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Christ the Creator According to John Philoponus1 Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 67(1-2), 1-12. doi: 10.2143/JECS.67.1.3144280 © 2015 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. 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. 98607.indb 1 12/05/16 12:47 2 LESLIE S.B. MACCOULL 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 sec- ond 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 transla- tion 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. 98607.indb 2 12/05/16 12:47 CHRIST THE CREATOR ACCORDING TO JOHN PHILOPONUS 3 in whichever of its forms,12 a Christology according to which all three per- sons 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. 98607.indb 3 12/05/16 12:47 4 LESLIE S.B. MACCOULL 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 com- mentary 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’.
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