Among the ancient philosophers of every school it was uni- versally accepted as an indubitable axiom that the origination of any new existence out of nothing is impossible, *. e., ex nihilo nihil fit. All, therefore, theists and atheists alike, repudiated the idea of creation. Plato held that there are two eternal, self-existent prin- ciples, God and matter, which exist coordinately in an indivisible unsuccessive eternity ; that time and the actual phenomenal world which exists in time, are the work of God, who freely molds matter into forms which image his own infinitely perfect and eternal ideas. Aristotle also held that God and matter are co- ordinately self-existent and eternal ; but he differed from Plato in regarding God as eternally self-active in organizing the world out of matter, and consequently in regarding the universe thus organized as eternal as well as the mere matter of which it is formed. — Ancient Phil., W. Archer Butler, Series 3, Lectures
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1 and 2. These, however, recognized God as the real author of the universe as a harmonious system. The Atomists, of whom Leucippus and Democritus were the first teachers, were, on the other hand, Atheists and Materialists. They held that the only self-existent principle of all things was an infinite number of atoms which from eternity move together in obedience to certain necessaiy forces, and in their fortuitous concourse combined and constituted the various forms and systems of bodies which com- pose the universe, as well as the intelligent and sensitive souls of men, which are as really material as their bodies, or any of the grosser forms of matter. This system was adopted in its essential features by the Epicureans. — Bitters' Hist, of Ancient Phil., Book VI., chap. ii.
Since the Christian era, all who have acknowledged the Holy Scriptures to be the word of God have agreed in maintaining the doctrine of God's absolute creation of the universe, alike matter and form, out of nothing by his mere power ; although some of the schoolmen, following Aristotle, have held that God created the world from eternity. The Manichaeans of the third and fourth centuries, an entirely antichristian sect, rejecting the Old Testa- ment and corrupting the Xew, maintained the coordinate, eter- nal self-existence of two worlds, of spirit and light and of matter and darkness, presided over by two great antagonistic beings. Our present system is the result of the invasion of the world of light by the prince of darkness, and the consequent entanglement of a portion of that spiritual world with gross matter. The spirits of men belong naturally to the one world, their bodies and material nature generally to the other. All sin and suffering re- sult from the evil inherent in matter. The object of Christ's mission was to deliver our spirits from our bodies, which it is the great end of all practical religion to mortify and subdue. In modern times the cleniers of the doctrine of absolute creation ex nihilo, have been either Pantheists or Atheists. For a statement of the essential elements of Pantheism, see below, Chapter I., question 35. The Atheists have differed among themselves ; some maintaining that the present system of the universe has continued just as it now is in unbroken succession from eternity ; some resorting to the atomic theory of the ancients, and others holding to an endless development of all things from their pri-
188 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.
mordial elementary principles. This doctrine of development has received its most perfect scientific exposition in La Place's Nebular Hypothesis, wherein he traces the evolution of the whole solar system by the rigid application of known mechanical prin- ciples, from a condition of intensely heated vapor, rotating on its axis from west to east, precisely similar to that of many nebulous bodies now existing in the universe. As an account of the suc- cessive stages through which God has carried his work of creating the world, in which sense this theory is very generally accepted by Christian philosophers, the nebular hypothesis is a peerless monument of its author's philosophical genius. But as an ac- count of the manner in which the world might have come into existence without the intervention of either a divine wisdom or power, in which sense the author intended it, it is an equally eminent monument of his wickedness and folly.
3. How may creation ex niliilo be proved from Scripture ?