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| Meaning of the Phrase--In the Beginning. Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter.
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Chapter
XX.—Meaning of the Phrase—In the Beginning. Tertullian
Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that
the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter.
But in proof that the Greek word means nothing
else than beginning, and that beginning admits of no other sense
than the initial one, we have that (Being)6323
even acknowledging such a beginning, who
says: “The Lord possessed6324
me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His
works.”6325
For since all
things were made by the Wisdom of God, it follows that, when God made
both the heaven and the earth in
principio—that is to say, in the beginning—He
made them in His Wisdom. If, indeed, beginning had a material
signification, the Scripture would not have informed us that God made
so and so in principio, at the beginning, but rather
ex principio, of the beginning; for He would not have
created in, but of, matter. When Wisdom, however, was
referred to, it was quite right to say, in the beginning. For it
was in Wisdom that He made all things at first, because by meditating
and arranging His plans therein,6326
He had in fact
already done (the work of creation); and if He had even intended to
create out of matter, He would yet have effected His creation when He
previously meditated
on it and arranged it in His Wisdom, since It6327
was in fact the beginning of His ways: this meditation and
arrangement being the primal operation of Wisdom, opening as it does
the way to the works by the act of meditation and thought.6328
This authority of Scripture I claim for
myself even from this circumstance, that whilst it shows me the God who
created, and the works He created, it does not in like manner reveal to
me the source from which He created. For since in every operation there
are three principal things, He who makes, and that which is made, and
that of which it is made, there must be three names mentioned in a
correct narrative of the operation—the person of the maker the
sort of thing which is made,6329
and the
material of which it is formed. If the material is not mentioned, while
the work and the maker of the work are both mentioned, it is manifest
that He made the work out of nothing. For if He had had anything
to operate upon, it would have been mentioned as well as (the other two
particulars).6330
In conclusion, I
will apply the Gospel as a supplementary testimony to the Old
Testament. Now in this there is all the greater reason why there
should be shown the material (if there were any) out of which God made
all things, inasmuch as it is therein plainly revealed by whom He made
all things. “In the beginning was the Word”6331
—that is, the same beginning, of
course, in which God made the heaven and the earth6332
—“and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him
nothing was made.”6333
Now, since we have
here clearly told us who the Maker was, that is, God, and what He made,
even all things, and through whom He made them, even His Word, would
not the order of the narrative have required that the source out of
which all things were made by God through the Word should likewise be
declared, if they had been in fact made out of anything? What,
therefore, did not exist, the Scripture was unable to mention; and by
not mentioning it, it has given us a clear proof that there was no such
thing: for if there had been, the Scripture would have mentioned
it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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