Anyone who reads Genesis and then opens the Timaeus usually has the same impression: Plato's craftsman and the Creator of the Bible seem to be the same figure. Both make a good world, and both make it with order. There is only one difference, and it is the subject of this article: the material. Plato's craftsman finds the matter ready; the God of the Bible creates even that.
What Plato's craftsman finds
In the Timaeus, Plato calls the Demiurge, a Greek word meaning craftsman, the cause the world needs in order to exist. Like a carpenter, he has material and a model in his mind: the better the model, the better the table. The model of the world is what does not change, and that is why the world is beautiful (Timaeus 28a).
The point that matters here is what the craftsman had to hand. Before his work there was disorder and movement without rule (Timaeus 30a). He does not make this matter: he finds it, and brings it to order because he judged order to be better. It is also worth remembering that, as the class notes, Plato does not yet speak here of a personal God: the craftsman is the answer to the question "what would this cause be?", given with the resources of Greek thought.
What changes in Genesis
The Christian reads the Timaeus "with pen in hand," and this is where the pen writes. The Christian tradition reads Genesis differently: the God of the Bible finds nothing ready. He creates out of nothing, and even matter is his work.
Go back to the image of the carpenter. He makes the table, but he does not make the wood: he depends on someone, or something, having put it there. The craftsman of the Timaeus is in that situation, however wise and good he may be. The Creator of Genesis would be a carpenter who also made the wood, and made it without needing it for anything.
Notice how large the difference is. In the Timaeus, the craftsman is good, but limited by the material he received. In Genesis, nothing precedes God, and nothing limits him from outside. The world depends on him entirely, not only on its form. This is the meaning of the expression creatio ex nihilo, "creation out of nothing."
And the eternal model?
The correction leaves an open question. If God creates everything, where does the model come from that Plato's craftsman looked to? If that model exists outside God, it becomes a new limit.
Augustine answers this in the Eighty-Three Different Questions (question 46), and the answer, paraphrased, is that the ideas of all things are in God's own intelligence, as stable reasons for what he does. God copies nothing: he knows what he makes. The model stops being a separate object, to which the craftsman must look, and becomes the thought of the Creator himself.
What remains
Plato gave Christians a language: order, model, goodness that does not keep the good for itself. Genesis, read in that language, calls for two adjustments: matter was not there before, and the model is not outside. The Christians who read the Timaeus accepted the first part of the picture and corrected the craftsman, who became the Creator. The full path of this reading is in Plato and Christianity: from the Timaeus to Saint Augustine's Genesis, and the other consequence of the same idea, time, is in What was God doing before creating the world?.
In-depth study
Church History Course, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt
In-depth reading of the work of Daniel Rops, where the Christian faith of the first centuries and the intellectual world that received it appear in full.
Discover the courseFrequently asked questions
Did Plato believe the world was created out of nothing?
No, according to the Timaeus. Plato's craftsman works with a matter that was already there, in disorder, and brings that disorder to order. He gives it form, not existence.
What does it mean to say God created out of nothing?
It means that the God of the Bible finds nothing ready: he creates everything, and even matter is his work. This is the idea the Christian tradition sums up with the Latin expression creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.
Where are the eternal ideas, according to Augustine?
In the intelligence of God. Augustine answers, in the Eighty-Three Different Questions (question 46), that the ideas of all things are in the divine mind. God does not look to a model outside himself: he knows what he makes.
Continue: Plato and Christianity: from the Timaeus to Saint Augustine's Genesis · What was God doing before creating the world? Saint Augustine · Did Plato believe in God? The Demiurge of the Timaeus · In Turner's painting, the giant is barely there
Source class (YouTube): Timeu, de Platão | Por que existe um mundo, e não o caos