The Question
In reference to Genesis 1, did God create the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), or did He create it from existing matter and organize it?
Why this Matters
What’s at stake is much more than meets the eye. Important theological doctrine lives or dies with the answer to this question. The nature of God, the role of Jesus Christ and His relationship to God and us, our relationship to Him, our own value, and keys to understanding difficult questions, such as The Problem of Evil.
The Changing Answer Through the Ages
Most theologians today insist the word create in Genesis 1, or "bara" in Hebrew is understood to mean “to make something out of nothing" (ex nihilo). This must be so in their minds or the very sanctity of God is at stake. In other words, if God did not create out of nothing, then it is possible for matter, or even man, to be coeternal with God. This is blasphemy in their minds as it demeans the power and majesty of God. It also opens the door to other doctrine they cannot fathom to even be possible, such as the extremely prevalent doctrine in early Christianity of human deification.
But creation out of nothing has not always been the orthodox belief. Contrary to most of todays theologians' claims, their belief in ex nihilo creation was not shared by the first Christians.
According to Gerhard May, in Schoepfung Aus Dem Nichts, the concept of creation ex nihilo “began to be adumbrated in Christian circles shortly before Galen's time. The first Christian thinker to articulate the rudiments of a doctrine of creation 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.”
Thus, the doctrine of creation out of nothing was first advanced by a Gnostic (a heretical branch of Christianity), and even then it did not appear until more than a century after the birth of Christ.
However, the idea of God using pre-existing material in creation was common belief shared by many of the early Church Fathers, confirming that beliefs about the mechanism of creation altered over time.
Justin Martyr (A.D. 110-165) 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.”
Clement of Alexandria (c.150-215) 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...”
As was the case in many cherished doctrine among the early Christians, Greek philosophical ideas intruded on Christian doctrine, often changing it altogether.
What we see in all texts from about 165 A.D. and after is that Platonic philosophy, both Middle and Neo, have infiltrated Christian thought and became a basis for major innovations in doctrine. To promote a restorationists view, we clearly see an apostasy in action here. The personal God of the Bible known through revelation and personal encounter is suddenly too far removed from the human sphere of existence to be involved in such things with humans. The notion that humans are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1: 26) must be reinterpreted to fit the Platonic view, that God is utterly unique and entirely unlike humans.
The adoption of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo had other far reaching implications for the history and form of Christian theology even to our own day. The doctrine of creation out of nothing led inevitably to what came from the council of Chalcedon, which put in stone the idea that Christ was one person having two natures, consubstantial with the Father in his deity. This two-nature theory of Christology assured that the Platonic view of natures and substance would be essential to make sense (at least to the Greek mind) of the doctrine of God within the new creedal tradition. This way of thinking gave rise to what became todays popular doctrine of the Trinity--that God is three in substance.
The doctrine of creation out of nothing also leads to incorrect arguments in which everything that occurs must be caused by God, for if he didn’t cause each substance to exist anew in each moment, it would cease to exist. By definition, this must include both good and evil creations--even Satan himself.
Well-known author Edwin Hatch noted the influence of some Greek philosophical ideas in the change to the now orthodox belief in creation ex nihilo:
“With Basilides [a second century Gnostic philosopher], the conception of matter was raised to a higher plane. The distinction of subject and object was preserved, so that the action of the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not of evolution; but it was "out of that which was not" that He made things to be . . . . The basis of the theory was Platonic, though some of the terms were borrowed from both Aristotle and the Stoics. It became itself the basis for the theory which ultimately prevailed in the Church.” The transition appears in Tatian, ca. A.D. 170.
Evaluation only from the Scriptures, “sola scriptura”
The definition of the word bara in Hebrew is an abstract concept with no apparent concrete foundation. The English translation we conceive is therefore not a Hebrew concept, and as we shall see, the translated word can and does change throughout the scriptures. But a simple view of its use through hermeneutics can help. In Genesis 2:7 it states that the Almighty “formed” man. The Hebrew word here translated as “formed” is the verb “yatsar” and is best understood as the process of pressing clay together to form an object such as a figurine. We can plainly see from this verse that man was made from something; however, in Genesis 1:27 we read, according to most translators, “God created (“bara”) man”, and it is said this means from nothing. However, as we have discovered, man was made from something. In fact in Genesis 2:7 it states that God formed man out of dust. Therefore the word “create” or “bara” in Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:27 cannot mean to make something out of nothing. By examining other passages where this word appears, we can begin to see its true meaning more clearly.
“‘Why do you kick at My slaughtering and My offering which I have commanded in My Dwelling Place, and esteem your sons above Me, to make yourselves fat (bara) with the best of all the offerings of Israel My people?” (1 Sam 2:29).
Believe it or not, the word “bara” is translated as “fat” in the verse above and is the original concrete meaning of this word. With this translation in mind, what would it mean in Genesis 1:1 when it says, “Elohim fattened the heavens and the earth”? When an animal is chosen for the slaughter, it is placed in a pen and fed grain so that it can be fattened, or “filled up.” This idea of “filling up” is now more relevant to the next verse.
“And the earth became formless and empty (unfilled)…” (Genesis 1:2)
The New Testament does not teach creation ex nihilo. To the contrary, 2 Peter 3:5 expressly teaches that God created out of the already existing chaotic waters, Hebrews 11:3 expressly teaches that God created the visible world from the already existing invisible world, and Romans 4:17 teaches that God created from an already existing substrate.
Numbers 16:30 describes a miracle, but not technically an ex nihilo event. There are several similar uses in the book of Ezekiel. In the well-known petition of king David, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalms 51:10), he uses the word, bara.
Thinking of God organizing or filling in the creation process simply makes more sense in English and is more true to the word, bara.
Let’s consider 2 Corinthians 4:18. “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal", suggesting that aspects of the created "unseen world" are eternal, despite the exercise of God's creative power upon them.
Further, Michael L.T. Griffith in One Lord, One Faith, clarifies the Greek portion of the puzzle. “The Greek text translated from Hebrew does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials, since the verb “ktidzo" carried an architectural connotation...as in 'to build' or 'establish' a city.... Thus, the verb presupposes the presence of already existing material.”
Conclusion
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who support the view of creation ex materia, are often held up as the "bad" example when this topic is criticized. Critics of the LDS church in their stance on this issue claim Joseph Smith’s theology to be Pagan, false and recently contrived.
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:
“Far from reverting to paganism or simply falling into sloppy thinking, Smith was carrying his confidence in Christ to its fullest possible expression....All things are possible not only for us but also for God, in that this universe does not exhaust the divine creativity. The universe is not big enough to hold the majesty of God’s ingenuity. Rather than reacting negatively to the apparently infinite expansiveness of the universe, Smith called astronomy’s bluff and multiplied the universe by the same expansive factor. Smith was wiping the theological slate clean of the Neo-Platonic metaphysics that had so influenced Augustine.”
Doctrine and Covenants 93: 29 is a verse that can be easily read through without much notice, but it literally explodes millennia of debate and error and opens up this issue in wonder and simplicity, “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”
Among other important doctrine, it blew apart The Problem of Evil, at least in part. This is a philosophical and theological problem that basically states; If God is good, and God is omnipotent, why does evil exist? Either He can’t or won’t eliminate it. This dilemma drives people to atheism more than any other issue. Probably the biggest “evil” here is man and his evil works. Why would God create this evil being in the first place? Answer: He didn’t—at least not the inner part with the predisposition to choose good or evil. But He is trying His best to change that evil part into good. He is literally our Heavenly Father as He is the Father of our spirits, but we have always existed.
Joseph Smith’s theology is simple, yet vast as the multiverse. It eliminates Neo-Platonism and Augustine’s part therein. It reestablishes the belief that we are a whole universe more personal with God and significantly elevates our potential—that we really were made in the image and likeness of God. It is my conviction that his theology was revealed to him from God himself. Given his lack of education, this is by far the most logical conclusion. Man’s medaling with theology, even by well-educated theologians and philosophers, without God’s help too often leads down a road to more and more error and misunderstanding, and it is no different in this case.
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