Ex Nihilo & Other Creation Theories

The pros and cons of various creation theories, with scientific considerations.

(This is chapter ten of my systematic theology of love in progress. Free subscribers get a portion of this chapter, but paid subscribers get the entire chapter. Paid subscribers [only $8 a month] also get a signed copy of the book when it’s completed. And they’ll be mentioned in the book’s acknowledgements. Consider subscribing!)

Just about every believer — Christian or otherwise — says God creates. Most hold theories about how God originally created our universe and whether this creating continues. But the details of creation theories differ, sometimes drastically.

Some theories take Christian scripture as a historical-literal account of the origin of the universe. This approach leads many to think the earth is relatively young, evolution is false, and contemporary science is suspect.^[1] Biblical writers describe a three-tiered cosmology that is far different from how contemporary scientists think of the universe. Scripture also depicts heavens and firmament above a flat earth, and the sky it describes sounds like an inverted bowl or tent. Biblical writers say that under the earth is a place for the dead (sheol), a watery chaos, and large pillars. The exact details of these descriptions, however, are irreconcilable with one another.

Other theories of creation embrace key theories in contemporary science. They claim God created the universe at the big bang, for instance, and deity used evolution thereafter when creating diverse life forms. Many theologians link these claims to theories that say God created the universe from nothing, and deity can and does intervene in it. In some mysterious way, goes this thinking, God is the primary cause that determines all secondary, creaturely causes. Most who take this approach think scientific explanations differ entirely from theological ones, because divine causation and creaturely causation are different in kind. Theologians who otherwise separate science and theology occasionally draw from science when it supports their theology.

This systematic theology of love draws from scripture and science. It rejects the notion that biblical writers give a historical-literal description of the universe. It affirms major scientific theories like the big bang and evolution, and it aligns with the general features of contemporary cosmology. It draws from theological claims in the Bible, while criticizing long-held theories about how God created the world. The overall aim is an internally consistent theory of creation that aligns well with science, our experience, reason, and key themes in scripture.

Before laying out the creation theory of this systematic theology of love, we need to look at the current creation options.

The Theory of Creatio Ex Nihilo

Since roughly the third century, major Christian theologians have speculated that God initially created our universe from absolutely nothing.^[2] Many Jews, Muslims, and other theists adopted this theory too.^[3] Scholars today often use the Latin phrase creatio ex nihilo to refer to the idea.

Advocates of the creation from nothing view say God initially existed alone, without creation. Maimonides puts it simply: “In the beginning, God alone existed, and nothing else.^[4]” At some point and for some reason, the solitary One created the universe out of absolutely nothing. God made all things, says Augustine, “not from [God’s] own substance…but out of nothing.^[5]”

Theologians offer various reasons for why God decided to create. Wayne Grudem follows the logic of Calvinist theologians by saying God wanted to display glory.^[6] Clark Pinnock says the members of the Trinity wanted to share their love with something not divine.^[7] According to each, God could have remained alone, without ever creating.

The idea God creates something from nothing is not in the Bible.

Creatio ex nihilo isn’t in the opening verses of the Bible. Genesis begins, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (1:1, 2). “When” is a temporal clause, which is important, because it does not point to an absolute beginning of time.^[8] And there is no definite article “the” in the Hebrew text, so it could just as well be translated, “In a beginning,” rather than “In the beginning.”

The Spirit (ruach elohim) creates “while” hovering or vibrating over the “formless void,” “face of the deep,” and “face of the waters.” These phrases suggest something was present when God began to create the universe.^[9] The Spirit engaged materials and forces in the beginning, and God established a life-sustaining order by creating from what was present.

The phrase “formless void” in verse two of Genesis is tohu wabohu. Some translators render it “primordial chaos;” others call it an “amorphous state” or “undifferentiated mass.”^[10] God transforms this chaos rather than conjuring from nothing. These early verses of Genesis also speak of darkness covering the “face of the deep.” This deep is tehom, which also refers to something nondivine. “The tehom signifies here the primeval waters,” says Brevard Childs, which also point so something present in the beginning.^[11]

Influential biblical scholars say Genesis does not endorse creation from nothing:

⁃ “Creation out of nothing is foreign to both the language and the thought of the unknown author of Genesis,” says Claus Westermann. “It is clear that there can be here no question of creatio ex nihilo.”^[12]

⁃ “God’s creating in Genesis one,” says Terrence Fretheim, “includes ordering that which already exists . . . God works creatively with already existing reality to bring about newness.”^[13]

⁃ “‘Nothingness’ is not the picture of the situation at the beginning,” says Mark S. Smith. “Unformed as the world is, tohu va bohu is far from being nothingness or connoting nothingness.”^[14]

⁃ “It can be said that Yahweh is the creator of the world,” says Rolf P. Knierim, “because he is its liberator from chaos.”^[15]

⁃ “Properly understood,” says Jon Levenson, “Genesis 1:1–2:3 cannot be invoked to support the developed Jewish, Christian, and Muslim doctrine of creation ex nihilo.”^[16]

⁃ “The storytellers were not thinking of what later philosophical and theological traditions, speaking Latin as they often did, called creatio ex nihilo,” writes Edwin Good. “In this story, something was there—the empty, shapeless “earth,” darkness, the “abyss,” the wind across the waters.”^[17]

⁃ “At the outset of God’s creation,” says David Carr, “there were three main precursors, with the description of each element building on the others: the uninhabitable formless mass of earth (1:2aα), the dark primeval ocean in which that earth was submerged (1:2aβ), and God’s breath/primeval wind moving over the face of the waters (1:2b).”^[18]

The list of scholars saying Genesis does not support creatio ex nihilo is long, and it includes liberals and conservatives.^[19] But given the prominence of this theory, it’s hard to overemphasize what I’ve been describing. So, again:

Genesis does not support the idea God creates from nothing.

Old Testament writers use a dozen Hebrew words biblical scholars translate “create.” The writers of Genesis typically use bara and asah. These words refer to God’s activity and creaturely creating. There is no Hebrew word that means God created something out of nothing.^[20] The writers of the Psalms praise God as creator, for instance, and their praise portrays the Spirit’s creating in ways that compliment or contrast the early chapters of Genesis. But no passage in the Psalms says God creates something from nothing.

Advocates of creation from nothing sometimes appeal to a passage in 2 Maccabees. This book is not recognized as canonical by Protestants, but Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians cite it. In the passage, a mother speaks to her son:

She leaned over close to him and, in derision of the cruel tyrant, said in their native language: “Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months, nursed you for three years, brought you up, educated and supported you to your present age. I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see all that is in them; then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things. In the same way, humankind came into existence (7:27–28).

Some have thought the phrase “God did not make them out of existing things” refers to creation from nothing. But the context of the passage suggests otherwise. The mother witnesses to carrying, nursing, and educating her son. “In the same way,” says 2 Maccabees, “humankind came into existence.” That’s not creatio ex nihilo. The mother plays the key role in creating children, but her egg requires a male’s sperm. The growth of the fetus also requires a womb and nutrients, and environmental factors affect its growth. In short, natal and developmental analogies for creation require multiple causes and, therefore, don’t align with God alone creating from nothing.

If we are considering Catholic and Orthodox scriptures, the creation language should be addressed. “For your all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter,” says the Wisdom of Solomon, “did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears or bold lions” (11:17). This scripture opposes creation from nothing by depicting the ancient Greek view that God creates by bringing form to matter. Matter is something, not nothing.

There are no explicit references to creatio ex nihilo in the New Testament. The book of Peter offers the most direct statement about God’s creating, however, and it points to God creating in relation to materials. God “created out of water and by means of water” (2 Pet. 3:5). Many scholars argue that the verse alludes to Genesis 1:1-2, because ancient peoples often associated water with chaos.

Other New Testament passages speak of God creating out of “unseen things” (Heb. 11:3) and creation generally. Ancient people sometimes referred to children being created by their parents “from what does not exist.”^[21] Obviously, parental sperm, egg, and womb exist, and we know that various factors contribute to a fetus’s development. These examples of parents creating children “from what does not exist,” therefore, point to creating from something, not nothing.

Speaking into Existence

Some advocates of the creation from nothing theory cite biblical passages that say God creates by speaking or calling things into existence (e.g., Ps. 33:6-9). An oft-cited passage is Romans 4:16-18: