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Beginnings
Many are the revelations and philosophies that flourished in the Sacred Scriptures, the Holy Qur’an, and in Academies, Lyceums, and Stoas of antiquity concerning the beginning of the heavens and of earth. Divine creation, in antiquity’s realm, is seen as two-fold: creation “out of something,” or “out of nothing.”7
Some conceived of a Platonic Demiurge whose creation begins from a pre-existing, disordered reality ending in a beautifully ordered cosmos after the imitation of the Ideal Forms. Others, the Neo-Platonists 3⁄4 Plotinus, Dionysus the Areopagite, Scotus, Alfarabi, Crescas 3⁄4 conceived of God’s essence eternally emanating all things into coming into being.8 Hebrews, too, conceived of a divine Yahweh who creates all things, not from the pre-existing Eternal Model of Plato’s forms, but from non- existent things:9 from His Living Word.
7 Wolfson,HarryAustryn. StudiesintheHistoryofPhilosophyandReligion. Ch. 12. The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in the Church Fathers, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy, and St. Thomas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 207- 221.
8 Wolfson,HarryAustryn. StudiesintheHistoryofPhilosophyandReligion. Ch. 12. The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in the Church Fathers, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy, and St. Thomas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 207- 221.
9 Maccabees 7:28 affirms Creation from non-existent things, ek ouk ontwn, or ek tou me outos “the non-existent” of some Kalam thinkers. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion. Ch. 12. The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in the Church Fathers, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy, and St. Thomas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 207-221.
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