The Identity of God: Trinity

The Christian embrace of monotheism and creation ex nihilo was not an entirely straightforward development. While the overall direction was clear enough from the start, there were indications that the end was not a foregone conclusion. For example, Origen, whom Gilson credits in his monumental History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages with the clearest presentation of creation ex nihilo, in fact held that the cosmos is eternal. A god who creates an eternal world on a Neoplatonic model is problematic at best, from a Christian perspective, since the entire conception has its origin in the Greek view of the gods and man as parts of one organic whole. And Charles Norris Cochrane, in his classic study, Christianity and Classical Culture, notes that both Clement of Alexandria and Origen exhibit a fundamental Neoplatonic influence: