22.1.6; X 14.2), and. the world seed is created out of non— being in the absolute sense, out of nothing.'3+ What distinguishes
Basilides from other Gnostics is that he 'looks on the supreme God, exalted over being and over all plurality, as being also the creator of the world and ascribes to the archons merely the function of under-demiurges. From this statement he has to reach the conclusion that God can only have created the cosmos out of nothing."*35 But does he reach this conclusion? It is more probable that he has used the phrase 'out of nothing' without conceptual awareness. Yet the claim is put strongly. Basilides is credited with the traditional concept of creatio ex nthilo, that the supreme God is the sole creator and that negative theology requires that there are no analogies to God's acts. 'Is it any more than a curious accident of history, that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo first meets us in unambiguous form in the work of a gnostic theologian?'3° First, there is ambiguity. "Not x creates not z from not y' is consistent with many claims, including, 'Anything which is not x creates
33 We digress to discuss Basilides for three reasons: first, to examine the competitive claim that he (not Irenaeus and Theophilus) invented creation ex nihilo; second, because the difference between formulas and concepts needs to be asserted; and third, because the contemporary discussion illuminates the problem.
34 May, Schopfung, 78, ET 76.
35 Tbid., 77, ET 76. My italics.
3°Tbid., 85, ET 83.
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anything which is not z from anything which is not y' or 'Nothing creates nothing from nothing.' Secondly, if we distinguish three kinds of non-being — as above being, not-yet being and absolute not-being — the picture is more promising. The above-existent God creates from the non-existent the not-yet existent. This is the best case we can make for him; but there has been no creation for world seed is not yet being. Politicians commonly produce what is not yet out of what is absolutely not. Nothing comes of nothing. Being has not been produced. Thirdly, if we take the world seed as a stage in the process of creation, then creation takes place through an intermediate entity. Creation ex nhilo should be marked by immediacy and the absence of intermediaries. Here there is an intermediary and once again the bureaucratic fallacy has taken its toll; it cannot be the case that 'God makes the cosmos on the ground of the decisions of his will alone through his mighty word out of nothing'
(21.4 and 22.3).37 Fourthly, Basilides' claim to reject all analogies is inconsistent with his concept of world seed, which is analogous to growth within the world.
3.6.3
CREATIO EX NIHILO: FORMULA
AND CONCEPT (IRENAEUS)
Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus change the scene by enunciating a strict account of creatio ex mhilo, the former engaging with Plato's Timaeus, perhaps the most heavily interpreted passage in classical literature,3° the latter exercising argument against theosophy. Irenaeus attributes basic matter to the power and will of God.
Men need material to maké things. God provides his own material (2.10.4). Theophilus similarly points to the power of God demonstrated in creatio ex nthilo (ad Autolycum 2.4, 13). There is a difference in definition. Theophilus sees creatio ex nthilo in the creation of formless matter (ad Aut. 2.10) as the first stage of creation, but Irenaeus does not talk of formless matter: creation of matter and the shaping of the world are two aspects of a single act by God who 1s both supreme king and wise architect. This act is part of the divine economy and is the work
37 Thid., 74, ET 73.
38 See M. Baltes, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaeus nach den antiken Interpreten, 2 vols.
(Leiden, 1976-8).
Economy of the father through the son and spirit. Theophilus denies that matter could be uncreated (ad Aut. 2.4, 6). Irenaeus will not divide creation of matter from the formation of creatures since they are two aspects of one act.
For Plato demiurge, matter and forms present the move from one to many. For the Stoics God and matter coexist eternally and from these two principles the world is produced (SVF 1.85, 24).
Neo-Pythagoreans and Middle Platonists argued for one or two first principles, the second principle being matter. Middle Platonists faced the problem posed by Timaeus 28b (the world has come into being [yéyovev] from a first principle) and Timaeus 30a (God brought all that was visible from disorder to order). A monist interpretation taught that matter was coeternally dependent on God. A dualist interpretation saw unformed matter as independent of God until, at a point of time, God brought it into order.
This view, held by Plutarch, Atticus, and Maximus Tyrius, was strongly opposed by Plotinus as well as by Alexander of Lycopolis in his rejection of Manicheism. Pythagoreans were either monists
(Eudorus, Nicomachus of Gerasa, Moderatus of Gades) who derived the One/Dyad from the transcendent One (God took some of his own substance, deprived it of all qualities so that it was pure potentiality),29 or dualists like Numenius (for whom both the One and the Dyad were ultimate).
In this debate the origin of matter became a crucial question. All agreed that the world came into being by the imposition of form on unformed matter. Did matter come from God or not? Gnostics linked this debate to the biblical account of creation. The primeval chaos of unformed matter derived from Sophia through the action of the Logos. 'Theophilus and Irenaeus, looking to the king rather than to the architect, insisted that the eternal uncreated God freely created all things out of nothing.*° Genesis 2:17b was taken by Gnostics to be proof of the impotence and inferiority of the demiurge, for Adam and Eve did not die
39 See A. J. Festugiére, La révélation d'Hermés Trismégiste, vol. tv: Le dieu inconnu et la gnose (Paris,
1954), 32-40.
Theophilus attacks Platonists because they claim that matter is eternal (ad Aut. 2.4). Like
'Tertullian, he wrote against Hermogenes, but his work has not survived. Like Platonic monists, he claimed that God created matter; but he did not line up against dualists by deriving matter from the substance of God.
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when they ate of the forbidden fruit. Their disobedience opened their eyes to true gnosis. Wisdom had spoken through the serpent and defeated the demiurge. Irenaeus offered five solutions to the problem: Adam and Eve died the death of the soul at the moment of their disobedience; when they took the forbidden fruit they became mortal; they died on the one day of creation; they died on the sixth day as did the second Adam; the day of the lord is a thousand years and Adam died at the age of 930. The second of the solutions
(instant mortality) is most consistent with Irenaeus' thought.
Irenaeus differed from Theophilus because he did not divide creato ex nthilo from the formation of creatures. Against Gnostics he affirmed that creation was one act of architect and king. Theophilus on the other hand distinguished creation of matter from production of creatures; he thereby confronted the widely held philosophical thesis of the eternity of matter. He put forward a general objection to the thesis: myths and philosophical accounts trace the origin of the world to an ultimate divine cause from which, through intermediaries, the world emanates; this impairs the divine transcendence and the freedom of the creative act.#'
Creation from matter and creation from nothing point to our ruling themes of architect and king. It would be wrong to see this distinction as purely a second-century novelty. The whole of the old testament anticipates these two themes. The Genesis creation story resounds to the royal command: "God said' (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9,
11, 14).
In the Psalms, his throne is in the heavens (Ps. 11:4), when the lord thunders and the most high gave his voice (Ps. 18:13). The mighty
God, even the lord has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto its going down (Ps. 50:1). God is our king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps. 74:12).4* He rules the raging of the sea. The architect/master-builder forms man out of dust (Gen. 2:7) and sets lights in the heavens (Gen. 1:16-17).
In the Psalms the heavens are the work of his fingers (Ps. 8:3), the heavens declare his glory and the firmament shows his handiwork
4" Fantino, 'L'origine de la doctrine', 601 . 'C'est précisément ce point que veut exprimer la notion de création ex nthilo. Elle manifeste la transcendance de Dieu par rapport au créé et donc sa liberté dans l'action créatrice.'
42 The voice of the lord thunders on the waters, powerful and full of majesty (Ps. 29:4—5), for God is king of all the earth (Ps. 47:7).
We Economy (Ps. 19:1). The earth is the lord's for he founded it on the seas and established it on the floods (Ps. 24:1—2). Before the mountains brought forth or ever God formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting he is God (Ps. 90:2).
All this is supported by Irenaeus' account of Plato (3.25.5), whom he declares to be more religious than the Gnostics for three reasons: Plato declares that the same god is both just and good, is omnipotent, and himself executes judgement. God is the ancient word who possesses the beginning, middle and end of all that exists, who does everything rightly, moving around things according to their nature, and is followed by retributive justice for those who transgress the divine law. Elsewhere Plato says that the maker and framer of the universe is good; because he has no envy his goodness takes effect in the beginning and the course of the creation of the world. For Irenaeus, the Gnostic account of creation is false and inferior to Plato when it speaks of causes of the world such as ignorance, wandering, consequences of defect, the weeping mother or another god and father.
The will of the creator is the efficient cause of the world. God acts freely and of his own will (2.1.1; 3.8.3). The creative will of God expresses his goodness (4.38.3; 2.25.3; 2.29.2; 5.4.2). While
Plato speaks of the will of the demiurge, the Valentinians fragment God with their account of 'thought' and 'will'; but for Irenaeus
God 1s all will and all mind (1.12.2). The belief that God's will and its realisation go together is a common philosophical idea.43 God created the world through himself (4.20.1) and from himself, freely and of his own choice, so that his will is the substance of all things
(2.30.0).
'To sum up the question of creation from nothing in Justin and Irenaeus, we can do no better than to quote Irenaeus concerning matter.
Moreover we shall not go wrong if we affirm the same thing concerning the origin of matter, namely that God produced it, for we have learned from the scriptures that God holds primacy over all things. But whence did he produce it and how? That, scripture nowhere explains, and we have
13 A, J. Festugiére, La révélation d'Hermés Trismégiste, vol. ut: Les doctrines de l'ame (Paris, 1953),
159. Galen (De usu partium 11.14) claims against Moses that there are things impossible by nature and God chooses what is best from what is possible at the time.
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no right, with our own opinions, to launch ourselves into an unending sea of fantasy concerning God; we must leave such knowledge to God.
(2.28.7) 3.7
IMMEDIACY
Irenaeus analysed the concepts behind the two models with which he worked. So long as they were kept together there was no problem. When one was given culinary status and taken without conceptual awareness, trouble occurred. Those who claimed to be above reason showed that they were below it.
How did Irenaeus hold the two models together? His concept of God as unwersal mind, indwisible, homogeneous and simultaneous, who thinks, wills, speaks and acts inseparably, makes the two models compatible and creation thinkable. Creatio ex nhilo leads to an awareness of the immediacy*4 of God whose right hand will hold us, even when we take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. This is the exact opposite of the meaning of ex nzhilo in Basilides, who separates
God from creation by an intermediary. Remarkably, a recent study speaks of creatio ex nthilo and concludes in the same way:
Finally the collective effect of all the above should be to affirm, in the most radical way, that the Christian faith knows no doctrine of creation that is not a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and that this doctrine demands to be articulated and interpreted in irreducibly trinitarian ways ... That is, it speaks not of some cosmological process but of the dynamic presence of the divine communion in the created order. God's presence is a free and ecstatic presence in, for and with the created order and God's purpose in this (discerned by the Spirit in and through the incarnate Son) is to bring to perfection the created order within his own life.
44 'the immediacy (used in its literal, non-temporal sense!) of the totality of the created order's contingency upon God's creativity', A. J. Torrance, "Creatio ex nihilo and the Spatio-Temporal dimension with special reference to Jiirgen Moltmann and D. C.
Williams', in The doctrine of creation, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Edinburgh, 1997), 99.
45 Tbid., 102.