Athanasius views of Creation

Here is a great excerpt from Athanasius' book "on the Incarnation" that presents his views of creation. It is valuable for seeing the traditional and classic christian views of creation that were strongly and clearly communicated already 300-400 years after Christ's death. I am not well versed with the "creation debate", but I think any christian who tries to reconcile the science of evolution with the teaching of Scripture should not easily sidestep or wipe away these two pillars of christian thought: (1) There is a mind behind the universe and (2) God created "ex-nihilo" out of nothing- he was pre-existent before matter. I would be interested to see how. (For a website supporting the dialogue between orthodox christianity and modern science see http://biologos.org/) 

(2) In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whatever it was, and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all.

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artificer of all things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis,

“He Who created them in the beginning made them male and female . . . ,” and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” 

How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John, speaking all inclusively, says,

“All things became by Him and without Him came nothing into being.”

How then could the Artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?

(3) Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;4

and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd,

“Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being.”5

Paul also indicates the same thing when he says,

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared.”6