God built the universe from chaos and evil

[cloudyday2]

The Hebrew is debatable. I've read on it before, but am hardly an expert. Regardless if Genesis account is ex materia or not, it does not disavow a previous ex nihilo creation if people want to quibble.

On another note, most near-eastern Creation accounts are about order being made from Chaos. Chaos is usually viewed as water, because water was untamed. It is the primordial ocean, the Sea Serpent with its undulating, malleable form. This is also why water and serpents are associated with chaos in most archetype formulations as well. It fits the Genesis account's Semitic origins, but the lack of a heroic narrative, a slaying of the Serpent, is telling (unless you would rope in Leviathan in Job, but that is not a creation account). I don't think the argument as strong as some suppose. Genesis 1 can be read as a satire of the Enuma Elish myth of Babylonia anyway.

I don't think Christian apologists should be arguing for creation ex nihilo if Genesis 1 says something different. Personally, I think having God arise through dumb luck from a preexisting chaos is a nice idea. Quantum mechanics seems to show that chaos is integral to reality. Just as some myths had the god of order defeating the god of chaos and chopping up its body to build the world, that is what I see in quantum mechanics. The equations are the order and the probabilities are the chaos. They are both necessary.

So the Christian apologists need to drop that ex nihilo nonsense.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I don't think Christian apologists should be arguing for creation ex nihilo if Genesis 1 says something different. Personally, I think having God arise through dumb luck from a preexisting chaos is a nice idea. Quantum mechanics seems to show that chaos is integral to reality. Just as some myths had the god of order defeating the god of chaos and chopping up its body to build the world, that is what I see in quantum mechanics. The equations are the order and the probabilities are the chaos. They are both necessary.

So the Christian apologists need to drop that ex nihilo nonsense.

Genesis 1 can be understood either way. Ex materia just fits the Semitic context better. This doesn't mean ex nihilo is wrong, though, for other unequivocal Jewish ideas, such as monotheism or God using other nations to punish, run counter to prevailing Semitic ideas.

It is because God is seen as the fount of existence, as is implied by Philo translating YHWH as Being, or the understanding of I AM. The first principle. This implies that God is fundamental reality. Ex nihilo creation fits this understanding much better, especially from Hellenistic ideas thereof, and is clearly how Philo and Jewish intellectuals conceived it in the Second Temple period. Both Christianity and Judaism mostly conceive creation ex nihilo as a consequence. So if it was supposed to be read ex materia, it mostly hasn't been since at least the 1st century BC.

It is apt to group your quantum theory interpretation with mythic beast-slaying ordering archetypes, for they are clearly the same types of myth. This is not really the moralising tone of Genesis though, declaring that creation was 'good'.

 

[cloudyday2]

So if it was supposed to be read ex materia, it mostly hasn't been since at least the 1st century BC.

This brings up another issue: can Scripture say different and even contradictory things to different cultures and still be holy? Should Christians try to understand the Scriptures as the historic Jesus probably understood them, or should they try to understand them as the original authors, or should they try to understand them in a modern context?

 

[Halbhh]

I won't pretend I read the link, but I like the idea of this thread. The idea you summarize is consistent with my laymen understanding of old religions. But it's an idea Christians would be foolish to accept. Creatio ex materia is actually fatal to the Christian position.

As I said elsewhere in a similar thread of mine,

The eternal existence of physical material would render God's existence moot. Given eternity in a Godless reality, all possible outcomes must occur. If an outcome does not occur in an eternity, then it's not a possible outcome. Our universe is obviously a possible outcome, so it must occur and God is not necessary. Thus God's existence is moot.

Many things are 'fatal' or against certain ways (some ways, but not other ways) of making assumptions about things not specified in Genesis chapter 1...

But Christianity is not about which assumptions a person makes about things not said in Genesis chapters 1-3, nor what a person thinks is figurative or allegorical or actual. None of these are what Christianity is.

Not what Christianity is.

Christianity is believing in Jesus the Christ, and what He said and did. All that is in the 4 gospel accounts of His words and deeds. That He rose again, and that He will come again in the end, and that we will gain Life.

Example:
"A new command I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you." -- Christ our Lord

The 12 or 20 different ways of reading Genesis chapter 1 combined with extra guesses or assumptions are irrelevant in the end for being Christian, for making it. Many of us must be mistaken about some things!

We are not required to be omniscient as Christians, in order to be rescued from our wrongs and gain Life.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Apparently the best translations of Genesis 1 show God creating the universe from preexisting evil and chaos instead of from nothing.

This seems to be an important point, because many Christian apologists make arguments assuming that God created the universe from nothing when apparently that is not what the Bible says.

This also solves the problem of evil, because Christians can argue that God did not create the evil and chaos - it was already here. God has simply been tidying-up the chaos to make it good instead of evil, and the process is not complete.

This also dovetails with the Gospel theme of redemption IMO.


Creation and Cosmogony in the Bible

I've read the article, but I'm not seeing any direct implication that evil is contained within God's creative acts, nor do I see that God made the universe 'out of' chaos. You'll need to cite the specific part of the article that you think is communicating this, Cloudy, because apparently, I'm reading it differently than you are and understanding different connotations from it.

 

[cloudyday2]

I've read the article, but I'm not seeing any direct implication that evil is contained within God's creative acts, nor do I see that God made the universe 'out of' chaos. You'll need to cite the specific part of the article that you think is communicating this, Cloudy, because apparently, I'm reading it differently than you are and understanding different connotations from it.

o.k. here are some snippets from the article. "Evil" isn't mentioned, but in the ancient near east "darkness", "deep waters", and "chaos" were all symbols of "evil". Apparently the only thing mentioned initially that was not a symbol of evil is the "wind" that was associated with God's spirit.

The verb brʾ used in the very first sentence of the creation story does not imply, as most traditional commentators believed, creatio ex nihilo
...
(1:3) relates the first act by which God, by divine fiat, created cosmic order out of primeval chaos

Creation and Cosmogony in the Bible

 

[cloudyday2]

^ @2PhiloVoid , I have been watching this guy's series of lectures on Genesis, and that is where I initially became aware of the issue. (He might have some things you can google that would explain more - Gary A. Rendsburg of Rutgers)
Book of Genesis

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Apparently the best translations of Genesis 1 show God creating the universe from preexisting evil and chaos instead of from nothing.

I don't believe "apparently" counts as authoritative.

I think it is written somewhere in Yahweh's Word that EVERYTHING that is in existence was made by Yahshua and without Yahshua was not anything made that was made.
Also (I think) that Yahweh Created all things out of nothing.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Apparently the only thing mentioned initially that was not a symbol of evil is the "wind" that was associated with God's spirit.

Again, I think, "Apparently" is not authoritative nor accurate, and the sources are not in line with Scripture nor with Yahweh's Plan, Creation, Purpose or Salvation in Jesus.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

How can you say it's not Biblical when the whole idea comes from a careful reading of the Hebrew for Genesis 1 in its historical context? I don't know how to be any more Biblical than that. LOL

Good questions.
Common problem all over the earth in all religions including "Christianity".

Return simply to Scripture trusting the Father and relying on Him.
Remember
even the Apostles Called and Chosen BY JESUS (AND THE FATHER)
DID NOT KNOW
Jesus is THE MESSIAH until, as Jesus told Simon barjona ,
THE FATHER REVEALED THIS TO THEM (and likewise to all other disciples who know Jesus as the Messiah).
i.e. without supernatural revelation ("Spiritually Revealed by the Father")
NO ONE knows the truth , not about Jesus, or Creation, or the Father, or about anything.

The "natural [carnal] mind" (in anyone) cannot (not only does not but is UNABLE TO ) understand anything spiritual or of Yahweh's Word.

This does not leave people hopeless nor helpless - only the ONLY HOPE is IN JESUS to ever know the truth, and to ever see heaven. The world is unable to reveal these things.

 

[cloudyday2]

Again, I think, "Apparently" is not authoritative nor accurate, and the sources are not in line with Scripture nor with Yahweh's Plan, Creation, Purpose or Salvation in Jesus.

Where do you see a conflict with Christian stuff?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Where do you see a conflict with Christian stuff?

What is "Christian stuff" ?

 

[cloudyday2]

What is "Christian stuff" ?

"Yahweh's Plan, Creation, Purpose or Salvation in Jesus"

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I don't think Christian apologists should be arguing for creation ex nihilo if Genesis 1 says something different. Personally, I think having God arise through dumb luck from a preexisting chaos is a nice idea. Quantum mechanics seems to show that chaos is integral to reality. Just as some myths had the god of order defeating the god of chaos and chopping up its body to build the world, that is what I see in quantum mechanics. The equations are the order and the probabilities are the chaos. They are both necessary.

It depends on what you mean by God then. Statistically we expect a self-aware entity to arise by spontaneous entropy decrease once per 10^(10^50) years per 10^80 particles. But such an entity will typically not exist for very long in the vacuum of space.

While any possible arrangement of matter can be actualized by a spontaneous entropy decrease (given enough time, of course), I doubt that a God—an entity that can manipulate matter with its mind—is such a possible arrangement of matter.

So the Christian apologists need to drop that ex nihilo nonsense.

While I agree with the conclusion, I don't see how you got there.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

This brings up another issue: can Scripture say different and even contradictory things to different cultures and still be holy? Should Christians try to understand the Scriptures as the historic Jesus probably understood them, or should they try to understand them as the original authors, or should they try to understand them in a modern context?

Texts are living things in a sense. If I read an old novel, I may gain something or see connections that others do not, or the author never intended. These are still valid ideas. A good example is Shylock in Merchants of Venice - he was seen as a comedic character, before people started reading him as a tragic one. Or certain works have merely become more pertinent with time, like Crime and Punishment or 1984.

Traditionally, the Bible was read in four senses: Literal, tropological, anagogical and moral. Later a historical reading was added, to ascertain the context from which it was written and its original meaning. If a meaning only arose later doesn't matter, it is still a possible reading. This is even more so if we consider the book a fundamental one to the culture (or even more if seen as Divinely inspired). I wouldn't necessarily even give the historical reading primacy, as the meanings aren't mutually exclusive nor necessarily the most important point thereof. Genesis 1 may for instance have been polemical against Enuma Elish - that hardly matters to us today, but its ideas of Divine Creation and so forth certainly does.

o.k. here are some snippets from the article. "Evil" isn't mentioned, but in the ancient near east "darkness", "deep waters", and "chaos" were all symbols of "evil". Apparently the only thing mentioned initially that was not a symbol of evil is the "wind" that was associated with God's spirit.

Creation and Cosmogony in the Bible

Using Evil is a bit anachronistic. The waters and chaos weren't evil, just unordered, not under the control of man or the gods. They were scary, an Other, but also an opportunity. Tiamat, the primordial ocean and Serpent of Chaos, gave birth to the gods after all, and the bounty of our world was made from her remains. She wasn't intrinsically 'evil' as such. It is as Set was god of deserts, but could also thus help you in one, or Reshpu god of plagues.
It is a more a Zoroastrian idea to have such explicit dualism and it only entered Semitic thought much later. A similar idea is for instance Yin Yang, where Yin is chaotic and unstructured, but is as necessary as Yang. It is not 'evil'.

 

[cloudyday2]

Using Evil is a bit anachronistic.

I can explain why the water actually was viewed as evil. On each day of creation there is a refrain "and God saw that it was good" - each day that is except the day that God created the sky to divide the waters below from the waters above. That is because the waters symbolized evil, and the author felt it was inappropriate to write "and God saw that it was good" even though it would have been more poetic to do that. (That point was made by the Rendsburg in the lectures I have been watching.)

Another point Rendsburg has been repeating is that Judaism innovated by including a moral dimension in many of its stories. The original flood story has the gods trying to exterminate humans because they are too noisy, and the survivor of the flood seems to be chosen at random. Genesis has God exterminating humans because they are evil and Noah is chosen as a survivor because he is good.​

 

[cloudyday2]

It depends on what you mean by God then. Statistically we expect a self-aware entity to arise by spontaneous entropy decrease once per 10^(10^50) years per 10^80 particles. But such an entity will typically not exist for very long in the vacuum of space.

While any possible arrangement of matter can be actualized by a spontaneous entropy decrease (given enough time, of course), I doubt that a God—an entity that can manipulate matter with its mind—is such a possible arrangement of matter.

While I agree with the conclusion, I don't see how you got there.

I think it's interesting that God actually creates through words, and parsing is equivalent to computation, and computation usually is a non-reversible process with an effect on entropy. (Of course I imagine the author Genesis had God creating through words, because God was modeled on human kings.)

It's hard to say if God can emerge spontaneously from the chaos without knowing clearly what God is like. But like you mentioned earlier (paraphrasing) - eternity is a long time and a lot can happen

 

[2PhiloVoid]

^ @2PhiloVoid , I have been watching this guy's series of lectures on Genesis, and that is where I initially became aware of the issue. (He might have some things you can google that would explain more - Gary A. Rendsburg of Rutgers)
Book of Genesis

Unfortunately, I can't access the individual chapters to see what Dr. Rendsburg has to say on the matter. Oh well. I guess I'll have to stick with Conrad Hyers who covered all of this same 'stuff' over thirty years ago in his book, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science.

 

[cloudyday2]

Unfortunately, I can't access the individual chapters to see what Dr. Rendsburg has to say on the matter. Oh well. I guess I'll have to stick with Conrad Hyers who covered all of this same 'stuff' over thirty years ago in his book, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science.

So what did he have to say about "ex nihilo"?

 

[Eloy Craft]

For a little interplay between the revelation of God to Moses and the symbols used to communicate pagan thought about eternity, consider the ouroboros and the first prophecy recorded in Genesis.

I add that eternal reality has two qualities. Changelessness and an endless duration. Changeless existence is also an endless duration. Changeless is primary never ending is consequential. The latter is the sole definition grasped by human reason. The former is not, but both are one eternal reality. The former is divinely revealed the latter is symbolized by the ouroboros.

The Pagan cultures developed a very subtle and accurate understanding of eternity and humanities experience within it. The ouroboros was a powerful symbol of the nature of time, human history and the eternal order of the cosmos. It is developed from a long history of experience. The ouroboros symbolized what is experienced at the cusp of ages. I believe it is an example of the heights human reason can attain. When one age ends and the next begins, according to pagans, the end is swallowed up in the beginning of the next age. The people who live when that happens will experience long forgotten conditions surrounding human life and come to understand human origins in a uniquely comprehensive way. Having the experience of generations from the dawn to the end of the age coupled with the emergent conditions of their collective genesis experience creates a wisdom of the ages that will form myth that the following age will remember devotedly but forget the true meaning of nonetheless.

The pagans thought of time as cyclic due to this experience they interpreted as marking that peculiar crossing over of the ages. The end is swallowed up in the beginning. So eternity is a cycle and that's how pagans defined time. Time is a cycle that becomes evident when the snake swallows it's tail. The ouroboros is probably the most powerful symbol of ancient pagan wisdom. It is reasoning based on the intellective abstraction of the material experience of Pagan life over generations of time.

The revelation of God to Moses is a story of perfect immortal life that is plunged into sin and death by the archetypes of humanity.. At the end of this tragedy is a revelation from God that offers a Gospel of hope for salvation. The salvation from a life of endless loops of time symbolized by a serpent swallowing it's tail. I'll just post the prophetic imagery described in Genesis.

15 I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.


A revelation from God will introduce concepts and ideas unattainable by human reason alone. The Pagan idea of time as cyclic and harmonious with the powers of nature is redefined as an internal struggle with evil, a vicious circle that man must overcome.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

The ouroboros is anthropamorphized and the tail becomes a foot that the head strikes as the age proceeds, but at the end of the age when the beginning starts to swallow it's end, the foot of a human emerges and crushes the serpents head. The cusp of this age is conflict and humanity is loosed from eternal loop of the serpent that swallows it's tail.

The ideas of creation exmateria vs exnihilo relate to one another in the same way as the ouroborous and the Genesis story of the Hebrews.