Creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo)

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Criticism

Mainstream Christianity teaches that God created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), while Mormons teach that God organized the universe from pre-existing matter. The LDS God is therefore claimed to be "less powerful" than the God of mainstream Christianity, or "unBiblical."

Source(s) of the Criticism

Response

This idea “began to be adumbrated in Christian circles shortly before Galens time. The first Christian thinker to articulate the rudiments of a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was the Gnostic theologian Basilides, who flourished in the second quarter of the second century. Basilides worked out an elaborate cosmogony as he sought to think through the implications of Christian teaching in light of the platonic cosmogony. He rejected the analogy of the human maker, the craftsman who carves a piece of wood, as an anthropomorphism that severely limited the power of God. God, unlike mortals, created the world out of ‘non-existing’ matter. He first brought matter into being through the creation of ‘seeds’, and it is this created stuff that is fashioned, according to His will, into the cosmos.” [note]  In Gen. 1:1 where it says that God “created” the earth, it should read organize. The Hebrew word for create is 'bara'. Which according to the Wilsons Old Testament Word Studies, means “to put in form, or renew; to put in a new or happier condition....the act of renovating, remodeling, or reconstituting, something already in existence”. This definition was accepted by at least of the early Church Fathers. Justin Martyr (110-165 A.D.) Said: “And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man's sake, create all things out of unformed matter; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received-of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering.” [note] 

He goes on saying: “by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses.” [note]  He also said the earth “which God made according to the pre-existent form.” [note]  And again: “And His; Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word who also was with Him and was begotten before the works. when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God's ordering all thing; through Him;” [note]  Clement said in his Hymn to the Paedagogus: "Out of a confused heap who didst create This ordered sphere, and from the shapeless mass Of matter didst the universe adorn . . . ." [note] 

Conclusion

A summary of the argument against the criticism.

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Gerhard May, Schopfung aus dem nichts, die entstehung der Legre von der Creatio ex nihilo, pg. 63-85, as quoted in 'The Christians as the Romans saw Them, Robert Wilken, pg. 88-89
  2. [note]  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:165, chap. 10 First Apology of Justin
  3. [note]  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:182, chap 59, First Apology of Justin
  4. [note]  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:286 chap. 30 Hortatory to the Greeks
  5. [note]  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:165, chap. 10 First Apology of Justin
  6. [note]  Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:296

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

  • Links to related articles in the wiki

FAIR web site

External links

  • Donald Q. Cannon, Larry E. Dahl, and John W. Welch, "The Restoration of Major Doctrines through Joseph Smith: The Godhead, Mankind, and the Creation," Ensign 19 (January 1989): 27. off-site
  • Keith Norman, "Ex Nihilo: The Development of the Doctrines of God and Creation in Early Christianity," Brigham Young University Studies 17 no. 3 (1977), 291–318. off-site
  • Blake T. Ostler, "Bridging the Gulf (Review of How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation)," FARMS Review of Books 11/2 (1999): 103–177. off-site
  • Blake T. Ostler, "Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought (review of Review of Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, "Craftsman or Creator? An Examination of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation and a Defense of Creatio ex nihilo," in The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement, edited by Beckwith, Mosser, and Owen)," FARMS Review 17/2 (2005): 253–320. off-site

Printed material

  • Bernhard W. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation: Old Testament Perspectives (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 30.
  • Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (Gloucester: Smith, 1970), 194–198.
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