Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

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Irish1975
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Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by Irish1975 »

The Nicene Creed affirms the doctrine that "all things were made through him," i.e. Christ. At first blush, this idea seems superfluous, as though having a hand in creation were just another honorific attaching to the figure they call Lord and Christ. But lines in the creed invariably functioned to settle some kind of heresy, so there was probably more to it.

One hypothesis for the origin of this idea is that it functioned as a catholic compromise between two untenable and warring doctrines in the early church--

1. That the creation account in Genesis is fine as it is; and

2. that the world was created by angels or lower powers or a demiurge.

The centrist path lay between these two extremes, and creation through Christ somehow fit the bill.

After the 2nd century, of course, Christianity would canonize the OT and emphatically affirm the Genesis account of creation and fall. With the doctrine of Christ's homoousia with the Father, creation through Christ came to be somewhat redundant. And one can easily argue that the whole conception derives more or less directly from the Sophia conceptions in the wisdom literature of the Jewish scriptures, by way of Logos speculation.

But in the early days, there might have been a sizable number of potential Christians who found the creator in Genesis to be unacceptable, and who were placated by the prologue in John and the language in 1 Corinthians 8 and Colossians 1.

I am not quite satisfied with this theory. Did creation through Christ really amend all the problems with the Jewish creator God that brought into being the theories of a fallen demiurge? No, but the anti-Marcionites were never going to settle for two Gods. If the world were created through the Logos/Christ, it is in accordance with the will of the Father, but also to some degree there is preserved the transcendence and sublime infinitude of the ultimate deity that was so deep a concern to Platonically influenced theologians in the Hellenistic era. And the idea of a divine emanation or procession is preserved. And the homoousian dogma was long in the future.

:confusedsmiley:
rgprice
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Re: Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by rgprice »

Yeah. We can look at it in the context of the Gnostic teachings, which typically either said that the world was created by the Jewish God, who was lower than the Highest God, or that it was created by angels / demiurge, as you said. But I'm still not sure if the opening of John was written in reaction to the Gnostics or if it actually traces back earlier.

The interesting thing is that you have to deal with the problem of sin in order to work out how the world was created. Obviously the world is not perfect. That's why the Gnostics assigned the creation to a lower being than the Highest God. That's how they accounted for the imperfections.

But I also see the possibility of the Creation being assigned to the Lord as having preceded the Gnostics. Because if you look at Philo, Philo is the one who assigns the Creation to the Logos, and Philo is surely pre-Gnostic.

But, ironically, Philo was assigning the Creation to the Logos for the same reason that the Gnostics assigned it to a lesser being. For Philo, God himself wouldn't be directly involved in the creation of the world, it was done through an intercessor. The odd thing about John is that it builds off the concept of the world being created through an intermediary, but then says that that intermediary was also God himself. So its pretty weird really.

I mean honestly, the New Testament does not really solve the problem of the flawed Creation or address why this salvation was needed. That's why it had to be paired with the "Old Testament" and then have dogma laid on top of that in order to rationalize it all. In some ways, while many of the Gnostic teachings sound very bizarre at first blush, they do may more sense.

The Catholic version of things requires a whole lot of additional explanatory dogma in order to try and rationalize it all. For all of the oddities of Gnosticism, the basic premise is pretty straight forward: The Creation is flawed. There is suffering in the world. A perfect God wouldn't have created such a world. The world was created by some lesser deity. The Highest God has now had enough of the suffering and has sent his Son to save us from it.

The Catholic version is: The Highest God/Only created the world. But even though this God is perfect, the world still descended into sin and suffering because of the Eve and Satan, which somehow corrupted the perfect world created by God. And we know the rest...

So yeah, it seems less logical really. But all of the contortions of Catholic dogma were required in order to maintain monotheism.

In the book I'm working on I make connections between the Christ Hymn in Philippians, the Christological hymn in Colossians and the opening of John. And I'd say that both of those things preceded orthodox ideology, so I don't know. It's hard to say the degree to which the opening of John is anti-Gnostic and the degree to which is reflects possibly pre-Gnostic ideas. It actually seems to align strongly with Philo.
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billd89
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Re: Philo is NOT the Innovator

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rgprice wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:23 amBut I also see the possibility of the Creation being assigned to the Lord as having preceded the Gnostics. Because if you look at Philo, Philo is the one who assigns the Creation to the Logos, and Philo is surely pre-Gnostic.
... so I don't know. It's hard to say the degree to which the opening of John is anti-Gnostic and the degree to which is reflects possibly pre-Gnostic ideas. It actually seems to align strongly with Philo.
Respectfully:
The Logos Doctrine predates Philo Judaeus - perhaps by ~200 yrs. Philo is not "pre-Gnostic" (in this context) - much of his writings are designed to contradict the "radical allegorizers", reset smthg closer to the familiar Torah. In all likelihood, there were deep Judeo-Gnostic currents decades before Philo was born. (Scant heretical material, but burned by Jews and Xians alike!) Philo is like a conservative publishing house tacitly rebutting the radical preachers of his day: that horse had left the barn.

I'm finding evidence of the Hermetica in Philo. That is "impossible" according to the dominant scholarship today. Hermetic-Gnostic origins should NOT be dated to the 2nd C. AD. - that False Timeframe generates all kinds of false assumptions.
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Irish1975
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Re: Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by Irish1975 »

Another way to look at it is through the prism of debates about the Law. If rejecting the Law was paramount, and if Christ is to become the alternative to the Law, then it makes sense to associate Christ with the creation that preceded the giving of the Law through Moses. The Pauline appeal to Abraham and Adam was urgent because these figures pre-dated Moses, and creation through Christ can be seen as a continuation of this line of thinking. Destroy the Law from both ends of the historical timeline.
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Irish1975
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Re: Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by Irish1975 »

They wanted to get rid of the Law, but also clarify that what was evil about the Law was not a reflection on the creator. Whatever exactly that evil was, it had nothing to do with the creation, the element spirits of the cosmos, or the creator--contra what Marcion was preaching. Christ mediated the creation, but not the Law.

These points are rather obvious, but they do explain the appeal and the logic of the creation through Christ. It need not have had anything to do with some revelation to Paul or anyone else of Christ's glory at the right of the father. It had an altogether strategic purpose and meaning.
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billd89
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Re: Christos Supercedes the 100yo Creation Myth

Post by billd89 »

A Ptolemy orders a very small group of scribes (Mosaic Cult?) to consolidate/rewrite Jewish lore for their Alexandrian political agenda. Israel should be a vassal and buffer state.

Another Ptolemy continues the project. Over 100 yrs or so, the assembled writings, a canon, eventually becomes the Torah (after 170 BC).

There were Jews who knew what was happening, and some perhaps disliked that faction chosen to write the myths. From the beginning, 270 AD? opposition arose. Simply, there were other Jews who rejected the Torah written by 'those guys.' We know that other Jewish myths -the Sethians' mythos well-known to Josephus in 90 AD, so therefore established several generations- definitely circulated.

Because some Jews knew what had happened, they felt confident and fully justified with their own allegoresis and motives to create competing myths. Jerusalem didnt control Alexandria. New ideas appeared, flourished. So it was with the Christos Myth, c.25 BC.

The Christos Myth was superimposed on the Logos Myth, an abstraction of the old Jewish mercenaries' (300 BC) Melchizedek Warrior-Saviour Cult. Hence, Epistle to the Hebrews. Imagine there must have been a period of struggle between these two factions, the old Logos Jews and the upstart Christos sect, predating catholic Christianity by +100yrs.

Mechizedekianism would have been effectively wiped out 38-117 AD, so that's the window to look in.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by GakuseiDon »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:01 amOne hypothesis for the origin of this idea is that it functioned as a catholic compromise between two untenable and warring doctrines in the early church--

1. That the creation account in Genesis is fine as it is; and

2. that the world was created by angels or lower powers or a demiurge.

The centrist path lay between these two extremes, and creation through Christ somehow fit the bill.
I would add a third one:

3. the impact of the Greek philosophical idea from the time of Xenophanes that, since a perfect God would need to do nothing, there had to be an intermediary between that remote perfect God and an imperfect world of matter and an imperfect humanity.

The more perfect God was conceived to be, the more remote He became. Thus the need for intermediaries. If you conceive the world of matter as less-than-perfect, then you will need some mechanism by which the world is brought about.
rgprice
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Re: Philo is NOT the Innovator

Post by rgprice »

billd89 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:04 am Respectfully:
The Logos Doctrine predates Philo Judaeus - perhaps by ~200 yrs. Philo is not "pre-Gnostic" (in this context) - much of his writings are designed to contradict the "radical allegorizers", reset smthg closer to the familiar Torah. In all likelihood, there were deep Judeo-Gnostic currents decades before Philo was born. (Scant heretical material, but burned by Jews and Xians alike!) Philo is like a conservative publishing house tacitly rebutting the radical preachers of his day: that horse had left the barn.

I'm finding evidence of the Hermetica in Philo. That is "impossible" according to the dominant scholarship today. Hermetic-Gnostic origins should NOT be dated to the 2nd C. AD. - that False Timeframe generates all kinds of false assumptions.
True, but I meant that Philo was before second century Gnosticism, which was who the proto-Catholics were at odds with. I'm saying these concepts existed before the proto-Catholics came about.
andrewcriddle
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Re: Origins of the idea of creation through Christ

Post by andrewcriddle »

The origin of this idea is presumably the first verses of John
1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2
He was with God in the beginning.
3
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Andrew Criddle
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