Volume XII Number 2 KING'S

Autumn 1989

Theological
Review

Preserving God's Creation. Three lectures on Theology and Ecology. II 41

John D. Zizioulas

Alfred Russel Wallace: Theistic Darwinism 46

J.M. Ross

Problems with Ecclesiastes . .. ? 49

Stephen Sims

Inspiration and Incarnation: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology 52

Alan Spence

"Classics of Western spirituality", II: Three medieval women theologians and their background 56
Nicholas Watson

BOOK REVIEWS 65

FACULTY NEWS Insert

PRESERVING GOD'S CREATION
THREE LECTURES ON In order to answer this question, we propose to deal
THEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY first with the way Christian tradition views the reality we
normally call creation. This will be the task of tonight's
lecture. Our next step in tomorrow's lecture will con-
JOHN D. ZIZIOULAS cern more specifically the role man is called to play in
creation. It will then, we hope, be possible to draw some
Editorial Note conclusions as to what Christian theology and the Church
can offer to man in the difficult crisis he is faced with in
We publish here the second of Professor Zizoulas' our time.
lectures, given at King's College in January 1989, and
repeat what we said of the first, that it is printed as I. Doctrines of Creation in the First Centuries
delivered, and not in the final form in which its author
may eventually wish to develop it. "Creation" is a term which Christian theology found
from the beginning to be convenient in order to express
LECTURE TWO its world view. It is a term which indicates that the world
as we know it is a work or a product of someone, the
INTRODUCTION result ofa certain personal cause. The normal Greek term
corresponding to creation is demiourgia, although the
In our previous lecture, we emphasized the serious- Christian writers of the first centuries, for reasons to
ness of the situation with which humanity, and indeed which we shall refer presently, prefer to use the term ktisis
our planet as a whole, are faced because of the ecological - a word that brings to mind images of craftsmanship,
problem, and tried to look briefly at history in order to or rather of building and raising an edifice.
see to what extent (a) Christian theology could be
regarded as responsible for the ecological crisis of our Now, the view of the world as a 'creation' by
time, and (b) Christian tradition could be of help in our someone was by no means aJudeo-Christian invention.
attempt to deal with this crisis. Our brief and inevitably The idea was widespread at the time of the rise of
generalized historical survey led us to the conclusion that Christianity that the world was created by some creator,
the Christian Church and its theology have indeed been and what the Church had to do was not so much to insist
to a large extent responsible for the emergence of the on this idea as to offer its own interpretation of it. True,
ecological problem in our time, but that, in spite of that, there were still around some atheists in the first and
they possess resources that can be of help to humanity in second centuries A.D. who would either attribute the
its present crisis. The ecological problem, therefore, world to certain laws inherent in its nature and be happy
although being a problem ofscience and to a large degree with this explanation (such were the "physiologists"
of ethics, education and state legislation, is also a theo- whom Plato had in mind in providing for them a stiff
logical problem. As it is evident that certain theological penalty, inscribed in his LAws; or who, like Epicureans,
ideas have played an important role in the creation of the would attribute the world to pure chance. But all these
problem, so it must be the case too, that the theological were negligible, almost marginalized in the intellectual
ideas can influence the course of events in the reverse milieu in which the Early Church found itself, and it is
way. for this reason that the Christian writers did not bother
very much about them. The main views of creation that
Theology cannot and should not be irrelevant to the the Church had to face and from which it was seen to
creation of culture. It is unfortunate that Christian the- dissociate itself fell into two categories. One was the
ology has in our time very often taken a negative view of Gnostic interpretation of creation, and the other was what
culture, science, etc., very much in contradiction to its we may call Platonic or classical Greek philosophical
fundamental claims and beliefs. And it is equally regret- view. To these two we shall briefly tum in order to see
table that owing to pressures from the Enlightenment, in what way the Christian concept of creation took its
theology and the Church have been marginalized in our shape in this early period.
W estem society and became incapable of doing harm as
well as good to modem culture. One would suspect that, Gnosticism took the view that the world in which we
from the way things develop in our modem world, the live is so penetrated with evil, pain, suffering, etc., that it
absence of theology from our culture will be felt very could not have been created by God, the Father whose
deeply, as science, ethics, etc., appear increasingly unable goodness would never have allowed Him to create such
to handle situations such as the one created by the a world. Thus, in order to keep God the Father free from
ecological problem. For it is necessary to repeat the point any responsibility for the evil that permeates the world,
I tried to underline in the previous lecture, namely that Gnosticism attributed creation to the lowest of the
without a world-view that involves religious and what intermediaries between the ineffable Father and the
we may call liturgical attitudes to creation it will be world. This it called Demiourgos (literally "Creator"), and
impossible to reverse the alarming situation the world is made him responsible for creation. Gnosticism believed
facing today. that creation is bad by definition and had no interest in
saving it, particularly in its material form. Man was
How does Christian theology view creation and created (according to certain Gnostic myths) before the
man's place in it? This is the question to which we must material world was made, and his present material state of
now address ourselves. If Christian theology has some- existence constitutes his fall. Salvation is achieved through
how led the world to its present crisis, by what ideas can knowledge (gnosis - hence the name of this heresy), a
it now help the world to deal with it? secret knowledge of the truth taught by the. teachers of

41
the Gnostic schools. It is through an es.cape from time and II. Creation with a "beginning"
space that man can be saved. Caring for this material
world is the most absurd and in fact sinful thing there is. If we look carefully into the issues that divided the
The sooner you get away from the material world the Church from ancient Greek philosophy as a whole on the
better. subject of creation, we can perhaps locate the heart of the
problem and the crucial difference in the question of
It is known to all of you that the Church took a very whether the world has had a beginning or not. This
negative attitude towards Gnosticism. Great theologians question, as we shall try to show in this lecture, has such
of that time, in particular St Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon at far reaching implications, that it can be said to constitute
the end of the 2nd century, wrote treatises against the one ofthe most important aspects of the relation between
Gnostics. The result of this anti-Gnostic polemic was to Christian theology and the ecological problem.
have a statement included in the early baptismal creeds of
the local churches, which finally became part of Creed Thatthe world had a beginning in any absolute sense
we all use in the liturgy, declaring that it is God the Father of the world seemed to be utter nonsense and absurdity
who made the material world ("I believe in God the to all ancient Greek thinkers. fu Professor Richard
Father maker of heaven and earth") and that conse~ Sorabji (of this university) states in his well-known study
quently the material world ("all things visible and invis- Time, Creation and the Continuum the view that the
ible") is good, since it was made by God the Father universe has had a beginning "was denied by everybody
Himse1£ Evil is of course a problem. But this should not in European antiquity outside the J udeo-Christian tradi-
lead us to the conclusion that the world is bad by nature tion" (p.193). For all ancient Greeks the world was
and that it is not God's creation. The Church had to find eternal. One may argue that Plato in his Timaeus {the
other ways of explaining the presence of evil without famous work that deals with creation) accepts the idea of
attributing it either to God or to the material world. On beginning in creation, but the fact is that this beginning,
this matter we shall have an opportunity to say more later as indeed all notions of beginning in ancient Greek
on. thought, was not absolute, since it always presupposed
something from which the world (or anything for that
So much for Gnosticism which introduced a gap be- matter) was created. In the case of Plato's Timaeus this
tween God and Creation. Platonism and the mainstream prtsupposed "something" which the creator used in
classical Greek thought took the extreme opposite posi- order to create the world was matter, ideas and even space
tion. For them not only was the gap between God and the (chora), all of which acted as conditions limiting the
world narrowed to the point of often disappearing creator's freedom. Creation was therefore beginning-
altogether, but in fact the world was penetrated by divine less, and the world, although particular beings in it could
presence in all its parts. "Everything is filled with gods" be said to have beginnings, the world taken as a whole
as the famous saying put it. Some identified the world had no beginning.
with God to the extent of not needing a doctrine of
creation at all. Others, like Plato, believed that the world The Church and the Fathers reacted negatively to this
was created by someone, whom Plato called Father, or view. They felt that it limited God's freedom in creating,
Mind (nous) or Creator (demiourgos) and who made the since He had to work with pre-existing matter and other
best possible world - not absolutely perfect, to be sure conditions. It also made God and the world somehow
- given the fact that it is a world made from matter and eternally co-existent. They had, therefore, to modify
enclosed in space, which inevitably acted as limitations Platonism in this respect if they were to remain in some
upon the creator. Thus the material world, in the sense "Christian Platonists." Such a modification had
Platonic view of things, is good and beautiful, yet only already been made through what we call "Middle Plato-
insofar as it partakes of the absolute goodness and beauty nism" (the Platonic Schools of the first two centuries AD
which is to be found outside this material world, in the before N eoplatonism appeared in the third century) and
world ofideas to which we can ascend through contem- with the famous Jewish philosopher of Alexandria in the
plation and intellectual katharsis, moving from the sen- first century AD, Philo. The modification involved the
sible to the spiritual, to the ideal world. Pure Platonism rejection of the idea that matter was not created by God,
took a positive view of the material universe as a means and the suggestion that Plato's ideas on the basis of which
providing us with a ladder to ascend higher; it was God formed creation were thoughts in the mind of God.
Neoplatonism a little later that showed a distrust for the This modification removed to a large extent the crudest
material world, and regarded it negatively. aspects of Platot'Es doctrine of creation, and those most
provocative to the Christian mind, but still left enough
Now, the Church did not react to platonism in the to make Platonism unacceptable to the Church on this
same polemical way as it did to Gnosticism. She seemed subject. Where did the problem lie?
to like the idea that the world was attributed to a
"creator" (called even the Father-God by Plato) and The real problem became evident when Christian
some of her greatest theologians such as St Justin in the Platonists such as Origen in Alexandria {third century)
second century, came out strongly in favour of Plato on put forth the view of an eternal creation on the basis of
almost all counts, including creation. Yet it would be a the belief mentioned above that the ideas or logoi with
mistake to regard the Church of the first centuries 3S which the world was created were thoughts in the mind
having accepted the Platonic or the ancient Greek view of God, and in order to answer the question "how could
of the world, for the differences were very deep, and God be almighty eternally, ifhe had no world on which
relate directly to the subject we are discussing in this series to exercise His power?" This not only led Origen to the
of lectures. Let us consider them briefly. view, officially condemned by the Church a few centu-
ries later, that souls were eternally pre-existing, but it also

42
showed clearly the dangers involved in any doctrine of throughout and decisively. There is no way, therefore,
creation which does not presuppose a radical and abso- for the world to escape from space and time or from the
lute beginning. As the late Father G. Florovsky put it, pre-condition of beginning which lies behind its being.
Origen's doctrine of creation implied that besides God Created being by definition is subject to these conditions,
there was always, eternally, a non-ego, a non-God, which not only mark the difference between God and
which meant that God was a creator by necessity and not the world, created and uncreated being, but also deter-
freely. Unless He created the world God would remain mine the world existentially. It is to the existential
unfulfilled, He would not be God. The notion of God conditions of being created out of nothing that we shall
and the notion of creation thus overlap, and Paganism now tum our attention, for they have to do directly with
makes its appearance disguised under the form of Chris- our subject.
tian doctrine.
What does being created our of nothing imply exis-
Thus, the idea that the world has had a beginning tentially? How does the world "experience," so to say,
ought to be taken in an absolute sense. But how could this the fact that it had a beginning? We can reply briefly to
absolute sense be described? And how could it make this question by making the following points:
"sense" and not lead to absurdity as the ancient Greeks
thought? Above all how does such an idea of absolute a) If we take the world as a "whole," as an entity in itself,
beginning affect our existence in this world and eventu- which we can do if we regard it, as we do, as finite and
ally the world's fate? These are questions to which we as other than God, the fact that the world had a
shall now tum. beginning forces us to put a line of demarcation, a
point of departure, at least at its beginning. A classical
III. Creation "'out of nothing" logical axiom would oblige us to put a line of
demarcation, a stopping point also at the end, for
The idea that the world had an absolute beginning according to this axiom whatever has had a beginning
could only be expressed through the formula that the will also have an end. But even leaving aside this
world was created "out of nothing," ex nihilo. But what axiom, the idea of.finitude attached to that of creature-
does "nothing" mean in this case? Can there ever be hood by definition implies that in the very concept of
something out of nothing? The ancient Greeks replied creaturehood there lies together with the idea of the
categorically in the negative. Christians had to find ways beginning, also that of the end. All this means that
ofmaking sense ofthis statement. Some ofthese ways did creation taken in itself (this condition is of decisive
not always maintain the. absolute character of nothing- importance for, as we shall see, things are different if
ness, but succumbed indirectly to the logic of Greek creation is not taken "in itself') constitutes an entity
thought which could not accept this idea and found it surrounded and conditioned by nothing: It came from
absurd. Such an understanding of"out of nothing" is to nothing and will return to nothing.
be found already in the Neoplatonists who understood it
in the sense that a beginningless creation could be I have called this implication of creaturehood "exis-
produced by God without its coming out of anything. tential" not because I have in mind certain modern
Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages gave a meaning to philosophical schools that bear this name, but because
"nothing" which amounted more or less to a source out there is in fact no other way for us to speak of the
of which creation came, while Karl Barth in our time, if universe except by somehow personifying it and
studied carefully, seems to understand "nothing" as a sort attributing to it categories stemming from our expe-
of void which God rejeded in opting for Christ pre- rience. We cannot, for example, avoid associating the
eternally as the one in whom and through whom He disappearances of a certain thing with the experience
created the world. All these interpretations of "out of of death, and vice-versa the experience of death with
nothing" should not be confused with what St Irenaeus the disappearance, the extinction of something. If the
and other Church Fathers meant by it. The purpose of universe is conceivable as a finite particular entity the
this expression for them was to indicate that nothing at very possibility of conceiving it in our minds implies
all existed previously to creation, no factor whatsoever putting lines ofdemarcation around it. But lines of de-
apart from God's free will was at work or contributed in marcation allowing for the conception mentally,
any way towards the creation of the world. imply existentially the experience of a before and an
after, the experience of the beginning and the end of
In order to make sense of this understanding of "out the thing conceived, therefore something analogous
of nothing" the ancient Christian theologians had to to the experience of the birth as well as the death of
make one thing clear: time and space are categories something. In this way ofspeaking, therefore, that the
which come into being together with creation. It is mean- world had an absolute beginning implies that taken in
ingless to ask "what did God do before creating," for itself it hangs in a void, and cannot avoid the threat of
there is no such thing as "before" and "after" until death. The universe is not eternal either in temis ofits
creation. Time and space are notions that have to do with beginning or in temis of its end; it is mortal, and
beginning, and whatever had no beginning could not be mortality in this case is as absolute as the use of the
measured with such categories. Thus, it seems that by term "nothing" - it signifies total extinction.
accepting the view that the world had a beginning the
Christians opted for a notion of time which: (a) is tied up b) If we do not take the world as a whole, as an entity in
with space organically - something that Platonism, for itself, but look instead at its interior, at what happens,
example, could not consider; and (b) characterises exclu- so to say, inside it, we observe the same consequences
sively the created world - as space does too - and of the fact that it has come into being out of nothing.
together with space affects the existence of the universe Just as the world in its totality has had a beginning, so

43
 also each particular being that makes it up is condi- because it was created out of nothing in the absolute sense
tioned by a beginning which threatens it with extinc- of the word. The world possesses no natural power in
tion. The space-time structure of the universe is itself which would enable it to overcome this situation,
"experienced" by everything and everyone in the for if it did it would have been immortal and eternal by
world as the means by which entities acquire their nature; it would have had no beginning in the absolute
being and at the same time their non-being. My father sense as the ancient Greeks rightly observed. A Christian
was united with me through time, and through the who wishes to have both his doctrine of creatio ex nihilo
same time he is divided from me by his death. The and a faith that the world possesses in its nature some kind
same space that unites me with you at this moment of means for eternal survival is bound to be logically
also separates me from you. Things are brought inconsistent. For what such a view would imply is that
together and are separated by the same means. Space the eternal God created an eternal world, i.e. another
and time are the exclusive characteristics of creation, God by nature, which amounts to the total denial of the
and this is expressed in every simple being that can be doctrine of creation out of nothing and a the same time
said to have an identity ofits own. No individual thing to the abolition of the distinction between created and
can exist without space and time (c£ P.F. Strawson's uncreated being - a distinction on which the entire
Individuals), and this --unless space and time were Patristic tradition insisted so much.
always there, i.e. unless they were beginningless -
proves them in the end to be non-entities. IV. Conclusion

One could say, therefore, that the nothingness out of Now, in saying all of this I can sense the reaction
which the world came into being permeates it and affects coming to the minds ofsome ofyou: if things are the way
every single being within the universe. Death is experi- we have described them here, does this mean that the
enced as return to nothingness, in spite of the fact that world was created by God in order to disappear one day?
new entities may emerge out of the old ones that died. Was God so cruel as to bring about beings other than
For neither can the fact that species procreate change the Himself without taking any measures to secure their
fact that a concrete progenitor A no longer exists after his survival? Do we not believe in a God who is "the God
death as a particular identity, nor, worse even, the can not of the dead but of the living" and who loves the world
return of a corpse to the earth in order to become the to the point of wanting it to share His own life and bliss?
basic natural elements for other forms of life be a conso-
lation for the loss of a particular being. Death amounts to Ofcourse, all ofthis is true. But the question is how did
the extinction of particular beings precisely because the God want the world to survive and share His own life?
world having come out of nothing and being penetrated And, theologically speaking, the question is how to state
by it does not possess any means in its nature whereby to all this in a way that does not involve logical contradic-
overcome nothingness. Plato had to make use of the idea tions or stumble on fundamental scientific facts, which
of immortality as a natural characteristic of the soul in would exclude theology from normal scientific or philo-
order to secure the overcoming of death in the universe, sophical discourse. For it is easy for theology to speak its
and Aristotle having at some point denied this belief of own language to its own people and thus form an esoteric
his master had to rely on the immortality of the species ghetto of its own. But we have started here with the
through pro-creation. In these ways the world as a whole assumption that theology can offer something to man in
would achieve immortality, yet at the expense ofparticu- his attempt to face a crisis created by culture, including
lar beings. But a Christian? What could a Christian do to science and philosophy. We intend to stick to this as-
secure the overcoming of death as extinction of the sumption in spite of the limitations to our dealing
particular beings, given the fact that there was no eternal adequately with such a vast and difficult problem. We,
and immortal element in the nature of creation, all of therefore, wish to articulate Christian theology in a way
them - including souls, species and matter - having that would be faithful to the logical consequences of its own
had a beginning? It is tragic, but once we accept the assumptions, and not contradict them.
doctrine of creation out of nothing we are unable to find
anything in this world that is not subject to death, and- Thus, it is an assumption, a doctrine of the Church,
what is even more significant - we cannot understand that the world was created out of nothing in the absolute
death as anything less than total extinction. Here I find sense of the term, a doctrine that distinguished Christi-
the words ofUnamuno, quoted by Professor Sorabji in anity from ancient Pagan religions and philosophies. The
his book which I mentioned earlier, to be quite revealing: fact that in our time natural science does not find it
inconceivable that the world was created out of absolute
"For myself I can say that as a youth and even as a nothing can be a positive factor in enabling theology to
child I remained unmoved when shown the most enter into constructive discourse with the scientist. But
moving pictures of hell, for even then nothing even if the scientist were to disagree about this doctrine,
appeared quite so horrible to me as nothingness." the Christian theologian having accepted it in the first
instance, would have to be logically consistent with it.
These words may easily be taken as sheer psychologizing This consistency will have to be observed also in trying
and therefore dismissed by hard thinking. But the psy- to answer the question: how did God envisage the
chological aspects of death -which may or may not play survival of the world given the fact that He created it out
an important role depending on the particular individual of nothing?
and his mood at the time - is not all there is in the
quotation. This quotation conveys faithfully the message We have already noted that it would be inconsistent
of Christian theology that the world as a whole, like to assume that God endowed the world with a natural
every part of it, exists under the threat of nothingness, capacity for survival, for such an assumption would imply

44
that between God and the world there is a natural affinity
(a syggeneia as the ancient Greeks would say). Anything
naturally common between God and Creation would
make the two realities one in a substantial way. This is
why the Fathers had to reject the Neoplatonic idea of
emanations, the Platonic and Origenist idea of the
eternity of souls, the Aristotelian view of the eternity of
matter, etc. It is a matter oflogical consistency to seek the
survival of creation in ways other than these.

But if we exclude the assumption that the world

possesses in its nature some factor securing its survival,
and still want to secure this survival, we are left only with
one solution: we must find a way of uniting the world
with God, the only eternal and immortal being, other
than a natural affinity. We must find a link between the
two which would secure the communication of life
between them without abolishing the natural otherness
between God and Creation. Can such a link be found?
And can such a linkage make any sense?

Christian doctrine offers as a solution to this problem

the place of Man in creation. It is in the human being that
we must seek the link between God and the world, and
it is precisely this that makes Man responsible, in a sense
the only being responsible for the fate of creation. What
an awful responsibility and what a glorious mission at the
same time! "Man is the glory of God" declares St
Irenaeus, and with good reason. But why and how can
Man be the solution to the problem of the survival of
creation? What qualities does he possess enabling him to
achieve this? And why has he failed in this mission? These
are questions we shall attempt to discuss in our next
lecture.

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