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| Erroneous views of Creation rejected. (1) Epicurean (fortuitous generation). But diversity of bodies and parts argues a creating intellect. (2.) Platonists (pre-existent matter.) But this subjects God to human limitations, making Him not a creator but a mechanic. (3) Gnostics (an alien Demiurge). Rejected from Scripture. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
§2.
Erroneous views of Creation rejected. (1) Epicurean (fortuitous
generation). But diversity of bodies and parts argues a creating
intellect. (2.) Platonists (pre-existent matter.) But this subjects God
to human limitations, making Him not a creator but a mechanic. (3)
Gnostics (an alien Demiurge). Rejected from Scripture.
Of the making of the universe and the creation of
all things many have taken different views, and each man has laid down
the law just as he pleased. For some say that all things have come into
being of themselves, and in a chance fashion; as, for example, the
Epicureans, who tell us in their self-contempt, that universal
providence does not exist, speaking right in the face of obvious fact
and experience. 2. For if, as they say, everything has had its beginning of itself, and
independently of purpose, it would follow that everything had come
into194
194 Or,
“been made in one way only.” In the next clause I formerly
translated the difficult words ὡς ἐπὶ
σώματος
ἕνος ‘as in the case
of the universe;’ but although the rendering has commended itself
to others I now reluctantly admit that it puts too much into the Greek
(in spite of §41. 5). | mere being, so as to be alike and not
distinct. For it would follow in virtue of the unity of body that
everything must be sun or moon, and in the case of men it would follow
that the whole must be hand, or eye, or foot. But as it is this is not
so. On the contrary, we see a distinction of sun, moon, and earth; and
again, in the case of human bodies, of foot, hand, and head. Now, such
separate arrangement as this tells us not of their having come into
being of themselves, but shews that a cause preceded them; from which
cause it is possible to apprehend God also as the Maker and Orderer of
all.
3. But others, including Plato, who is in such
repute among the Greeks, argue that God has made the world out of
matter previously existing and without beginning. For God could have
made nothing had not the material existed already; just as the wood
must exist ready at hand for the carpenter, to enable him to work at
all. 4. But in so saying they know not that they are investing God with
weakness. For if He is not Himself the cause of the material, but makes
things only of previously existing material, He proves to be weak,
because unable to produce anything He makes without the material; just
as it is without doubt a weakness of the carpenter not to be able to
make anything required without his timber. For, ex hypothesi,
had not the material existed, God would not have made anything. And how
could He in that case be called Maker and Artificer, if He owes His
ability to make to some other source—namely, to the material? So
that if this be so, God will be on their theory a Mechanic only, and
not a Creator out of nothing195 ; if, that is, He
works at existing material, but is not Himself the cause of the
material. For He could not in any sense be called Creator unless He is
Creator of the material of which the things created have in their turn
been made. 5. But the sectaries imagine to themselves a different
artificer of all things, other than the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, in deep blindness even as to the words they use. 6. For whereas
the Lord says to the Jews196 : “Have ye not
read that from the beginning He which created them made them male and
female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall become one
flesh?” and then, referring to the Creator, says, “What,
therefore, God hath joined together let not
man put asunder:” how come these men to assert that the creation
is independent of the Father? Or if, in the words of John, who says,
making no exception, “All things197 were
made by Him,” and “without Him was not anything
made,” how could the artificer be another, distinct from the
Father of Christ?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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