On Created Things (Excerpts from Xeno)

Contents

Excerpts preserved by Photius (Bibliotheca, cod. 235), as printed by Bonwetsch; excerpt 8 (on the name church) is not yet on the site.

1. 1Methodius rejects Xenon's reading of the pearls and swine as mystical teaching withheld from unbelievers, since the apostles preached to unbelievers; the pearls are the virtues, which must not be given over to pleasures.
2. 2Photius reports Origen's argument, as Methodius presents it, that the universe must be co-eternal with God, since God is always Creator and Almighty and cannot change.
3. 3In a short dialogue Methodius argues that God is perfect, almighty, and Maker through himself, not because of the world, so the world need not be eternal.
4. 4Since God has ceased creating without being changed, his beginning to create did not change him either, so the world need not be eternal.
5. 5Whatever has come into being has a cause and a beginning, so the world, made by God, cannot be co-infinite with him.
6. 6Methodius presses the Origenists: if God shaped pre-existing matter, matter had a beginning of its ordering, which they will not admit.
7. 7By the image of a statue, Methodius argues that a work without beginning would need no maker, so an eternal world would be uncreated, unchangeable, and equal to God, which is absurd.
8. 9Methodius distinguishes two creative powers: the Father, who creates from nothing by his will, and the Son, the Father's hand, who orders and adorns what was made.
9. 10Methodius held that Moses wrote the book of Job.
10. 11The "beginning" of Genesis 1:1 is Wisdom, the Word, who was with the Father before creation and through whom all things were made.