Scripture & Creation
2 Maccabees 7:28
Creation from Nothing
The first and second books of Maccabees are part of the Scriptural canon for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. The third and fourth books are considered apocryphal. This passage from the Second Book of Maccabees forms the primary Scriptural basis for the doctrine that creation was made from nothing.
The early doctrine of creatio ex nihilo declares that God made creation out of nothing. In its original context, this was an appropriate doctrine because it presumed a world view and context in which all things exist in Christ, the world is in Christ and Christ is in the world. Today, in light of a revisionist materialist world view, and especially some Protestant notions that Christ is up in heaven and not down here in the world, this doctrine contributes to misinterpretations of the biblical vision of creation and it weakens Christian connection to creation in a manner never intended.
The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was not directly inherited from Judaism. It was first articulated by Theophilus of Antioch around the year 185 AD and scripturally it rests largely on this one passage. The early Church developed this doctrine because it countered the pagan Greek notion that God used pre-existent matter to make the world. The idea of pre-existent matter was associated with the Greek notion of a fall from an ethereal “continent” called Atlantis. Early Christians emphasized that no material thing, and particularly no preexistent matter, was inherent in the creation of the world. Rather God creates with the Word (John 1:1-5), or as HE Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware] has recently taken to say, “out of love.”
Despite the Gospel of John, which says that God creates through His Word, some Christians today have trouble connecting God, as Creator, to creation as His handiwork or “footstool” (cf. Acts 7:49). In part this is because of misleading assumptions about creatio ex nihilo, because this doctrine creates a subtle disconnection in perspective which seems small, but which becomes large in its impact upon theological and social attitudes.
What happens, even among those who say that their foundation rests in Scripture, is that this doctrine, well suited to the special evangelical needs of the second century, becomes overemphasized, then misinterpreted and misapplied. When combined with the virulent materialism of the modern age, it fosters a disregard for creation which is anything but biblical. By simple association, “creation from nothing” has become “creation is nothing,” or of minimal consequence, or somehow separated and disconnected from God. This false assumption is not the biblical teaching. It is not even close! The meaning of Scripture, as St. Paul declares, is that creation is “Of him and through him, and to him...” (Romans 11:36).
Philip Sherrard, biblical scholar and translator of the fathers, sees the literal and rigorous application of creatio ex nihilo as a primary obstacle for overcoming a dualism which has gradually been creeping into Christian theology.
Reinhard Hütter, a German theologian at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, goes further and declares that the doctrine, while valid, is “hardly biblical.” His search through Scripture finds only this one clear citation in support of “creatio ex nihilo,” plus vague and oblique references in Romans 4:17 and Hebrews 11:3.
The Egyptian historian of world religions, Seyyed Nasr, observes that to understand how a Christian dualism between God and creation came about, “resulting in the world of nature being considered as an independent order of reality...” (and so divorced from a living sense of creation), one must understand how the idea of creatio ex nihilo has in our generation distorted the original Judeo-Christian suppositions about the nature of creation.
While most of the doctrines for Christian creation theology derive from Judaism, creatio ex nihilo does not. The Hebrew scriptures scarcely address the question of what preceded creation. Consistent with this passage in Second Maccabees, Solomon, in Wisdom 11:17, in a parenthetical remark, declares that “formless matter” was the substance of creation at its formation.
This does not contradict the idea that creation is formed of no material thing, but it does contradict an understanding that this “nothing” means a void or some sort of emptiness. In this view “creation from nothing” has to mean a “nothing” which is a metaphysical or spiritual something, i.e., a spiritual energy or light.
Jewish theologians, while affirming creatio ex nihilo, emphasize that this is not a key doctrine. Their emphasis is upon seeing one’s life in the context of Torah, or the House of Life in which God’s “linguistic action” creates, commands, appoints, and bestows value and pledges his protection. Through the observant Jew’s spoken prayers, the linguistic power and action of God continues the unfolding process of creation.
The earliest Christians are of a similar mind. Writers before Theophilus of Antioch, such as Justin Martyr, or contemporaries such as Clement of Alexandria, reflect the Jewish view that the world was created by God out of formless matter, i.e., a spiritual energy or substance, meaning God’s own interior nature.
This view persists even after Theophilus, showing that the early understanding of “creatio ex nihilo” existed within a far more nuanced conception of creation than it does within modern theology. Origen, for instance, in his commentary on chapter one of the Gospel of John, probes the origins of creation and finds profound ancient meaning about the creation hidden in the Book of Job.
Most tellingly of the original assumptions underlying this doctrine is Origen’s correlative assumption that God as Creator implies a creation.
Now as one cannot be a father apart from having a son, nor a lord apart from holding a possession or a slave, so we cannot even call God almighty if there are none over whom He can exercise His power. Accordingly, to demonstrate that God is Almighty, we must assume the existence of the world.
Origen goes on to say, as do other early Christian writers, that creation cannot be interpreted as an accomplished “event,” but rather creation is a permanent and continuous relationship, a relationship of “being begotten,” just as radiance is perpetually concomitant with light itself.
The Celtic Church, formed within a different set of cultural influences, is clear about “creatio ex nihilo.” John Scottus Eriugena, the great medieval Irish theologian, writing in the tenth century, affirms that “creatio ex nihilo” means “God’s own self-creation, His self-manifestation in theophanies, His movement from darkness to light.”
Eriugena goes further and declares that this “nothing” has to be understood as one of the names of God, and therefore it means “creation from or out of God.”
The historical record regarding “creatio ex nihilo” shows that this was never a central doctrine of Early Christianity. Its value was to guard against the notion that there is some pre-existing, independent material out of which God creates, an idea that would introduce a dualism between God and creation. But when this concept is applied literally and rigorously in ways such as it has come to be applied, it defeats its original purpose because it introduces a new dualism similar in effect to what it was intended to guard against.
The key for modern Orthodox Christians should be that creation through the Word means that God creates within Himself. Nothing exists outside of God. The implication first is that God is the Creator, but second that He exists to some extent in what He creates, i.e., He sustains it. A complete doctrine of creation must start with the affirmation of God and affirm that any conception of the creature as a second being outside of God, or separate from God, is a false doctrine. Creatures not only take their being from God, but are kept in being by remaining in God. Creation, therefore, takes place in God and not outside of God.
Creation through the Word implies that God’s numinous presence is everywhere the heart, soul and flesh of creation. It means that everything is filled with life and spirit. It means that creation is in the present; it is continuing in this moment as well as in the beginning. It means, as the Apostle Paul declares, “In Him we live and move and have our being...” (Acts 17:28).
For Orthodox cosmological vision, the central fact must be that everything exists within God. His presence everywhere fills creation. This does not deny God’s transcendent otherness above and beyond the world, but it affirms that God also infuses the fabric of life and is present here and now in creation.
In classical theology all doctrines are intertwined and connected. Creatio ex nihilo, applied beyond its original purpose and outside the biblical pattern of connectedness, breaks the interconnected world view of Christ and creation intertwined. We unintentionally break this connection when we forget that every action takes place in and before God, and so we may sometimes forget to treat creation with reverence and respect. When this happens, we fail to feel connected to creation and the continuing Word of God as did earlier Christians. This wounds our ability to find holiness because we presume, because of forgetfulness, a false separation from God.
A creation-healing world view requires a rereading of Scripture so that we once again discern the immense cosmic flow of the Word of God vitalizing creation and a realization of the intimate connections between ourselves, God and creation. When some Orthodox Christians fail to articulate a whole doctrine of creation, they unintentionally ignore St. Paul’s question about design when he quotes Isaiah 66:1:
Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what house will you build for me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things? (Acts 7:49-50).
One reason we have not developed this consideration is that our doctrine of creation has been crippled by excessive emphasis upon “creatio ex nihilo” and even though we sing “who art everywhere present and fillest all things,” somehow this has not been enough to remind us of the fact that the Holy Spirit along with the Son and the Father are together in creation and provide an impetus for a healing human response.
