HERMOGENES ON CREATION.

119

imply that in fact God and Matter were never separated, and that the Hyle always existed along with the organization. He compared the operation of God upon it to the attractive power* which Beauty according to its nature exerts on be holders; or to the attraction of the Magnet, which according to its nature operates on iron. Consequently, like the NeoPlatonic School, he admitted a Universe that was always becoming, which in this form exists from all Eternity, so that God, and his formative agency, and Matter, must always be presupposed, and the idea of Hyle is only attained by separating what lies at the basis of the material world. In the Hyle is always to be distinguished what is allied to the divine formative power, and what is counter-active and destructive; from the later proceeds the destruction and dissolution that take place in the present life. If his view was charged with being unscriptural, he rejoined that his opinion was founded in reality, and the Tohu Vabohu (rin) of Genesis was a designation of Chaos; and, on the other hand, Creation out of nothing, had it been a fact, must have been clearly and expressly signified. By logical development Hermogenes would have been led through the Neo-Platonic idea of Creation to a different idea of God, but we must take care not to blame him for what can only be logically inferred. We have to notice the course of development in a man of this age, who probably in early life adopted the philosophical principles of a Neo-Platonic school, was then attracted by Christianity, and in whose mind what he imbibed of the influence of Christianity remained in conflict with his speculative principles. Tertullian, from whose reply we learn the doctrine of Hermogenes, objects that God is not acknowledged as the only one if he is not regarded as the sole, unconditioned Originator of all existence. In the History of the Creation in Genesis, the phrase "in the beginning" indicates no pre-existent matter, but the gradual sequence of the divine arrangement;† lastly, we must distinguish the absolute attributes of God belonging to his Essence, and the relative attributes referrible to Creation. The former are eternal; the latter mark a relation to the World, and therefore might originate with it.‡

ORIGEN on one side adhered to the doctrine of the Church; * Tertull. adv. Hermogenem. c. 44. Ibid. c. 19.

Ibid. c. 3.

on another he went beyond it, where it had not given express decisions; he attempted to harmonize traditionary dogmas with the standpoint of the Gnostics. He points out as a biblical doctrine that this world had a beginning, that it was created out of nothing, but what there was before this world is left undetermined, and here Gnosis has free scope. The doctrine of

*

ar absolute beginning of Creation appeared to him untenable; the operative divine attributes being presupposed in Creation, no reason can be imagined why they should not always have been at work ;t and as little can it be imagined how in God a transition could be made from rest to activity. On the contrary, he advances the idea of an eternal Creation, a derivation of the creature from God by virtue of an ideal beginning. Origen did not assert it of this actual world, which rather presupposed a foregoing History, but he imagined a pure spiritual creation as a beginning, and God as the original source of a spirit-world allied to him, but yet at an infinite distance from him, which constituted his eternal Self-revelation. He combats the doctrine of the Gnostics of the ooooION of spiritual natures with God, and beholds in the spirit-world only a partial reflection of the divine glory. He endeavoured to defend the doctrine of Creation out of nothing, as he derived everything immediately from God and not conditioned by preexistent matter; and with that he was able to connect a certain spiritually conceived emanation of the spirit-world from God.

This doctrine of Origen was controverted by Methodius, Bishop of Tyre, towards the end of the third century.§ He

*Пepì ápx. i. præfat. 4. c. 3, § 3.

+ Πῶς δὲ οὐκ ἄτοπον τὸ μὴ ἔχοντα τι τῶν πρεπόντων αὐτῷ τὸν θεὸν, εἰς τὸ ἔχειν εληλυθέναι ; επεὶ δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε παντοκράτωρ οὐκ ἦν, ἀεὶ εἶναι δεῖ ταῦτα, δι' ἃ παντοκράτωρ εστι, καὶ ἀεὶ ἦν ὑπ' αὐτοῦ κρατούμενα, αρχοντη αὐτῷ χρώμενα.-3. πάντα τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἀεὶ ἦν· ἀλλ ̓ οὐ δή τις ἐρεῖ καὶ τὸ καθ' ἓν ἀριθμοῦ· πλὴν ἑκατέρως δηλοῦται, οτι ουκ ηρξατο ὁ Θεὸς δημιουργεῖν ἀργήσας ποτέ. Εp. Justiniani ad Mennam Patriarch Mansi, ix. 528. περì áрxшv, p. 4, ed. Redepenning.

† In Joann. t. xxxii. § 18.(οἶμαι) φθάνειν μέντοι γε ἀπὸ του ἀπαυγάσματος τούτου τῆς ὕλης δόξης μερικὰ ἀπαυγάσματα ἐπὶ τὴν λοιπὴν λογικὴν κτισιν· ουκ οιμαι γαρ τινα τὸ πολὺ δύνασθαι χωρῆσαι τῆς ὅλης δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀπαύγασμα ἤ τον υἱὸν αὐτοῦ. t. xiii. § 25.

§ In his work περὶ τῶν γεννητῶν (v. Lardner's “ Credibility of the Gospel History," ch. 57. Works iii. p. 303, ed 1788), an abstract in Photius Bibl. cod. 235.

METHODIUS ON CREATION.

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quoted the language of Origen correctly, that the World proceeds in an eternal becoming, without beginning, from God; but his mind was not speculative enough to enter into the train of Origen's ideas, so that many of his objections did not apply. He transfers the relation that a piece of human workmanship has to its maker to the dependence of creatures on God, and hence asserts that the world must have been completed at some time, and therefore God must have passed from making to not-making. Origen would not have granted this, for he regarded the Spirit-world not as ever completed, but as always becoming,-proceeding in an eternal process from God, and depending upon Him. Further, Methodius objected that Origen's scheme removed the distance between God and the creature. But Origen denied that the creature in its essence possessed self-subsistence; he would rather have described God's upholding agency as a constant creative energy, conditioned by the creature. Origen's doctrine, as to its form at least, could sooner be met by the third objection, that it was at variance with the self-sufficiency of God, who requires nothing out of himself for his satisfaction. But this Origen would not maintain, but only say that the contemplation of the divine Perfection would lead us to expect a constant Revelation of God in his works. He referred this in no wise to the form of the universe as it now is, but to the original spiritual Creation. In this reference, we must rightly understand the tenor of his ideas as they were developed in opposition to Gnosticism. When the Gnostics maintained that the Universe could not proceed from one original Being, but that the contrarieties in it were referrible to three different principles, the πνευματικόν, the ψυχικόν, and the υλικόν, Origen endeavoured to prove that another explanation was possible. When the Gnostics subordinating the Ethical to the Physical, traced ethical differences to an original diversity of natures, it comported with his views to establish physical contrarieties by the Ethical. The direction of the will, according to him, is the lever of the Universe, and from the contrarieties founded on that, proceed all other differences. Now the Gnostics maintained that if the World owed its origin to one Supreme original being, its constitution would correspond to his perfection, and we must find in it only what was like himself; granting them that, he arrives at the presumption of an original Creation of

spirits allied to God, and then endeavours further to show that later contrarieties proceeded from the tendency of their wills. In that blessed world of spirits allied to God, the adherence to communion with God was determined by their free will. By a free yielding of themselves to God they might continue in the good and the divine, or it was possible for them to apostatize; and from this apostacy of the Spirits from God, the total revolution of the Universe and all its contrarieties are to be derived, The misunderstood idea of the divine righteousness had also led him into the error of carrying the Unity into that original Spirit-world so far, that he thought of them as all alike, endowed with equal gifts of power, and differing only in number from one another; hence it followed that the individual, characteristic difference had an ethical ground and was deducible from Sin. As soon as these contrarieties had been formed, and with them the manifoldness of existence, God reduced them to a higher unity and formed out of them a world of which the aim is, to bring back fallen beings to their original unity (αποκατάστασις). In his work περὶ ἀρχῶν he applies the idea of the soul of the world to the animating divine power by which unity is educed from these contrarieties. Lastly, the question occurs, whether Origen was not forced by the untenability of his notion of the original perfect equality of Spirits, to modify it in some degree; for subsequently he describes the Logos as the collected reflection of the divine glory, and the individual spirits as a partial reflection; this language would imply that what is one in the Logos, becomes individualized in the Spirit-world. Probably, then, an original difference in the spirits is supposed.

As to the relation of Matter to the original Creation, in his work Tegi agxv, he regards it as questionable whether any created spirit can exist without a body,* so that the body is so constantly connected with it as to be distinguished only in idea. Many persons have so understood this as if Origen held bodies to be only ideal, that is, founded on the idea of a created being—the

Пepì áoxwv, ii. c. 2, 2.-Si vero impossibile est hoc ullo modo affirmari, id est quod vivere præter corpus possit ulla alia natura præter Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, necessitas consequentiæ ac rationis coarctat intelligi, principaliter quidem creatas esse rationabiles naturas; materialem vero substantiam opinione quidem et intellectu solum separari ab eis, et pro ipsis vel post ipsius effectam videri, sed nunquam sine ipsa vel vixisse vel vivere.

THE DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE.

123

He

expression of objective limits the natural boundary of created existence. According to this notion the contrariety between Spirit and body would cease, and body would be nothing but the finite, limited essence of Spirit. Yet his words do not express so much, but only contain the question whether with the existence of every created Spirit, a body is given because it cannot exist without body. But according to other expressions it would seem that the contrariety between Spirit and Body vanishes, since he often speaks of Matter as simply undefined, which may acquire higher or lower qualities. ascribes to it an infinite capability of refinement, so that at the highest shape it is entirely spiritualized. Hence it seems traced back to the idea of mere potentiality of Existence, which in its manifestations may be advanced to different stages, and that this potentiality is to be regarded as given with Creation. But it must not be overlooked that in the passages referred to from the book Tegi dgxv he expresses himself doubtfully, and that there are other passages in which is assumed the pure immateriality of the Spirit-world.*

4. THE DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE.

This doctrine as now held throughout Christendom, belongs to those that were peculiarly new, though being grounded on the religious nature of man it has met with a general response. In the religions of Antiquity only the World as a whole was regarded as an image of God; whereas in Christianity every man appears as a self-revelation of God-no longer as a mere part of the great whole, but as a peculiar object of the divine regard, with which the whole must co-operate, so that this doctrine was connected with all the leading truths of Christianity, -with the whole scheme of salvation and redemption. To the heathen, the importance which Christianity attached to the individual, seemed to be arrogance. How can it be that the great orbs of Heaven should perish but Man be eternal ?" The wide

* In Joann. t. xix. § 5.—ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ δεικνύμενος κόσμος, ὑλικὸς γενόμενος διὰ τοὺς δεηθέντας τῆς ἐνύλου ζωῆς, τόπους μὲν ἔχει διαφό ρους, οἵτινες δὴ πάντες, ὡς μὲν πρὸς τὰ ἄϋλα καὶ τὰ ἀόρατα καὶ τὰ ἀσώματα κάτα εἰσὶν, οὐ τόσον τῳ τόπῳ, ὅσον τῇ πρὸς τὰ ἀόρατα συγκρίσει. ibid. of the κόσμος ἀόρατος, κόσμος νοητός: εἴη ἂν τοσούτῳ ποικιλώτερος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ κόσμου καὶ διαφέρων, ὅσῳ διαφέρει γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος τοῦ ἐνύλου κόσμου οὐκ ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης, ἀλλ ̓ ἀπὸ τῆς μετοχῆς τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς σοφίας τῶν κοσμούντων τὴν ὕλην κεκοσμημένων.