Perhaps one of the conceptually richest books of the Holy Scripture is the Genesis, a book shared by the three monotheisms that embodies the philosophical production of the Middle Ages: Judaism, Christianism, and Islam. Right at the beginning, in its second verse, there is a notion that has been translated in very different ways and not exactly equivalent to each other. We find tohu va-bohu in the Hebrew Torah, aóratos kaì akataskeúastos, in the Greek of the Septuagint, or inanis et vacua in Jerome’s Vulgate. In the Quran there are some verses that preserve the same idea, such as āyah 30 of surah 21, in which it is said that the heavens and the earth formed a homogeneous whole (ratqan).

To this idea of the sacred canon, it has been added the interpretation of the Genesis narration that many authors have made in light of Timaeus 30a, according to Philo of Alexandria. Thus, thanks to the interweaving of Greek philosophy –or, rather, Platonism– with the religions of the Book, this primordial state would be called “chaos” by many, and closely associated with matter (hýle) and the four elements while its opposite, order, being the product of demiurgic efficacy, would from then on become divine. This has given rise to many comments and explanations in all traditions, discussing not only the existence of primordial chaos, but also the details of the cosmic ordering process. In fact, the very Greek notion of cháos is opposite to that of kósmos. Thus, in the Latin tradition we will find, for example, the famous poem “O qui perpetua” from Consolatio III.9, by Boethius, the Glosae super Boetium and the Glosae super Platonem, by William of Conches or even the De processione mundi, by Domingo Gundisalvus, whose hylomorphic theory is closely linked to the Fons vitae, the book in which Ibn Gabirol sets out to study the order of creation. The interpretation of tohu va-bohu in hylomorphic terms, however, was supported, for example, by the Spanish astronomer and mathematician Abraham bar Hiyya in his Hegyon ha-Nefesh.

Although the first reference of this duo is cosmogonic, it has also been extended to other areas of philosophy. Considering its theoretical closeness, the first one is regarded as natural philosophy. However, in this area, the idea of chaos is no longer the exclusive heritage of the Platonic tradition, but it also appears in the Aristotelian tradition. At the beginning of the fourth book of his Physics (208b 27), Aristotle quotes verses 116-117 of Hesiod’s Theogony in relation to the category of “emptiness” when he explains what should be understood by the category of “place” and what would be the importance of its study. In the Middle Ages this approach was developed mainly in the commentaries on the Physics in Scholasticism, such as, for example, the Expositio in Aristotelis Physicam, attributed to Albert of Saxony, or in the Commentarius in octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, by Robert Gosseteste. As far as Islam is concerned, there were authors whose cosmogonic explanation manifested a strong naturalistic or physicalist approach. Such is the case of al-Rāzī, for whom “absolute matter” (hayūlā muṭlaqah) represents one of the five eternal and uncaused principles of the universe (along with time, soul, space, and God), which consists of an amorphous mass of atoms. Once such atoms combine with the void, created beings are formed. Conversely, in the Jewish sphere, the Aristotelian tradition is presented rather as an alternative tool to Neoplatonism to explain the story of the book of Genesis, just as Judah Halevi has done in the Kuzari.

On the other hand, that primal chaos and order are reflected in the human world in different ways. First of all, practically all medieval people took for granted that the cosmic and providential order had to be reflected in our soul, as well as in society, in such a way that both private and community spheres lived in order and harmony. The problem, of course, was determining what that order was, and how –and to what extent– it could be reflected. Thus, ethical and political considerations would be necessarily linked to the metaphysical starting point that is adopted, especially with regard to the question of theodicy. Since chaos is also disorder, and disorder –deprivation of order– for medieval men and women, it has been synonymous of not just  evil, but  the worst of all evils: the chaos gehennae of which, for example, Dionysius the Carthusian speaks in his Enarratio in librum Iob, or the tartareum chaos, as Alain de Lille calls it in his Anticlaudianus. Institutions, such as the Church, must also imitate the ordo coelestis to avoid falling into what Gerson characterizes as chaos anaxagoreum, something similar to hell, but here, in the dimensions of space and time. However, within the Latin Christian tradition, it would be Augustine of Hippo who would establish a large part of these ideas through his work but, perhaps most evidently, in his De ordine and De civitate Dei. Augustine was part of those who, along with authors of the most diverse nature, such as Thomas Aquinas or Martin Luther, tried to clarify the notion of ordo caritatis, which would have implications even in political thought, given its close relationship with natural law and the common good. However, if we look at the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition, we will find, for example, that the Sefer ha-Bahir stands out, where the link between evil and the concept of tohu is explicit. This type of moral chaos or corruption can be found even in āyah 41 of surah 30 regarding usury.

These are just some of the multiple approaches and authors in which the opposition “chaos-order” has been philosophically worked on. We have attempted to summarize the diverse notions from which medieval authors have developed their ideas regarding an antagonistic binomial that, in any of the medieval traditions, can be understood from different approaches:

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- Cosmogonic and cosmological chaos and order

- Physical and natural chaos and order

- Ethical and moral chaos and order

- Political and institutional chaos and order

- Logical and epistemic chaos and order

- Psychic and intellectual chaos and order

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