Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing)

God brought everything that is not God into being out of nothing — not from pre-existing matter, and not out of his own substance.

Latin, 'creation out of nothing'; the Greek equivalent ouk ex ontōn ('not from existing things') appears in 2 Maccabees 7:28.

Genesis 1:1; Psalm 33:6, 9; Isaiah 44:24; John 1:3; Romans 4:17 ('calls into existence the things that do not exist'); Hebrews 11:3 ('not made out of things that are visible'); Revelation 4:11; 2 Maccabees 7:28.

Implicit in the OT's exclusion of any co-eternal; made fully explicit by Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus (c. 180) against Platonist eternal matter and Gnostic dualism; Tertullian's Against Hermogenes; dogmatically defined at Lateran IV (1215) and Vatican I.

Entails that only God is uncreated, that creatures are radically contingent, that matter is good (not a prison or a rival), that God is free (he need not create), and — with Augustine — that time itself is created.

Process theology rejects ex nihilo (God and world mutually dependent); some OT scholars read Genesis 1 as the ordering of a pre-existent chaos rather than an absolute beginning — the doctrine rests on the canonical whole, not Genesis 1:1 alone.

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.