Out of Nothing

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. HEBREWS 11:3

Before Athanasius says a word about Bethlehem or Calvary, he spends three sections of On the Incarnation on the creation of the world. He knows his reader may be puzzled. You are wondering, perhaps, he says in effect, why a book about the Incarnation is talking about the origin of mankind. But it belongs to the aim of the treatise. You cannot understand the rescue until you understand what was made, who made it, and how it came to be in danger.

So he begins with three wrong answers to the question of where the world came from, and one right one.

Three wrong answers

The first wrong answer belonged to the Epicureans, the philosophers who taught that everything came about by chance, that the universe simply assembled itself without purpose or providence. Athanasius replies with an argument any child can follow. If the world had made itself by accident, everything would be the same, a shapeless mass. Instead we see sun, moon and earth, each distinct; we see bodies with hands and feet and heads, each fitted to its task. Such order, he says, tells us not that things came to be of themselves, but that a cause went before them.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. PSALM 19:1

The second wrong answer was Plato’s. The great philosopher, whom Athanasius notes is “in such repute among the Greeks”, taught that God shaped the world out of matter that had always existed, as a carpenter works with wood that is already to hand. It sounds respectable. Athanasius sees at once what it does to God. If God can only work with material He did not make, then He is weak; He depends on something outside Himself. As he puts it, “God will be on their theory a Mechanic only, and not a Creator out of nothing.” A craftsman, however skilled, is not a Creator.

The third wrong answer came from the sects we now call Gnostic, who imagined that the world was made by some lesser, alien maker, not by the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Athanasius answers them from the Gospels. The Lord Himself spoke of the One who “from the beginning” made them male and female, and John says without exception that all things were made by Him. There is no second god behind the world, no rival maker. The Father of Jesus is the Maker of all.

The true doctrine

Against all three, Athanasius sets out what he calls the godly teaching: God made the universe out of nothing, through His Word. Not by chance, because He is wise. Not from existing matter, because He is not weak. Out of nothing, because He is God.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. GENESIS 1:1

And then he says why. This is the heart of the chapter, and it is one of the most beautiful things in the book. “For God is good, or rather is essentially the source of goodness: nor could one that is good be niggardly of anything.” Grudging existence to none, he goes on, God made all things out of nothing by His own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Stop and consider that. The reason there is a world at all is that God is generous. He did not need to create. He was not lonely or incomplete. He made the world because goodness overflows, because it is the nature of the Good to give. Every star, every sparrow, every human being exists because God did not grudge existence. The world is a gift before it is anything else.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. REVELATION 4:11

Made for more than nature could give

But Athanasius has more to say, and here he lays the groundwork for everything that follows. Of all the creatures on earth, God took special pity on the human race. He saw that, because we came from nothing, we could not by our own nature continue in one stay; left to ourselves we would drift back towards the nothing from which we came. So He gave us a further gift. He did not simply create man as He created the animals. He made us in His own image, giving us a share in the power of His own Word, so that we might know Him and abide in blessedness.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. GENESIS 1:27

This is a subtle and important idea. For Athanasius, human beings are not naturally immortal in the sense that we could keep ourselves in being. We are creatures, made out of nothing, and by nature we are fragile. What held us in life and goodness was our relation to God — the grace of His image, the knowledge of His Word. As long as we kept our eyes on Him, we would remain as He made us. If we turned away, we would begin to unravel.

He goes on to say something that sounds strange to modern ears but is worth pondering. Evil, he says, in a phrase that echoes the philosophers but is turned to Christian use, “is not, but what is good is”. He does not mean that evil is unreal or that it does no harm. He means that evil is not a thing God made. It is a falling away, a turning from the One who IS towards nothing. That is why sin is so destructive: it is a turning from the source of our very being.

The goodness of creation

It follows that Athanasius will never despise the created world. The body is not a prison; matter is not evil; the world is not a mistake. All of it was made by the Word, and all of it was made good. This matters for the rest of his teaching. It is why the Word could take a real human body without being defiled. It is why the resurrection of the body is good news and not an embarrassment. It is why, much later in the book, he can argue with the pagans that if the Word is present in the whole universe, there is nothing absurd in His being present in one human body.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. GENESIS 1:31

There is a caution to set beside this. The Life of Antony, as we shall see, sometimes speaks of the body with a severity that sits uneasily with this doctrine: Antony eats with shame, will not wash, and treats his body as something to be subdued. Athanasius admired him for it. Readers should notice the tension, and hold fast to the better principle, which is Athanasius’s own: the world and the body are the good work of a good God, spoiled by sin but never hateful in themselves.

Why it matters now

We live among people who are tempted by versions of all three wrong answers. Some think the world is an accident. Some imagine God as a kind of engineer tinkering with material He did not make. Some, disillusioned with the world, treat it as worthless. Athanasius offers a better way. The world is the free gift of a good God, made out of nothing by His Word, and held in being moment by moment by His power. That should make us humble, because we did not make ourselves. It should make us thankful, because every breath is given. And it should make us hopeful, because a Maker who made us out of nothing can remake us.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Take a walk this week with no purpose but to notice created things, and at each one say, This was made by the Word, out of nothing, because God is good.

2. Consider where you treat your life as your own achievement. Thank God specifically for three things you did not make or earn.

3. If you have ever thought of your body or the physical world as unspiritual, read Genesis 1 and ask God to correct your view.

4. Athanasius says we were made to keep our eyes on God. Choose one daily habit that will turn your attention to Him at the start of each day.

5. Read the first five sections of On the Incarnation and mark every place Athanasius speaks of God’s goodness.

A PRAYER

Father, You made all things out of nothing by Your Word, because You are good and do not grudge existence.

Thank You for my life, which I did not make and cannot keep; for the world, which is Your gift; for the image of Yourself that You set in us.

Forgive me for turning my eyes from You towards things that cannot hold me up.

Keep me looking to You, the source of all goodness, and teach me to receive each day as a gift. Amen.