The theological significance of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo

Trinity Journal, 1996

2005

Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought In their contribution to The New Mormon Challenge entitled “Craftsman or Creator? An Examination of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation and a Defense of Creatio ex nihilo,” Paul Copan and William Lane Craig assert, among other things, that the notion of creation ex nihilo—creation out of nothing—is biblical.1 For good 1. The first section of their essay, dealing with scriptural arguments, is essentially the same as Copan’s article “Is Creatio ex Nihilo a Post-Biblical Invention? An Examination of Gerhard May’s Proposal,” Trinity Journal, n.s., 17 (1996): 77–93. Stephen D. Ricks deals with creation ex nihilo in “Ancient Views of Creation and the Doctrine of Creation ex Nihilo,” in Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002), 319–37. See Daniel C. Peterson, “Does the Qur’an Teach Creation Ex Nihilo?” in By...

Evangelical Quarterly, 2022

Creatio ex nihilo is the dominant creation theory in the Christian tradition. Relational theologian Thomas Jay Oord proposes an alternative creation theory, in which God everlastingly creates from what he previously created. Key reasons why Oord argues creatio ex nihilo should be rejected are that it has Gnostic roots, is not explicitly taught in Scripture, and is illogical. This article critically assesses Oord's arguments against creatio ex nihilo, contending that his conclusions are misguided due to a Biblicist tendency in his reading of the text and the inaccurate definition of creatio ex nihilo he argues against. With the biblical and historical data, a definition of creatio ex nihilo representative of the Christian tradition is articulated. This essay then demonstrates how creatio ex nihilo is superior to Oord's alternative theory.

2019

The Big Bang Theory refers to the beginning of the Universe, originating from a singularity, a theory so far verified by the observational data. In accordance with this theory, the Universe, space and time have a beginning. Similar is the position of the Christian writers of the early Christian Church, who support the ex nihilo - ἐκ μὴ ὄντος (ek me ontos = from the ‘non-being’) creation of the world through the divine ‘energy’, with the two theories converging to the fact that space and time have a beginning. But according to the Father of the Eastern Church Basilius the Great and the Greek Christian philosopher, theologian and natural scientist John Philoponus, the ‘non-being’ does not represent ‘nothing’ but something beyond space and time, inaccessible to human senses. Parallel, though not coincident, in contemporary Cosmology is supported the hypothesis of the existence of the ‘false vacuum’, an imperceptible state before the Big Bang. A major question that philosophers as well as modern scholars have considered over the years is whether our Universe has a beginning. Some Christian scholars considered that the Universe had a principle reigning exclusively in the divine will and envisaged its creation as a transition from the ‘non-being’ to being. In modern Astrophysics, space and time originate from the Big Bang. The principal aim of this work is to investigate the common points between the early Christian version of the creation of the Universe and modern Cosmology. Hence we will present the main scientific data supporting the Big Bang Theory. Also, will be discussed the first Christian version of the creation of the Cosmos from the ‘non-being’, being interpreted as a state inaccessible to human senses. At the end, there is a discussion about the false vacuum from which our visible Universe originated, according to the theory of inflation complementing Big Bang theory.

Academia Letters, 2020

Claritas Journal of Dialogue and Culture, 2015

The question of God's relationship with creation touches upon important contemporary issues with regard to science, interfaith dialogue, and contemporary philosophy. Using the fundamental and specifically Christian theological stance that begins from creatio ex nihilo, the author shows how Chiara Lubich, on the basis of her charism of unity, develops an original understanding of the event of creation in which God creates by giving being to nonbeing, constantly creating historically and preserving in being what is created, and, at the same time, making what is created evolve. The basis for this understanding is to read creation out of nothing in light of a radical understanding of divine love that, as a result of its own dynamic, is both One and Three. This vision of reality implicitly contains a Trinitarian metaphysics 1. English translation by Catharine R. de Rienzo, A.I.T.I., Fr. Thomas J. Norris, and Callan Slipper. 2. Evidence of this renewed interest in the subject of the beginning (the Greek philosophers' archē) can be found, for example, in Massimo Cacciari's tour de force, significantly entitled Dell'Inizio

2003

1.0 Introduction. In their contribution to The New Mormon Challenge, entitled “Craftsman or Creator: An Examination of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation & a Defense of Creatio Ex Nihilo,” Paul Copan and William Lane Craig argue that the notion of creation ex nihilo is both biblical and required by modern cosmology and logic. They begin by examining Mormon scripture. They suggest that Mormon scripture itself is susceptible to a reading consistent with creation out of nothing. In the next section they argue against the vast majority of biblical scholars that the Bible requires the doctrine of creation out of nothing. They add for good measure that this doctrine was not an invention of the philosophers but has always been the well-established “Christian” doctrine. They next offer two deductive arguments to show that it is absurd that there could be an infinitely old universe based on: (1) the supposed impossibility of an actual infinite; and (2) the supposed impossibility of successive f...