Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)
2012 / 3-4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Martien E. Brinkman: Az igazvoltról és a gonoszról alkotott fogalmaink isteni transzcendenciája
Abraham van de Beek ‘How can the constitution of these gods remain, who themselves are not self-existent, but have been originated?’3 Christians confess a God who is different. Their God is not a part of this world. This God is the Creator of the world.4 God has no beginning and will have no ending. God is eternal. Only a Creator who is totally different from the world can be everlasting and thus truly be God. We ‘distinguish God from matter, and teach that matter is one thing and God another, and that they are separated by a wide interval because the Deity is uncreated and eternal, to be beheld by the understanding and reason alone, while matter is created and perishable.’5 Thus the first interest of Christians in confessing the Creator is to guarantee God’s divinity, in contrast to the perishing pagan gods.6 The Creeds of the early church do not refer explicitly to the eternity of the Creator. Yet it is indicated by the word ‘Father’. Because Christ lived on earth, is born and has died, Christ could be considered to be one of the dying and reviving gods of the antique world, a mere expression of coming and leaving, leaving and coming as the world goes. The Creed says that Christ is the Son of the Creator of heaven and earth: He belongs to a different category. His coming is anchored in the eternity of the Creator of heaven and earth. Therefore his birth is not a beginning but an acting and coming. The confession of the Father is a guarantee for the belief that Christ is really God.7 Christians did not invent this idea of an eternal Creator. They lived with the Old Testament and the prophets of Israel already made the same claim about the God in Whom they believed.8 The gods of the gentiles are creations of human beings, even the handiwork of them. They cannot help human creatures because they are not gods. Only the almighty Creator who has no beginning or ending and who does not get tired is a true Savior. 3 Athenagoras, Plea 19. 4 ‘The multitude, who cannot distinguish between matter and God, or see how great is the interval which lies between diem, pray to idols made of matter;’ but ‘we do distinguish and separate the uncreated and the created, that which is and that which is not...’ ‘They are at the greatest possible remove from one another—as far asunder as the artist and the materials of his art’ (Plea 15). 5 Athenagoras, Plea 4. 6 Christian theologians are more positive about Plato who not only stresses that true divinity is one and thus everlasting, but also once speaks about God as Creator. See Meijering 2004:187, 296f. Athenagoras refers also to other Greek philosophers and poets, who have at least some idea of what real divinity should be, ‘even against their will’ (Plea 7). ‘For poets and philosophers, as to other subjects so also to this, have applied themselves in the way of conjecture, moved, by reason of their affinity with the afflatus from God, each one by his own soul, to try whether he could find out and apprehend the truth; but they have not been found competent to apprehend it fully, because they thought fit to learn, not from God concerning God, but each one from himself’(Plea 7). See also Justin the Martyr, Dialogue with the Jew Trypho 5: ‘For God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible, and therefore is God, but all other things after God are created and corruptible.’ 7 Cf. Athenagoras, Plea 10: ‘The Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation.’ 8 Cf. Athenagoras. Plea 9. Sárospataki Füze itk2012.
