Creatio ex nihilo and Genesis 1

Creatio ex nihilo is the teaching that God created the universe out of nothing. The idea is compatible with the Big Bang theory as often presented: the universe started with a singularity of infinite density; before the Bang occured, there was no "matter" or "stuff." With the Bang, symmetry breaking occured, and matter came into existence.

Gen 1 does not teach creatio ex nihilo. It does not narrate the creation of an inchoate earth, the waters of the abyss, the darkness which covered the abyss, or the wind that hovered over said waters; all of the above pre-exist the first creative fiat the narrator recounts: "Let there be light!" (Gen 1:2-3). It does not explain the existence of divine beings apart from God and apart from creation, those included in the "Let us make man" of Gen 1:26. But Gen 1 does teach what creatio ex nihilo teaches: that the universe is, without remainder, the product of a sovereign infinite singularity, referred to as "God." In Gen 1, there is no place for a power in heaven or earth comparable to that of the sole deity described throughout as the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. 

University of Chicago theologian Langdon Gilkey argued that the notion of creatio ex nihilo is a bulwark against metaphysical dualism - the idea that the way things are is the product of two principles, good and evil, with evil a fundamental reality no less than good. On this view, the nature and nurture of human beings comes to concrete expression in the clash of conflicting powers each of which is its own final arbiter. In the polytheism of ancient Israel's environment, there were not two but any number of supernal powers at odds with each other, whose fortunes fall and rise. 

Dualism and multipolarism are far and away the most popular worldviews on the market today. Their objective correlatives are things like vegetarianism, pacifism, and relentlessly happy movies. The options make aesthetic sense and local (as opposed to global) sense in terms of right and wrong to those who espouse them. If evil has as much ontological and teleological integrity as good, and is not subservient to the good, the mere taint of it will be avoided. 

According to Gilkey, dualism contradicts

. . . two basic affirmations about God and his world . . . The first of these is that God is the Almighty Sovereign of all existence. . . . Secondly, a metaphysical dualism . . . always tends to become a moral dualism in which all good comes from the divine and all evil from the opposing principle.¹

Dualism infuses the post-modern mind. An epitome of the “new theology” might go like this. (1) God is like a weak and helpless baby. We must nurture her. We must not lead her into temptation; we must deliver her from evil. (2) [in apparent contradiction to (1)] God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

In the "old theology," (1) God - the good, the true, the beautiful - is Alpha and Omega and not manipulable by human hands;  (2) God is good but God also transcends good and evil and makes use of evil for the good. Objective correlatives include things like slaughter (eating of meat) in which the taking of life is sacralized; a goal-oriented use of violence; and movies that, even if they end well, are full of darkness before dawn. 

Creatio ex nihilo stands foursquare in the old theology. It is a logical development from Gen 1, because Gen 1 knows of a singular power that established the cosmos for good, and it conceives of the cosmos as dependent on that power alone. 

According to Gilkey, [in post-Old Testament theology,] it was “discovered that in order to express the traditional monotheism of Jewish and Christian religions, [one] must, in speaking of creation, insist on creation out of nothing,” that God is “the sole sovereign Lord of existence,” and that “every aspect of existence must be essentially dependent on His power as the ground and basis of its being,”  “that since all that is comes from God’s will as its sole source, nothing in existence can be intrinsically evil.”²

It follows that the doctrine of creation cannot be separated from the doctrine of providence, otherwise known as creatio continua. It follows that Gen 1 teaches what creatio ex nihilo teaches, that “every aspect of existence must be essentially dependent on His power as the ground and basis of its being,” even if, as is probable, Gen 1:1 does not describe the creation of heaven and earth out of nothing but is a summary statement introducing creation by fiat and from pre-existing materials (Gen 1:2-31). Indeed, Gen 1:1 is probably not a summary statement; even less, the account of a first event; rather, it is most likely an introductory temporal marker, "At the beginning of God's creating of heaven and earth . . ." Nonetheless, as already noted, there is no place in Gen 1 for a power in heaven or earth comparable to that of the deity described throughout as the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth.  

Technical Note  (Added 1/2012)

As Robert Holmstedt has argued, "Grammatically, the introduction to Genesis simply indicates that it is this particular rē'šît from which the rest of the story as we know it unfolds" ("The Restrictive Syntax of Gen i 1," VT 58 (2008) 58-67; 66). Gen 1:1 "is a stage-setting prepositional phrase, providing a temporal frame of reference ... for what follows" (op. cit., 65). The matrix clause of Gen 1:1-3 is, on my understanding, Gen 1:3 "God said, 'Let there be light.'" The same understanding is represented in the Andersen–Forbes Phrase Marker Analysis of the Hebrew Bible available through Logos Bible Software. Gen 1:1 is identified as a grammatical marker of "time point" and Gen 1:3 as the matrix clause. Andersen = Francis I. Andersen, an accomplished Hebraist of the last fifty years. 

¹ Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth: The Christian Doctrine of Creation in the Light of Modern Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1965 [1959]) 47-48.

² Ibid., 49-50.

Comments

[The Mission 2]

I'm slightly confused by what you mean by "Gen 1 does not teach creatio ex nihilo, but it does teach what creatio ex nihilo teaches: that the universe is, without remainder, the product of an infinite singularity." Are you able to expand on this specific phrase? Are you saying that God created the universe from nothing or the opposite? I'm sorry, I just seemed to get lost with your explanation.

[Chariots of Fire 2]

The idea of the creatio ex nihilo is easy to understand, but following the ways it applies to Genesis 1 is kind of confusing. My impression from it is that Genesis does not teach creatio ex nihlio but it teaches some of the same guidelines of it. I’m not sure if you are saying that they use that idea of creatio ex nihilo to base dualism and multipolarism off of it too. It sounds like creation ex nihilo is the building/modeling block for some ideas.In addition to The Mission2, I don’t understand it very well and am confused with the explanation.