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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
Origen, for instance (A.N.C.L. vol. xxiii. p. 218), says: "God never made any thing mortal.” This should be sufficient to show that the account of the creation of the world given in the Book of Genesis is not to be read literally. The Jews also maintained (see Minhat Kenaot: referred to in the Jewish Encyclopedia vol. i. p. 253) :
" From Creation to Revelation all 18 parable."
Moses Maimonides (see the Guide for the Perplexed p. 207) describes the creation of heaven and earth as « The restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, its stability and permanence."
Origen (Philocalia, 16, 61, 225), Clement (A.N.C. L. vol. xii. pp. 239, 339, 476), and Hippolytus (A.N. O.L. vol. vi. p. 399) hold the account of the creation to be a secret doctrine which was not to be disclosed to the profane. St. Paul expressly speaks of the “ mystery of God ” in Col. ii. 2. Clement, like Origen, also tells us that the “ 'first creation of God' was Wisdom.”(A.N.C.L. vol. xii. p. 274.)
Other important quotations are as follows:
“But God has no natural relation to us, ... neither on the supposition of His having made us of nothing, nor on that of baving formed us from matter; neither portions of himself nor ... bis children ..."-(Clement, vol. 1) A.N.C.L. vol. xii. p. 45.
"... Therefore that which is simple, and which is without any of those things by which that which subsists can be dissolved, is without doubt incomprehensible and infinite, knowing neither beginning nor end, and therefore is one and alone, and subsisting without an author. But that which is compound is subject to number, and diversity, and division,is necessarily compounded by some author, and is a diversity collected into one species."—(Recognitions of Clement) A.N.C.L. vol. i. p. 365.
