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‘Creatio Ex Nihilo’: A Context for the

Emergence of the Christian Doctrine of
Creation

Frances Young

Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 44 / Issue 02 / May 1991, pp 139 - 152

DOI: 10.1017/S0036930600039089, Published online: 30 January 2009

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How to cite this article:

Frances Young (1991). ‘Creatio Ex Nihilo’: A Context for the Emergence
of the Christian Doctrine of Creation. Scottish Journal of Theology, 44,
pp 139-152 doi:10.1017/S003693060003908

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ScoLjoum. ofTheoL VoL 44, (1991) pp. 139-151

'CREATIO EX NIHILO': A CONTEXT FOR THE

EMERGENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
CREATION
by PROFESSOR FRANCES YOUNG

with our culture has recently been put on

C ONFRONTATION
the agenda by Lesslie Newbigin, in Beyond 1984 and
1
Foolishness to the Greeks. Broadly speaking his position is that
theology has sold out to Western culture, and the opposing
perceptions of the Gospel need to be reclaimed and affirmed
against prevailing assumptions.
It is not my purpose to engage in that discussion in this
paper, but rather to explore an area where early Christianity
did develop an understanding of the world which was self-
consciously in confrontation with ancient culture. It is often
supposed that Hebraic understanding lost out in the assimi-
lation of the Bible to Greek philosophy, but increasingly this
seems to be a false estimate of what was going on in the
formation of Christian doctrine. The development of the
distinctively Christian doctrine of creation is a clear sign that
Christian intellectuals were not 'captured' by Greek philoso-
phy. For creatio ex nihilo was affirmed in the face of Greek
assumptions: 'nothing comes from nothing' was a Greek
commonplace, and implied thatanythingcomingfrom nothing
is a sham! Typical is the view of Plutarch :2
For creation does not take place out of what does not
exist at all but rather out of what is in an improper or
unfulfilled state, as in the case of a house or a garment
or a statue. For the state that things were in before the
creation of the ordered may be characterised as 'lack of
order' (akosmia); and this 'lack of order' was not
something incorporeal or immobile or soulless, but
rather it possessed a corporeal nature which was formless
1
WCC publications, 1983 and 1986.
2
Quoted byjohn Dillon, The Middle Plalonists, Duckworth 1977, p. 207.
139
140 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
and inconstant, and a power of motion which was frantic
and irrational. (On the Creation of the Soul in the Timaeus
1014B.)

The adoption of the doctrine of creation out of nothing was

daring.
It was also the fundamental factor in the development of
Christian distinctiveness. By comparison, the first steps in
Christology, utilising the concept of the Logos with the prec-
edent of Philo, were far less revolutionary, and indeed
Christology became its radically distinctive self only when this
creation-doctrine was allowed to affect the perspective within
which the questions were debated. For if, as recent work has
shown, the 'real' issue behind the development of Christology
and Trinitarian doctrine was often soteriology,sunderlying the
most crucial episode in the emergence of the Christian doc-
trine of God, namely the reply to Arianism, was affirmation of
creation out of nothing. The question of the origin of this idea,
and indeed its meaning and import, is therefore of particular
interest.
Furthermore, the adoption of the idea was of great signifi-
cance for the future development of European culture. Robin
Lane Fox observes4 that Christianity 'de-sacralised' nature, so
allowing the destruction of sacred groves of trees by fanatical
monks; but its effects had even more profound consequences
for the development of European attitudes. It broke the hold
of 'necessity' or 'chance' which crippled other cultures, and
substituted the notion of a created order with its own ration-
ality, ultimately permitting the rise of modern science and the
exploitation of modern technology.5 The doctrine of creation
out of nothing has had vast consequences, some of which,
ironically enough, have contributed to Lesslie Newbigin's
perception of the need for confrontation between the Gospel
and our culture.
3
E.g. M. F. Wiles, 'In Defense of Arius'./TSNS XIII, 1962,339-47; 'The Nature of
the Early Debate about Christ's Human Soul'.yEWXVI no. 2,1965,139-51; and 'The
Unassumed is the Unhealed', Religious Studies 4, 1968, 47-56; all republished in
WorkingPapers in Doctrine, SCM 1976. R. Gregg and E. Groh, Earfy Arianism, SCM 1981;
et mult, al
* Pagans and Christians, Viking 1986 (Penguin 1988).
5
Stanley L. Jaki, Creator and Cosmos, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, and T. F.
Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, OUP 1981.
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 141

Where then did the doctrine originate? Contrary to expec-

tations, it does not seem to have been ajewish idea, though this
isoften assumed (e.g. byTorrance).6Thereasonsfor rejecting
this assumption7 may be summarised as follows:
(i) the sparsity of reference to the doctrine in Jewish texts,
and indeed in the earliest Christian material, and the problem
of interpreting those references that do exist (see further
below);
(ii) the contrary evidence of the Wisdom of Solomon and the
works of Philo, and in early Christianity, ofjustin, Athenagoras,
Hermogenes and Clement of Alexandria. All these authors
seem quite happy to adopt without question the Platonic view
of an active and passive element, namely God plus matter. The
fact that Philo can even so speak of things being created exouk
onto-n shows that the term could be understood as consistent
with the notion of pre-existent matter which he takes for
granted elsewhere.8 Middle Platonism was married withjewish
tradition without any sense of tension;
(iii) the lack of interest in creatio ex nihilo in Jewish tradition
prior to the Middle Ages: the Rabbis condemn speculation
about creation as much as about the chariot-throne of God!
Gamaliel II's discussion with a philosopher, recorded in
Midrash Genesis Rabbah, apparently upholds the unlimited
creative power of God, suggesting that the primitive stuffs the
philosopher thought God used to create are expressly de-
scribed in the Bible as themselves created by God: but we find
no firm doctrine of creatio ex nihifo developing, despite the
apparent natural logic which would lead to that doctrine
evidenced by Gamaliel's discussion.9

6
hoc. at. and The Trinitarian Faith, T. &T. Clark 1988.
* See Gerhard May, Schopfungausdem Nichts, De Gruyter 1978; following H.-F. Weiss,
Untersuchungen tur Kosmolagie des hellenistischen andpleastinischenjudentums, 1966.
B
Pace Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, Duckworth 1983.
* See May, Op. ciL p. 23. This 'apparent natural logic' leads Walter Eichrodt to
attribute an absolute beginning to the Priestly authors of Genesis 1: 'In the Beginning:
a Contribution to the Interpretation of the First Word of the Bible',firstpublished in
Israel's Prophetic Heritage: Essays in honor of James Muilenburg, ed. Bern hard W. Anderson
and Walter Harrelson; New York 1962; republished in Creation in the Old Testament, ed.
Bern hard W. Anderson, Issues in Religion and Theology 6, SPCK1984. However, the
article is addressing the fact that Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages, notably
Rashi, have understood the text as meaning, 'In the beginning, when God .. .' so as
to harmonise the first verse with the chaotic primitive state ofthe earth in v. 2.
142 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
(iv) the lack of emphasis on the idea in early Christian
literature of the first and early second centuries, contrasted
with its general acceptance by the beginning of the third
century.
There are some apparent references to the idea, despite
these sweeping generalisations, but their significance depends
upon their interpretation. They will be surveyed at a later
stage. Meanwhile let us examine the material that indicates
positive adoption of the idea.
Tertullian provides the clearest expression of the alternatives:
God did not create out of himself, nor out of eternal co-
existing matter. So if it was neither out of God's self nor out of
something, it must have been out of nothing. These alterna-
tives had been set up and answered differently, it seems, by
Hermogenes, a Second Century Christian universally described
as a Platonist, and against whom Tertullian was writing (Adversus
Hermogenem).
Theophilus had reached the same conclusion somewhat
earlier, also, it seems, in opposition to Hermogenes, though
this is not explicitly the case in the texts which have survived.
In the AdAutolycumll. 4, he criticises Plato for regarding matter
as uncreated and therefore equal to God, arguing for God's
unique 'sovereignty' (though monarchia could mean some-
thing more like 'solefirstprinciple'). A human artisan creates
out of pre-existent material, suggests Theophilus; so there is
nothing remarkable about God doing likewise. The power of
God is evident by his makingwhatever he wants exoukonto-n, out
of the non-existent.
So Theophilus and Tertullian were both confronting Hel-
lenistic assumptions. Tertullian was also confronting Gnostic
views, as indeed Theophilus probably was, though not obvi-
ously in the context where we find his comments. Second
Century apologetic, together with the struggle against gnosti-
cism, apparently provides the context in which the issue
explicitly arises and a clear 'theory' exoukonto-nemerges: even
Gamaliel was arguing with a philosopher*. It cannot simply be
assumed that creation 'out of nothing' is Judaeo-Christian
tradition, though the Jewish stress on the unique sovereignty
of God would make it a natural step to take once the issue was
raised.
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 143
The alternative hypotheses opposed, 'out of the divine self
or 'out of matter', indicate a self-conscious differentiation.
Speaking very generally one may say that gnostics took the
Platonic view of a 'recalcitrant' medium to the extreme of
suggesting that matter was evil. But they opened up the
possibility of matter not being eternal but coming into exist-
ence, by claiming it was produced by the fallen Demiurge. The
dualism was no longer an ontological dualism with permanence,
but a radical dualism resulting from a fall — their real interest
being in the problem of evil and salvation from it. Gnosticism
also raised the possibility of the universe emerging by emanation
from the divine and by a fall away from its perfection. This is
the context of Tertullian's clear statement of the alternatives
and his choice of the only one that made sense of the notion
of God inherited from Judaism and the Jewish scriptures.
Indeed, i t helped that such a notion had verbal if not theoretical
anticipation in the tradition.
So let us turn to these anticipations and the problem of their
interpretation.
1. The first reference to creation out of nothing, it is often
claimed, is found in 2 Mace. 7.28:

I implore you, my child, to look at the heavens and the

earth; consider all that is in them, and realise that God did
not create them from what already existed (ouk ex onto-n),
and that a human being comes into existence in the same
way.

Commenting on this and other such passages, Arnold

Ehrhardt10 noted that martyr literature,Jewish and Christian,
tends to regard the present world as a sham; he implies,
therefore, that the words here have a very different implication
from the later doctrine of creation out of nothing — indeed
that they follow the Greek assumption that 'nothing comes
from nothing'. This seems unlikely.11
More convincing is the exposition of Gerhard May:12 this is
a paraenetic reference to God's power, implying no more than
10
The Beginning: a study in the Greek philosophical approachtothe concept oj'Creadon from
Anaximander to Stjohn, Manchester University Press 1968.
" Jaki, Op. ciL p. 75 also finds this explanation unacceptable.
12
Op. ciL, p. 6 tf.
144 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
that the world came into existence when it was previously not
there; it cannot be characterised as a critical move away from
the doctrine of God fashioning the world out of eternal
matter. In Xenophon's Memorabilia May finds a reference to
parents bringing forth their children 'out of non-being',
which is clearly a non-philosophical everyday turn of phrase.
The reference in II Maccabees, he claims, is no more signifi-
cant than that.
Attention should be drawn to the context, and in particular
the earlier verse 23:

The Creator of the universe, who designed the beginning

of humanity and devised the origin of all, will in his mercy
give you back again breath and life . . .

What is envisaged is God's power to bring life out of death, and

the comment under discussion merely uses the analogy of
birth as a parallel mystery. The text is rooted i n Biblical images,
and entirely compatible with the creation 'out of clay' found
in Genesis 2. Here there is no 'theory' of creation out of
nothing — indeed the wording is not the usual later formula,
the ouk not qualifying the onto-n directly. The dogma 'out of
nothing' would seem to be a self-conscious rejection of the
craftsman analogy presupposed by a Platonism that took the
Timaeus literally, and that is not in view in Maccabees. Indeed,
it seems Philo could take such a Platonic viewfor granted while
using phrases just like those of Maccabees. God could con-
ceivably bring into existence'things'which do not exist before,
without such language excluding a pre-existent 'stuff.
2. In the New Testament are found two passages which have
suggested that ajewish doctrine was simply assumed by early
Christianity:

Rom. 4.17: In the presence of God, the God who makes

the dead live and calls into being things that are not,
Abraham had faith.
Heb. 11.3: By faith we understand that the universe was
formed by God's command, so that the visible came forth
from the invisible.
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 145

Then, in Hermas 1.1.6, we find an early confession of faith,

which it is claimed, shows the doctrine was part of the tradition
long before the debates to which we have drawn attention:

First of all you have to believe that there is one God, who
has founded and organised the universe, and has brought
the universe out of nothing into existence.
Similar confessions in Justin and Irenaeus have suggested it
belongs to the Rule of Faith.
Ehrhardt couples with Maccabees these early Christian
references, and offers the same interpretation, drawing at-
tention to the strong tendency of early Christianity to think of
the world as 'passing away'.15 This approach is no more con-
vincing here than before, but that does not mean that the
parallel in Maccabees, and our discussion of it, is irrelevant.
For given that Justin clearly thought in terms of the Platonist
picture, this confession does notrepresent a 'theory' displacing
the Platonist view, and must be understood as already suggested.
The thrust of early Christianity is in the direction of a 'new
creation' being born out of the old, and cosmogony was not at
the forefront. Neither Hermas nor indeed Aristides clearly
distinguished between creating and 'world-building'.
G. May further surveys early anti-gnostic literature like the
Pastoral Epistles. Here the goodness of creation is insisted on,
but there is no interest at all in how or from what God created.
The assumption generally seems to have been that creation
meant ordering without further speculation. The absence of
the idea of creation exouk onto-n, especially if it was, as is often
supposed, an established Jewish doctrine, is far more re-
markable than the sparse ill-defined cases where the language
is apparently used.
Certainly, the Jewish sense of God's sovereignty and al-
mighty power does figure in the tradition from which the
'orthodox' stream of Christianity began when confronted with
the questions of the Second Century, and in that context the
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo became the natural implicate (cf.
Gamaliel II above). Theophilus indicates that resistance to an

"Op. at, p. 167.

146 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
anthropomorphic picture became highly significant in the
process of differentiation from Platonism, a process which
provides the context in which we firstfind the explicit doctrine
ex ouk onto-n. But now we begin to sense that the problem of
origin relates to the problem of meaning.
To speak of'nothing' can be paradoxical, as pointed out in
a paper by George S. Hendry concerned with some modern
theology.14 Ancient discussions, though sometimes highly so-
phisticated, betray considerable confusion, particularly at the
more popular level, a confusion only partially eased in Greek
by the use of the distinct negatives ouand me-. Let us simply note
some of the problems.
(i) At the commonsense level, to speak of makingsomething
'out of nothing' tends to turn nothing into something.
(ii) In the admittedly later Neoplatonic tradition, matter
was taken to be 'non-being* in thesenseofbeingonly potentially
something. This had earlier roots in philosophical discussion,
and it means that there was profound ambivalence in the term.
The eternally existing 'stuff of the universe could be described
as 'non-existent'.
(iii) Like Augustine and others influenced by Neoplatonism,
Karl Barth has used Nothingness (Das Nichtige) as a way to
describe the recalcitrant 'Other' with which God struggles in
order to produce the Good he wills: so 'nothing' easily slips
into being a powerful force for evil. God's activity of bringing
good out of evil, order out of chaos, etc., may be correlated
with Neoplatonic tendencies to equate evil with non-being,
and though explained as the deprivation of good, this inevi-
tably makes the non-existent suspiciously real. Or does i t mean
that evil does not exist? Or is evil 'non-being' in the same
'potential' sense as matter is 'non-being'? And does this mean
matter is evil, a point of view the Christian tradition has firmly
resisted since that initial struggle with gnosticism? However we
reply to these questions, we are left with some profound
'teasers' about the meaning of the idea of creation out of
nothing.
Theophilus, Tertullian and Irenaeus do not seem to be
aware of this kind of problem: for them, creation out of

14
'Nothing', Theology TodayvoL xxxix (1982), pp. 275-289.
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 147
nothing is simply a logical consequence of the alternatives
pcsed by Hermogenes. It is a way of affirming the dependence
and contingency of creation, and the free gracious act of God
in creation arising from no necessity. The latter point about
necessity was fundamentally important as against the 'auto-
matic', or 'necessary', emanations posited by gnosticism, as
was the idea that the Logos was not an emanation but the
Reason of God himself becoming active in creation, revelation
and redemption. But the point for our purposes is this: the
function in Christian theology of the doctrine of creation out
of nothing lies in the consequent dependence and contin-
gency of creation, and the question of the 'content' expressed
in the verbal formulation is inappropriate. That does not,
however, remove the fact that later there is considerable
ambivalence in the use of the idea by Athanasius, not to
mention Augustine.
However, this discussion of meaning raises the question of
Basilides and his possible priority in developing the doctrine.
The conclusion that Second Century debates with Gnosticism
and philosophy about origins (archai, first principles) pro-
vided the context in which this doctrine was formulated, has
also been reached by G. May. May argues, however, that the
idea is first to be found in Basilides.
Basilides, according to Hippolytus (Irenaeus' evidence is
different), is atypical among Gnostics in seeing the 'high God'
as the ultimate creator rather than a lesser demiurge, and
rather than positing emanations, he speaks of the non-existent
God producing a non-existent world out of the non-existent.
What is produced seems to be a world-seed from which all
future developments automatically come about. May suggests
that the driving force of Basilides' logic is his notion of radical
transcendence, his via negativa, his critique of human analo-
gies — the ultimate God is not an anthropomorphic world-
builder. At first hearing this seems like Theophilus, and May
opens up the possibility of a Syrian tradition influencing both,
though with little conviction. The logic of Basilides' thinking
makes it more likely he arrived at the idea himself, he suggests.
Basilides therefore must be credited with the priority. Here, it
seems, is thefirstthinker to formulate the idea of creatioexnihib.
May's suggestion cannot be sustained, however. The sheer
148 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY

ambivalence of the concept of the non-existent seems to be at

the heart of what Basilides is saying. Let us look again at
Hippolytus' account of his teaching:

There was a time, says he, when there was nothing; not
even the nothing was there, but simply, clearly, and
without any sophistry there was nothing at all. When I say
'there was', he says, I do not indicate a Being, but in order
to signify what I want to express I say, says he, that there
was nothing at all (Ref. VII.20.2).15

Clearly the difficulty about speaking of nothing without

making it something is present to Basilides' mind.

For that, says he, is not simply something ineffable which is

named; we call it ineffable, but it is not even ineffable. For
what is not inexpressible is called 'not even inexpressible',
but is above every name that is named . . . (Ibid. 3)

Given that the connections in Basilides' thought are far from

clear in Hippolytus' report, it certainly seems that May is right.
Before Plotinus Basilides was trying to speak of the high God
as 'beyond Being' in a radical development of the via negativa.
The only way he could do this was to speak of 'non-being'.
Hence the 'non-existent God'. Platonic thought had not been
able to envisage the'infinite'because it meant'boundlessness',
indefiniteness, lack of Form; so prior to Plotinus, the One and
the Good were in some sense finite, and though hard to know,
comprehensible to the purified mind since defined.16 By
contrast, for Basilides, as for other gnostics, the ultimate is
infinite, ineffable and incomprehensible.
Before a literalising interpretation of the Timaeus became
fashionable, Platonism saw reality as an eternal interaction of
15
Quoted from the translation in Werner Foerster, Cnosis A Selection of Gnostic
Texts,
16
ET ed. R. McL Wilson, Oxford 1972, vol. 1 Patristic Evidence, p. 64.
See further my paper 'The God of the Greeks and the Nature of Religious
Language' in W. R. Schoedel and Robert Wilken,£ariy Christian Literature and thtGreek
Intellectual Tradition. Festschrift for R. M. Grant, Theologie Historique no. 53, Paris
1979.
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 149

Nous, Form and Matter, Matter in a sense being only 'no-

tional', and never 'existing' except 'formed' into something.
Infinity, therefore, Platonism tended to attribute to matter
which was apeiron in the sense of having no 'form' or definite-
ness, 'existing' only as 'potential', as 'non-being'. Basilides
seems to radicalise this perception too, making even 'formed'
things indefinable:

Names do not even suffice, he says, for the world, so

multiform is it, but fall short. And I do not have it in me
to find correct names for everything; rather it is proper to
comprehend ineffably, without using names, the char-
acteristics of the things which are to be named. (Ibid.)

As we have seen, Basilides was aware of the problem of using

'non-being' as a way of describing things that are something,
and here he insists on the fundamental inadequacies of
language. There can be no definitions.
Yet he returns to hisfirststatement about there really being
nothing:

there was nothing, no matter, no substance, nothing

insubstantial, nothing simple, nothing composite, noth-
ing non-composite, nothing imperceptible. . . . (Ibid.
21.1.)

Recognising the ambivalence of Platonic language, he rejects

the notion of a pre-existent matter, as May argues. But out of
the non-existent comes a non-existent world. The sense is
shifting again, surely. The only world that could come into
being was the world of appearance, which is transient and a
sham; for'nothing comes from nothing...'and everything we
know is only notional.
So, despite Basilides' attempt to affirm an initially real
nothingness, the meaning of 'non-existent' as applied to God
does not seem to be the same as applied to the world, nor as
applied to whatever it is out of which the world is made.
Basilides' paradoxical statement would seem to issue from an
awareness of the profound ambiguity of language about 'non-
being', and yet to be using that language to speak both of the
150 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
genuinely non-existent and of realities which he took to be
beyond articulation in a defined form, though they are inde-
finable for different reasons. The result is an understanding of
everything as incomprehensible and therefore in some sense
unreal.
Maybe the Church Fathers were not so far wrong after all in
thinking that Gnosticism had affinities with philosophy. Be
that as it may, this would appear to be utterly different from the
thrust of the argument with Platonism and Gnosti;ism as
outlined above (Theophilus and Tertullian). As May argues,
Basilides did not adopt the usual Gnostic resort to emanations,
maintaining the sovereign act of a God so transcendent you
could say nothing about him. Thereafter, however, as May
admits, he slipped into a process of natural necessity, which
allowed the use of highly mythological pictures like that of the
world-egg. This it was that was produced 'out of nothing'. And
if the exegesis of Basilides offered here is accepted, then it
provides further proof that his idea of creation out of nothing
hasaverydifferentfunctionfrom theideain Christian theology,
and is not so much a confrontation with Greek conceptions as
a radicalising of them, everything one says having to be seen as
merely notional.
The adoption of the view that the world was created out of
nothing was almost universal in Christian circles very quickly.
It was not merely a different view of the origin of things, nor
just a different estimate of the material world — though that
would become more and more significant both in the struggle
with otherworldly asceticism, and in the development of a
distinctive eschatology: it is instructive to contrast Origen's
views on the resurrection with those of Gregory of Nyssa, for
restoration of the body rather than mere immortality of the
soul informs Gregory's escahtological vision, despite his
Neoplatonic leanings. But creation out of nothing was notjust
a doctrine about the world. It was doctrine about God.
For it meant that God was no longer conceived as
ontologically intertwined with the world, as he was in Stoicism,
in Pseudo-Aristotle's DeMundo, and most other contemporary
cosmologies. Nor was he simply the active principle in relation
to a passive principle. God became independent of the world
as its sole arche-, its 'sovereign' as well as its 'beginning'. Fur-
 CREATIO EX NIHILO 151
thermore, God was not subject to necessity but free, and that
was abetter and more biblical groundingfor his transcendence
and impassibility than a mere adoption of Platonic axioms. He
was conceived as containing all things while not being himself
contained: thus even before Plotinus, indeed in Irenaeus, the
concept of his infinity began to be grasped.
But this was not all. Christological discussions from Arianism
on were the result of pressing this theology of God as the sole
arche-, the one agene-tosbeing, who createdgene-tafrom nothing.
Logos-theology had tempered the dichotomy, bridged the
gulf between Creator and created: for God's own Reason
containing his Ideas produced the material world which the
Logos then pervaded as its immanent order and rationality
while remaining the Reason of God himself. But the tendency
to regard this Logos as a mediating being, in a sense inde-
pendent of the sovereign, free, impassible, changeless God —
indeed, as Tertullian would suggest, the visible form of the
invisible or the passible form of the impassible, able to be seen
and to suffer, led to the old 'creation' question re-surfacing
now in relation to this 'mediator': is the Logos 'out of God' or
'out of nothing'? These are now the only alternatives, and the
decision between them had profound consequences for the
future of Logos-theology, for the classic formulation of the
doctrine of the Trinity as wholly Creator and arche-, and for the
classic Christological problem: how could one who shared
God's invisibility and impassibility be incarnate?

FRANCES M. YOUNG
Department of Theology
University of Birmingham
POB363
Birmingham B15 2TT
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P. Ramsey, Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics
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