Meaning of creation ex nihilo?

[tansy]

Having just had a quick look on a thread inPhys and Life sciences touching on this subject got me wondering.
I THINK creation ex nihilo means creation out of nothing...but what exactly does that mean? Did God literally create out of nothing, or do you think He actually created from energy that is part of His being, somehow? Or do you think that's not possible as He is spirit?
Any thoughts? Scripture says that His creation is maintained by His power?..or is that a misquote..can't remember where to find the exact verse

 

[Dark_Lite]

Ex nihilo literally means from nothing in Latin.

As far as my personal take on what it "means" in the larger sense:
God literally formed, from nothing, the singularity that was to become the big bang and placed it in whatever unfathomable concept of nothingness it was in (can't be in space because space started with the big bang). He then said "bang" and it was big.

Most Christian theological thought places the physical and spiritual as two philosophical substances. Therefore, I don't think that he created the physical world in any way from part of his own being. But, creation is touched by his power because 1) the physical substance was created by him, and 2) he has the ability to interact with the entirety of creation much like we can interact with physical objects we create. We are on the "outside" of those objects, so to speak, just as God is outside the entirety of creation.

 

[Assyrian]

Having just had a quick look on a thread inPhys and Life sciences touching on this subject got me wondering.
I THINK creation ex nihilo means creation out of nothing...but what exactly does that mean? Did God literally create out of nothing, or do you think He actually created from energy that is part of His being, somehow? Or do you think that's not possible as He is spirit?
Any thoughts? Scripture says that His creation is maintained by His power?..or is that a misquote..can't remember where to find the exact verse

The verse you are looking for is Heb 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. There is also Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I think God creating from energy that is part of his being, is a quite a different idea from ex nihilo creation. It is really ex deo, creation, not out of nothing, but out of part of God himself. Which would make the universe itself and all that is in it, divine.

 

[tansy]

Ex nihilo literally means from nothing in Latin.

As far as my personal take on what it "means" in the larger sense:
God literally formed, from nothing, the singularity that was to become the big bang and placed it in whatever unfathomable concept of nothingness it was in (can't be in space because space started with the big bang). He then said "bang" and it was big.

Most Christian theological thought places the physical and spiritual as two philosophical substances. Therefore, I don't think that he created the physical world in any way from part of his own being. But, creation is touched by his power because 1) the physical substance was created by him, and 2) he has the ability to interact with the entirety of creation much like we can interact with physical objects we create. We are on the "outside" of those objects, so to speak, just as God is outside the entirety of creation.

Thank you for your response. That's what I assumed....but how about the spiritual realm that He created - angels etc? I assume that the spiritual realm is also separate.
Which actually makes me wonder about the new birth and the Holy Spirit indwelling us...how do you view that? Do you think that our spirits are kind of imbued with God's, or do you think the HS dwells separately within us?
I know in a way that these questions are impossible to answer, or to really comprehend any answers....but I'm curious, partly also as atheists seem to find it impossible to imagine that God could create ex nihilo.

 

[tansy]

The verse you are looking for is Heb 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. There is also Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I think God creating from energy that is part of his being, is a quite a different idea from ex nihilo creation. It is really ex deo, creation, not out of nothing, but out of part of God himself. Which would make the universe itself and all that is in it, divine.

Thanks for your reply, Assyrian. Also for the scriptures..I tend to get muddled between Col. and Cor 1 and 2.
Your reply is interesting in that many people think that we are gods and they practically worship nature etc..pantheism etc.
So maybe the answer to my question is quite important, otherwise it could lead to false ideas or worshipping in the wrong place.
Of course, I suppose it also depends on what is meant by divine...maybe on one level, one could say that everything IS divine in that it pertains to God, as He created everything (sorry if I'm not putting this very well) - but of course, if one starts saying things like that, then as I said above, it can perhaps lead to wrong perceptions and worship.
So ex nihilo sounds more correct to me than ex deo.
Anyone else with any thoughts?

 

[juvenissun]

The verse you are looking for is Heb 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. There is also Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I think God creating from energy that is part of his being, is a quite a different idea from ex nihilo creation. It is really ex deo, creation, not out of nothing, but out of part of God himself. Which would make the universe itself and all that is in it, divine.

I don't have much idea about this issue.

Why or how would this issue matter?

I see, if the creation is part of God Himself, does that mean there is something about God in a small grass? I don't like the idea. It implies pantheism.

 

[Ekuda]

Having just had a quick look on a thread inPhys and Life sciences touching on this subject got me wondering.
I THINK creation ex nihilo means creation out of nothing...but what exactly does that mean? Did God literally create out of nothing, or do you think He actually created from energy that is part of His being, somehow? Or do you think that's not possible as He is spirit?
Any thoughts? Scripture says that His creation is maintained by His power?..or is that a misquote..can't remember where to find the exact verse

God spoke (commanded) matter into existence from nothing, how He did this is unknown to me. It puts a smile on my face just thinking about it because it is so far beyond my comprehension.

Also, I fail to see what Him being a spirit has to do with anything...

Do you think that our spirits are kind of imbued with God's, or do you think the HS dwells separately within us?
Paul tells us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit - draw from that what you will. That is part of the reason for his strong stance against sexual immorality, as it desecrates our body where the Spirit resides. I take it to mean that the Holy Spirit dwells within each believer. The exact nature of this is something that I'm unsure on.

partly also as atheists seem to find it impossible to imagine that God could create ex nihilo.

... and to get around it atheists have to come up with different ideas (like the oscillating universe) to which there is no known mechanism that would allow a bounce back after their hypothetical big crunch in addition to other problems. I think that it is much more reasonable to presume that the universe was created from nothing with a lot of usable energy and is now running down.

That's ignoring the obvious point that atheists have already ruled out God and Him creating as a possibility, and so they have to explain our existence through material processes only.

 

[Dark_Lite]

Thank you for your response. That's what I assumed....but how about the spiritual realm that He created - angels etc? I assume that the spiritual realm is also separate.

WARNING: Philosophy ahead.

Well, if heaven is described as being in the presence of God, then there is something in there that suggests that the "spiritual realm" may be from the same substance that God is of. So, I think it would be fairly logical to say that the spiritual realm could be God creating it from his own substance. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

The main problem that arises in a dualistic substance theory is the interaction between the two substances. This is classically seen in the mind-body problem. If the mind is a separate substance from the body, how does it communicate with the body? Answers have ranged from:

1. There is only a physical substance. This is can be monism (the mind is reducible to physical states), property dualism (mental states can't be reduced, but still one physical substance). This is a decent answer, but in the context of Christianity, we must reject the answer because it denies the dualism of body and soul. It could still work for someone who believes in supernatural creation though, if they were to be a deist.

2. There is some sort of currently unknown process where the mind communicates to the body. Descartes, who came up with this idea, said it happened in the hippocampus I believe. This is bad because all the evidence we have about neurology disagrees, and Descartes was pretty much just making up stuff at the point when he decided to use the hippocampus.

3. There is no physical substance, only mental. Anything physical is a perception created by the mind. This is idealism. This is bad because how do all humans, with their own mental perceptions, interact with each other in a unified fashion?

4. Somewhere between the two extremes of idealism and monism. This is Kant's theory of transcendental idealism, where the mind brings the perceptions of space and time to the table, but we exist in some sort of world. However, since we are beings of time and space, we can't know what the world is really like. This world is referred to as the noumenal world, and the world we perceive the phenomenal world.

So the problem with our two separate substances (physical and spiritual--our universe and heaven) is: how does God and other spiritual creatures such as angels, whom are of a completely different type of existence, interact with our physical world? We could chalk the answer up to "God is infinitely powerful!" but I don't think that's a very satisfying answer.

My own personal theory is that the creation basically has a number of external "dials and buttons" God can turn or press. That's a terrible analogy, but basically the bridge between the physical and the spiritual realms is facilitated by God tinkering with unknown external things that themselves cause physical changes. They are gateways, so to speak, from the spiritual to the physical. Angelic appearances and the like would all rely on these unknown "spiritual movers" to interact with our world. So, the appearance of an angel in this world is fundamentally physical, despite their substance being spiritual.

The problem with that theory, though, is that it shifts the burden of substance interaction to these "spiritual movers." They are gateways from outside the creation into the creation, but how do they actually work?

Which actually makes me wonder about the new birth and the Holy Spirit indwelling us...how do you view that? Do you think that our spirits are kind of imbued with God's, or do you think the HS dwells separately within us?
I know in a way that these questions are impossible to answer, or to really comprehend any answers....but I'm curious, partly also as atheists seem to find it impossible to imagine that God could create ex nihilo.

Expanding on the idea I presented above, it could be said that each person's spirit is one of these spiritual movers or gateways. This may be the point at which the human inability to comprehend certain things about the divine arises. We can say that the soul/spirit, which is somehow connected to the body, facilitates interaction with the divine (such as the holy spirit dwelling within us), but we cannot say how that process is accomplished.

Because of our perceptions as beings of time and space, we are fundamentally unable to see how this could possibly work. The spiritual movers would be a part of Kant's noumenal world--although the notion of us being able to reason our way to the existence of these spiritual movers or gateways would be beyond the limits that Kant himself placed on the noumenal world.

So perhaps Kant's noumenal world isn't as restrictive as he thought it was, OR I'm just horribly wrong. Probably closer to the second choice.

 

[gluadys]

WARNING: Philosophy ahead.

Well, if heaven is described as being in the presence of God, then there is something in there that suggests that the "spiritual realm" may be from the same substance that God is of. So, I think it would be fairly logical to say that the spiritual realm could be God creating it from his own substance. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

The main problem that arises in a dualistic substance theory is the interaction between the two substances. This is classically seen in the mind-body problem. If the mind is a separate substance from the body, how does it communicate with the body? Answers have ranged from:

1. There is only a physical substance. This is can be monism (the mind is reducible to physical states), property dualism (mental states can't be reduced, but still one physical substance). This is a decent answer, but in the context of Christianity, we must reject the answer because it denies the dualism of body and soul. It could still work for someone who believes in supernatural creation though, if they were to be a deist.

2. There is some sort of currently unknown process where the mind communicates to the body. Descartes, who came up with this idea, said it happened in the hippocampus I believe. This is bad because all the evidence we have about neurology disagrees, and Descartes was pretty much just making up stuff at the point when he decided to use the hippocampus.

3. There is no physical substance, only mental. Anything physical is a perception created by the mind. This is idealism. This is bad because how do all humans, with their own mental perceptions, interact with each other in a unified fashion?

4. Somewhere between the two extremes of idealism and monism. This is Kant's theory of transcendental idealism, where the mind brings the perceptions of space and time to the table, but we exist in some sort of world. However, since we are beings of time and space, we can't know what the world is really like. This world is referred to as the noumenal world, and the world we perceive the phenomenal world.

So the problem with our two separate substances (physical and spiritual--our universe and heaven) is: how does God and other spiritual creatures such as angels, whom are of a completely different type of existence, interact with our physical world? We could chalk the answer up to "God is infinitely powerful!" but I don't think that's a very satisfying answer.

My own personal theory is that the creation basically has a number of external "dials and buttons" God can turn or press. That's a terrible analogy, but basically the bridge between the physical and the spiritual realms is facilitated by God tinkering with unknown external things that themselves cause physical changes. They are gateways, so to speak, from the spiritual to the physical. Angelic appearances and the like would all rely on these unknown "spiritual movers" to interact with our world. So, the appearance of an angel in this world is fundamentally physical, despite their substance being spiritual.

The problem with that theory, though, is that it shifts the burden of substance interaction to these "spiritual movers." They are gateways from outside the creation into the creation, but how do they actually work?

Expanding on the idea I presented above, it could be said that each person's spirit is one of these spiritual movers or gateways. This may be the point at which the human inability to comprehend certain things about the divine arises. We can say that the soul/spirit, which is somehow connected to the body, facilitates interaction with the divine (such as the holy spirit dwelling within us), but we cannot say how that process is accomplished.

Because of our perceptions as beings of time and space, we are fundamentally unable to see how this could possibly work. The spiritual movers would be a part of Kant's noumenal world--although the notion of us being able to reason our way to the existence of these spiritual movers or gateways would be beyond the limits that Kant himself placed on the noumenal world.

So perhaps Kant's noumenal world isn't as restrictive as he thought it was, OR I'm just horribly wrong. Probably closer to the second choice.

John Polkinghorne and few others have suggested that what you are calling spiritual movers or gateways might be located at the quantum level of matter. Action at the quantum level is totally unpredictable; it can be measured only in terms of probabilities. This doesn't affect things on the macro-level of physical action (like Newton's laws of motion) because so many quanta are involved that the probabilities sum up statistically to predictable motions.

But its an interesting thought that God might do something in the world of matter by manipulating the probabilities at the quantum level.

 

[Dark_Lite]

John Polkinghorne and few others have suggested that what you are calling spiritual movers or gateways might be located at the quantum level of matter. Action at the quantum level is totally unpredictable; it can be measured only in terms of probabilities. This doesn't affect things on the macro-level of physical action (like Newton's laws of motion) because so many quanta are involved that the probabilities sum up statistically to predictable motions.

But its an interesting thought that God might do something in the world of matter by manipulating the probabilities at the quantum level.

That was actually is my main pseudo-scientific explanation for the whole idea. It originated with this silly discussion my friend and I were having about "Mindotrons from the 13th Dimension!" We turned a terribly pseudoscientific joke discussion about hypothetical subatomic molecules that initiate thoughts and string theory into the title for a bad horror movie.