Ex nihilo

Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.

In theology, the common phrase creatio ex nihilo ("creation out of nothing"), contrasts with creatio ex materia (creation out of some pre-existent, eternal matter) and with creatio ex deo (creation out of the being of God).

The phrase ex nihilo also appears in the classical philosophical formulation ex nihilo nihil fit, which means "Out of nothing comes nothing".

Ex nihilo when used outside of religious or metaphysical contexts, also refers to something coming from nothing. For example, in a conversation, one might raise a topic "ex nihilo" if it bears no relation to the previous topic of discussion. The term has specific meanings in military and computer-science contexts.

In mathematics, ex nihilo can refer to an answer to a question provided with no working, thus appearing to have developed "out of nothing".

Contents

History of the idea of creatio ex nihilo

Ancient Near Eastern mythologies, classical creation myths in Greek mythology envision the creation of the world as resulting from the actions of a god or gods upon already-existing primeval matter, known as chaos; this is also the scenario envisaged by the authors of the Hebrew Genesis creation narrative.[1]

The classical tradition of creation from chaos first came under question in Hellenistic philosophy (on a priori grounds), which developed the idea that a primum movens must have created the world out of nothing.

An early conflation of these tenets of Greek philosophy with the narratives in the Hebrew Bible came from Philo of Alexandria (d. AD 50), writing in the context of Hellenistic Judaism. Philo equated the Hebrew creator-deity Yahweh with Plato's primum movens (First Cause)[2][3] in an attempt to prove that the Jews had held monotheistic views even before the Greeks.

The first sentence of the Greek version of Genesis in the Septuagint starts with the words: ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν, translatable as "the primary cause caused to be". A verse of 2 Maccabees (a book written in Koine Greek in the same sphere of Hellenised Judaism of Alexandria, but predating Philo by about a century) expresses a similar idea:

"I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise." (2 Maccabees 7:28, KJV)

Theologians from the 2nd century seized upon this idea[4] and developed it into the idea of creation ex nihilo by God. Church Fathers opposed a literal reading of Genesis and notions appearing in pre-Christian creation myths and in Gnosticism—notions of creation by a demiurge out of a primordial state of matter (known in religious studies as chaos after the Greek term used by Hesiod in his Theogony).[5] Jewish thinkers took up the idea,[6] which became important to Judaism, to ongoing strands in the Christian tradition, and—as a corollary—to Islam.

Max Weber summarizes a sociological view of the overall development and corollaries of the theological idea:

[...] As otherworldly expectations become increasingly important, the problem of the basic relationship of god to the world and the problem of the world's imperfections press into the foreground of thought; this happens the more life here on earth comes to be regarded as a merely provisional form of existence when compared to that beyond, the more the world comes to be viewed as something created by god ex nihilo, and therefore subject to decline, the more god himself is conceived as a subject to transcendental goals and values, and the more a person's behavior in this world becomes oriented to his fate in the next. [...][7]

Theological usage

Approaches favoring ex nihilo creation

Logical approaches

Not all ex nihilo thought specifies a divine creator.

A major argument for creatio ex nihilo, the First cause argument, states in summary:

  1. everything that begins to exist has a cause
  2. the universe began to exist
  3. therefore, the universe must have a cause

Another argument for ex nihilo creation comes from Claude Nowell's Summum philosophy that states before anything existed, nothing existed, and if nothing existed, then it must have been possible for nothing to be. If it is possible for nothing to be (the argument goes), then it must be possible for everything to be.[8]

Other support for creatio ex nihilo belief comes from the idea that something cannot arise from nothing; that would involve a contradiction (compare ex nihilo nihil fit). Therefore something must always have existed. But (this account continues) it is scientifically impossible for matter to always have existed. Moreover, matter is contingent: it is not logically impossible for it not to exist, and nothing else depends on it. Hence one deduces a Creator, non-contingent and not composed of matter.

Ancient Greek speculation

Some scholars have argued that Plethon viewed Plato as positing ex nihilo creation in his Timaeus.

Eric Voegelin detects in Hesiod's chaos a creatio ex nihilo.[9]

Islamic views

Several Qur'anic verses explicitly state that God created man, the heavens and the earth, out of nothing. The following quotations come from Muhammad Asad's translation, The Message of the Quran:

Judaeo-Christian theologians

Biblical scholars and theologians within the Judaeo-Christian tradition such as Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE),[10][11] Augustine (354-430),[12] John Calvin (1509–1564),[13] John Wesley (1703–1791)[14] and Matthew Henry (1662–1714)[15] cite Genesis 1:1 in support of the idea of Divine creation out of nothing.

Philo, as well as some of the Church Fathers with a Platonic background, argued that the act of creation itself involved pre-existent matter, but made that matter in turn to have been created out of nothing.[16] alongside God.

Modern physics

A widely supported hypothesis in modern physics is the zero-energy universe which states that the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero. That is the only kind of universe that could come from nothing.[17][18] Such a universe would have to be flat in shape, a state which does not contradict current observations that the Universe is flat with a 0.5% margin of error.[19][20]

Arguments against ex nihilo creation

See also: Parmenides and Nothing comes from nothing

Roman Philosophy

Roman poet and philsopher Lucretius in his first book of De Rerum Natura explicitly states his opposition to the concept of ex nihilo creation:

quas ob res ubi viderimus nil posse creari
de nihilo, tum quod sequimur iam rectius inde
perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari
et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom.[21]

English translation:

Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
Nothing can be create, we shall divine
More clearly what we seek: those elements
From which alone all things created are,
And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.[22]

Opposition within modern Christian theology

Thomas Jay Oord (born 1965), a Christian philosopher and theologian, argues that Christians should abandon the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oord points to the work of biblical scholars, such as Jon D. Levenson, who point out that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo does not appear in Genesis. Oord speculates that God created our particular universe billions of years ago from primordial chaos. This chaos did not predate God, however, for God would have created the chaotic elements as well.[23] Oord suggests that God can create all things without creating from absolute nothingness.[24]

Oord offers nine objections to creatio ex nihilo:

  1. Theoretical problem: One cannot conceive absolute nothingness.
  2. Biblical problem: Scripture – in Genesis, 2 Peter, and elsewhere – suggests creation from something (water, deep, chaos, etc.), not creation from absolutely nothing.
  3. Historical problem: The Gnostics Basilides and Valentinus first proposed creatio ex nihilo on the basis of assuming the inherently evil nature of creation, and in the belief that God does not act in history. Early Christian theologians adopted the idea to affirm the kind of absolute divine power that many Christians now reject.
  4. Empirical problem: We have no evidence that our universe originally came into being from absolutely nothing.
  5. Creation-at-an-instant problem: We have no evidence in the history of the universe after the big bang that entities can emerge instantaneously from absolute nothingness. As the earliest philosophers noted, out of nothing comes nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit).
  6. Solitary power problem: Creatio ex nihilo assumes that a powerful God once acted alone. But power, as a social concept, only becomes meaningful in relation to others.
  7. Errant revelation problem: The God with the capacity to create something from absolutely nothing would apparently have the power to guarantee an unambiguous and inerrant message of salvation (for example: inerrant Bible). An unambiguously clear and inerrant divine revelation does not exist.
  8. Evil problem: If God once had the power to create from absolutely nothing, God essentially retains that power. But a God of love with this capacity appears culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil.
  9. Empire Problem: The kind of divine power implied in creatio ex nihilo supports a theology of empire, based upon unilateral force and control of others.

Process theologians argue that humans have always related a God to some “world” or another.

Some also claim that rejecting creatio ex nihilo provides the opportunity to affirm that God has everlastingly created and related with some realm of non-divine actualities or another (compare continuous creation). According to this alternative God-world theory, no non-divine thing exists without the creative activity of God, and nothing can terminate God's necessary existence.

Some Christian churches do not teach the ex nihilo doctrine. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that Jehovah (whom they identify as the heavenly form of Jesus Christ) and Michael (whom they identify as the heavenly form of Adam), under the direction of God the Father, organized this world and others like it out of eternal, pre-existing materials. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that God used the energy he possesses to create the universe based on the statement at Isaiah 40:26.[25] They point out that this harmonizes with the scientific idea of the relationship between matter and energy. They distinguish Jehovah from Jesus Christ, teaching that before he created the physical universe, Jehovah created Jesus and that Michael is the heavenly form of Jesus.

Cosmological arguments

Physicists Paul Steinhardt (Princeton University) and Neil Turok (Cambridge University) offer an alternative to ex nihilo creation. Their proposal stems from the ancient idea that space and time have always existed in some form. Using developments in string theory, Steinhardt and Turok suggest the Big Bang of our universe as a bridge to a pre-existing universe, and speculate that creation undergoes an eternal succession of universes, with possibly trillions of years of evolution in each. Gravity and the transition from Big Crunch to Big Bang characterize an everlasting succession of universes.

Hindu views

The Vedanta schools of Hinduism reject the concept of creation ex nihilo for several reasons, for example:

  1. both types of revelatory texts (śruti[26] and smṛti) designate matter as eternal although completely dependent on God—the Absolute Truth (param satyam)
  2. believers then have to attribute all the evil ingrained in material life to God, making Him partial and arbitrary[27], which does not logically accord with His nature

The Bhagavad Gita (BG) states the eternality of matter and its transformability clearly and succinctly: "Material nature and the living entities should be understood to be beginningless. Their transformations and the modes of matter are products of material nature."[28] The opening words of Krishna in BG 2.12-13 also imply this, as do the doctrines referred to in BG 16.8 as explained by the commentator Vadiraja Tirtha.[29]

Computer science

Some computing environments use the tag ex nihilo to describe various techniques for creating data structures or objects. In prototype-based programming languages, a programmer sets up an object "ex nihilo" if it does not use another object as its prototype.[30]

Military organization

A unit raised ex nihilo forms without the use of significant components from other units. Thus, when a military authority sets up a unit composed entirely of personnel transferred as individuals from other units, one can speak of raising ex nihilo. Alternatives to this method, (also known as "cutting a unit from whole cloth") include expanding a skeleton (cadre) unit, assembling a large unit from components taken from other units, and the splitting of an existing unit into two or more skeleton units for subsequent filling out with additional personnel. German-speakers call this last-named method "calving" (das Kalben). French-speakers refer to it as "doubling" (dédoublement), but only, as the name suggests, when forming two new units on the framework of one old one.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Walton, John H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. InterVarsity Press. p. 44. ISBN 9780830837045. http://books.google.com/books?id=6qZLAz3TckgC. Retrieved 2010-04-09. "[...] the absence of reference to materials, rather than suggesting material creation out of nothing, is better explained as indication that bārā is not a material activity but a functional one." 
  2. ^ n Yonge, Charles Duke (1854). "Appendices A Treatise Concerning the World (1): But what can be worse than this, or more calculated to display the want of true nobility existing in the soul, than the notion of causes in general being secondary and created causes, combined with an ignorance of the one first cause, the uncreated God, the Creator of the universe, who for these and innumerable other reasons is most excellent, reasons which because of their magnitude human intellect is unable to apprehend?" The Works of Philo Judaeus: the contemporary of Josephus. London: H. G. Bohn. http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo.
  3. ^ Plato Laws Book X, Public Domain-Project Gutenberg. “ATHENIAN: Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods… Then we must say that self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.”
  4. ^ May, Gerhard (2004). Creatio ex nihilo [Creation from nothing]. Continuum International. p. xii. ISBN 9780567083562. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LoS05gQUDhEC. Retrieved 2009-11-23. "If we look into the early Christian sources, it becomes apparent that the thesis of creatio ex nihilo in its full and proper sense, as an ontological statement, only appeared when it was intended, in opposition to the idea of world-formation from unoriginate matter, to give expression to the omnipotence, freedom and uniqueness of God." 
  5. ^ May, Gerhard (1978) (in German). Schöpfung aus dem Nichts. Die Entstehung der Lehre von der creatio ex nihilo [Creation from Nothingness: the origin of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo]. AKG 48. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. p. 151f. ISBN 3110072041. 
  6. ^ Siegfried, Francis (1908). "Creation". The Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04470a.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-30. "Probably the idea of creation never entered the human mind apart from Revelation. Though some of the pagan philosophers attained to a relatively high conception of God as the supreme ruler of the world, they seem never to have drawn the next logical inference of His being the absolute cause of all finite existence. [...] The descendants of Sem and Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, preserved the idea of creation clear and pure; and from the opening verse of Genesis to the closing book of the Old Testament the doctrine of creation runs unmistakably outlined and absolutely undefiled by any extraneous element. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In this, the first, sentence of the Bible we see the fountain-head of the stream which is carried over to the new order by the declaration of the mother of the Machabees: "Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing" (2 Maccabees 7:28). One has only to compare the Mosaic account of the creative work with that recently discovered on the clay tablets unearthed from the ruins of Babylon to discern the immense difference between the unadulterated revealed tradition and the puerile story of the cosmogony corrupted by polytheistic myths. Between the Hebrew and the Chaldean account there is just sufficient similarity to warrant the supposition that both are versions of some antecedent record or tradition; but no one can avoid the conviction that the Biblical account represents the pure, even if incomplete, truth, while the Babylonian story is both legendary and fragmentary (Smith, "Chaldean Account of Genesis", New York, 1875)." 
  7. ^ Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus. eds. Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 521. ISBN 0-520-03500-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=pSdaNuIaUUEC. Retrieved 2010-05-31. 
  8. ^ Ra, Summum Bonum Amen (2004) [1975]. "Chapter 2". SUMMUM: Sealed Except to the Open Mind. Salt Lake City: Summum. http://www.summum.us/philosophy/ebook/ebook.htm. Retrieved 2006-12-15. 
  9. ^ Moorton, Richard F (2001). "Hesiod as Precursor to the Presocratic Philosophers: A Voeglinian View". http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/voegelin/EVS/Panel42001.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-04. "First, says Hesiod, there came to be Chaos, and then Earth, Tartarus (which Voegelin curiously neglects in his account), and Eros. For Voegelin this is a creatio ex nihilo, which points the finger of questioning towards the yet undifferentiated beyond. If he is right, the Greek philosophers who followed were unanimous in retreating from this seeming violation of the principle of sufficient reason to the principle that ex nihilio nihil fit.[sic]" 
  10. ^ Yonge, Charles Duke (1854). "Appendices A Treatise Concerning the World (1), On the Creation (16–19, 26–30), Special Laws IV (187), On the Unchangeableness of God (23-32)". The Works of Philo Judaeus: the contemporary of Josephus. London: H. G. Bohn. http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo.
  11. ^ Clontz, T.E. and J. (2008). "The Comprehensive New Testament with complete textual variant mapping and references for the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, Nag Hammadi Library, Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, Plato, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Talmud, Old Testament, Patristic Writings, Dhammapada, Tacitus, Epic of Gilgamesh. Cornerstone Publications. ISBN 978-0-977873-71-5. (p. 473 Philo[On Dreams, That they Are God-Sent (2.8) cf. {Genesis 37:5-11}; Special Laws IV (187) cf. {Genesis 1:1-31}]; p. 494 Philo[Appendices A Treatise Concerning the World (1) cf. {Genesis 1:1, Deuteronomy 10:17})
  12. ^ The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers First Series, Volume 1 The Confessions and Letters of Augustine with a Sketch of his Life and Work, 1896, Philip Schaff, Augustine Confessions, Book XI.11–30, XII.7–9
  13. ^ Commentaries on The First Book of Moses Called Genesis, by John Calvin, Translated from the Original Latin, and Compared with the French Edition, by the Rev. John King, M.A, 1578, Volume 1, Genesis 1:1–31 see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.vii.i.html - “In the beginning. To expound the term 'beginning,' of Christ, is altogether frivolous. For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at its very commencement, in the manner in which it is now seen, but that it was created an empty chaos of heaven and earth. His language therefore may be thus explained. When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the earth was empty and waste. He moreover teaches by the word 'created,' that what before did not exist was now made; for he has not used the term יצר, (yatsar,) which signifies to frame or forms but ברא, (bara,) which signifies to create. Therefore his meaning is, that the world was made out of nothing. Hence the folly of those is refuted who imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity; and who gather nothing else from the narration of Moses than that the world was furnished with new ornaments, and received a form of which it was before destitute.”
  14. ^ John Wesley’s notes on the whole Bible the Old Testament, Notes On The First Book Of Moses Called Genesis, by John Wesley, p.14 see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/notes.ii.ii.ii.i.html - “Observe the manner how this work was effected; God created, that is, made it out of nothing. There was not any pre-existent matter out of which the world was produced. The fish and fowl were indeed produced out of the waters, and the beasts and man out of the earth; but that earth and those waters were made out of nothing. Observe when this work was produced; In the beginning—That is, in the beginning of time. Time began with the production of those beings that are measured by time. Before the beginning of time there was none but that Infinite Being that inhabits eternity.”
  15. ^ Henry, Matthew. Commentary on the whole Bible. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. 1 (Genesis to Deuteronomy) ([online] ed.). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Calvin College. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.Gen.ii.html. Retrieved 2010-04-09. "The manner in which this work was effected: God created it, that is, made it out of nothing. There was not any pre-existent matter out of which the world was produced. The fish and fowl were indeed produced out of the waters and the beasts and man out of the earth; but that earth and those waters were made out of nothing. By the ordinary power of nature, it is impossible that any thing should be made out of nothing; no artificer can work, unless he has something to work on." 
  16. ^ Wolfson, Harry Austryn (1976). The philosophy of the Kalam. Structure and growth of philosophic systems from Plato to Spinoza. 4. Harvard University Press. pp. 779. ISBN 9780674665804. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fuv8J-g7EdAC. Retrieved 2010-02-25. "It can be further shown that Philo and some of the Church Fathers who have adopted the Platonic theory of creation out of a pre-existent matter made that matter to have been created out of nothing [...]" 
  17. ^ "A Universe from Nothing". Astronomical Society of the Pacific. http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html. Retrieved 10 March 2010.  by Alexei V. Filippenko and Jay M. Pasachoff
  18. ^ Berman, Marcelo Samuel (2009). "On the Zero-energy Universe". International Journal of Theoretical Physics (International Journal of Theoretical Physics) 48 (11): 3278. arXiv:gr-qc/0605063. Bibcode 2009IJTP..tmp..162B. doi:10.1007/s10773-009-0125-8. 
  19. ^ "Will the Universe expand forever?". NASA. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
  20. ^ "A Universe From Nothing lecture by Lawrence Krauss at AAI". 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo. Retrieved 17 October 2011. 
  21. ^ Lucretius, Titus. "Book 1" (in Latin). De Rerum Natura. Line 156: The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius/lucretius1.shtml. Retrieved 20 August 2011. 
  22. ^ Lucretius, Titus; Leonard, William Ellery. "Book 1" (in English). De Rerum Natura. Internet Classics Archive. http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.1.i.html. Retrieved 20 August 2011. 
  23. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=DsPwO1YDeNIC&pg=PA240&dq=Thomas+Jay+Oord&lr=
  24. ^ Keller, Catherine (2003) Face of the deep: a theology of becoming Routledge p. 240 ISBN 9780415256490 http://books.google.com/books?id=DsPwO1YDeNIC. Retrieved 2009-10-04 "Thomas Jay Oord has advocated an 'open theology' that 'embraces the hypothesis that God did not create the world out of absolutely nothing, i.e., ex nihilo. [...]' Matching Theology and Piety: An Evangelical Process Theology of Love', PhD dissertation (Claremont Graduate University, 1999), p. 284." 
  25. ^ "What Is The Holy Spirit?". Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. http://www.watchtower.org/e/20091001/article_02.htm. Retrieved 12/13/11. 
  26. ^ But compare King, Richard; Gaudapāda Ācārya (1995). Early Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism: the Mahāyāna context of the Gaudapādīya-kārikā. State University of New York Suny series in religious studies. SUNY Press. p. 58. ISBN 9780791425138. http://books.google.com/books?id=p1bASTAOhjoC. Retrieved 2010-05-31. "[...] the Upanisads do not have a definitive point of view, even within the same Upanisad. GK III.23 notes for instance that the sruti equally upholds the view that creation occurs from a pre-existent being (sat) and that it proceeds from non-existence. creation is most frequently understood to be a transformation (parinama) or an emanation from a pre-existent reality. Creation from non-being (asat), however, is put forward as a possibility in Chandogya Upanisad III.19 and Taittiriya Upanisad II.7. This is not necessarily a creatio ex nihilo, but in all likelihood denotes an emergence of being from the pregnant and undifferentiated chaos known as non-being (asat). Nevertheless, the equating of non-being with nothingness may have been intended and it is certainly criticized on those grounds in Chandogya Upanisad VI.2. The predominant Brahmanical creation theme, however, describes an emanation from or transformation of "sat," whether envisaged as an abstract impersonal reality as in Taittiriya Upanisad II.i, or from a personal creator, as in Prasna Upanisad I.4." 
  27. ^ Brahmasutra Bhashya 2:1:34-36
  28. ^ Bhagavad Gita 13.19 or 20
  29. ^ See Sri Vadiraja's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita
  30. ^ http://www.lirmm.fr/~dony/postscript/proto-book.pdf

Further reading