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As modern people we think that something is created when it is materially constituted. Being is opposed to non-being. But the Ancients didn't think that way. Rather something exists when it has a function, a meaning or telos - when it is ordered out of chaos.
John Walton gives a good example of the beginning of a restaurant. When does a restaurant begin to exist? Does it begin to exist when the building is constructed? Well, not necessarily. Maybe it was a warehouse which was later renovated into a restaurant so that the restaurant begins to exist when it has a license and opens and begins to function as a restaurant. So the restaurant began to exist when it began to function as a restaurant. But that's not when the building began to exist. The creation or the beginning of the restaurant didn't represent the material origin of the building.
I think John Walton is in error however when he opposes something existing materially as opposed to functionally. They were inseparable for the Ancients. To exist is to have a meaning in the cosmos.
A cold meaningless universe is merely a superstitious notion, the "disenchanted" universe is merely an unreal projection of an unreal humanity.
Paul Tyson in Return to Reality writes that :
“In ancient terms one might think of nature as space, time, and matter and of grace as order, value, purpose, and meaning. In those terms nature is the medium for the partial expression of grace.
But notice, within this outlook there is no way in which it is possible to conceive of nature as other than fundamentally graced.
How could you have matter without form, how could you have facts without meaning, how could you have objectivity without value, how could you have time without eternity, how could you have thinking without reason?”
Fr Stephen de Young in his book The Religion of the Apostles notes that for the Ancient Israelites :
“….being was opposed not to nonexistence or fiction, nor the state of becoming. Rather, being was opposed to chaos. To exist is to dwell within a web of relationships that create meaning and purpose. It is to be ordered and structured. When a tower collapses into rubble, the constituent material of the tower is still there in the form of the rubble. The tower, however, no longer exists. Likewise, when an animal dies, its body dissolves into the earth, returning to its component elements, but the animal no longer exists.
In Genesis 1, the Creation of the world is described as being from nothing, but that nothing is primordial chaos rather than a timeless, spaceless void, if such a thing can even be conceived by human persons. In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty—but it was something in a material sense (Gen. 1:2). This state of formlessness is further described as a darkness above and the watery abyss below. Over the ensuing sequence of days, God gave structure to the primal elements.
In the Platonic understanding, the things that “are” are superior to the things that are becoming because the latter are not yet the thing they are becoming. They can be recognized or understood only to the degree that they are like the thing they are turning into. This makes stasis, for Platonism, one of the highest virtues.
When this concept was integrated into Christianity, it produced an understanding of being not as an either/or phenomenon, but rather as a chain or spectrum. The simple, immutable God stood at the top, and the raw materials of creation lay at the bottom. All things, then, partake in being along a continuum.
Aristotle, a student of Plato, made a variation on this understanding that reveals the ancient view that had preceded it. Rather than being and becoming, he taught of potentiality and actuality. On one end of the chain was potential or “prime matter,” which can be formed into anything but is not yet anything, just as a lump of clay can be shaped to form any recognizable figure, but until it is sculpted is not yet any of them.
On the other end was pure actuality, a being who is unable to change, which is how Thomas Aquinas understood the Christian God as the “prime mover.” Once again, all created things and their Creator are connected by being itself and are therefore related to one another analogously.
This ordering of the world forms the scriptural understanding of justice and expresses itself in the Torah in the form of commandments, through the keeping of which human life will bring that structure to the world as a whole. Sin as a force is opposed to this order and seeks to destroy it, reducing human life to chaos and death. It is only through these structures, however, that life can have meaning and purpose.
Judgment, in Hebrew and Aramaic the same word as “justice,” is the establishment or reestablishment of this order on earth. Justification is the setting of things or persons back into the proper order of things and the correct set of relationships with their Creator and the rest of the creation. It represents a new creative act.
Therefore, what it means to “live” or even to “exist” is to participate in these correctly ordered relationships with other human persons, the rest of the creation, and preeminently with God, the Holy Trinity.
Conceptually, order and meaning are inseparable. Therefore, the breaking of these relationships through sin, the disintegration of good order, or exile, constitutes death and nonexistence.”
