[RD] Ask a Theologian V

[timtofly]

1. I got a lot of heat in my "gay-friendly churches" thread from Evangelicals here when I mentioned my church allows gay members, saying any church that doesn't recognize homosexuality as a sin is 'not real Christians. Would you consider my church, the Disciples of Christ to be 'real' Christians (you won't offend me if you say no). Either way, what would you say is the official cutoff point for someone to be a 'real' christian, or not?

2. Should/do Christians get offended when popular culture such as books, movies, video games etc has characters or plotlines with vague Christian influence without anything direct? Or even direct. Should we be offended by movies such as 'Bruce Almighty'?

3. I've seen arguments back and forth that either the Bible/christians defend the institution of slavery or bash it. Could you settle this both in the biblical case, and how it's relevant to the American south?

4. let's say someone who has completely lost base with reality (hallucinating/under psychosis, and this isn't drug related, just something naturally wrong with them) commits a crime such as murder or whatever. Would they have sinned or would it be excused?

If humans toss out the Bible as a Standard would they be able on their own to come up with something that all humans would accept, or would it also be turned away by some who do not agree with another human's standard? There are examples of humans in the Bible who understood that the Bible would be offensive to other humans, but that any offenses occuring would not be directed at them, but at God and his presence on earth. If the Bible is just a man made guide, then humans would have to shoulder the brunt of any offenses that come against it.

2: Sin is supposed to be an offense against God. Why would humans be offended by their own nature? Humans like to pick and choose "sin" as a means to control other humans as an inflection of their own weakness to sin. If someone is going to give up their will to God, then all sin is sin and offensive. We are talking about two different things though. Most people are offended because of their feelings, and not because such things are offensive to God.

3: Slavery is a cultural issue and human control over other humans. The Bible is not a guide on how to do culture. The Bible is a history of how humans faced the culture they lived in and some changed culture for the better, and some failed at culture.

4: All humans are sinners and commit sin (I assume you mean against God). It is an inescapable part of their nature. Attempting to paint people as better than others and free of sin, is not what the Bible is about. The Bible is about the struggle against sin, and it's enslavement. It should not be about controlling others and painting them good or bad. When it comes to sin from God's perspective, no one has an excuse. Humans excuse themselves all the time and that is why some "sins" are more acceptable to them and do not offend their moral senses. God has forgiven humans of every sin, except the one that rejects such forgiveness. That is not a failure on God's part. That is the ability of humans to make their own choice in the matter.

So in effect, sin should not be a wall between humans, but only a wall between humans and God, and only if humans reject God's forgiveness because they think they are their own arbitrators in the matter. Culture is the wall that separates humans from other humans. If some humans incorporate sins against God in their culture, then they are going to alienate other humans who choose not to include God (and sin) in their culture.

 

[Mouthwash]

Why do you think the Problem of Evil was never taken seriously in antiquity or the Middle Ages, if it is as challenging as you believe? You'd think that a thousand years of philosophical thought would have at least recognized the difficulty of the problem.

 

[Plotinus]

As usual, sorry to have taken so long over these. I've had a lot of RL stuff going on.

So that David Mason fellow will be teaching a class called "Religion is Theater" next semester. I think this page gets at the gist of his perspective.

Is this a common way of thinking about religion? What sorts of flaws or strengths do you see to this approach? What exactly is the role theory of religious experience, and what other theories are there?

This is rather outside my expertise, being really psychology of religion / religious studies. The basic idea of "role theory", as I understand it, is that readers of religious texts (or participants in religious liturgies) identify with the roles of characters in the piece, and this is what gives it psychological power. This then allows religious believers to enact these roles imaginatively in their everyday life, transforming everyday experience into a religious experience. E.g. perhaps in church I hear a Gospel reading about Jesus helping a leper, and I find myself identifying with the role of the leper in the story, and in my everyday life I find myself re-thinking this identification and feeling myself to be more reliant on Jesus' aid.

As a psychological account of how religion functions it sounds pretty plausible to me - and I think there's a clear similarity between liturgy and theatre which is worth exploring - but I don't know anything about the psychology of theatre, so I can't really judge!

You might be correct, but an atemporal being would be unnoticeable to temporal beings. However, countless records claim that God is very noticeable. If that is true, then the premiss is wrong, i.e. God is not atemporal.

Why must an atemporal being necessarily be unnoticeable to temporal beings? I don't see a good reason for assuming that.

Even if it's true, bear in mind that many theologians have thought that all perceptions of God are indirect. E.g. Justin Martyr thought that all Old Testament theophanies, such as God appearing in the burning bush, are actually appearances of the Logos, not of the Father. It could also be the case that God "appears" to people by creating temporary physical objects which mediate his presence, rather than by actually inserting himself into the timeline. E.g. think of the pillar of fire and smoke which led the Israelites out of Egypt: a miraculous object, but still a physical object, which indicates God's presence in some sense but obviously isn't identical with him. So even if God is intrinsically imperceptible in a direct way, he could certainly be perceptible in an indirect way like this.

Going back to the original statement: the universe is everything known to exist (which would necessarily include God), we see that, surprisingly, it is not a contradiction, but in effect a paradox. The apparent contradiction comes from the common concept of time. So, assuming everything we know is also true, God is a timeless being affecting the temporal universe. That is the contradiction. (Not, as you state, my definition.)

I still think your definition is wrong. "The Universe" certainly doesn't mean "everything known to exist". If there is life on Europa, we don't know it. But if there is life on Europa, that life is part of the universe. A better definition would be "everything that exists", not everything that is known to exist.

Even so, I think that such a definition wouldn't normally be taken to include God, even assuming he exists, because God is not traditionally thought to exist in the same way as other things. God, according to classical theism, isn't another entity that exists alongside chairs, horses, and galaxies. He is, rather, existence itself, that which makes the existence of other things possible in the first place. So he's not another part of the furniture of the universe, he's what the existence of the universe itself presupposes. Whether this makes any sense or not, I'm not sure, but it's how God is traditionally conceived.

1. I got a lot of heat in my "gay-friendly churches" thread from Evangelicals here when I mentioned my church allows gay members, saying any church that doesn't recognize homosexuality as a sin is 'not real Christians. Would you consider my church, the Disciples of Christ to be 'real' Christians (you won't offend me if you say no). Either way, what would you say is the official cutoff point for someone to be a 'real' christian, or not?

I don't think there's a correct answer to that. There isn't some cosmic definition of "Christian" which is objectively correct. It's just a human term that we apply as we find useful, and different people have different definitions of it. Your church certainly sounds Christian to me; my general approach would be to say that if someone calls themselves a Christian they should probably know. Perhaps to a conservative evangelical someone who doesn't have a problem with homosexuality isn't a "proper" Christian, but that seems to me too narrow a definition. But such narrow definitions as this are part of the evangelical tradition - or, perhaps more accurately, part of the fundamentalist tradition, which is closely connected to it.

2. Should/do Christians get offended when popular culture such as books, movies, video games etc has characters or plotlines with vague Christian influence without anything direct? Or even direct. Should we be offended by movies such as 'Bruce Almighty'?

I wouldn't want to tell other people whether they should be offended or not at something that doesn't offend me. But I can't think of any reason why they should be offended by such things. The Chronicles of Narnia never mention Jesus by name, I think, but Christians don't get offended by that!

3. I've seen arguments back and forth that either the Bible/christians defend the institution of slavery or bash it. Could you settle this both in the biblical case, and how it's relevant to the American south?

The Bible certainly assumes the existence of slavery uncritically. It would be anachronistic to see that as an explicit endorsement of slavery, though, given that it was just an accepted part of the ancient world. Later Christians were largely against slavery, and the Christianisation of Europe was the major factor in the ending of slavery there by the end of the first millennium. Obviously in early modern times, with the Atlantic slave trade, there were Christians on both sides of the debate right from the start, all appealing to the Bible and to other authorities. I'd say that this simply illustrates the futility of trying to argue from the Bible about topics that the biblical authors weren't really addressing.

4. let's say someone who has completely lost base with reality (hallucinating/under psychosis, and this isn't drug related, just something naturally wrong with them) commits a crime such as murder or whatever. Would they have sinned or would it be excused?

I think the most reasonable answer (at least the Augustinian one, which seems reasonable to me) would be that it depends on whether the person intended to do something that they knew to be wrong. If they genuinely didn't understand that the action was wrong, and if this lack of understanding itself was not their fault (e.g. they lack the capacity to understand), then it would seem unjust to hold them morally culpable even if the act was wrong in itself.

Why do you think the Problem of Evil was never taken seriously in antiquity or the Middle Ages, if it is as challenging as you believe? You'd think that a thousand years of philosophical thought would have at least recognized the difficulty of the problem.

I don't think it's really true that it wasn't taken seriously at all. You certainly find extensive treatments of it in Augustine, for example, as well as other ancient theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa, and it's a topic addressed by Aquinas and other medieval theologians and spiritual writers such as Julian of Norwich. But most people in antiquity, and everyone in the Middle Ages, thought that God's existence could be demonstrably proved beyond any reasonable doubt. So while there might be a pastoral problem of evil (i.e. how to explain to people why God had allowed something terrible to happen, which was what Gregory of Nyssa tried to answer), there just wasn't what you might call the modern evidential problem, i.e. the notion that the existence of evil gives us good reason to think that God doesn't exist. To the ancient and medieval mind, an argument like that would be a bit like Xeno's paradoxes that purport to show that motion is impossible: a nice puzzle, but since motion clearly is possible, not really worth taking seriously.

~~~~

Also, a quick announcement of possible interest to anyone following this thread: there's a new series of "Myth Busters" on the History Channel at the moment, and I'm featured as a talking head in two episodes (on the Veil of Veronica and the Chalice of Valencia). I've only watched the chalice one so far and they seem to have included a shot of me saying that the theory could be true and left out the long explanation I gave of why it almost certainly isn't. Such is showbusiness!

 

[Mouthwash]

Also, a quick announcement of possible interest to anyone following this thread: there's a new series of "Myth Busters" on the History Channel at the moment, and I'm featured as a talking head in two episodes (on the Veil of Veronica and the Chalice of Valencia).

 

[Arakhor]

Next up - Plotinus on the Wimple of Valeria and the Hanky of Victoria.

 

[Takhisis]

Also, a quick announcement of possible interest to anyone following this thread: there's a new series of "Myth Busters" on the History Channel at the moment, and I'm featured as a talking head in two episodes (on the Veil of Veronica and the Chalice of Valencia). I've only watched the chalice one so far and they seem to have included a shot of me saying that the theory could be true and left out the long explanation I gave of why it almost certainly isn't. Such is showbusiness!

How quaint.

 

[classical_hero]

Also, a quick announcement of possible interest to anyone following this thread: there's a new series of "Myth Busters" on the History Channel at the moment, and I'm featured as a talking head in two episodes (on the Veil of Veronica and the Chalice of Valencia). I've only watched the chalice one so far and they seem to have included a shot of me saying that the theory could be true and left out the long explanation I gave of why it almost certainly isn't. Such is showbusiness!

I'm sure if you said it was aliens they might have taken you seriously. But seriously you really need to get straight to the point and make it forceful, rather than give a possibility and then explain why not.

 

[Plotinus]

But seriously you really need to get straight to the point and make it forceful, rather than give a possibility and then explain why not.

That's exactly what I did. But documentary making is about picking and choosing your material to fit the narrative you're trying to tell. I've been on the other side of the camera myself so I'm not surprised!

 

[H4run]

Plotinus, can we see Satanism as a branch of Christianity? or another interpretation of it? because it seem they define their existence base from Christianity's structure. For example their symbolism: they use inverted "cross". Their place of worship: "church", and their religious scholar: "priest", and they base their believe by mostly biblical character or being like Lucifer.

I really have insufficient knowledge regarding these kind of things. However I always see these things in the media like horror movie, or some band, which makes them got public attention. And my impression is that they seem more likely another kind of interpretation of Christianity than something that stand by themselves out of nothing, like a branch of Christianity, the extreme one. Is that correct?

 

[Plotinus]

It depends on what you mean by "Satanists". In the real world, people who call themselves "Satanists" are basically of two kinds. The first are neo-pagans who take "Satan" to represent pre-Christian deities, particularly those associated with physicality and freedom. They usually think (mistakenly) that the Christian representation of Satan is a deliberate attempt to demonise earlier gods, and they're trying to reverse this process and recapture the original meaning of that imagery before it was regarded as evil. So they're consciously non-Christian. The second kind are basically atheists or humanists who take "Satan" to be a symbol of rebellion against the establishment. They don't really worship anything at all, Satan or otherwise. So they're also consciously non-Christian, though in a different way.

I think that "Hollywood" Satanists, who literally worship Satan as traditionally represented in Christianity while also regarding him as evil, don't really exist.

 

[H4run]

It depends on what you mean by "Satanists". In the real world, people who call themselves "Satanists" are basically of two kinds. The first are neo-pagans who take "Satan" to represent pre-Christian deities, particularly those associated with physicality and freedom. They usually think (mistakenly) that the Christian representation of Satan is a deliberate attempt to demonise earlier gods, and they're trying to reverse this process and recapture the original meaning of that imagery before it was regarded as evil. So they're consciously non-Christian.

That's really sound like new age cult or maybe wicka (magician). mmm...

 

[Flying Pig]

Following on from something in the 'Historical Jesus' thread - do you know anything about pre-Christian Roman religion? Specifically, is there any evidence that people's belief in pagan gods, deified emperors and the Christian god was in some way qualitatively different? Some older books give the view that the 'state' religion was generally something nodded along to for the sake of keeping up patriotic appearances, and that philosophy filled the space that we today fill with religion, but is there actually any substantial truth to that?

 

[Atticus]

According to Christian doctrines, what happened to the divine part of Jesus when he died? Did the God die? Did that person of God die? Was it just elsewhere, and if so, does it make sense to say that Jesus died (since he is both human and God)?

Was the Jesus who rose from the dead and ascended to heaven the same Jesus that he was before crucifixion? And if so, does being human entail that he has to exist in a physical form somewhere now?

Also, is Pilgrim's Progress in your opinion worth of reading to an ordinary man in the street, who's moderately interested in the history of thought, but doesn't read on the subject systematically?

 

[_random_]

Plotinus, can we see Satanism as a branch of Christianity? or another interpretation of it? because it seem they define their existence base from Christianity's structure. For example their symbolism: they use inverted "cross". Their place of worship: "church", and their religious scholar: "priest", and they base their believe by mostly biblical character or being like Lucifer.

I really have insufficient knowledge regarding these kind of things. However I always see these things in the media like horror movie, or some band, which makes them got public attention. And my impression is that they seem more likely another kind of interpretation of Christianity than something that stand by themselves out of nothing, like a branch of Christianity, the extreme one. Is that correct?

If drawing heavily from Christian thought and language makes a group Christian, then I think there's a better case that Islam is a sort of Christianity. St. John of Damascus appeared to consider it such.

To what degree is the Life of Antony a theological text? Like was Athanasius (assuming his authorship is genuine) intentionally using biography as a springboard to promote his brand of incarnational theology, or am I just reading that into it?

 

[Agent327]

As usual, sorry to have taken so long over these. I've had a lot of RL stuff going on.

Understandable.

Why must an atemporal being necessarily be unnoticeable to temporal beings? I don't see a good reason for assuming that.

Atemporal presumes existing outside space-time. We have no instruments to acknowledge such a being.

Even if it's true, bear in mind that many theologians have thought that all perceptions of God are indirect. E.g. Justin Martyr thought that all Old Testament theophanies, such as God appearing in the burning bush, are actually appearances of the Logos, not of the Father. It could also be the case that God "appears" to people by creating temporary physical objects which mediate his presence, rather than by actually inserting himself into the timeline. E.g. think of the pillar of fire and smoke which led the Israelites out of Egypt: a miraculous object, but still a physical object, which indicates God's presence in some sense but obviously isn't identical with him. So even if God is intrinsically imperceptible in a direct way, he could certainly be perceptible in an indirect way like this.

This goes back to what I just mentioned: in order for an atemporal being to be even be noticed it would need some sort of 'trick', i.e. a phenomenon that actually can be witnessed by temporal beings such as ourselves.

I still think your definition is wrong. "The Universe" certainly doesn't mean "everything known to exist". If there is life on Europa, we don't know it. But if there is life on Europa, that life is part of the universe. A better definition would be "everything that exists", not everything that is known to exist.

A bad analogy: we know Europa exists. (It's also highly unlikely that there is any life on Europa, but that is beside the point. Should there miraculously be life found on Europa, that would then again be included in our knowledge of everything existing.)

But if you prefer the definition of 'the universe' may also simply be: everything. (That might be a bit too simple though.) Astrophysicists certainly use the definition I mentioned, so I don't quite see how it would be 'wrong'. The universe is, however, defined as everything we know to exist. It is assumed that there is no 'outside' or 'beyond' the universe. (Whether that is actually true is another matter, obviously.) Perhaps the confusion is about the universe we are in? Because that's the only universe we know.

The universe can't be defined as 'everything that exists', however, because that would include things that may exist outside the universe. So, this proceeds from the same definition that 'the universe is everything known to exist', and is not limited by an apparent reduction to 'everything that exists'. The simplest definition is not always the right one, I'm afraid.

Even so, I think that such a definition wouldn't normally be taken to include God, even assuming he exists, because God is not traditionally thought to exist in the same way as other things. God, according to classical theism, isn't another entity that exists alongside chairs, horses, and galaxies. He is, rather, existence itself, that which makes the existence of other things possible in the first place. So he's not another part of the furniture of the universe, he's what the existence of the universe itself presupposes. Whether this makes any sense or not, I'm not sure, but it's how God is traditionally conceived.

It wouldn't normally be taken to include God, no. Especially since we can't with absolute certainly know God exists other than in the minds of believers. I note you are referring to God as the prime mover or absolute cause. In the Bible book of Genesis, however, there is no mention of this: the existence of a universe is already presumed. God just brings the order to it that we know. As to the physical universe, there is nothing in astrophysics or cosmology that makes the existence of a Kickstarter God impossible. It's just not the realm of science (outside of philosophy and theology, that is) to discuss it, since it is not an observable phenomenon.

 

[timtofly]

It wouldn't normally be taken to include God, no. Especially since we can't with absolute certainly know God exists other than in the minds of believers. I note you are referring to God as the prime mover or absolute cause. In the Bible book of Genesis, however, there is no mention of this: the existence of a universe is already presumed. God just brings the order to it that we know. As to the physical universe, there is nothing in astrophysics or cosmology that makes the existence of a Kickstarter God impossible. It's just not the realm of science (outside of philosophy and theology, that is) to discuss it, since it is not an observable phenomenon.

Saying that God is the prime mover or first cause is a concept in the minds of humans. God is not a concept in the minds of humans. From around 1000 BC there were humans who thought that God is part of the universe as Plotinus noted because they described the universe as existing within God and that without God, the universe would not exist. Some would explain it as God infused in the universe. By the time Hellenized Christianity came along, theologians were arguing if God created the universe out of nothing or as you said the first cause. No one was arguing whether God existed or not. I am not understanding how you think that they thought the universe pre-existed. That notion has only been introduced lately due to evolution and the thought that the universe has been around longer than ancient people thought it had been. Genesis clearly points out that God created, which does not mean bring order. Create means make or cause to exist, and it is assumed out of nothing. Saying that God brought order to chaos is an attempt to twist the words to fit the modern theory of evolution. After God created, then he formed the universe. There are some people who believe that God is still bringing order to substance he created in the beginning, and new galaxies; stars and planets appear from the process. Not that they are new, but there is still the ongoing process of God adding himself to the universe. This creation does not go against science, because the universe had a singularity point in the process, nicknamed "the big bang". Mathematics does not rule God out as it can only be applied to the physical aspect of the universe, not God. Seeing as how God cannot be explained via phenomenon, God either exist or he does not, but using known phenomenon to prove that is pointless. Now humans think that they can explain how the universe is ongoing and that new formations are just the result of matter interacting with matter, but such processes are still theories and not observed phenomenon. All that can be observed is the result of such actions and not the actions themselves.

 

[Plotinus]

Following on from something in the 'Historical Jesus' thread - do you know anything about pre-Christian Roman religion? Specifically, is there any evidence that people's belief in pagan gods, deified emperors and the Christian god was in some way qualitatively different? Some older books give the view that the 'state' religion was generally something nodded along to for the sake of keeping up patriotic appearances, and that philosophy filled the space that we today fill with religion, but is there actually any substantial truth to that?

I think there's a little bit of truth to that in the sense that in antiquity philosophy did, to a certain extent, occupy some of the space we associate with religion. People studied philosophy in part because they wanted to know about God and salvation. That, at least, is what some philosophers claimed. But I think that to suggest that philosophy simply took the space that today we associate with religion and religion itself was just a hollow shell is a mistake, caused by focusing too much on elements of antiquity that interest us now but at the time were really a minority interest. Philosophy was only a pastime undertaken by a few, much like today. No doubt there were people for whom the Roman state religion was of little interest and just something to pay lip service to, but certainly for many other people and and other forms of pagan religion were important spiritual traditions that meant a lot to them. The various resurgences of such religion at Rome and elsewhere after the time of Constantine indicate that; indeed the old religion was still thriving in the time of Justinian I, as shown by his attempts to stamp it out. Some of the mystery cults were still operating well into Christian times too. The notion that paganism was spiritually bankrupt and basically rolled over as soon as Christianity turned up is really a Christian myth.

According to Christian doctrines, what happened to the divine part of Jesus when he died? Did the God die? Did that person of God die? Was it just elsewhere, and if so, does it make sense to say that Jesus died (since he is both human and God)?

According to the traditional orthodox view, the divine part of Jesus did not die. It remained impassible and untouched by what was going on in the human part. However, it is still accurate to say that the Son died. This is because anything that the human part did can be attributed to the Son, because he is the only person involved in the incarnation. So the Son died as a human being, but not as a divine being. The traditional interpretation of this is that the human body and soul which were united to the Son died, but nothing happened to the Son himself; however, because the human body and soul did not constitute a person in themselves, the subject of their actions was the Son, so the Son did die in that sense.

An analogy that's been used for this is a diver in a wetsuit. He puts on the wetsuit to allow him to enter the water. As a result, he is in the water, but he is not strictly speaking wet - only the wetsuit is wet. But because it's wet, the diver himself can be said to be in the water. Similarly, the Son "puts on" a human body and soul in order to enter human society. This human body and soul walk around, talk to people, and so on, in ways that the Son could not without them. As a result, the Son can be said to be doing these things, in a slightly indirect kind of way, because he is the person in which the body and soul inhere (just as the diver is the person wearing the wetsuit).

Was the Jesus who rose from the dead and ascended to heaven the same Jesus that he was before crucifixion? And if so, does being human entail that he has to exist in a physical form somewhere now?

Yes, he is the same person, but his humanity has been transformed. Traditionally he is supposed to still exist in a physical form in heaven. However, although his body still exists, it is not like ours. Paul describes the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 as involving the transformation of the physical body into a spiritual one. No-one really knows quite what this means.

I do think that the traditional understanding of Christ's resurrection and exaltation raises pretty hefty problems for the doctrine of incarnation, though. I published a paper on that a while ago.

Also, is Pilgrim's Progress in your opinion worth of reading to an ordinary man in the street, who's moderately interested in the history of thought, but doesn't read on the subject systematically?

Unfortunately I've never read it, so I can't say!

To what degree is the Life of Antony a theological text? Like was Athanasius (assuming his authorship is genuine) intentionally using biography as a springboard to promote his brand of incarnational theology, or am I just reading that into it?

No, that's exactly what's going on. Athanasius was very keen to co-opt the heroic and much admired Antony onto his side in the theological battles he, Athanasius, was fighting. That's why Antony is presented as denouncing Arianism at every turn. Which may perhaps be historically accurate - perhaps Athanasius had chosen a subject that suited his purposes well.

By the time Hellenized Christianity came along, theologians were arguing if God created the universe out of nothing or as you said the first cause. No one was arguing whether God existed or not. I am not understanding how you think that they thought the universe pre-existed. That notion has only been introduced lately due to evolution and the thought that the universe has been around longer than ancient people thought it had been. Genesis clearly points out that God created, which does not mean bring order. Create means make or cause to exist, and it is assumed out of nothing. Saying that God brought order to chaos is an attempt to twist the words to fit the modern theory of evolution.

No, this isn't correct. Platonism also believed that God fashioned the universe out of pre-existent matter. Some early Christians, influenced by Platonism, believed the same thing. On this view, matter always existed from eternity, and when God created the universe, he imposed order on this matter, like a potter moulding from clay that already existed. This was an ancient view that has nothing to do with the modern theory of evolution.

This is the most natural interpretation of Genesis, which certainly does not explicitly state that God created out of nothing. On the contrary, it states:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

So here you have a picture of an existing chaotic situation of darkness and water. The creation narrative in Genesis portrays God as bringing order to this situation and separating the various elements out before creating the familiar objects of the natural world out of them. My Old Testament colleagues tell me that underlying this story are older myths of God defeating chaos monsters: the chaos was, for the earlier Hebrews, a sort of demonic element that God had to conquer in order to create.

The fact that the book of Genesis seemed to teach pretty much the same thing as Plato's Timaeus about how the world was created was not lost on the early Christians. But this led to debates about the nature of creation at the end of the second century and in the early third century. We see both Tertullian and Origen weighing in on these and attacking the view that matter existed before God created anything. And indeed this view got condemned as heretical. The orthodox position became either that God created matter first and then fashioned the universe out of it (Tatian the Syrian seems to think this) or that God simply fashioned the universe out of nothing at all (creation ex nihilo). But while this became orthodoxy, don't make the mistake of thinking that it was older than the rival view or more clearly in the Bible, because a natural reading of Genesis suggests the rival view.

 

[timtofly]

No, this isn't correct. Platonism also believed that God fashioned the universe out of pre-existent matter. Some early Christians, influenced by Platonism, believed the same thing. On this view, matter always existed from eternity, and when God created the universe, he imposed order on this matter, like a potter moulding from clay that already existed. This was an ancient view that has nothing to do with the modern theory of evolution.

Platonism and this heretical belief was held at bay until scholars like Spinoza and Darwin. The transference from God as creator outside of creation to just the "first mover" started with Spinoza and ended with Darwin "knocking" God out of the universe altogether. It may be hard to prove if Plato knew God the same way the Hebrew scriptures portrayed God, and point to his writings as misinterpreting the Hebrew OT. Perhaps if history had gone differently there may have been another branch in the Abrahamic tradition. Although it may be considered alive and doing very well in today's modernism. What proof is there that the early church fathers or even pre-Christian thinkers held that position?

This is the most natural interpretation of Genesis, which certainly does not explicitly state that God created out of nothing. On the contrary, it states:

Originally Posted by Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

So here you have a picture of an existing chaotic situation of darkness and water. The creation narrative in Genesis portrays God as bringing order to this situation and separating the various elements out before creating the familiar objects of the natural world out of them. My Old Testament colleagues tell me that underlying this story are older myths of God defeating chaos monsters: the chaos was, for the earlier Hebrews, a sort of demonic element that God had to conquer in order to create.

The fact that the book of Genesis seemed to teach pretty much the same thing as Plato's Timaeus about how the world was created was not lost on the early Christians. But this led to debates about the nature of creation at the end of the second century and in the early third century. We see both Tertullian and Origen weighing in on these and attacking the view that matter existed before God created anything. And indeed this view got condemned as heretical. The orthodox position became either that God created matter first and then fashioned the universe out of it (Tatian the Syrian seems to think this) or that God simply fashioned the universe out of nothing at all (creation ex nihilo). But while this became orthodoxy, don't make the mistake of thinking that it was older than the rival view or more clearly in the Bible, because a natural reading of Genesis suggests the rival view.

In Hebrew the word bolded does not exist. The Hebrew reads: In the beginning [noun] created [verb] God [noun] ( ) [accusative] the heavens [noun] and earth [noun]. Putting a "when" in there promotes the heretical viewpoint that matter already existed.

Even Young's LT says:
In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,

Which is the heretical view. It is changing the word created to a propositional form of preparing. The Hebrew action was accusative: God created. YTL even goes further than the translation you quoted and states: "hath existed". Most versions just say "was without form" or "was a formless void"

God did an action - created. What he created was [matter] without form and void. Matter is what the universe consisted of after God created it. The second verse is describing how the universe appeared after he created it. The only way matter pre-existed is if you change the Hebrew accusative to a prepositional phrase; that God did not create' but only reformed what was already there. Even if it is used as a long period or infinite time, the matter God created was always formless, until the first day when God added light to the matter. It would seem to me that any translation that changes the original Hebrew to say that God worked with matter that already existed is incorrect. The early church would call it heretical.

The Wycliffe Bible circa 1382 reads: In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. (In the beginning God made out of nothing the heavens and the earth.) Forsooth the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of (the) depth;

Benton's Septuagint circa 1870 reads: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished.

The only way these readings make sense is that God made the earth formless. Why would he make it formless if it was already that way?

 

[Arakhor]

I can't find the word when in either the Authorised Version or the Latin Vulgate. However, neither say that God created everything ex nihilo either.

 

[Plotinus]

Platonism and this heretical belief was held at bay until scholars like Spinoza and Darwin. The transference from God as creator outside of creation to just the "first mover" started with Spinoza and ended with Darwin "knocking" God out of the universe altogether.

I don't think this is correct. Spinoza didn't claim that God made the world out of pre-existing matter; this would have been incoherent with his Cartesian understanding of the nature of matter. He thought that God was identical with the universe. Darwin of course says nothing about the origins of the universe or the nature of creation; he only describes the process of biological evolution, which is a quite different matter.

The "first mover" is an Aristotelian concept which was incorporated into Christian theology mainly in the thirteenth century by people like Thomas Aquinas. It is based on Aristotelian physics which holds that things naturally stop moving if other things don't move them, and since motion continues in the universe, there must be something keeping everything going. So the "first mover" is like the engine in a car that keeps the universe running, and Aquinas identified this with God. Again this has nothing to do with the origins of the universe or the nature of matter.

It may be hard to prove if Plato knew God the same way the Hebrew scriptures portrayed God, and point to his writings as misinterpreting the Hebrew OT.

Early Christians, (some) Jews, and (some) pagans alike thought that Plato had indeed read the Hebrew Bible and taken his best ideas from it. Of course this is very unlikely.

Although it may be considered alive and doing very well in today's modernism.

I don't think this is true. I at least have never met anyone who thinks that matter is eternal and pre-existent and that God created the universe out of it.

What proof is there that the early church fathers or even pre-Christian thinkers held that position?

The most comprehensive discussion from a Christian point of view is Tertullian's Against Hermogenes, which attacks the view in question, so clearly there were some people who believed it then. Evidently, until this time, there were divergent views on the matter and it hadn't really been discussed. Justin Martyr states that "God changed shapeless matter and created the world" (Apology I 59), which at least sounds like he envisages that matter was pre-existent, although doesn't discuss the topic explicitly.

From a non-Christian point of view, the obvious source text is Plato's Timaeus 48-50. Later Platonists systematised this (e.g. by explicitly referring to matter as hyle, something Plato himself doesn't do) - an example is Alcinous' Didaskalikos 8.3.

In Hebrew the word bolded does not exist. The Hebrew reads: In the beginning [noun] created [verb] God [noun] ( ) [accusative] the heavens [noun] and earth [noun]. Putting a "when" in there promotes the heretical viewpoint that matter already existed.

This isn't accurate. You're right that there is no word in Hebrew directly corresponding to "when", but this is because Hebrew is an inflected language that conveys such concepts via verb and noun forms. Now I checked this with a colleague who is an expert on biblical Hebrew and he confirms that the word for "created" here is not in fact a simple indicative as you imply with your rendering. It's what's called a genitive construct. The word for "beginning" is something like "the start of" or "the first fruits of", and would normally be followed by a noun. The use of a verb after it is unusual and indicates that what follows is the thing that it's the beginning of, if you see what I mean.

It's a bit like saying: Here is the list of what I bought once I'd got in my car, driven to the supermarket, and got out: tomatoes, bread, etc. You have the introduction, the description of the preceding situation, and then the important bits. Similarly, the opening of Genesis is like: Here is how God created the world once it was formless void, covered in darkness, and had the spirit of God sweeping over it: God said "Let there be light." The bit that comes after the opening phrase, but before "Let there be light," describes the situation that obtained when God began to create. It doesn't describe the first stages of God's creating. The Young's LT version that you quote captures this meaning exactly correctly.

My colleague also tells me that this interpretation of the unusual sentence structure in Genesis was well understood by medieval Jewish rabbis, but it was confirmed in modern times with the discovery of other creation accounts from the ancient Middle East, which use similar linguistic constructions. It seems that this was a standard way of starting creation stories.

It would seem to me that any translation that changes the original Hebrew to say that God worked with matter that already existed is incorrect. The early church would call it heretical.

As I say, these translations don't change the original Hebrew but translate it accurately. However, I'd add here that most of the early Christians wouldn't have called that heretical, because they didn't care about the original Hebrew. They thought that the inspired text was the Greek Septuagint, not the original Hebrew. Interestingly, the Septuagint does translate "created" as a simple indicative, and entirely misses the genitive construction that I described above. So the Septuagint would pretty much match the translation you propose (one of the translations you cite is of the Septuagint, not the Hebrew, so this would make sense). I don't know whether this was a factor that influenced the church's rejection of the notion of pre-existent matter.