{"id":767,"date":"2009-03-22T06:56:15","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T10:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=767"},"modified":"2009-03-13T09:56:41","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T13:56:41","slug":"arius-and-athanasius-part-4-a-definition-of-creation-jt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/arius-and-athanasius-part-4-a-definition-of-creation-jt\/","title":{"rendered":"Arius and Athanasius, part 4 — A definition of creation (JT)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"God,
God, giving a shout-out to all his hombres. Or he's creating the universe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the last<\/a> two<\/a> posts, I explained what I mean by \u2018pre-existing ingredients\u2019. In the first of those two posts, I said that an \u2018ingredient\u2019 in a product is something that is (i) in the product, and (ii) not identical to another ingredient or to the whole product. In the second of those two posts, I explained that an ingredient is \u2018pre-existing\u2019 if it\u2019s not produced by the same productive act that brings the product into being.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019ve made the sense of these terms clear, we can formulate a more precise definition of creation. Earlier, I said that something is created from nothing if it\u2019s produced without any pre-existing ingredients. That\u2019s the loose definition. Here\u2019s the more precise definition: a producer creates a product from nothing if and only if the producer causes the product itself and each of its ingredients to come into being by the same productive act. So:<\/p>\n

Creation:
\nFor any x<\/em> and y<\/em>, x<\/em> creates y<\/em> from nothing
\nby a productive act P<\/em> =df iff
\n(i) x<\/em> causes y<\/em> to exist by P<\/em>, and
\n(ii) for any ingredient F<\/em> in y<\/em>,
\nx<\/em> causes F<\/em> to exist by P<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On this definition then, something is created from nothing if it\u2019s produced without any<\/em> pre-existing ingredients, and something is not created from nothing if it\u2019s produced with at least one<\/em> pre-existing ingredient (in my sense of \u2018pre-existing ingredients\u2019). It just takes one pre-existing ingredient to show that something is not created.<\/p>\n

I presume that this definition also applies to cases where multiple producers work together to create something from nothing. Suppose, for example, that God the Father creates Socrates\u2019 body, and God the Son creates Socrates\u2019 soul. By my definition of creation, the Father alone doesn\u2019t create Socrates. He only creates Socrates\u2019 body. Likewise, the Son doesn\u2019t create Socrates either, for he only creates Socrates\u2019 soul. But taken as a single productive unit, the Father and Son jointly create Socrates from nothing.<\/p>\n

With this definition of creation in mind, we can now turn to the disagreement between Arius and Athanasius. As I said above, Arius thinks the Father creates the Son out of nothing, but Athanasius denies this. In the next post<\/a>, I will turn to Arius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last two posts, I explained what I mean by \u2018pre-existing ingredients\u2019. In the first of those two posts, I said that an \u2018ingredient\u2019 in a product is something that is (i) in the product, and (ii) not identical to another ingredient or to the whole product. In the second of those two posts,… Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 4 — A definition of creation (JT)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14,13,3],"tags":[29,26,39,24,22],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-theologians","category-theories","tag-arius","tag-athanasius","tag-generation","tag-nicea","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}