A question (mostly to Plotinus, but others feel free to reply) :
What is the most acceptable iconography of the Wheel of Ezekiel? (the wheel within a wheel and the cheruvim related to it, from the book of Ezekiel)
Looking for an image, but one which has some degree of theologic backing, if possible. Eg some historic church icon of that wheel.
I'm afraid I have no idea at all - you're on your own with that one!
The whole point about Genesis 1 though is that if you follow Young's translation, there is no verse that states that God created the universe. It is inferred that matter did exist and that God formed that matter into the current arrangement of the solar system. The only other mention about the universe is in verse 16 the last word is "the stars". Unless verse one is taken as the beginning (first principle) God created the universe (out of nothing), then there is no matter ex nihilo stated in such a specific way as to rule out any other interpretation.
If the first verse of the Bible does not state ex nihilo, then when did such knowledge became known as to be given to the church by God?
I explained that in my previous post about Hermogenes and Tertullian. I gave a link to Tertullian's treatise on this subject, which should answer this question pretty comprehensively.
Aristotle introduced that there had to be a first cause.
Yes, but it's not a temporal cause. "First" here means logical priority, not temporal priority. Aristotle believed that although the universe has a cause, namely the Unmoved Mover, the universe has always existed and there was never a start to its existence. He argues in
Physics 1.7 (which you can read
here) that the notion of something coming to be out of nothing is incoherent, because coming to be is a form of change, and something can change only if it already exists. So nothing really comes into existence - rather, things are formed out of pre-existing things.
It would seem that the Hebrews already understood that God was the first cause and spoke all matter into existence. Young was the first to translate the first verse into a reading that allowed matter (pre-existing) to be formed and not created (out of nothing).
No. There's no concept in ancient Judaism of creation
ex nihilo. I don't think you'll find, either in the Bible or anywhere else, a Hebrew concept of "matter" at all, let alone one that explicitly states God created it.
You seem to be saying that Young invented this idea that Genesis talks about a pre-existing substratum from which God created the universe. This isn't accurate. Any translation of the Bible you care to look at states that the earth was formless before God started creating it, and speaks of "waters" over which God moves.
As I mentioned, the notion of creation
ex nihilo seems to be absent from any author before Tatian of Syria, who was writing in the mid-second century CE. I don't think this would be the case if Genesis did teach this doctrine.
Creation can not even exist in evolutionary thought even if there was a big bang. The Hebrew word can mean create or form. There is not really a determinate (out of nothing). It is assumed God spoke the big bang into a formative state, but that would be different than creating something out of nothing. It would just be the act of causing that which existed in the singularity to come forth as in an evolutionary process.
Your argument here is very hard to follow. I see no reason at all why God couldn't create (from nothing or not, either is possible) the primordial singularity and cause it to explode into our universe. So the notion of the big bang is perfectly consistent with the notion that God created the universe; the fact that most Christians believe in both ought to be proof enough of this.
The whole point of Genesis 1:1 was that there was no big bang. God created in space, matter ex nihilo. He then proceeded to define what that matter was and how he interacted with that matter. There was no single point of condensed matter. The universe was given a mature age, just like humans and animals were given a mature life. It was instantaneous not evolving. Things would have progressed or evolved from that point in "time". That God created biological beings able to mutate is not really a point in Genesis 1 other than that point that they reproduced after their kind, but that was not really a pronouncement on origins, but that different kinds did exist. It does not state any where that kinds could not evolve at all.
You're certainly right that Genesis 1, taken literally, is incompatible with the scientific understanding of the origins and development of the universe. I think it's over-egging the pudding to say that this is the
point of that passage, given that its author was obviously unfamiliar with modern science; the real intent of the passage is to oppose rival beliefs that were held at that time (such as the notion that there were other gods beyond God), not to oppose rival beliefs that people hold today.
I changed my post. Sorry it was 2 Peter 3:1-10.
Well, there again, creation
ex nihilo is not taught; on the contrary, God is described as creating the world "out of water and by means of water". So here again water seems to be pre-existent.
(I suppose that's no odder than the Platonic idea that matter was pre-existent, since the word for matter,
hyle, actually means "wood".)
So the doctrine of creatoin
ex nihilo was a later development and a later re-interpretation of texts such as these, not their original meaning. The doctrine developed for philosophical reasons deriving from monotheism and the wish to make God the sole cause of the universe, not from any superior methods of textual exegesis. Again, if you read the text by Tertullian that I linked to, you will see this - he uses rational arguments to defend the doctrine, not exegetical ones.
I have no idea why anyone would believe the Big Bang as being scientific when at every turn it violates known physics. Look up the cosmological statement, which was released by non Christian scientists attack the religious belief that is the Big Bang.
Of course the Big Bang theory doesn't violate all known physics; if it did, most physicists wouldn't accept the theory. And of course it's not a "religious belief", that's just hyperbole. Even the Wikipedia page on the subject gives a good explanation of how the theory developed and why, and what observable evidence there is in favour of it. So even if you disagree with the theory it seems odd that you should say you have no idea why anyone believes it. This information isn't hard to find.
The "cosmological statement" you refer to doesn't seem to me to be very helpful for your position. This is for two reasons. First, it represents a small minority of professional physicists. Second, and more importantly, it argues for alternatives to the Big Bang theory that are far harder to reconcile with traditional Christian belief, notably plasma cosmology and the steady-state model. Both of these models deny that the universe had a beginning at all. At least the Big Bang theory holds that the (observable) universe had a beginning, which is easier to reconcile with Christian dogma.
The whole point is that God made clear how he created "the heavens and the earth". If you can't trust him on what he did, then how can you trust him on other things? It's God's Word verses man's words. Every time I will take God's Word over man' s interpretations.
Well, as others have pointed out, you may think that evidence for the Big Bang is insufficient, but at least there
is evidence for it. There's no evidence at all, that I can see, that the Genesis account is "God's words".
As John Locke said, if we have a revelation from God, then by all means that revelation should trump any alternative views and we should take it to be true, because anything God says must be true. But before we can do that we must be sure that it
is a revelation from God. And to do that we must use reason. The problem is that:
(1) There are ways in which one could test the claim that a given text is divine revelation. For example, if the text contained information that the author couldn't possibly have known except by divine revelation (or at least some other non-natural source), such as detailed and infallible predictions of the future or of scientific facts otherwise unknown at the time.
(2) No supposedly divine text has actually passed this test. For example, some such texts apparently make predictions of the future, but we have no good reason to think that they were really written before those supposedly future events. But we would have to be sure of that in order to be sure that they are genuine predictions.
From (1) and (2) it follows that there's no text for which we have good reason to suppose that it contains divine revelation. It follows that if you think that the first chapter of Genesis, or any other text, is "God's words" and tells infallible truth, this belief (whether true or not) is not evidence-based but just blind faith. In which case you can't use it as evidence against anyone else's beliefs that may contradict it. If you want to attack those contradictory beliefs you must find other sources of evidence against them.
Heaven(s) and Earth are defined by God and the waters of gen 1:2 were not created by God - Heaven was placed amidst the waters, the Earth is the dry land, not the planet. And heaven is nearby, it isn't the universe. The "stars" refers to only those stars people could see, they were to serve for signs and seasons and help light the night sky.
