Made Out of Nothing

Now if the good was not produced out of Matter—since, evil as Matter is, the good was not in it—and not out of God either, since on Hermogenes’ own terms nothing could be produced out of God, then it turns out that the good was created out of nothing: it was formed from neither of the two, neither from Matter nor from God. And if the good was formed out of nothing, why not evil as well? In fact, if anything at all was formed out of nothing, why not everything? Unless the divine power was not equal to producing everything, though it did manage to produce something out of nothing. Or else, if the good did come from evil Matter, since it came neither from nothing nor from God, then it must have come from a change in Matter—a change that contradicts the unchangeableness Hermogenes claims for Matter as an eternal being. So he will now have to deny that there is any possible source for the good at all. And yet the good has to come from one of the very sources whose possibility he has denied. [a]

Now suppose evil is denied to be out of nothing, in order to deny that it is God’s work—since out of nothing it would look far too much as though evil came from God’s will—and suppose it is said instead to come out of Matter, so that it belongs to the very thing out of whose substance it is taken to be made. Even so, as I have said, God will still have to be counted the author of evil. For his business was to produce all good things out of Matter—or rather, simply good things—by that one and the same power and will of his. Yet not only did he fail to produce all good things; he produced some evil ones too. And in that case, either he wanted the evil to exist when he was able to keep it from existing, or he was not strong enough to make everything good, and wanted that result and failed to reach it. It makes no difference whether it was weakness or will: either way the Lord turns out to be the author of evil. Otherwise, what was his reason, after making good things as a good God would, for going on to produce evil things as well, as though his goodness had run out—since he did not confine himself to producing what was simply consistent with himself? What need was there, once his own proper work was done, to trouble himself with Matter too and produce evil out of it, all so that he alone should be acknowledged as good from the good he made, and at the same time Matter should not be counted evil from the evil produced? The good would have flourished far better if evil had never blown upon it. Hermogenes himself, after all, demolishes the argument of certain people who maintain that evil things were necessary to give the good its shine, since good has to be understood by its opposite. So that was not the reason for producing evil. But if some other reason has to be found for bringing evil in, why could it not have been brought in out of nothing just as well? The very same reason that now excuses the existence of evil things when God produces them out of Matter would equally clear the Lord of the charge of being their author if he had produced them out of nothing. And if that excuse holds, then the question is shut up on every side, in the one corner where these people are unwilling to look for it—people who never examine the reason for evil itself, and never work out whether to lay it at God’s door or keep it clear of him, and who in fact expose God to a great many slanders he in no way deserves.

So then, at the very foundation of this subject, which I shall probably have to treat elsewhere, let me lay down my position plainly. Both good and evil must be assigned either to God, who made them out of Matter; or to Matter itself, out of which he made them; or both of them to both together, since the two are bound up with each other—the one who created and that out of which he created; or else one to the one and the other to the other, since after Matter and God there is no third. Now if both should turn out to belong to God, God is plainly the author of evil—but God, being good, cannot be the author of evil. If, on the other hand, both are assigned to Matter, then Matter is plainly the mother of the good—but since Matter is wholly evil, it cannot be the mother of the good. And if both are thought to belong to the two together, then here too Matter is put on a level with God, and both are equals, tied on equal terms to evil and to good alike. But Matter ought not to be put on a level with God, or it will make two gods. And if, finally, one belongs to the one and the other to the other—the good to God, that is, and the evil to Matter—then evil must not be laid to God, nor good to Matter. Yet God, by making both good things and evil things out of Matter, makes them along with it. [f]

That being so, I cannot see how Hermogenes escapes my conclusion. He supposes that God cannot be the author of evil, in whatever way he created evil out of Matter—whether by his own will, or of necessity, or for a reason. But if he is the author of evil, being the one who actually did the creating, with Matter merely associated with him as the thing that supplied the substance, then you have just cancelled the very reason you brought Matter in for. For it remains true that it is by means of Matter that God shows himself the author of evil, even though Matter was assumed by you precisely to keep God from seeming to be the author of evil. So Matter is ruled out, since the reason for it is ruled out, and what remains is that God, beyond doubt, must have made everything out of nothing. Whether there were any evil things among them we shall see when it becomes clear what evil things are, and whether the things you presently take to be evil really are. For it is more worthy of God that he produced even these of his own will, by producing them out of nothing, than that he produced them on terms laid down in advance by another, which is what it would have been if he had produced them out of Matter. Freedom, not necessity, is what suits the character of God. I would far rather he had chosen to create evil himself than that he lacked the power to prevent its being created.

This rule is required by the nature of the one and only God, who is one and only in no other way than as being the sole God, and sole in no other way than as having nothing else alongside him. And so he will be first, because everything is after him; and everything is after him, because everything is by him; and everything is by him, because everything is out of nothing. So reason agrees with the Scripture that says: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or with whom did he take counsel? Or who showed him the way of wisdom and knowledge? Who has first given to him, and it will be paid back to him?” Nobody at all—because there was nothing present with him, no power, no material, no nature belonging to anyone but himself. But if it was with some Matter to hand that he did his creating, then he must have received from that Matter both the design and the handling of its arrangement, as “the way of wisdom and knowledge.” For he would have had to work in keeping with the quality of the stuff, and according to the nature of Matter, not according to his own will—so that he must have made even evil things to suit a nature that was not his own but Matter’s. [j]

If some material really was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, he had a far nobler and more suitable one in his own Wisdom—a Wisdom not to be measured by the writings of philosophers, but to be learned from the words of prophets. This alone knew the mind of the Lord. For “who knows the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit who is in him?” And his Wisdom is that Spirit. This was his counselor, the very way of his wisdom and knowledge. Out of this he made everything, making everything through it and with it. “When he prepared the heavens,” Scripture says, “I was there with him; and when he made firm the lofty clouds above the winds, and when he secured the springs that are under the heaven, I was there, fitting these things together along with him. I was the one he took delight in; and day after day I rejoiced in his presence, for he rejoiced when he had finished the world, and among the sons of men he showed his delight.” Now who would not sooner commend this as the fountain and origin of everything—this as, in very truth, the Matter of all matter: not subject to any end, not varying in its condition, not restless in its motion, not ungainly in form, but natural and proper and rightly proportioned and beautiful, exactly the sort of thing God might well require, who requires his own and not another’s? Indeed, the moment he saw that it was needed for his creation of the world, he creates it and generates it within himself. [k]

“The Lord created me,” says the Scripture, “the beginning of his ways for the making of his works. Before the ages he founded me; before he made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; before the hills, too, he generated me, and prior to the depths I was begotten.” Let Hermogenes then admit that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created—for this express reason, that we should not suppose there is any being other than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if what was inside the Lord, being of him and in him, still was not without a beginning—I mean his Wisdom, which was born and created at the point when, in the thought of God, it began to stir for the arranging of his creative works—how much less possible is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was outside the Lord! But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, taken in the sense of Wisdom, and is the one without whom nothing was made, just as nothing was set in order without Wisdom, then how can anything except the Father be older, and on that account nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? Let alone that what is unbegotten is stronger than what is born, and what is unmade more powerful than what is made—because a thing that needed no maker to give it existence will rank far higher than a thing that had an author to bring it into being. On this principle, then, if evil is in fact unbegotten while the Son of God is begotten—“for,” says God, “my heart has uttered my best Word”—I am not at all sure that evil may not be brought in by good, the stronger by the weaker, in just the way the unbegotten is by the begotten. So on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even ahead of God, by putting it ahead of the Son—because the Son is the Word, and “the Word was God,” and “I and my Father are one.” Though perhaps, after all, the Son will be patient enough about having something preferred to him that Hermogenes has made equal to the Father.

But I shall appeal to Moses’ own record, the document our opponents lean on, in vain, to prop up their guesses—wanting, of course, to look as if they had the backing of the authority no inquiry like this can do without. They found their opening the way heretics usually do, by twisting the plain sense of certain words. Take the beginning itself, in which God made the heaven and the earth. They will construe it as meaning something substantial and bodily, to be regarded as Matter. We, however, hold every word to its proper meaning, and say that principium means beginning—a term suited to things that begin to exist. For nothing that has come into being is without a beginning, and its beginning cannot fall at any other moment than when it begins to exist. So principium, beginning, is simply a word of starting, not the name of a substance. Now since the heaven and the earth are the chief works of God, and since by making them first he made them, in a special way, the beginning of his creation, before everything else, Scripture had good reason to open its record with the words, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth”—just as it would have said, “At the last God made the heaven and the earth,” if God had created these after all the rest. Besides, if the beginning is a substance, the end will have to be a material thing too. [r]

No doubt a substantial thing can be the beginning of some other thing that is formed out of it: clay is the beginning of the pot, and seed is the beginning of the plant. But when we use the word beginning in that sense of origin, and not in the sense of order, we do not leave out the name of the particular thing we are treating as the origin of the other. On the other hand, if we were to say, for instance, “In the beginning the potter made a basin or a water jug,” the word beginning would not point to a material substance at all. For I have not mentioned the clay, which is the beginning in that sense, but only the order of the work: that the potter made the basin and the jug first, before anything else, meaning to make the rest afterwards. So it is to the order of the works that the word beginning refers, not to the origin of their substance. I might also explain the word another way, and not out of place either. The Greek term for beginning, arche, carries the sense not only of priority of order but of power as well; and that is why rulers and magistrates are called archontes. So in this sense too, beginning may be taken for princely authority and power. And it was indeed in his surpassing authority and power that God made the heaven and the earth.

But to prove that the Greek word means nothing else than beginning, and that beginning admits of no sense but the first one, we have that very Being acknowledging such a beginning, who says: “The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways for the making of his works.” For since everything was made by the Wisdom of God, it follows that when God made both the heaven and the earth in principio—that is, in the beginning—he made them in his Wisdom. If beginning really had a material meaning, Scripture would not have told us that God made this and that in principio, at the beginning, but ex principio, out of the beginning; for he would not have created in matter, but out of it. Since it was Wisdom that was meant, it was quite right to say in the beginning. For it was in Wisdom that he made everything at the first, because by thinking it out and laying his plans there he had in fact already done the work of creation. And even if he had intended to create out of matter, he would still have carried his creation through when he thought it out beforehand and arranged it in his Wisdom, since Wisdom was in fact the beginning of his ways. This thinking and arranging is Wisdom’s first work, and it opens the way to the works themselves by the act of thought. [v]

I claim this authority of Scripture for my own side for this very reason: while it shows me the God who created, and the works he created, it does not in the same way reveal to me the source he created them from. For since in every operation there are three principal things—the one who makes, the thing that is made, and that out of which it is made—a correct account of the operation has to name three things: the person of the maker, the kind of thing made, and the material it is formed from. If the material is not named while the work and the maker of the work both are, it is plain that he made the work out of nothing. If he had had anything to work upon, it would have been mentioned along with the other two. In conclusion, I will bring in the Gospel as further testimony alongside the Old Testament. And here there is all the more reason why the material should be shown, if there was any, out of which God made everything, since here it is plainly revealed by whom he made everything. “In the beginning was the Word”—the same beginning, of course, in which God made the heaven and the earth—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made.” Now, since we are clearly told here who the maker was, namely God, and what he made, namely all things, and through whom he made them, namely his Word, would not the order of the account have required that the source out of which all things were made by God through the Word should be declared as well, if things had in fact been made out of anything? What did not exist, the Scripture was unable to mention; and by not mentioning it, it has given us clear proof that there was no such thing—for if there had been, the Scripture would have mentioned it.