Paganism as Creation ex nihilo: How Are Greek Texts Possible?

Abstract

We read Greek texts because, to paraphrase Voltaire, if they did not exist, we would have to create them. We must render Greek texts creative. But the paradox incomprehensible to the enlightened mind of Voltaire candidly based on paganism is, as we have already pointed out and shall now explore further, that we cannot create something which does not exist and that something does not exist if it has not been created. Creation is not hypothetically prior to existence, and existence is not conditionally posterior to creation. The story of creation with which the Bible opens renders existence creative and renders creation existent. The creation story is the creative human story — the creation of history as the story of man’s liberation from slavery. Creation begins “from nothing” (ex nihilo), because nothing exists either prior to or posterior to its creation. Nothing exists — existence is nil — unless and until (except insofar as: Spinoza’s wondrous quatenus) it necessarily involves and expresses creation. Nothing is creative except insofar as it exists. God’s essence is that which necessarily involves and expresses — creates — existence.