My continuing studies into Justin Martyr’s Christology are providing some interesting assessments. Note the following from the Reformed author, Harry R. Boer:
With the Apologists, Greek philosophy became associated with Christianity. The best known of them was Justin Martyr, a man from Samaria whose parents were Roman. He was a student and teacher of philosophy before his conversion. He remained a philosopher, regarding Christianity as the highest philosophy. He died a martyr for the faith between 163 and 167. Justin taught that before the creation of the world God was alone and that there was no Son. Within God, however, there was Reason, or Mind (Logos). When God desired to create the world, he needed an agent to do this for him. This necessity arose out of the Greek view that God cannot concern himself with matter. Therefore, he begot another divine being to create the world for him. This divine being was called the Logos or Son of God. He was called Son because he was born; he was called Logos because he was taken from the Reason or Mind of God. However, the Father does not lose anything when he gives independent existence to the Logos. The Logos that is taken out of him to become the Son is like a flame taken from a fire to make a new fire. The new fire does not lessen the older fire.
Justin and the other Apologists therefore taught that the Son is a creature. He is a high creature, a creature powerful enough to create the world but, nevertheless, a creature. In theology this relationship of the Son to the Father is called subordinationism. The Son is subordinate, that is, secondary to, dependent upon, and caused by the Father. The Apologists were subordinationists. (A Short History of the Early Church, p. 110 – Google Books link.)
Boer’s take on Justin’s Christology is an interesting one; it contains two important aspects that are rarely combined in the Christological evaluations of Justin's thought I have read. First, the preexistent Jesus Christ is created by God the Father, and as such is a “creature”. Second, this creative act by the Father is from Himself, and not ex nihilo.
Now, I suspect some folk are going to be quite eager to critique Boer’s assessment; but before doing so, I think it is very important to keep in mind that Justin on two occasions approvingly cites the LXX translation of Proverbs 8:22 which states that Wisdom was ‘created’ (ἔκτισέ), and then applies this verse to the preexistent Jesus Christ. (For the two quotations, see Dialogue With Trypho, chapters 61 and 129—both are provided in English and Greek in THIS THREAD.)
Back to my studies…
Grace and peace,
David
ReplyDeleteCatholic must know Dogma > Ripped from your soul
If you're at all interested in knowing . . . the Catholic Dogma . . . that we *must believe* to get to Heaven . . .
I list it on my website > > > www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com
The Catholic God knows . . . what we think and believe . . .
Catholic writing of Romans 1 : 21 >
"They ... became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Deuteronomy 31 : 21 >
"For I know their thoughts, and what they are about to do this day."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Job 21 : 27 >
"Surely I know your thoughts, and your unjust judgments against Me."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Catholic must know Dogma > Ripped from your soul.
If you're at all interested in knowing ... the Catholic Dogma ... that we *must believe* to
get to Heaven, and which you have *never* seen ...
I list it on my website > > www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com
And no ... the anti-Christ vatican-2 heretic cult (founded in 1965) is not the Catholic Church (founded in 33 A.D.).
Currently ... you are outside the Catholic Church and so ... have no chance of getting to Heaven.
Physical participation in a heretic cult (vatican-2, lutheran, evangelical, etc) ... automatically excommunicates you from the Catholic Church (that is, Christianity) >
www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com/section_13.2.2.html
Mandatory ... Abjuration of heresy to enter the Catholic Church >
www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com/section_40.html
Dogma that one must Abjure to leave the vatican-2 heretic cult and enter the Catholic Church >
www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com/section_40.1.html
The BIBLE says ... 15 TIMES ... it is not the authority on Faith,
the BIBLE says the Church in it's Dogma and Doctrine ... is the authority on Faith and the definition of the Catholic Faith ... www.Gods-Catholic-Dogma.com/section_6.html
The Catholic God knows ... what we think and believe ...
Catholic writing of Romans 1:21 >
"They ... became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Deuteronomy 31:21 >
"For I know their thoughts, and what they are about to do this day."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Job 21:27 >
"Surely I know your thoughts, and your unjust judgments against Me."
Regards - Victoria
Hey. Victoria. David Thickskin, will always be open to questioning the 2nd Vatican Council. I am sure he remembers as I do, going to the Grotto, in Portland together, and asking this liberal, deer in the headlights priest, about what Bill Buckley, William F., was saying on Firing Line so many years ago about the Council. 70's, 80's. Not later.
ReplyDeleteIt is still relevant... But I was this stupid, I shouldn't say was stupid, past tense, Protestant guy minister, and David Waltz came to my "church". And without Dave, I don't know here I would be. As it is, whether you approve or not, I am a Traditional Catholic, as an old guy in 2021, that renounces as defective, the hateful Mass of 1969. I was 13 years old. No religion in the house. God is so good. I am so blessed, and it sounds like you are too, coming from a different direction than Dave or I. Pray for us.
Rory
Victoria, I doubt you can help with your words to be honest. Just say an Ave for us. That we are not reprobate. That we make it.
Regards,
Rory
Hi Victoria and Rory,
ReplyDeleteI want to thank both of you for your posts—much to ponder.
Now, concerning the name “Traditionalist”, I could not help but think of the following from Benedict XV:
>>24. It is, moreover, Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought into use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another. They are to be avoided not only as “profane novelties of words,” out of harmony with both truth and justice, but also because they give rise to great trouble and confusion among Catholics. Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: “This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved” (Athanas. Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim “Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,” only let him endeavour to be in reality what he calls himself.>> (Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum - 1914)
Any thoughts?
Grace and peace,
David
Dave, I have a lot of thoughts about that.
ReplyDelete#1) I just want to have conversations and discussions, and indeed put forth arguments. I don't care about terms and expressions, so long as we can make ourselves understood.
#2) I like Pope Benedict XV. But I think he was hoping for some problems to go away that were real.
#3) Continuing with #2, would Benedict XV wish for us over a hundred years after he ascended the throne of Peter, to make as though there is no difference in the 21st Century between Pope Francis and Benedict's predecessor, Pope St. Pius X?
#4) What about Joe Biden? His first name is "Christian" and his last name is "Catholic"? As I said, however the other party wants to converse, I do not insist on saying that Joe Biden is Catholic or not. There is an important sense in which he is Catholic. There is an important sense in which he is not Catholic. It seems to me that words are needed to distinguish the senses.
#5) What about myself? If the other party in the conversation does not grant I am Catholic, fine. I know I am not a Communist...I mean Red Chinese...I mean Catholic...like Jorge Bergoglio, or Joseph P. Biden. I admit I am questioning the wisdom of Benedict XV here.
#6) I am different than Bergoglio and Biden, and if it is unacceptable to some other other party, even a pope, for me to distinguish my Catholicism from their Catholicism as "Traditional", I know what I am. I can use other words, I can use their words. I won't even argue about whether I am Catholic to someone who says I am not. I will forfeit words for the sake of discussion. But on the other hand, I believe everything the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church teaches by all definitions that have been used to this point. Does Jorge? Does Joe? Do they even care about Catholic AND APOSTOLIC? Okay, they are Catholics who do not believe everything the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church teaches. Bully for them! I am a non-Catholic, who believes everything the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church teaches.
# 7) As for Pope Benedict XV, I don't think he had the necessary foresight, God bless him, to judge these times. I think it is okay to allow that Joe Biden and Jorge Bergoglio are in some sense Catholic, while also distinguishing them from those who are formed by what the Church has always taught. This is why, for the time being, I intend to continue to distinguish my Catholic faith as "Traditional" except where it presents a stumblingblock.
Rory
PS: We are a long way from St. Justin. That is another reason I thought to delete my post, Dave! Heh.
Does the act of "creating" someone or something ex nihilo really bear a similar enough connotation to "creating" it or them ex materia as to use the word without qualification? This certainly does seem to be outside of the vernacular I've previously seen employed by patristic scholars. And where do we draw the line given that elsewhere Justin also said that, "we have been taught that in the beginning He of His goodness, for people's sakes, formed all things out of unformed matter" (First Apology 10), and again, at greater length:
ReplyDelete"And that you may learn that it was from our teachers—we mean from the Word through the prophets—that Plato took his statement that God made the Universe by changing formless matter, hear the precise words spoken through Moses, who, as shown above, was the first prophet and older than the Greek writers; through whom the prophetic Spirit, signifying how and from what God fashioned the Universe, spoke thus: 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was over the abyss; and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said, let there be light. And it was so.' [Genesis 1:1-3] So that both Plato and his followers and we ourselves have learned, and you may learn, that the whole Universe came into being by the Word of God out of the substratum spoken of before by Moses."
(Justin Martyr, ca. 153, First Apology 59, in Ancient Christian Writers 56:65)
And, yet again, "we all hold this common gathering on Sunday, since it is the first day, on which God transforming darkness and matter made the Universe" (First Apology 67).
Hi Errol,
ReplyDeleteOver the weekend, you asked:
==Does the act of "creating" someone or something ex nihilo really bear a similar enough connotation to "creating" it or them ex materia as to use the word without qualification?==
I suspect when Justin wrote, there was not as much need to make a distinct qualification—the understanding of ‘created’ was simply that something was ‘caused’—the issue of ex nihilo vs. ex materia was not being discussed yet.
You also wrote:
==And where do we draw the line given that elsewhere Justin also said that, "we have been taught that in the beginning He of His goodness, for people's sakes, formed all things out of unformed matter"==
The issue of creatio ex nihilo became a ‘hot-topic’ in the latter-half of the 20th century—and this due in no small part to the aggressive polemics of Mormon scholars. After much study, I have reached the opinion that creatio ex nihilo is NOT explicitly taught in either the OT or NT; and cannot be found in the ECFs before Tatian and Theophilus of Antioch.
As such, I think one must acknowledge that creatio ex nihilo is a doctrinal development. Whether or not it is a positive or negative development will probably be determined by one’s larger, more comprehensive theological paradigm.
For an excellent treatment on these issues, see Gerhard May’s, Creatio Ex Nihilo (LINK TO PDF).
Grace and peace,
David
Hi Dave...
ReplyDelete2 Macc. 7:28?
Can I think, as a Catholic, that the belief in creation ex nihilo was not already "developing" before the Incarnation? Or if one accepts the Catholic canon, revealed?
LDS dismissals are eased because of their truncated Old Testament. They say it teaches ex nihilo, but is a corruption.
I would be interested in Gerhard May's evaluation...and yours...Thanks.
Rory
David,
ReplyDeleteThe earliest explicit discussion of the subject which I've read is Tertullian's Against Hermogenes, in which he staunchly defends creatio ex nihilo, but also very candidly admitted the same conclusion which you came to:
“Scripture did not clearly proclaim that all things were made out of nothing”
(Tertullian, ca. 202, Treatise Against Hermogenes 21:2, in Ancient Christian Writers 24:55)
While Justin Martyr seems to have been convinced of creatio ex materia, I found that by the time we get to Irenaeus the Church didn't seem to have an official position on the matter:
“we have learned from the Scriptures that God has dominion over all things; but from what source and how God produced matter no passage of Scripture has explained. Nor ought we to make an imaginary picture of it by conjecturing out of our own opinions an infinite number of things about God. We must cede this knowledge to God.”
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against the Heresies 2:28:7, in Ancient Christian Writers 65:91)
Hi Rory,
ReplyDeleteBefore I share some musings on 2 Macc. 7:28, I want to thank you for your informative response to the quote I provided from Benedict XV—it was quite useful.
Now, 2 Macc. 7:28. I will let the recent assessment penned by the Notre Dame professor, Gary A. Anderson speak for me. When commenting on the use of Genesis 1:1 and 2 Maccabees 7:28 by some folk for support of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, he writes:
>>For many modern scholars, 2 Maccabees appears to be the better candidate of the two, for it seems to contain an explicit denial of preexistence of matter: “Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed.” But, as scholars have shown, the assertion that God did not make the world out of things that existed could have merely implied that he fashioned the world from unformed matter. For we have contemporary Greek evidence for the use of an almost identical idiom to describe the engendering of children by their parents. This does not mean that the author of 2 Maccabees understood the term this way, at the same time, that possibility cannot be ruled out. As a result this text fails as a decisive prooftext for the doctrine. The most we can say is that 2 Maccabees is patient of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.>> (“Creation ex nihilo - Origins, Development, Contemporary Challenges”, 2018, p. 16.)
From your comment:
==LDS dismissals are eased because of their truncated Old Testament. They say it teaches ex nihilo, but is a corruption.==
I have not heard of this before. I know that Joseph Smith Jr. in one of his last sermons makes an appeal to the Hebrew of Gen. 1 to support his belief that God created the universe from unformed matter.
With that said, I would be very interested in some examples by LDS folk who believe the OT teaches creatio ex nihilo.
Grace and peace,
David
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteGetting back to the original post, I think that "Boer" guy is making a lot of assumptions about what JM is writing about.
From what he's written it sounds like God has made a clone of Himself.
However, if wisdom is correctly "applied" reason or applied knowledge, then Proverbs 8:23 is God perfectly applying His reason to a something, the first "work". If this is outside time, as the LXX indicates:
22The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.
23He established me before time was in the beginning, before he made the earth
Wisdom must refer in application to a Person as nothing else exists. If outside time, Wisdom is eternally being generated.
Thus Jesus is not a creature.
If Logos also denotes word, which is verbalised reason, that also is actualised Wisdom, as what God says happens. So again the Reason is contained in God and is actualised as a Person. Not a separate clone.
Cheers
Dennis
Oh goodness sake...what a career!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.garyandersonperfectseason.com/
I remember Gary Anderson, Dave. 23 years in the NFL. You got a know a thing or two, when you bridge the gap from John Brodie to Tom Brady!
ReplyDeleteHello David. I start with our place kicker...I mean professor. No disrepect intended. Heh.
ReplyDeleteProf. Anderson
"This does not mean that the author of 2 Maccabees understood the term this way, at the same time, that possibility cannot be ruled out. As a result this text fails as a decisive prooftext for the doctrine. The most we can say is that 2 Maccabees is patient of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo."
Rory
I do not believe there is a "decisive prooftext" for any doctrinal controversy.
Latter-day Saints do not believe "the OT teaches creatio ex nihilo". I have experienced admission that this passage from 2 Macc. is at least more than "patient". But thankfully for LDS, it is not in their Old Testament.
Another interesting expression of Scripture which is "patient" of creatio ex nihilo, is at the burning bush, when Moses asks God to tell him His name. The mysterious answer, "I am Who am", when I have used it among LDS with a development of what this means to the Catholic Christian, has met with little resistance. If God is "pure existence", then matter is not eternal, and cannot be independent of God. Thankfully again for the LDS in this anecdotal incident, there was one of their textual scholars (you might remember "maklelan") who dealt with the question by raising doubts about the textual reliability of the passage:
"Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? what shall I say to them? God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you."
---Ex. 3:13, 14
Verse 15 catches my eye. It is a shame or crime if translators or copyists deliberately or accidentally changed the wording of God's answer to Moses as the LDS argued. It would seem pretty important to not mess up on God's name:
"And God said again to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me to you: This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
---Ex. 3:15, bold mine
These are my anecdotal examples of passages which seemed more than "patient" of creatio ex nihilo, according to the way Latter-day Saints were understanding the words. Why debate the authority of a Scriptural text, if the text teaches what you believe? I think the LDS saw difficulty if these texts had to be reconciled with LDS teaching about eternal intelligences and pre-existent eternal matter. They found ways of dismissing both texts without arguing about what the texts would mean.
Rory
Hello again Rory,
ReplyDeleteThanks much for taking the time to add a bit more clarification. You wrote:
==I do not believe there is a "decisive prooftext" for any doctrinal controversy.==
I concur. As soon as a person attempts to form a cohesive theology of what the Bible is trying to communicate to us humans a ‘tradition’ is formed. Texts that function as "decisive prooftext[s]" for one tradtion, are more often than not deemed to be ambigious by other ‘traditions', and need to be interpreteted in the light of a different set of "decisive prooftext[s]".
==Latter-day Saints do not believe "the OT teaches creatio ex nihilo". I have experienced admission that this passage from 2 Macc. is at least more than "patient". But thankfully for LDS, it is not in their Old Testament.==
I have yet to run into a Latter-day Saint who believes that 2 Macc. 7:28 teaches creatio ex nihilo. But then, over the last few years you have interacted with Mormons quite a bit more than I have.
With that said, I think it would be dishonest to make the claim that it is impossible to defend the view that 2 Macc. 7:28 teaches creatio ex nihilo. Paul Copan does a pretty good job in defending the notion that the Bible and other germane works—when properly exegeted—do in fact teach creatio ex nihilo. The following is a link to a journal article that Copan wrote back in 1996:
Is Creatio Ex Nihilo A Post-Biblical Invention
Eight years later, he co-authord a book-length treatment on creatio ex nihilo with William Lane Craig that is also quite good:
Creation Out of Nothing
Grace and peace,
David