Christ the Creator According to John Philoponus1

CHRIST THE CREATOR ACCORDING TO JOHN PHILOPONUS1

Leslie S.B. MacCoull († 23 August, 2015)

The sixth-century Alexandrian Miaphysite polymath, philosopher, theolo- gian, and exegete John Philoponus is known for having in A.D. 529 defended the Christian doctrine of the creation of the universe ex nihilo by God2 against the classical philosophers’ picture of an eternal world.3 Subsequently he was faced by another opponent, this time another Christian, but a Chris- tian of a different (though also non-Chalcedonian) theological position, namely the Dyophysite Cosmas Indicopleustes,4 who in his work Christian Topography called Philoponus only a ‘pretend Christian’5 – i.e. not Christian enough, in that Philoponus accepted the classical picture of the universe (while denying its eternity) instead of reconfiguring it in an explicitly Chris- tian, Bible-derived way. In his own work Cosmas, propounding a scriptural universe shaped like Moses’ Tabernacle, attacked both Alexandrian biblical exegesis and Miaphysite notions of Christ’s nature and activity. Philoponus

1 Thanks to the Interlibrary Loan Service, Hayden Library, Arizona State University, for help with access to sources. 2 John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Proclum, ed. H. Rabe (Leipzig, 1899); ed. and trans. C. Scholten, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 2009-2011); Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World, trans. M. Share and J. Wilberding, 4 vols. (London – Ithaca, 2004-2010); cf. also C. Wildberg, Philoponus Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (London, 1987). 3 Proclus, De Aeternitate Mundi/On the Eternity of the World, ed. and trans. H.S. Lang and A.D. Macro (Berkeley, 2001). Philoponus based his defense on philosophical postu- lates: B. Gleede, “Johannes Philoponos und die christliche Apologetik,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 54 (2011), pp. 73-97, at p. 92. 4 See M. Kominko, The World of Kosmas (Cambridge, 2013). 5 Kominko, World of Kosmas, pp. 4, 18; Cosmas, Topographie Chrétienne, pinax 3, 1.3, ed. and trans. W. Wolska-Conus, 3 vols., SC 141, 159, 197 (Paris, 1968-1973), 1, p. 277: τοῖς χριστιανίζειν μὲν ἐθέλοντας, κατὰ τοὺς ἔξωθεν δὲ σφαιροειδῆ τὸν οὐρανὸν νομίζοντας εἶναι καὶ δοξάζοντας, ‘those wanting to be Christians but thinking and opining that the universe is spherical, as the outsiders do’ (and cf. hyp. 4). On ‘outside’ = ‘pagan’ see A. Kaldellis, ‘Byzantine Philosophy Inside and Out’, in The Many Faces of Byzantine Phi- losophy, eds. B. Bydén and K. Ierodiakonou (Athens, 2012), pp. 129-151, esp. p. 140.

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was quick to counter him6 in his own Genesis commentary, De Opificio Mundi 7 or Explanations of Moses’ Cosmogony (Εἰς τὴν Μωυσέως κοσμογο- νίαν ἐξηγητικά). In that work he set out to show that only the Miaphysite understanding of Christ is adequate to explain the creating role of the second person of the Trinity – a role explicit in John 1:3 and in the Niceno- Constantinopolitan Creed. Passages from this work by Philoponus invite scrutiny for what they can tell us about how the culture of late antique Egypt gave rise to new ideas in a vividly local world of thought.8 To set the scene: according to Cyril of Scythopolis in his tendentious Life of the abbot Cyriacus (CPG 7538), his monastic hero, in a literary setting placed ca. 543-553, brought the accusation that ‘they [sc. Leontius of Byz- antium and the Origenists]9 say that the holy Trinity (or in a variant “the all-holy and consubstantial” [παναγία καὶ ὁμοούσιος] Trinity) did not create the world (οὐκ ἐδημιούργησε τὸν κόσμον)’,10 a ‘hellish’ doctrine supposedly going back even to Plato. The creating entity was rather designated by these erroneous thinkers a pre-existing νοῦς δημιουργικός (as in the words of the Constantinople Council of 553 describing the mistaken position).11 This of course sounds dangerously out of alignment with sixth-century Christology

6 The debate is discussed in E.B. Elweskiöld, ‘John Philoponus Against Cosmas Indico- pleustes: A Christian Controversy on the Structure of the World in Sixth-Century Alexan- dria’ (Ph.D. diss., Lund University, 2005); also in C.W. Pearson, ‘Scripture as Commentary: Natural Philosophical Debate in John Philoponus’s Alexandria’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Uni- versity, 1999). 7 Ed. W. Reichardt (Leipzig, 1897); Über die Erschaffung der Welt, ed. and trans. C. Scholten, 3 vols. (Freiburg, 1997); this edition which will be cited here. The work is dated to right around the time of the 553 Constantinople Council: besides the view of Scholten in the prolegomena to his edition, see also J. Schamp, ‘Photius et Jean Philopon: sur la date du “De opificio mundi”’, Byzantion, 70 (2000), pp. 135-154. An annotated English translation of the DOM has been made by the present writer and is forthcoming. 8 See also M.W. Champion, Explaining the Cosmos: Creation and Cultural Interaction in Late-Antique Gaza (Oxford, 2014), esp. pp. 49, 131, 159, 187 (on ‘creation creating cultures’), and pp. 190-192 on the Philoponus-Cosmas/Theodore controversy. 9 On this see B. Daley, ‘What did “Origenism” Mean in the Sixth Century?’, in Orige- niana Sexta: Origen and the Bible, eds. G. Dorival and A. Le Boulluec (Leuven, 1995), pp. 627-638. 10 D. Hombergen, The Second Origenist Controversy (Rome, 2001), pp. 259, 375 ll. 5-6; cf. pp. 275-278. Also in The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, trans. R. Price, 2 vols. (Liverpool, 2009), 2: pp. 272, 285. 11 Hombergen, Second Origenist Controversy, p. 276 with n. 116.

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in whichever of its forms,12 a Christology according to which all three persons of the co-creating Trinity brought the universe into being (as illustrated by the cruciform-nimbed creator depicted in the contemporary Cotton Genesis).13 We see this debate reflected in two notable texts of the time, those by Cosmas and by Philoponus.

I. Philoponus

In Philoponus’ De Opificio Mundi,14 after a prooemium addressed to his patron, Sergius of Tella (Miaphysite patriarch of Antioch), whom he honors for having requested the present work,15 the Alexandrian scholar outlines the intention (σκοπός) of his treatise, declaring that, while Genesis commentaries such as Basil’s have been useful, paradoxes remain. On the one hand, things believed (sc. by Christians) seem not to agree with the phenomena (οὔπω τοῖς φαινομένοις ὁμολογεῖν πιστευόμενα, 1.1; cf. 1.2), while on the other hand, Moses, understood as the author of the biblical book of Genesis, was trying not to write a systematic and technical ‘physics’ (natural science) textbook, but rather to lead human beings to knowledge of God (εἰς θεογνωσίαν ἀνθρώπους ἀγαγεῖν, 1.1, cf. 1.2). So even uneducated souls16 can come to grasp that, simultaneously (ἅμα … ἀχρόνως) with God’s pronouncing an utterance, the thing he uttered came into existence. As proof-texts Philoponus adduces first Judith 9:5-6 and Psalms 32:9, and then Plato, Timaeus 41B, in which the

12 See Champion, Explaining the Cosmos, pp. 161-168 on how the Christological debates made people take a new look at the topic of creation. 13 K. Weitzmann and H. Kessler, The Cotton Genesis (Princeton, 1986), Plate 1. 14 For a characterization of the work as advocating a ‘creative coexistence between Chris- tianity and philosophy’, see G. Benevich, ‘John Philoponus and Maximus the Confessor at the Crossroads of Philosophical and Theological Thought in Late Antiquity’, Scrinium, 7-8 (2011-2012), pp. 102-130, esp. pp. 103-112; quotation at p. 108. 15 See L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘John Philoponus: Egyptian Exegete, Ecclesiastical Politician’, in Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown, ed. A.C. Skinner et al. (Provo, 2011), pp. 211-221. 16 ‘Rather dim souls, more closely bound to bodies’ (ταῖς παχυτέραις τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ προσηλωμέναις τοῖς σώμασιν,1.2) – an allusion to the Origenist trope of souls that ‘fall’ out of incorporeality into bodies, a notion with which Philoponus will repeatedly engage in the DOM. See Hombergen, Second Origenist Controversy, pp. 25, 158-159, 174, 214- 215; B.P. Blosser, Become Like the Angels: Origen’s Doctrine of the Soul (Washington, D.C., 2012), pp. 158-179, 194-219; and Champion, Explaining the Cosmos, pp. 171-173.

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Demiurge asserts his own power to bring everything into being – with Philo- ponus proclaiming that it was Plato who imitated (ἐμιμήσατο) the more high- minded (μεγαλοπρεπέστερα), more exalted (ὑψηλότερα), and of course more deity-appropriate (θεοπρεπέστερα) propositions of Moses (1.2). This brings Philoponus to his own work, its debt to his predecessors and its originality. Beginning with ‘In (the) beginning’ (ἐν ἀρχῇ) of Genesis 1:1, Philoponus first, following Basil’s Homily 1 on the Hexaemeron, explains the various senses of ἀρχή, and then introduces his own innovative take on the matter, one that is deeply involved with the controversies of his own time: ‘Some say that “In (the) beginning” equals “In the Wisdom (ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ)”’ (1.3).17 This goes back both to the Timaeus commentary and to the Genesis commentary tradition, particularly to Philoponus’ fourth-century Alexandrian predecessor Didymus the Blind.18 And of course the equation of Christ, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, with God’s Wisdom (Ϲοφία)19 goes back to Paul: Philoponus immediately continues, “For God made all things in wisdom, that is, (in) the Son” (ἐν σοφίᾳ … τουτέστι τῷ υἱῷ) (1.3),20 fol- lowed by a quotation of 1 Corinthians 1:24, ‘For Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom’. (He then adds quotations of John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16.)

17 Τινὲς δὲ ‘ἐν ἀρχῇ’ ‘ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ’ φασί. All English translations in this paper are by the present writer unless otherwise noted. 18 Scholten, Erschaffung, 1, p. 91 n. 36. 19 A. Cutler (‘Sophia’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 [New York, 1991], cc. 1926- 1927) points out that in a catacomb at Alexandria a winged figure is depicted captioned Sophia I(esou)s Ch(ristos); while Philoponus must have been aware that Justinian had just dedicated his Great Church in Constantinople to ‘Hagia Sophia’, Holy Wisdom. 20 Compare the Greek and Coptic anaphora ‘of St. Mark’ (/‘Cyril’) (probably late 5th c.): G. Cuming, The Liturgy of St Mark (Rome, 1990), pp. 21, 71; F.E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1965), pp. 126, 165: ‘You made everything through (διά / ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲓⲧⲉⲛ) your Wisdom, the true Light, your only-begotten Son, our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ’. The translation of the Coptic in Brightman’s volume was made from the Bohairic text in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Huntington 360, fol. 217v: ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲓⲧⲉⲛ ⲧⲉⲕⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ (I thank Sebastian Brock for autoptically check- ing this). Note the echo of Psalm 103:24, πάντα ἐν σοφίᾳ ἐποίησας (in Sahidic Coptic [E.A. W. Budge, The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter (London, 1898)] ⲁⲕⲧⲁⲙⲟⲟⲩ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ, with ⲧⲁⲙⲓⲟ rendering ποιεῖν as it does in Genesis 1:1 (by parallelism with the early Bohairic text in Bodmer III, ed. R. Kasser, CSCO, 177 [Louvain, 1958]; a Sahidic Genesis 1:1 is not yet in K. Schüssler, Biblia Coptica [Wiesbaden, 1995–]). For more on Philoponus’s probable knowledge of Coptic biblical versions see L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘Ecclesiastes in Philoponus: The Coptic Dimension’, forthcoming in Le Muséon.

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However, Philoponus disagrees that this is what the Genesis λόγιον implies: ‘First, the cosmos is not shown by this as taking a beginning (ἀρχήν) of (its) being (τοῦ εἶναι); Moses wishes to teach the beginning (τὴν ἀρχήν) of its coming-into-existence (τῆς τούτου γενέσεως). So the heaven and the earth’s having been made (τὸ … πεποιῆσθαι) in the Son is separated from the having-come-into-existence (τοῦ … γεγονέναι) of the rest of the things created (δημιουργησμάτων) in him’ (1.3).21 This is a subtle distinction, shown by how he continues his analysis: ‘For the (phrase) ἐν ἀρχῇ is used only of the heaven and the earth, not of all the things that are in the cosmos. And so it would be more logical (ἀκολουθότερον) to say “through him [sc. the Son]” (δι᾿ αὐτοῦ): for (the additional biblical passage) “In whom we live and move and have our being” [Acts 17:28] manifests the coherence (συνοχή) and the continuance (διαμονή) of all things, and does not signify our first bringing-forth (παραγωγή). But it is not good sense (εὔλογον) to introduce the final cause: for the expression “on account of [or for the sake of ] him/it” (δι᾿ ὅ) would have been more fitting to it (sc. the final cause) than the expression “in him/it” (ἐν ᾧ). And not only heaven and earth but also all other extant things are brought forth on account of [or for the sake of] the Good (διὰ τὸ ἀγαθόν)” (1.3).22 This picks up on what he has asserted just previ- ously in his exploration of the senses of ἀρχή, namely that one sense of that word is that of ‘final cause’ (τὸ τελικόν), ‘which is the Good, on account of [or for the sake of] which each of the things that come into existence comes into existence’ (ὅπερ ἐστὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, δι᾿ ὃ γίνεται τῶν γινομένων ἕκαστον). Philoponus is opposing a Neoplatonic equating of God with ‘the Good’ – with the subtext that if exegetes with Origenist leanings like Didymus say that God (the Father or first person of the Trinity) created everything in

21 Πρῶτον μὲν οὐ δείκνυται διὰ τούτου ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἶναι λαβὼν ὁ κόσμος, τὴν ἀρχὴν δὲ τῆς τούτου γενέσεως διδάξαι θέλει Μωϋσῆς, ἔπειτα τὸ ἐν τῷ υἱῷ πεποιῆσθαι τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν ἀφαιρεῖται τοῦ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν δημιουργημάτων ἐν αὐτῷ γεγονέναι. 22 Περὶ γὰρ μόνου τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς εἴρηται τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ, οὐ μὴν περὶ πάντων τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ. Καὶ ὅτι ἀκολουθότερον ἦν τὸ δι᾿ αὐτοῦ· τὸ γὰρ “ἐν αὐτῷ ζῶμεν καὶ κινού- μεθα καὶ ἐσμέν” τὴν συνοχὴν πάντων δηλοῖ καὶ διαμονήν, οὐ τὴν πρώτην ἡμῶν σημαίνει παραγωγήν. Ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ τὸ τελικὸν αἴτιον παραλαβεῖν εὔλογον· τούτῳ γὰρ τὸ δι᾿ ὃ πρέποι ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἐν ᾧ. Καὶ οὐ μόνος οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντα τὰ ὄντα διὰ τὸ ἀγαθὸν παρῆκται. – Philoponus further discusses ‘the Good’ (τὸ ἀγαθόν) in DOM Book 7.6-7, in a context of explaining why the Septuagint Genesis has God calling his creation ‘beautiful’ (καλόν) while Aquila’s version uses ‘good’ (ἀγαθόν).

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(his) Sophia or Son, then that Son is not a co-creating agent but a means.23 That is too close to the Antiochene Dyophysite position for Philoponus’ comfort. He will admit from his Johannine and Pauline proof-texts that all things were made (ἐγένετο) by/through (διά + gen.) the Logos, and were created in (ἐν + dat.) the Son.24 But in his distinctive view Moses was proleptically demonstrating that Christ, God the Son, had to have been acting as a coequal agent for bringing into being the first things to exist. By the time Philoponus gets to Book 6 of the DOM – an extended commentary on Genesis 1:26, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ – he is ready to make further assertions that Moses, who lived before the Incar- nation, nonetheless “pre-announced (προανεκήρυξε) the dogma of the Holy Trinity” (6.4 heading). After having explored (in 6.3) the connotation of the plural expressions in Genesis 1:26 (ποιήσωμεν … ἡμετέραν),25 he first asserts that the Son and the Holy Spirit co-created (συνδημιουργεῖν) the universe together with the Father. He then quotes Psalm 32:6, ‘By the word (logos) of the Lord were the heavens established, and all their power by the pneuma of his mouth’.26 Next he adds a quotation from Psalm 106:20, ‘He sent his word (logos)…’, explaining that God’s ‘word’ is nothing other than ‘God’s being (οὐσία), having completely come forth (προεληλυθυῖα) from him, God

23 However, compare the Origen passage commenting on Proverbs that singles out τὸν ἐνυπόστατον Υἱὸν καὶ Λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ, τὸν ἐξ οὐκ ὄντα εἰς τὸ εἶναι παραγαγόντα τὰ σύμπαντα τῇ σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ (PG 17.185B); ‘the insubsistent Son and Word of God, who brought all things out of non-being into being by his [sc. own] wisdom’: see B. Gleede, The Development of the Term ἐνυπόστατος from Origen to John of Damascus (Leiden, 2012), pp. 15-17, at p. 15 n. 24 (and cf. also p. 20, and p. 25 on Colossians 1:16). This prefigures phrases in the Eucharistic liturgy attributed to Timothy III, Miaphysite patriarch of Alex- andria (517-535), preserved in Syriac, on the bringing of creation out of nonbeing into being through God the Word / Wisdom / Son: ‘Anaphora Syriaca Timothei Alexandrini’, ed. and trans. A. Rücker, in Anaphorae Syriacae, vol. 1.1 (Rome, 1939), pp. 3-47, at pp. 12- 15; L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘Philoponus and the Coptic Eucharist’, Journal of Late Antiquity, 3 (2010), pp. 158-175, at p. 165. 24 Colossians 1:17 continues that ‘all things were created through (διά + gen.) him and into (εἰς + acc.) him’. 25 The versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus use ἡμῶν. 26 Allegorical Trinitarian exegesis of this psalm verse is traditional, going back at least to Basil’s Homily on Ps. 32, PG 29.333A-C, at B: ῾Ως οὐν ὁ δημιουργὸς Λόγος ἐστερέωσε [playing on the ἐστερεώθησαν of Psalm 32:6] τὸν οὐρανόν, οὕτω τὸ Πνεῦμα …; C: ἵνα νοηθῇ ὁ Σωτήρ, καὶ τὸ ἅγιον αὐτοῦ Πνεῦμα … Basil’s δημιουργὸς Λόγος stands over against the δημιουργικὸς λόγος in Simplicius In De Caelo I.2, ed. J.L. Heiberg, CAG, 7 (Berlin, 1894), p. 44.12.

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the Father, the one who begot (γεννήσαντος) him’ (6.4).27 Specifically Moses’ witness to the three Persons comes in the Genesis account (18:1-16) of the Hospitality (‘Philoxenia’) of Abraham, where the three “men” are tradition- ally interpreted as the Trinity.28 The Old Testament, Philoponus maintains, teaches in many places the three prosōpa of the deity. And as a Miaphysite he is concerned that the second prosōpon should not be understood in the Antiochene fashion that got the ‘Three Chapters’ writers – especially Theo- dore of Mopsuestia whom Philoponus decries throughout his work – into trouble at the Constantinople Council of 553. But does the ‘image’ (εἰκών) of Genesis 1:26 apply to the Son, and if so, how? (6.5 heading). The Septuagint text has not ‘εἰκόνα’ but ‘κατ᾿ εἰκόνα’, so ‘some people’ (τινές, i..e. Dyophysites) have relied on an armamentarium of biblical quotations (especially Colossians 1:15; John 14:9, 16:5; Mat- thew 11:27) to take the position that humans are the image of an image: an image of the one who is ‘an image of the invisible God’, viz. Christ (6.5). On the surface this seems unexceptionable, but Philoponus is again concerned that such a degree of Neoplatonic remove is too close to the misprisions of Cosmas to be correct. Such a Christ would have been a passive model, not an active creator. For Philoponus Christ too was a speaker in the triple unison that declared ‘Let us make’.

II. theodore and Cosmas

Subsequently, after taking apart Theodore’s comparison of man-the-image, honored by creatures, with images of the emperor, honored by humans (6.9),29

27 … τί ἂν ἕτερον ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγος ὑπάρχοι, πλὴν οὐσία Θεοῦ πάντως ἐξ αὐτοῦ προεληλυθυῖα τοῦ γεννήσαντος αὐτὸν Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρός; This is close to Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus de Trinitate 12 (PG 75.181D-183A) where he calls the Son … εἰκὼν … καὶ ἀπαύγασμα καὶ χαράκτηρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας. And in his next mini- florilegium about Christ in DOM 6.4 Philoponus explicitly uses the Cyrillian technical phrase τὸν σαρκωθέντα τοῦ θεοῦ λόγον, foundational in Miaphysite thought. 28 E.g. by Procopius of Gaza in the sixth century (PG 87.364BC). However, in Coptic exegesis the three ‘men’ are also interpreted as Christ accompanied by two angels – also Christocentric. See G. Peers, Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 36-37 with n. 44, 38-41 (including the notion of Christ as Creator [p. 38]). 29 Figuring large in the age of Justinian: cf. F.A. Bauer, Stadt, Platz und Denkmal in der Spätantike (Mainz, 1996), pp. 158-164, 244-245, 250-251, 317-318, 320-321; also T.M. Kristensen, ‘The Display of Statues in the Late Antique Cities of the Eastern Med- iterranean’, in Debating Urbanism: Within and Beyond the Walls, 300-700, eds. D. Sami

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Philoponus proceeds to attack Theodore’s Christology30 directly. He asserts that Theodore, flying in the face of such clear scriptural proof-texts as John 1:14 (‘The Word became flesh and dwelt [ἐσκήνωσεν, lit. ‘pitched his tent’] among [ἐν] us’),31 says that Christ is “not God humanified” (οὐ θεὸν ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, 6.10). Rather, according to Theodore, God, wishing to save the ‘image’ quality in humanity, ‘having taken one human being from among us and, having made him immortal and unchangeable (ἄτρεπτον), took him up to heaven, having conjoined (συνάψας) him to himself’ (6.10).32 Also according to Theodore, the reason for doing this was not only so he (Christ) would be worshipped by all creation but also so he would be an invincible foe to the ‘enemy powers’ (ἐναντίοις). Such an opinion, says Philo- ponus, comes from the devil, and it even further blasphemes the divine being (οὐσία), as though God were weak in confronting demonic power. (After all, the gospels narrate that while still on earth Christ was feared by demons [Matthew 8:29] and gave his disciples power over them [Luke 10:19], as quoted by Philoponus.) The Alexandrian scholar ridicules this Theodorean picture of Christ as impossible to find in the books of Moses or indeed in the gospels either. How indeed could Theodore’s Christ have been involved in the creation of the universe and of humanity? Philoponus sees the ‘assumed-man’ Christ lurking in Cosmas’ picture of an oblong earth topped by a vault and a universe

and G. Speed (Leicester, 2010), pp. 265-287. For Theodore see F. Petit, ‘L’homme créé “l’image de Dieu”: quelques fragments grecs inédits de Théodore de Mopsueste’, Le Muséon, 100 (1987), pp. 269-277, at pp. 274-276; and F.G. McLeod, The Roles of Christ’s Humanity in Salvation: Insights from Theodore of Mopsuestia (Washington, D.C., 2005), pp. 127-128, 135. 30 After the earlier work of R.A. Norris, Manhood and Christ: A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford, 1963), see now F.G. McLeod, The Image of God in the Antiochene Tradition (Washington, D.C., 1999); idem, The Roles of Christ’s Humanity in Salvation; and idem, Theodore of Mopsuestia (London, 2009). 31 He also gives Galatians 4:4 and Philippians 2:6-7. 32 … ἄνθρωπον ἐξ ἡμῶν ἕνα λαβὼν ἀθάνατόν τε καὶ ἄτρεπτον ποιήσας εἰς οὐρανὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἑαυτῷ συνάψας. Note the technical terms from Dyophysite discourse: ἀτρέπτως – used with its cognates explicitly Christologically by Cosmas in Top.Chr. 2.91, 99; 5.207; 9.22 – was one of the four touchstone adverbs of the Definition of Chalcedon, while συνάπτω is a characteristic verb of Antiochene Christology (e.g. Theodore in PG 66.1017B).Cf. also McLeod, Image, pp.120-140, and idem, The Roles, pp. 124- 143.

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divided by the firmament after the pattern of the Tabernacle veil.33 Accord- ing to Cosmas (Chr.Top. 2.91) this barrier was breached by Christ only at the Ascension when he acquired imperishability (ἀφθαρσία) and unchange- ability (ἀτρεπτότης) – very Theodorean. Of course to Philoponus this is nonsense: the firmament (στερέωμα) of Genesis 1:6-8, which Philoponus has already treated in DOM Book 3, is a three-dimensional firm structure that is in line with the Ptolemaic universe,34 not at all a barrier demarcating the space where the Antiochene-style risen Christ might now dwell in antic- ipation of the Second Coming.35 In addition, in DOM 6.17 Philoponus rejects Theodore’s analogy of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the rational (λογική) and vivifying (ζωτική) powers of the human soul. In his eyes such a wrong analogy is likewise much too ‘low’ a position. He is concerned throughout to show that Theodore’s and Cosmas’s misunderstandings both of the nature of Christ and of the structure of the universe36 (a) are intercon- nected and (b) mislead others.37

III. simplicius

Far from being a ‘pretend Christian’ or someone who ‘just wanted to “act like a Christian” (χριστιανίζειν)’, Philoponus for his part also had a further subtext underlying his DOM: to rebut the polemical criticisms directed against him by his ‘pagan’ polytheist contemporary, the Aristotelian commentator Sim- plicius.38 By replying to Simplicius’ accusations that he, Philoponus the

33 See M. Kominko, ‘The Science of the Flat Earth: The Cosmography of Kosmas’, in The Christian Topography of Kosmas Indikopleustes, Firenze, BML Plut.9.28: The Map of the Universe Redrawn in the Sixth Century, ed. J.C. Anderson (Rome, 2013), pp. 67-81. 34 See C. Scholten, Antike Naturphilosophie und christliche Kosmologie in der Schrift “De Opificio Mundi” des Johannes Philoponos (Berlin-New York, 1996), pp. 297-316. 35 Ibid., pp. 271-272, 284. 36 Cf. Kominko, World of Kosmas, p. 176: ‘… an emphasis on the human nature of Christ runs throughout the Christian Topography, as a necessary prerequisite of Kosmas’ system, where the two natures [emphasis added] of Christ, united in him, correspond to the two spaces of the universe, which he also unites’. 37 Cf. Champion, Explaining the Cosmos, p. 104 on how creation-ex-nihilo and the Trinity are the ‘generative grammar’ of context-dependent thought: comparable to what Philoponus was doing with the scripture-commentary genre. 38 P. Hoffmann, ‘Simplicius’ Polemics’, in Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, ed. R. Sorabji (London, 1987), pp. 57-83; also H. Baltussen, ‘Simplicius of Cilicia’, in

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Christian, denigrated the majesty of the cosmos and its demiurge, our Mia- physite exegete is showing that it was possible to go too far in the other direction the way Theodore and his follower Cosmas had done, resulting in nonsensical positions that really do insult the intelligence. In their trying to be ‘super-Christian’ it is the Antiochene Dyophysite Cosmas and his master who are blinding themselves to the true nature – pun intended – of the triune demiurge of the cosmos. Philoponus had commented on Aristotle’s Physics in 517 and perhaps, according to one recent view, revised his commentary shortly after 529 to reflect his developed thinking in the Contra Proclum and Contra Aristotelem.39 When Simplicius himself expounded both the Physics and the De Caelo40 he excoriated Philoponus “the Grammarian” in vituperative terms as a foul, blas- phemous fool careeristically pursuing his own vainglory and stupidly flying in the face of the ‘unchanging goodness’ (ἀμετάβλητον ἀγαθότητα)41 of the demiurge whom he himself (Simplicius) hymns for his ὑπεροχή42 in In De Caelo p. 731.25-29.43 Though Christian ‘atheists’, in Simplicius’ view, do manage to have enough sense to call heaven God’s οἰκητήριον and throne

Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, ed. L.P. Gerson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2010), 2, pp. 711-732, esp. pp. 730-731; and idem, Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Commentator (London, 2008), pp. 176-188. 39 K. Verrycken, ‘The Development of Philoponus’ Thought and its Chronology’, in Aristotle Transformed, ed. R. Sorabji (London, 1990), pp. 233-274; reiterated in idem, ‘John Philoponus’, in Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, ed. Gerson, 2, pp. 733-755, esp. pp. 736-737, 745-746. Not all scholars (including Scholten) accept his picture of ‘Philoponus 1’ (based on traditional philosophy) and ‘Philoponus 2’ (based on biblical revelation): L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘A New Look at the Career of John Philoponus’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 3 (1995), pp. 47-60, repr. in eadem, Documenting Chris- tianity in Egypt, Sixth to Fourteenth Centuries (Farnham, 2011), no. IX. A triple scheme, of Philoponus passing from a lesser to a medium stage to still more emphasis on Christian sources, is proposed by Benevich, ‘Philoponus and Maximus’, pp. 103-112. 40 The latter commentary is dated to the 530s: R.J. Hankinson, ‘Introduction,’ in Sim- plicius On Aristotle On the Heavens 1.1-4, trans. idem (London, 2002), pp. 1-14, at pp. 2, 5 (with pp. 2-3 on his anti-Philoponus polemics). 41 Simplicius In De Caelo, ed. Heiberg, p. 184.29-30. 42 An honorific epithet for provincial governors in sixth-century Egypt, attested in papyri: F. Preisigke, Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden, 3 vols. (repr., Milan, 1965), 3, p. 200 col. b. Simplicius applies this title to the demiurge in his prayer (… κατὰ τὴν ὑπεροχήν σε προσκυνῶμεν …: In De Caelo p. 731). 43 See Hoffmann, ‘Simplicius’ Polemics’, p. 72; Baltussen, Methodology, pp. 182-183.

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(In De Caelo p. 370.31-32),44 the ignorant Philoponus, says Simplicius, actually thinks that God is ὁμοφυής with himself, with a human being (In De Caelo p. 90.20)!45 To Simplicius this is madness; to Philoponus the Miaphys- ite Christian, according to whose belief Christ both became a human being and created the universe, it is obvious.

IV. conclusion

Justinian may or may not have been trying to achieve a compromise with the Miaphysites of his granary Egypt by having the decrees of the 553 Council come out the way they did. But by the time Philoponus, already attacked by Simplicius, was in the DOM attacking Dyophysitism in the persons of Cosmas and his master Theodore, he was well aware that the majesty of the universe was worthy of better acknowledgment that that proffered by either of those parties. That acknowledgement was afforded by the book of Genesis rightly interpreted. Simplicius (In De Caelo p. 731) wanted nothing low (εὐτελές) or human (ἀνθρώπινον) to be thought of the demiurge. Cosmas (Chr.Top., Prologue 2) awaited the second coming of a Christ who would summon the good into the upper regions described by Moses. But Philo- ponus was master of a complex of traditions that had room for the nuances expressed by such other biblical locutions as Jeremiah 10:12, ‘… he hath established the world by his wisdom’, [κύριος] ὁ ἀνορθώσας τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ (Bohairic Coptic [Tattam46] ⲁϥⲧⲁϩⲉ ϯⲟⲓⲕⲟⲩⲙⲉⲛⲏ ⲉⲣⲁⲧⲥ ϧⲉⲛ ⲧⲉϥⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ, with ⲧⲁϩⲟ ⲉⲣⲁⲧ= rendering ἀνορθοῦν), and

44 Astonishingly, the pagan Simplicius actually also quotes Psalm 18:2 LXX, using forms of the same words (διηγεῖσθαι … ἀναγγέλλειν: In De Caelo p. 90.16-17) in indirect discourse, except for changing the LXX οὐρανοί to a singular οὐρανόν: see Hoffmann, ‘Simplicius’ Polemics’, p. 70; Wildberg, Eternity, p. 75. This being a biblical quotation, it contains the only occurrence of the word στερέωμα in this work by Simplicius. While Philoponus himself quotes Psalm 18:3 in DOM 1.15, in a context of refuting Theodore’s ‘Manichaean’ position on light and darkness, Genesis exegetes such as Procopius of Gaza quoted verse 2 in a context of addressing the question of the number of heavens (a question treated by Philoponus in DOM 3, with the firmament being a second heaven): see Scholten, Antike Naturphilosophie und christliche Kosmologie, p. 291. 45 See Wildberg, Eternity, p. 75. (It is indeed in that very polemical commentary by Sim- plicius on Aristotle’s De Caelo – plus some in his In Physica – that most of the fragments of Philoponus’ Contra Aristotelem are preserved for us.) 46 H. Tattam, Prophetae Majores (Oxford, 1852).

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especially Proverbs 3:19, ‘The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth’, ὁ θεὸς τῇ σοφίᾳ ἐθεμελίωσεν τὴν γῆν (Sahidic Coptic [Worrell47] ⲁ ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲥⲙⲛⲥⲛⲧⲉ ⲙⲡⲕⲁϩ ϩⲛ ⲧⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ, with ⲥⲙⲓⲛⲉ + ⲥⲱⲛⲧ rendering θεμελιοῦν). Philoponus interwove such understandings both with the text of Genesis and with the Ptolemaic cosmology learned in the schools of Alexan- dria, an educational ingredient that possessed enduring social power.48 In his Miaphysite world picture (in contrast, as he saw it, to others of the time), ‘creation became part of the story of the history of God’s salvific acts’.49 The universe had an origin – an origin not from a deified human but from the deity. Philoponus portrayed a creating second person of the Trinity in a way that anticipates what would later be expressed in a Coptic Nativity hymn where, with regard to the one born in Bethlehem, the hymn writer says ‘… we remember that he is God who both made the cosmos and saved us’.50

Abstract

This essay studies John Philoponus’ views on the role of Christ in creation, in line with his Miaphysite theology, and the reactions this provoked from Dyo- physite theologians and from the pagan Aristotle Commentator Simplicius.

47 W.H. Worrell, The Proverbs of Solomon in Sahidic Coptic (Chicago, 1931). 48 See L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘Philosophy in its Social Context’, in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-700, ed. R.S. Bagnall (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 67-82, esp. pp. 70-72, 78-79. 49 Champion, Explaining the Cosmos, p. 195. 50 DeL. O’Leary, The Difnar (Antiphonarium) of the Coptic Church 1 (London, 1926), p. 98b. – In loving memory, as always, of Mirrit Boutros Ghali (“… the ease with which beauty is beauty” [Oscar Williams]).

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