2 - Physics and metaphysics: first principles and the question of cosmogony

Summary

Introduction: the philosophical issues

In this chapter I set out to discuss two issues that early Christians saw as tightly connected, namely the question of the first principles of reality and the question of cosmogony. Roughly speaking, the first question enquires about the ultimate causes of all things in the world, while the second question is about how the world, the kosmos, has come into being.

Both questions were crucial to early Christian philosophers. This becomes apparent from the fact that they spent much of their philosophical energy in addressing them. The task, however, turns out to be very demanding as well as the source of continuous debate among early Christian philosophers. There was indeed considerable disagreement among them about how to handle these questions, let alone about how to settle them. Even when they agreed on some central points, such as the idea that God creates the world out of nothing, further questions came up, such as how an immaterial God brings about the material world. This situation arose partly from the complexity of the issues involved and partly from the fact that Christian philosophers insisted on treating them jointly.