Creation Ex Nihilo: A doctrine created out of nothing?

natitude said:

God organizes existing material to bring about His divine purposes. The Bible doesn't provide any additional information as far as I know.



Can't the same issue be raised about the existence of God Himself?

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Would you mind responding to:

First Cause Argument

Aussie Pete said:

I agree. What I don't understand is how Catholicism went from God being Creator to evolution.

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Because the Bible got biology wrong.

Nihilist Virus said:

Because the Bible got biology wrong.

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Genesis 30:30-43
King James Version
30 For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it is now increased unto a multitude; and the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also?

31 And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock.

32 I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire.

33 So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me.

34 And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word.

35 And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons.

36 And he set three days' journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks.

37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.

38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.

39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

40 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle.

41 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.

42 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.

43 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.

"Gap theory is the notion that there is an indeterminate amount of time (the gap) between the first two verses of Genesis. Genesis 1:1 states: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Next comes the gap of possibly millions of years. Then, Genesis 1:2 states: "And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters" (Thompson). Such a gap allows for the lengthy geologic record to harmonize with the Bible. " The Age of the Earth - Creationism and Biblical Geneologies: Mike Janssen https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=eng_fac_pub Formless and Void: Gap Theory Creationism | National Center for Science Education

Old Earth Creation
A Travel Guide to the Evangelical Creation Debates: What is Old Earth Creationism?

The Sad Legacy of Father Jaki’s Writings on Evolution
April 14, 20180 15 minutes read
by Hugh Owen

Starting Point: Fr. Jaki on Genesis 1-11

For all their differences, Stanley Jaki, O.S.B., and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., agreed on one fundamental point: contemporary natural scientists are much more reliable than the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Councils of the past in explaining the origins of man and the universe. In Genesis 1 through the Ages, Fr. Jaki recognized that bringing Genesis 1 into harmony with the views of mainstream natural science required a radical departure from traditional exegesis. Calling Genesis 1 “a marvelous story”, Fr. Jaki confessed that:

As I reviewed one after another the great commentaries on Genesis 1, I could not help feeling how close their authors were time and again to an interpretation which is strictly literal and yet at the same time puts that marvellous story at safe remove from any comparison with science, old and new.[1]

Determined to reconcile Genesis with the majority view in the natural sciences, including its acceptance of biological evolution, Fr. Jaki argued that Genesis 1 was a “post-exilic” work whose sole purpose was to show that God is the creator of all things, without conveying any information as to when or how He created the world. Since this view contradicts the constant teaching of the Church Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Councils, it is not surprising that Fr. Jaki’s argument for his thesis breaks down quickly under scrutiny. And since an exhaustive critique of Fr. Jaki’s exegesis of Genesis 1 is beyond the scope of this article, it will suffice to show that the two pillars of his interpretation have no foundation whatsoever. These pillars are 1) the impossibility of light before the sun, and 2) the use of the word bara in Genesis 1.

Light before the Sun?

Like all theistic evolutionists, Fr. Jaki discounted the notion of correspondence between the “days” of Genesis and actual solar days. As Robert Sungenis explains:

[The Theistic evolutionist argues] that there can be no day/night sequence on the so-called first day of Creation, since the sun was created afterward, on the fourth day. He will reason that, since it is obvious today that the sun is what causes the day/night sequence on earth, there could have been no day/night sequence before the sun was created, and therefore, the days of Genesis are neither literal nor chronological.

On the surface, this sounds like a cogent argument. Fr. Stanley Jaki . . . considers it his strongest argument to deny a chronological, 24-hour period, creation sequence. For him, if the sun is missing from the first day, then there can be no darkness and light, and thus the days of Genesis are symbolic of long periods of time. Either that, or the sun existed on the first day and is recapitulated on the fourth day.[2]

We will answer this objection from two perspectives, the first from science, the second from Scripture.
The Sad Legacy of Father Jaki’s Writings on Evolution - Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Google fr. stanley jaki "eternal matter"
Fr. Stanley Jaki Genesis "creation out of nothing"

0 Third, un-created and eternal matter is unnecessary within the context of true
creation. Creation implies no preexisting matter, the matter, however conceived, relies
on, and has its origin, in God. Fourth, “creation is not an emanation, of the divine substance, not a procession from the divine substance. Creation is not a generation.”41
https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2264&context=etd
Strudwick, D. (2008). A Contemporary Consideration of the Role of Metaphysics in Systematic Theology: The Contributions of Pope
John Paul II and Claude Tresmontant (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from A Contemporary Consideration of the Role of Metaphysics in Systematic Theology: The Contributions of Pope John Paul II and Claude Tresmontant

Genesis 1: A Cosmogenesis? - Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Jaki extended this concept vastly to include
all ancient cultures He accounts for the “stillbirths of
science” in all major ancient cultures on the basis of the
absence, in all of them, of belief in creation out of nothing and in time. Jaki further illustrated how science
became a self-sustaining enterprise only in the medieval
Christian West,
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/paul-michael-haffner/Jaki.pdf

natitude said:

Does "all things" include God the Father?



Given your literal interpretation, do you believe that Christ was even before the Father? And is the Father being held together by the Son?



I'm unaware of Latter-day Saint teachings that specifically address Colossians 1:17, but it is generally taught that Christ created the universe under the direction of the Father. It would be assumed that Christ put whatever mechanisms necessary in place to hold the universe together.

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Technology all members of the Trinity had no beginning, nor end.

Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought

The Rev N. Joseph Torchia, O. P., Ph. D. noted:

But the contention that 2Mc 7:28 upholds creation ex nihilo is by no means a universally shared assumption among contemporary scholars. The dispute surrounds the formula ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησεν (the reading of Lucian 55 311, Origen GCS 10.22.14 on Jn 1:17, Latin M, Syriac) and its unambiguous pronouncement of creation “from what does not exist.” The alternate reading (A V 106, Latin BP, Coptic) of οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων carries the connotation of “not from existent things”, a formula less explicit in its comitment to creation from absolutely nothing at all. In this respect, J. C. O’Neill suggests that the original reading was ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησεν, stressing that the very need to highlight the “novelty” inherent in this act of making required a formula indicating an exceptional case (even as he concedes that the preposition ἐξ “implied some pre-existing stuff”). (Rev. N. Joseph Torchia, O. P., Ph. D., Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought, Lexington Books: 2019, p 18, 19)

This review tells us that Torchia is not to be taken seriously.
Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought: The Beginning of All Things by Joseph Torchia, O.P (review)
Project MUSE - <i>Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought: The Beginning of All Things</i> by Joseph Torchia, O.P (review)
Its connection with Plato's Timaeus Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought: The Beginning of All Things by Joseph Torchia,, O.P. | Boomerang Books lets us know that LDS thinking comes from Man, not a god.

I am curious why LDS ignore his book, Creatio ex nihilo and the theology of St. Augustine : the anti-Manichaean polemic and beyond by N. Joseph Torchia( Book )

16 editions published between 1999 and 2012 in English and held by 329 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

"This study proceeds from an investigation of the significance of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in some of the key components of St. Augustine's extended anti-Manichaean polemic. To a great extent, his devastating critique of the Manichaeans' world view, their conception of evil, and their most fundamental theological presuppositions relied heavily upon the affirmation that God ultimately created everything that exists from nothing
Torchia, N. Joseph 1953- (Natale Joseph) [WorldCat Identities]

natitude said:

This link has a few dozen quotes from scholars regarding the existence of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in the Bible.

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"
The death of Alexander the Great of Greece in 323 BCE led to the breakup of the Greek empire as three of his generals fought for supremacy and divided the Middle East among themselves. Ptolemy secured control of Egypt and the Land of Israel. Seleucus grabbed Syria and Asia Minor, and Antigonus took Greece.

The Land of Israel was thus sandwiched between two of the rivals and, for the next 125 years, Seleucids and Ptolemies battled for this prize. The former finally won in 198 B.C. when Antiochus III defeated the Egyptians and incorporated Judea into his empire. Initially, he continued to allow the Jews autonomy, but after a stinging defeat at the hands of the Romans he began a program of Hellenization that threatened to force the Jews to abandon their monotheism for the Greeks' paganism. Antiochus backed down in the face of Jewish opposition to his effort to introduce idols in their temples, but his son, Antiochus IV, who inherited the throne in 176 B.C. resumed his father's original policy without excepting the Jews. A brief Jewish rebellion only hardened his views and led him to outlaw central tenets of Judaism such as the Sabbath and circumcision, and defile the holy Temple by erecting an altar to the god Zeus, allowing the sacrifice of pigs, and opening the shrine to non-Jews.

The Jewish Hammer
Though many Jews had been seduced by the virtues of Hellenism, the extreme measures adopted by Antiochus helped unite the people. When a Greek official tried to force a priest named Mattathias to make a sacrifice to a pagan god, the Jew murdered the man. Predictably, Antiochus began reprisals, but in 167 BCE the Jews rose up behind Mattathias and his five sons and fought for their liberation.

The family of Mattathias became known as the Maccabees, from the Hebrew word for "hammer," because they were said to strike hammer blows against their enemies. Jews refer to the Maccabees, but the family is more commonly known as the Hasmoneans.

Like other rulers before him, Antiochus underestimated the will and strength of his Jewish adversaries and sent a small force to put down the rebellion. When that was annihilated, he led a more powerful army into battle only to be defeated. In 164 BCE, Jerusalem was recaptured by the Maccabees and the Temple purified, an event that gave birth to the holiday of Chanukah.

Jews Regain Their Independence

It took more than two decades of fighting before the Maccabees forced the Seleucids to retreat from the Land of Israel. By this time Antiochus had died and his successor agreed to the Jews' demand for independence. In the year 142 BCE, after more than 500 years of subjugation, the Jews were again masters of their own fate.

When Mattathias died, the revolt was led by his son Judas, or Judah Maccabee, as he is often called. By the end of the war, Simon was the only one of the five sons of Mattathias to survive and he ushered in an 80-year period of Jewish independence in Judea, as the Land of Israel was now called. The kingdom regained boundaries not far short of Solomon's realm and Jewish life flourished.

The Hasmoneans claimed not only the throne of Judah, but also the post of High Priest. This assertion of religious authority conflicted with the tradition of the priests coming from the descendants of Moses' brother Aaron and the tribe of Levi.
"History & Overview of the Maccabees

ARISTOTELIANISM
Abraham *Ibn Daud, the first of the Jewish Aristotelians, in his Emunah Ramah, adopted the Aristotelian concepts of form and matter, substance and accident, and the categories, finding allusions to the categories in the 139th Psalm. Unable to accept the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter insofar as it conflicted with the biblical concept of creation, Ibn Daud posited the existence of a formless prime matter which was the first stage in the process of creation.
...
*Levi b. Gershom disagreed with the Aristotelian notion that time and motion are infinite (Milḥamot Adonai, pt. 6, 1:10–12). Levi proved that the world was created from the teleological character of nature. Just as every particular object in nature moves toward the realization of its own particular goal, so the universe, the sum total of all the things that exist within it, moves toward an ultimate end. He is unique among Jewish philosophers in that he rejects the idea of creation ex nihilo, maintaining that there existed an eternal absolutely formless matter out of which God at a particular point in time created the universe (ibid., 1:17–28). He interprets the biblical story of creation to coincide with this theory.

Nature

So, do LDS think that God is subject to eternal laws and eternal matter?

They recruited tough Jewish people on the way and began a guerrilla war as they started to take over the northern villages of Judea. They tore down the altars of idols and killed those who worshipped them, even many Hellenistic Jews. Mattathias died in 166 BCE but just before death, he left Judah in charge of his army.
The Maccabean Revolt

Mattathias Biblical, Hellenistic Jews, fallen away from the Jewish faith.

Peter Hayman concurs:

“Nearly all recent studies on the origin of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo have come to the conclusion that this doctrine is not native to Judaism, is nowhere attested in the Hebrew Bible, and probably arose in Christianity in the second century C. E. in the course of its fierce battle with Gnosticism.” (Peter Hayman, “Monotheism – A misused word in Jewish Studies?”)

We know that creation ex nihilo came up at least in 166 BC which refutes the above nonsense.

The bringing into existence of the world by the act of God. Most Jewish philosophers find in (Gen. i. 1) creation ex nihilo (). The etymological meaning of the verb , however, is "to cut out and put into shape," and thus presupposes the use of material. This fact was recognized by Ibn Ezra and Naḥmanides, for instance (commentaries on Gen. i. 1; see also Maimonides, "Moreh Nebukim," ii. 30), and constitutes one of the arguments in the discussion of the problem.

Whatever may be the nature of the traditions in Genesis (see Cosmogony), and however strong may be the presumption that they suggest the existence of an original substance which was reshaped in accordance with the Deity's purposes (see Dragon; Darkness), it is clear that the Prophets and many of the Psalms accept without reservation the doctrine of creation from nothing by the will of a supermundane personal God (Ps. xxxiii. 6-9, cii. 26, cxxi. 2; Jer. x. 12; Isa. xlii. 5, xlv. 7-9): "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." To such a degree has this found acceptance as the doctrine of the Synagogue that God has come to be desinated as "He who spake and the world sprang into existence" (see Baruk She-Amar and 'Er. 13b; Meg. 13b; Sanh. 19a, 105a; Ḥid. 31a; Ḥul. 63b, 84b; Sifre to Num. § 84; Gen. R. 34b; Ex. R. xxv.; Shab. 139a; Midrash Mishle, 10c). God is "the author of creation," ("bereshit" having become the technical term for "creation"; Gen. R. xvi.; Ber. 54a, 58a; Ḥag. 12a, 18a; Ḥul. 83a; Ecclus. [Sirach] xv. 14).

The belief in God as the author of creation ranks first among the thirteen fundamentals (see Articles of Faith) enumerated by Maimonides. It occurs in the Yigdal, where God is called , "anterior [because Himself uncreated] to all that was created "; in the Adon 'Olam; and it is taught in all modern Jewish catechisms.

Difficulties of the Conception.
Nevertheless, Jewish literature (Talmudic, pseudoepigraphic, and philosophical) shows that the difficulties involved in this assumption of a creation ex nihilo () and in time, were recognized at a very early day, and that there were many among the Jews who spoke out on this subject with perfect candor and freedom. Around the first chapter of Genesis was waged many a controversy with both fellow Jews and non-Jews. The influence of Greek ideas is clearly discernible in various Midrashic homilies on the subject—e.g., those dealing with the mode of divine creation (Gen. R. i., "God looked into the Torah, and through it He created"—a Platonic idea; ib. x.); with the view of God as architect (ib. i.; Ḥag. 12; compare Philo, "De Opificiis Mundi," iv.); with the creative word or letter (Gen. R. i.; Midr. ha-Gadol, ed. Schechter, pp. 10 et seq.; Pesiḳ. R. xxi.; Yer. Ḥag. ii. 77c); with the original elements (Gen. R. x.; Ex. R. xiii., xv.; Yer. Ḥag. ii. 77a); with the order of creation, the subject of the well-known controversy between the schools of Hillel and Shammai (compare Ḥag. 12a; Taan. 32a; Pirḳe R. El. xxxvi.); with the various acts of creation assigned to various days (Charles, "Book of Jubilees," 1902, pp. 11 et seq.); with the time consumed in creation (Ber. R, xii.); with successive creations (Pes. 54a; Gen. R. i.; Ab. R. N. xxxvii.); and, finally, with the purpose of creation (Abot vi.; Sanh. 98b; Ber. 6b, 61b; see also Bacher, "Ag. Tan." and "Ag. Pal. Amor.," Indices, s.v. "Weltschöpfung," etc.). The Slavonic Enoch (xxiii.-xxxv.) contains an elaborate presentation of old Jewish cosmogonic speculations, apparently under Egyptian Orphic influences (see N. Bonwetsch, "Das Slavische Henochbuch," Berlin, 1896; "The Book of the Secrets of Enoch," ed. by W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, Oxford, 1896).
CREATION - JewishEncyclopedia.com

COSMOGONY.


By: Kaufmann Kohler, Emil G. Hirsch
Table of Contents

• —Biblical Data:
• Early Hebrew Cosmogony.
• Babylonian Cosmogony.
• Babylonian Accounts.
• Earlier Versions.
• —In Post-Biblical Literature:
• The Primal Elements.
• The Upper and the Lower World.
• Midrash Konen.
• Sefer Yezirah.

—Biblical Data:
A theory concerning the origin ("begetting") of the world; the mythological or ante-scientific view, as preserved in the traditions, oral or written, and the folk-poetry of primitive and ancient peoples.

Curiosity concerning the origin of the visible universe and the manner and order in which the various forms of life came into being, manifested itself at a comparatively early period. Cosmogonies are, therefore, found among nearly all races, and form a large part of their mythologies, preserved as tribal or national traditions. Old as they are, they reflect climatic and cultural conditions of various localities; and these differences, often unharmonized, appear in the later literary and religious versions. The original cosmogonies are spontaneous productions of folk-fancy, and are therefore unsystematic, forming as a rule only a chapter in the theogonies or genealogies of the gods.

COSMOGONY - JewishEncyclopedia.com

"Moreover, the Church Fathers, though heavily influenced by Greek thought, dug in their heels concerning the doctrine of creation, sturdily insisting on the temporal creation of the universe ex nihilo in opposition to the prevailing Hellenistic doctrine of the eternity of matter. [2] A tradition of robust argumentation against the past eternity of the world and in favor of creatio ex nihilo, issuing from the Alexandrian Christian theologian John Philoponus (d. 580?), continued for centuries in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought. [3] In 1215 the Catholic church promulgated temporal creatio ex nihilo as official church doctrine at the Fourth Lateran Council, declaring God to be “Creator of all things, visible and invisible, . . . who, by His almighty power, from the beginning of time has created both orders in the same way out of nothing.” [4] This remarkable declaration not only affirms that God created everything apart from Himself without recourse to any material cause, but even that time itself had a beginning. The doctrine of creation is thus inherently bound up with temporal considerations and entails that God brought the universe into being at some point in the past without any antecedent or contemporaneous material cause."
Creation ex nihilo: Theology and Science | Reasonable Faith