Dualism seeks to show how the One becomes the many, how the Absolute gives birth to the relative, how the Good can consist with evil. The ὕλη of Plato seems to have meant nothing but empty space, whose not-being, or merely negative existence, prevented the full realization of the divine ideas. Aristotle regarded the ὕλη as a more positive cause of imperfection,—it was like the hard material which hampers the sculptor in expressing his thought. The real problem for both Plato and Aristotle was to explain the passage from pure spiritual existence to that which is phenomenal and imperfect, from the absolute and unlimited to that which exists in space and time. Finiteness, instead of being created, was regarded as having eternal existence and as limiting all divine manifestations. The ὕλη, from being a mere abstraction, became either a negative or a positive source of evil. The Alexandrian Jews, under the influence of Hellenic culture, sought to make this dualism explain the doctrine of creation.
Basilides and Valentinus, however, were also under the influence of a pantheistic philosophy brought in from the remote East—the philosophy of Buddhism, which taught that the original Source of all was a nameless Being, devoid of all qualities, and so, indistinguishable from Nothing. From this Being, which is Not-being, all existing things proceed. Aristotle and Hegel similarly taught that pure Being = Nothing. But inasmuch as the object of the Alexandrian philosophers was to show how something could be originated, they were obliged to conceive of the primitive Nothing as capable of such originating. They, moreover, in the absence of any conception of absolute creation, were compelled to conceive of a material which could be fashioned. Hence the Void, the Abyss, is made to take the place of matter. If it be said that they did [pg 379]not conceive of the Void or the Abyss as substance, we reply that they gave it just as substantial existence as they gave to the first Cause of things, which, in spite of their negative descriptions of it, involved Will and Design. And although they do not attribute to this secondary substance a positive influence for evil, they notwithstanding see in it the unconscious hinderer of all good.
Principal Tulloch, in Encyc. Brit., 10:704—“In the Alexandrian Gnosis ... the stream of being in its ever outward flow at length comes in contact with dead matter which thus receives animation and becomes a living source of evil.” Windelband, Hist. Philosophy, 129, 144, 239—“With Valentinus, side by side with the Deity poured forth into the Pleroma or Fulness of spiritual forms, appears the Void, likewise original and from eternity; beside Form appears matter; beside the good appears the evil.”Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, 139—“The Platonic theory of an inert, semi-existent matter, ... was adopted by the Gnosis of Egypt.... 187—Valentinus does not content himself, like Plato, ... with assuming as the germ of the natural world an unformed matter existing from all eternity.... The whole theory may be described as a development, in allegorical language of the pantheistic hypothesis which in its outline had been previously adopted by Basilides.” A. H. Newman, Ch. History, 1:181-192, calls the philosophy of Basilides “fundamentally pantheistic.” “Valentinus,” he says, “was not so careful to insist on the original non-existence of God and everything.” We reply that even to Basilides the Non-existent One is endued with power; and this power accomplishes nothing until it comes in contact with things non-existent, and out of them fashions the seed of the world. The things non-existent are as substantial as is the Fashioner, and they imply both objectivity and limitation.
Lightfoot, Com. on Colossians, 76-113, esp. 82, has traced a connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian heresy, and the still earlier teaching of the Essenes of Palestine. All these were characterized by (1) the spirit of caste or intellectual exclusiveness; (2) peculiar tenets as to creation and as to evil; (3) practical asceticism. Matter is evil and separates man from God; hence intermediate beings between man and God as objects of worship; hence also mortification of the body as a means of purifying man from sin. Paul's antidote for both errors was simply the person of Christ, the true and only Mediator and Sanctifier. See Guericke, Church History, 1:161.
Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 1:128—“The majority of Gnostic undertakings may be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a theosophy.... In Gnosticism the Hellenic spirit desired to make itself master of Christianity, or more correctly, of the Christian communities.”... 232—Harnack represents one of the fundamental philosophic doctrines of Gnosticism to be that of the Cosmos as a mixture of matter with divine sparks, which has arisen from a descent of the latter into the former [Alexandrian Gnosticism], or, as some say, from the perverse, or at least merely permitted undertaking of a subordinate spirit [Syrian Gnosticism]. We may compare the Hebrew Sadducee with the Greek Epicurean; the Pharisee with the Stoic; the Essene with the Pythagorean. The Pharisees overdid the idea of God's transcendence. Angels must come in between God and the world. Gnostic intermediaries were the logical outcome. External works of obedience were alone valid. Christ preached, instead of this, a religion of the heart. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:52—“The rejection of animal sacrifices and consequent abstaining from temple-worship on the part of the Essenes, which seems out of harmony with the rest of their legal obedience, is most simply explained as the consequence of their idea that to bring to God a bloody animal offering was derogatory to his transcendental character. Therefore they interpreted the O. T. command in an allegorizing way.”
Lyman Abbott: “The Oriental dreams; the Greek defines; the Hebrew acts. All these influences met and intermingled at Alexandria. Emanations were mediations between the absolute, unknowable, all-containing God, and the personal, revealed and holy God of Scripture. Asceticism was one result: matter is undivine, therefore get rid of it. License was another result: matter is undivine, therefore disregard it—there is no disease and there is no sin—the modern doctrine of Christian Science.”Kedney, Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373; 2:354, conceives of the divine glory as an eternal material environment of God, out of which the universe is fashioned.
The author of “The Unseen Universe” (page 17) wrongly calls John Stuart Mill a Manichæan. But Mill disclaims belief in the personality of this principle that resists and limits God,—see his posthumous Essays on Religion, 176-195. F. W. Robertson, Lectures on Genesis, 4-16—“Before the creation of the world all was chaos ... but with the creation, order began.... God did not cease from creation, for creation is going on [pg 380]every day. Nature is God at work. Only after surprising changes, as in spring-time, do we say figuratively, ‘God rests.’ ” See also Frothingham, Christian Philosophy.
With regard to this view, we remark:
(a) The maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, upon which it rests, is true only in so far as it asserts that no event takes place without a cause. It is false, if it mean that nothing can ever be made except out of material previously existing. The maxim is therefore applicable only to the realm of second causes, and does not bar the creative power of the great first Cause. The doctrine of creation does not dispense with a cause; on the other hand, it assigns to the universe a sufficient cause in God.
Lucretius: “Nihil posse creari De nihilo, neque quod genitum est ad nihil revocari.”Persius: “Gigni De nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti.” Martensen, Dogmatics, 116—“The nothing, out of which God creates the world, is the eternal possibilities of his will, which are the sources of all the actualities of the world.” Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 2:292—“When therefore it is argued that the creation of something from nothing is unthinkable and is therefore peremptorily to be rejected, the argument seems to me to be defective. The process is thinkable, but not imaginable, conceivable but not probable.” See Cudworth, Intellectual System, 3:81 sq. Lipsius, Dogmatik, 288, remarks that the theory of dualism is quite as difficult as that of absolute creation. It holds to a point of time when God began to fashion preëxisting material, and can give no reason why God did not do it before, since there must always have been in him an impulse toward this fashioning.