The Biblical Creator/creature distinction vs “Chain of Being” metaphysics

I found this discussion this morning about the Biblical Creator/creature distinction, and its absolute contrast with “chain of being” or “continuity of being” metaphysics found in ancient pagan and some Medieval writers (such as Thomas Aquinas). The author refers to pagan creation texts, and then contrasts these with Genesis:

In the Genesis text, however, God is wholly separate from the universe. He is prior to all things. All else originates from Him. They come into existence, not by transformation from His Being, but by His spoken Word they come into existence from nothing (creatio ex-nihilo). There is thus an absolute, transcendental distinction between the Creator and all else.  

Over against the Bible’s Creator-creature distinction, paganism insists upon the unity of creator(s) and creations. Gods, men, animals, and rocks are all part of the same existence or being. This is the doctrine of the Chain of Being or Continuity of Being, a doctrine you will find lurking in all forms of paganism from ancient times through New Testament times (where it was related to the Gnostic heresy) to modern cosmic evolution. You will hear about this false doctrine again and again in the following chapters. It is spiritual poison.

Implied by the Continuity of Being idea and overtly present in some pagan origin-myths, is the concept of spontaneous generation. Since the universe basically is of one kind, everything within it differs only in degree. Thus the universe has power to bring forth life from non-life all by itself. Man is just a part of Nature. Contrast this situation with the Bible’s teaching about non-transgressable boundaries between man, each kind of animal, and each kind of plant (Gen. 1:11-12, 21, 24-25, 27).

An apparent corollary to the Continuity of Being is that the spontaneous transformations take vast amounts of time. Note the line in Enuma elish, “They lived many days, adding years (to days).” Contrast this slowness with the suddenness of God’s creative work (Ps. 33:9) done in six days (Exod. 20:11).

The first fundamental contrast between Genesis and ancient paganism, then, is between the Creator-creature distinction and the gradually self-transforming Continuity of Being.

Here is more along these lines:

http://www.bibleframework.com/

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/04/aquinas-existence-and-failure-to.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-new-pagan-era.html

“A New Pagan Era”

When it comes down to it, there are only two worldviews, according to Peter Jones (“One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference – Romans 1 for the Twenty-first Century”, Escondido, CA: Main Entry Editions, 2010). For simplicity’s sake, he identifies these simply as “One-ism” and “Two-ism”. The chart here (which I have modified somewhat) should be familiar to most Reformed readers. It illustrates how these worldviews line up:

Aquinas’s “donum superadditum” vs the Alien Righteousness of Christ

Here is the heart of the issue between Protestants and Roman Catholics. For those who are following along in my series on “chain-of-being” ontology:

Starting things off: Eastern Orthodoxy: Same as all the other Eastern religions
Part 1: “Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”
Part 2: Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Here is the Creator/creature distinction in the ontological sense:

Intrinsically holy, God is qualitatively distinct from creation—not just more than, but different from, his creatures. There is no divine soul, preexisting throughout eternity, thrown mercilessly into the realm of time and matter. God breathed life into Adam in creation, and he “became a living being” (Gen 2:7 NIV)—an embodied soul and an animated body. And yet, God pronounced this creation good (Gen 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25, [and “very good” when speaking of man, Gen 1:31]).

It is no crime to be different from God. Finitude is not a “falling away” from some primordial infinitude. There is no part of human nature that is higher, brighter, more infinite, or more real than another. This means that the only legitimate ontological distinction is between the uncreated God and the created world, not between spiritual and material realms (as is posited in the “chain-of-being” ontology). Ontological difference – the strangeness that makes us stand in awe of God’s majesty – is good … (from Michael Horton, “The Christian Faith”, A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan © 2011, pg 42).

So yes, above and beyond the condition “to exist”, Confessional Protestantism holds this Creator/creature distinction. This distinction also exists in the ethical sense after the fall:

Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Van Til, in his Introduction to Warfield's “Inspiration and Authority of the Bible”, notes that Roman Catholicism does not “start with the Creator-creature distinction as basic to all their interpretation of doctrine. They started with the idea of being as such and introduced the distinction of Creator and creature as a secondary something” (p. 49).

Protestants, from the earliest days of the Reformation, understood a “categorical distinction” between God and all of the rest of creation: the “Creator-creature distinction”. On the other hand, while God is Creator within the Roman Catholic system, God is not “above and beyond”, in a totally other category. He shares a trait, and that trait is “existence”.

In other words, the first category in Roman Catholicism is to start with “existence”: God has “existence”, and he passes this characteristic along to every other created thing. Down below and in subsequent entries I’ll begin to show how that cashes out in the Roman Catholic understanding of the universe.

This is not something that “damns them all to hell”. But this kind of difference at the starting point does lead to the kind of confusion in which Roman dogmas and Protestant doctrines cannot be reconciled after 500 years of differences.

There is also a caution that goes along with all of this.