Chapter XX. On the Same Subject From Origen’s Commentaries on Genesis

[ORIGEN] [1] ‘IF it is a difficulty to any one that, because of the case of human artists, he cannot admit that God furnished the existing world without any substratum of unoriginate matter, since neither can a statuary make his proper work without bronze, nor a carpenter without timber, nor a builder without stones, we must question him about God’s power, whether God, if He wills to establish whatever He chooses, there being no defect nor weakness in His will, cannot establish that which He chooses.

‘For as, according to all who bring in providence in their own argument, the qualities which were non-existent are established by Him as He chooses for the orderly arrangement of the whole by His unspeakable power and wisdom, so, the reason being the same in both cases, His will is able to bring into existence all the substance that He needs.

‘For to those who will not admit that this is so we shall put the question, whether it does not follow from their argument that God by a lucky chance found the substance unorigiuate, without which, had it not been supplied to Him by its unoriginate character, He could have produced no work at all, but would have continued to be no Creator, no Father, no Benefactor, no Good Being, nor anything else that is with good reason predicated of God.

‘Whence also came the measurement of just so much of the substratum of matter as to suffice for the establishment of a world of the actual size? For it would seem as if some providence anterior to God must have supplied Him with the matter, providing that the art existing in Him should not have mere empty ideas from the want of any substance, with which He could co-operate in embellishing the world with so great beauty.

‘Whence also has matter become capable of receiving every quality which God wills, unless God Himself made it for His own use just so much and such as He wished to have?

‘At all events if we admit as a hypothesis that matter is unoriginate, this is what we shall say to those who wish to have it so; if without any providence supplying the, material substance to God it has become such as it is, what could providence, if it existed, have done more than their spontaneous chance?

‘And if God Himself, when matter was non-existent, chose to prepare it, what would His wisdom and divine power have done more than that which, as supposed, arose from the unoriginate? For if it is found that the same result would have been produced by providence, which was produced even without providence, what reason is there why we should not dispense with the Demiurge and the Artificer in the case of the world-order also?

‘For just as it is absurd in the case of this ordered world, so skilfully contrived, to say that it has become such without help from a wise Artificer, so it is also equally unreasonable that the matter, being of such extent, and such quality, and so pliable to the Artificer, the Word of God, has been unoriginate.

‘In answer, however, to those who compare the fact that no workman makes anything without material, we must say that they are comparing dissimilar cases. For providence supplies every artificer with his material, as coming from some former art either human or divine. This then will at present suffice in answer to those who, because it is said, “And the earth was invisible and unarranged,’’ [2] think that material substance is unoriginate.’

So far this author. But the Hebrew Philo also in his book Concerning Providencegives the following account of matter: