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THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION EX NIHILO WAS CREATED OUT OF NOTHING: A RESPONSE TO COPAN AND CRAIG
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| Genesis 1:1-3 | Genesis 2:4-9 | |
| Protasis: When God set about to create the heaven and the earth. | At the time when God Yahweh made earth and heaven | |
| Parenthetical: - the world being then a formless waste... | - no shrub of the field being yet on the earth... | |
| Apodosis: God said, "Let there be light...." | And out of the ground God Yahweh caused to grow various trees.... |
The closest possible parallel account to Genesis 1 is Genesis 2. It shows that the temporal clause is precisely the structure used to begin creation accounts in the Hebrew mind-set. This reading is also supported by the syntax of the account in Genesis 1 because verse 1:2 begins with waw (translated as "and," "but," "now," "even," or "also") accompanied by a noun and a verb. Such a syntax supports the view that Genesis 1:2 is in fact a parenthetical statement that sets it off as a disjunctive from verse 1. These considerations are strong reasons indeed to adopt the reading of Genesis 1 favored by Speiser and those taking the view that it teaches that God created by organizing a preexisting chaos. Both Genesis 1 and 2 envision the world to exist in a chaotic state prior to creation. As Luis Stadelmann explained in his excellent work The Hebrew Conception of the World:
It has long been recognized by Bible scholars that the Priestly account of creation of the world [in Genesis 1] reveals traces of Mesopotamian influence. This influence is most apparent in the cosmological presuppositions, and in this sense the Priestly account differs significantly in outlook from that of the Yahwist [in Genesis 2]. For example, where as the Yahwist record envisages the primeval state as a desert needing water to make it fertile, the Priestly presupposes the existence of an unformed chaos enveloped in primeval darkness.... The world is pictured as "being then a formless waste, with darkness over the seas," in short a watery caos (sic). The passage concerned seems to indicate a situation in which the world is envisaged as immersed in the thwm, the 'seas.' As further development of the idea shows, the chief features of the primeval chaos were those of the raw material of the universe.29
Umberto Cassuto described the situation of the primeval chaos before creation as follows: "In this chaos of unformed matter, the heaviest materials were naturally at the bottom, and the waters, which were the lightest, floated on top. This apart, the whole material was an undifferentiated, unorganized, confused and lifeless agglomeration. It is this terrestrial state that is called thw wbhw [a formless waste]."30 I would add that there can be little doubt that the Hebrew word thw (tohu) when used alone with wbhw means primarily a desert or wasteland.31 As the Harper's Bible Commentary notes:
As most modern translations recognize, the P creation (1:1-2:4a) begins with a temporal clause ("When, in the beginning, God created"); such a translation puts Gen. 1:1 in agreement with the opening of the J account (2:4b) and with other ancient, Near Eastern creation myths.... The description of the precreation state in v.2 probably means to suggest a storm-tossed sea: darkness, a great wind, the watery abyss. God's superiority over the sea here and in vv. 9-10 may be reminiscent of the ancient Near Eastern mythic portrait of creation as the victory of order over hostile, chaotic forces like the divinized sea.32
Now this parallel is important for another reason: It completely undermines Adams' argument that the Old Testament creation accounts do not speak of a preexistent choas because they differ from other ancient Near Eastern accounts. The account showing the structure of Genesis 1 to be a construct beginning with a temporal clause is from the bible itself. Nevertheless, the reading of Genesis 1:1-3 as a statement of creation by organizing chaos is also strongly supported by comparisons with other ancient Near Eastern accounts - despite Adams' assertion that the Bible must be utterly unique.
It is typical of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts to begin with a parenthetical statement describing the chaos present at the time the creation begins. Indeed, these same sources show that the first line of such works functions as both a title of the entire work and a temporal clause. The Sumerian tale Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World, begins with such a title and temporal clause in words very similar to Genesis 1:1-3:
After heaven had been moved away from earth,
After earth had been separated from heaven,
After the name of man had been fixed....33
However, the most strikingly similar text is the Babylonian Enuma elish which begins by describing the primordial state of the world before the birth of the gods when only two primeval forces existed: Apsu or fresh water and Tiamat or salt water - both in a chaotic state:
When on high the heavens had not been named,
Nor earth below pronounced by name,
Apsu, the first one, the begetter,
And maker Tiamat, who bore them all
Had mixed their waters together,
But had not formed pastures, nor discovered reed-beds,
When yet no gods were manifest,
Nor names pronounced, nor destinies decreed,
Then gods were born within them.34
As Speiser notes, the importance of the parallel with the Enuma elish is threefold. First, both accounts have the same structure: "the related, and probably normative, arrangement at the beginning of the Enuma elish exhibits exactly the same kind of structure: dependent temporal clause (lines 1-2); parenthetic clauses (3-8); main clause (9). Thus, grammar, context, and parallels point uniformly in the same direction."35 That direction is taking Genesis to teach that when God began to create there was already a preexisting chaos.
Second, the Enuma elish supports the view that Genesis 1:1 is separated from verse two because it also functions as a title of the work. More specifically, this form adopts the so-called telodeth formula. The Hebrew word telodeth means "generations." Genesis 2:4a is translated: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when God created them." The telodeth formula occurs at the beginning of works as a title (see e.g., 5:1 [of Adam], 6:9 [of Noah], 10:1 [of Shem, Ham and Japeth], 11:10 [of Shem] 11:27 [of Terah], 25:19 [of Ishmael], 25:9 [of Issac], 36:1 [of Esau], and 37:2 [of Jacob]). In all of these occurrences, the word telodeth introduces the section as a title or caption. Thus, Genesis is also likely to be taken as a title just as in the Enuma elish and the J creation account in Genesis 2:4a. When it is understood in this sense, then the second verse actually describes the pre-creation state of the world as a watery chaos and God's creation begins with verse 3 by creating light. As Bernhard Anderson stated:
Stylistic and contextual considerations ... favor the view that Gen. 1:1 is an independent sentence that serves as a preface to the entire creation account. On this view, the story actually begins in v. 2 with a portrayal of uncreated chaos as the presupposition and background of God's creative work. The notion of creation out of nothing was undoubtedly too abstract for the Hebrew mind; in any case, the idea of a created chaos would have been strange to a narrative that is governed by the view that creation is the antithesis to chaos (cf., Isa. 45:18).36
Third, these ancient Near Eastern works show that the Priestly account in Genesis 1 shares a strikingly similar world view. As Ronald Simkins noted, the ancient Near Eastern sources adopt metaphors of separation and differentiation as God's mode of creation. In the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic, creation begins with the separation of earth from heaven. In the Creation of the Pickax Enlil, another Sumerian account, the god of air separates the originally united heaven and earth. "In both of these myths, the creation metaphors present creation as the process of differentiation through the establishment of boundaries."37 Of course, the Enuma elish begins with the same metaphor of separation of heaven and earth by splitting and arranging the corpse of Tiamat, representing the division of the chaotic waters. The Hebrew word tehom found in Genesis 1: 2 is a cognate of the Babylonian word tiamat meaning "sea" and is translated as the "deep" in the KJV. As Simkins observed:
Creation in the Bible is never ex nihilo, "from nothing." This doctrine was not formulated until the Hellenistic Age.... In the biblical tradition, and in the ancient Near East in general, God always works with some material that is either primordial or already there when God begins to create, though the ancient Israelites would not have made this distinction.... God creates either through establishing order and fixing boundaries, usually by separating a primordial substance, or through the natural physical processes of birth and growth. In the Yahwist creation myth the earth itself is primordial. God never creates the earth, but the earth without God's creative activity is barren and lifeless.38
Coote and Ord explain why Genesis 1:1 must be seen as a title which assumes that a preexisting watery chaos already existed:
Readers of the creation story in Genesis 1 are frequently puzzled by the statement that the first thing God created was "sky and earth." They observe that although the text says God created the sky and earth on the first day, it was not until the second day, when God made the "firmament," that the sky came into being. They also note that although light and darkness, day and night, are said to be created on this same first day, it was not until the fourth day that the sun, moon, and stars were made. The answer to this puzzle is that the opening statement that God created "sky and earth" is a summary anticipating the whole of what follows.... Obviously much did already exist, however, at the moment of creation. The ocean was present. The word for ocean is related to the Babylonian word for Tiamat. The RSV follows the traditional rendering "deep," which perhaps was meant to suggest an abyss of nothing, whereas it actually should suggest deep water. A wind likewise existed. As creation begins, the scene involves the ocean, in the darkness, with the wind blowing. Something already exists, but what is not present is order.39
It is easy to forget that the Hebrews who wrote the Old Testament did not have a scientific world view. We know that the sun did not come into being after the earth. The Hebrews did not know that. The earth is separated from heaven before the sun is created in Genesis 1. This order makes no sense given our present world view. However, if we place the Hebrew creation texts in the ancient Near Eastern context from which it came, then it begins to make sense. While it would be improper to fail to recognize that there are distinctive differences between Israel's faith and the view of other ancient Near Eastern people; nevertheless, it is equally important to recognize that the Bible is not a scientifically accurate account of the cosmos - nor was it meant to be. Bernhard Anderson stated it well:
In a formal sense Israel's creation faith and the cosmological views of antiquity have numerous points of contact. The Bible takes for granted a three-storied structure of the universe: heaven, earth, and underworld (Ex. 20:4). According to this Weltbild, the earth is a flat surface, corrugated by mountains and divided by rivers and lakes. Above the earth, like a huge dome, is spread the firmament that holds back the heavenly ocean and supports the dwelling place of the gods (Gen. 1:8; Ps. 148:4). The earth itself is founded on pillars that are sunk into the subterranean waters (Pss. 24:2; 104:5), in the depths of which is located Sheol, the realm of death. In this view, the habitable world is surrounded by the waters of chaos, which unless held back, would engulf the world, a threat graphically portrayed in the flood story (Gen. 7:11; c.f. 1:6) and in various poems in the Old Testament (e.g., Pss. 46:1-4; 104:5-9).40
I have provided a picture of the Hebrew view of the world to give a better idea of the view presupposed in the Old Testament and indeed throughout the ancient Near East (See Figure 1). This particular picture of the world is extensively documented in Stadelmann's work, The Hebrew Conception of the World. Of immediate interest is the status of the chaotic waters of the deep that simply appear in Genesis 1:3 without having been created by God and the firmament in 1:6-8 that God creates to divide the waters under the firmament from those above the firmament. The reason that this division is important is because Hebrews thought of this firmament as a solid dome dividing the heavens from the waters above. The firmament, in Hebrew raqia', was conceived as a solid dome which divided between the heavens and the primeval waters. As Paul Seely concluded in an extensive study of the meaning of raqia', the firmament cannot mean merely an atmospheric expanse as conservative scholars since the time of Calvin have argued; rather, the Hebrews thought of the firmament as a solid dome above the sun, moon and stars and the primeval waters were above the sky.41 The sun, moon and stars were in the sky below the firmament. The New International Commentary on the Bible translates Genesis 1:6-8 as follows:
And God said, 'Let there be a vault in the middle of the waters, and let it be a separator between the waters and waters.
So, God made the vault and he separated between the waters beneath the vault and waters above the vault. And so it was.
God called the vault 'sky.' And there was evening and morning - a second day.42
The reason that this is important is that God creates only those things located in the "heavens and the earth." The primeval ocean above the vault or firmament is never created by God; rather, it is the assumed background already existing when God begins to create the heavens (sky) and the earth. Simkins asserted: "There is a slight anomaly in the Priestly writer's symmetrical scheme because the waters are never created. They are primordial. God creates the sky by separating the waters above ... from the waters below."43 As Seely noted:
The question, however, naturally arises in the modern mind, schooled as it is in the almost infinite nature of sky and space: Did scientifically naive peoples really believe in a solid sky, or were they just employing a mythological or poetic concept?.... The answer to these questions ... is that scientifically naive peoples thought of the solid sky as an integral part of their physical universe. And it is precisely because ancient peoples were scientifically naive that they did not distinguish between the appearance of the sky and their scientific concept of the sky. They had no reason to doubt what their eyes told them was true, namely that the stars above were fixed in a solid dome and the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So they equated appearance with reality and concluded that the sky must be a solid part of the universe just as much as the earth itself.44
This observation is important to note because neither Genesis nor any other creation account in the Old Testament deals with anything other than the creation of the earth and what is visible from it to the naked human eye. The sky appeared to be the deep blue of the ocean to them, so they thought of it as a boundary holding back chaotic waters. The Bible simply does not address the creation of the universe as we know it. It speaks of creation in a form that we cannot accept as a scientifically accurate description of matters. Thus, whatever else the creation stories in the Old Testament may tell - and Genesis is only one of many in the Old Testament that assume this paradigm of the world - it does not tell us about creation of the scientific view of the universe as a whole as C&C would have it. It is true that the phrase "heavens (sky) and earth" is amerism that represents all that there is. But it is "all that there is" from the Hebrew perspective and not from the modern perspective. When the Book of Moses says that God gave Moses "only an account of this earth," (Moses 1:35) that statement reflects reality - and it is reality limited by what the ancient writers could grasp.
I conclude that C&C commit a grand category mistake by equating their dogma of creation ex nihilo in the Bible with creation ex nihilo as they argue for it based upon the Big Bang theory and modern scientific cosmology. These two arguments don't even address the same thought world - for the world as conceived by the Hebrews is not something that we can take seriously as a description of reality - except to the extent it teaches us deep truths about God and his covenant relationship to us. He creates us as his people by separating us from the profane world, by setting us apart as holy. He creates us as his people by entering into a covenant relationship with us. If we heed his laws which we accept by covenant, then our world is well ordered and good and not chaotic and threatening. That is the primary meaning of the Old Testament creation stories. Ludwig Kohler stated it well:
The Old Testament story of creation does not answer the question "How did the world come into being?" With the answer: "God created it," but answers the question "From where does the history of God's people derive its meaning?" with the answer: "God has given the history of His people its meaning through creation."45
The Old Testament teaches us that a part of the reason that chaos continually threatens us is that chaos precedes the creation. Without God's actively organizing the chaos, the world would collapse into chaos once again. The Old Testament creation accounts do not teach creation ex nihilo. To the contrary, the Old Testament teaches us that God created by organizing a chaos into a world reflecting the goodness of the order he established. As Jon Levinson concluded: "Two and a half millennia of Western theology have made it easy to forget that throughout the ancient Near Eastern world, including Israel, the point of creation is not the production of matter out of nothing, but rather of the emergence of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining order."46
I also want to be clear that Mormon doctrines are not the same as the cosmogonies and myths of the Sumerians, Bablylonians and Egyptians, despite Jim Adams' attempt to equate them. Such a view is absurd. Mormons don't see God as the personification of the sky and the earth any more than the ancient Hebrews did. Just how Adams could so carefully distinguish Israel's views from those of her Near Eastern neighbors and then fail to note any distinctions at all between Mormon beliefs and those of the ancient Near East is beyond me. In the Enuma elish Marduk struggles to overcome chaos. In Genesis 1 there is no struggle. The Mormon God does not struggle against chaos; rather, he persuades it effortlessly through love and trust to do his will. God creates like a hot knife slicing effortlessly through butter to divide asunder the heavens and the earth, or the waters from the earth, or the waters above and the waters below. God is in fact transcendent in the Old Testament in a way that God is not transcendent in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. God transcends the heavens and the earth in the sense that he is distinct from them and has mastery over them - he is not the personification of heavens and earth as in ancient Near Eastern accounts. However, in the Hebrew scripture God is not transcendent in a sense that assumes creation ex nihilo as being above and beyond the spatio-temporal world altogether. After all, he walked in the garden with Adam. He enters into real relations with us. I believe that Jon Levinson, the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, stated well his critique of those who read creatio ex nihilo into the Bible:
Although it is now generally recognized that creatio ex nihilo, the doctrine that God produced the physical world out of nothing, is not an adequate characterization of creation in the Hebrew Bible, the legacy of this dogmatic or propositional understanding lives on and continues to distort the perceptions of scholars and laypersons alike. In particular, a false finality or definiteness is ascribed to God's act of creation and, consequently, the fragility of the created order and its vulnerability to chaos tend to be played down .... and a static idea of creation then becomes the cornerstone of an overly optimistic understanding of the theology of the Hebrew Bible.47
Jon Levinson also summarizes well the evidence showing that Genesis 1 teaches that God created by organizing a preexisting chaos and that there were already other beings in existence when God set about his work of creation:
Nowhere in the seven-day creation scheme of Genesis 1 does God create the waters; they are most likely primordial. The traditional Jewish and Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo can be found in this chapter only if one translates its first verse as "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" and understands it to refer to some comprehensive creative act on the first day. But that translation, subject to doubt since the Middle Ages, has fallen into disfavor among scholars, and the rest of the chapter indicates that the heaven was created on the second day to restrain the celestial waters (vv. 9-10), and the earth on the third day (vv. 9-10). It is true - and quite significant - that the God of Israel has no myth of origin. Not a trace of theogony can be found in the Hebrew Bible. God has no nativity. But there do seem to be other divine beings in Genesis 1, to whom God proposes the creation of humanity, male and female together: "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness" (v. 26). When were these other divine beings created? They too seem to have been primordial.... From the biblical accounts of the divine assembly in session, it would appear that these "sons of God/gods" played an active role and made fresh proposals to God, who nonetheless had the final say.48
Jim Anderson argues that we cannot understand Genesis 1:1-3 to refer to uncreated, chaotic waters because of Psalm 104. Psalm 104 images Genesis 1:1-3 in poetic form. Adams quotes Psalm 104:5-9:
5You are the one who set the earth on its foundations,
it cannot move for ever and ever.
6The deep covered it like a garment.
The waters stood above the mountains.
7From your rebuke they fled;
from you loud chamber they ran away.
8They rose up to the mountains, ran down into the valleys
to the place that you set for them.
9You established a boundary they cannot pass,
they will never return to cover the earth.
Adams then concludes: "In this text we see that God initially set the earth upon its immovable foundations (v. 5) and then the mountains are covered with 'the deep' (v. 6). Clearly, 'the deep' is not some primordial realm or preexistent reality out of which God created. The earth and the mountains are described as already having been created before "the deep."49 However, Adams is fudging a bit here. First, the waters of the deep are not said to be created at all in Psalm 104. They merely run over and cover the mountains and the earth that God creates precisely because they are already there. More importantly, Adams has taken the sequence out of order, for he fails to note that in the prior verses in Psalm104 the waters already existed when God created his heavenly palace before God created the heaven and the earth:
1O Lord my God, thou art very great;
thou art clothed with honor and majesty.
2Who covered thyself with light as with a garment:
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain:
3Who lays the beams of his chambers in the waters:
who makes clouds his chariot:
who walks upon the wings of the wind.
God created his heavenly palace amidst the already existing waters. The waters were there already when God set the foundation of the earth. Further, the order suggested by Adams is not the same order of creation as in Genesis 1- God creates the earth on the fourth day (Genesis 1:10) and he divided the waters on the second day (Genesis 1:6-8). Thus, Psalm 104 does not attempt to give the order of creation as Adams assumes. As Carroll Stuhlmueller noted in her commentary on the Psalms: "The language of praise (Ps. 104:1-4) and of cosmogony (vv. 5-9) can be traced back into ancient mythology: the Lord's palace built above the heavenly waters (Pss.11:4; 18:5-10; 29:10), surrounded by stars and moon and wind as attendants and servants (Pss. 29:82; 103:20). Psalm 104:9, repeated almost verbatim in Jer. 5:22, refers to the taming of primeval chaos."50 In reality, Psalm 104 is strong confirmation that the chaos preceded God's creative activities; not the other way around as Adams argues.
C&C next turn to the New Testament. They assert that several passages expressly teach creatio ex nihilo. However, in so arguing they once again swim against the tide of the contrary conclusions reached by the vast majority of scholars who have treated this issue. However, before considering the New Testament passages cited by C&C I want to deal with a passage that C&C ignore. 2 Peter 3:5 presents a New Testament text which clearly refers back to the Old Testament teaching that God created by organizing the preexistent, chaotic waters. In fact, this scripture seems to have been directed at people like C&C who ignore it:
They deliberately ignore the fact that long ago there were the heavens and the earth, formed out of water and through water by the Word of God, and that it was through these same factors that the world of those days was destroyed by the floodwaters.
This text rather clearly teaches creation of heaven and earth per verbum out of the existing waters. It recalls the interpretation of Genesis which we have already discussed that the waters existed before the heavens and the earth and they were organized out of this preexisting chaos which provided the water for the great flood. In essence, the flood represents a return of the world to chaos because the people that God had created had not obeyed his commands.
Of course, C&C do not deal with this text. They begin with Hebrews 11:3 which says in the KJV:
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Another translation states: "It is by faith that we understand that the ages were created by a word from God, so that from the invisible the visible world came to be."51 What this text says is that God created visible things literally "from" invisible things (eis to me ek fainomenon to blepomenon gegonenai). However, the invisible things are not nothing; they already exist. C&C wrongly assume that invisible things can be equated with absolute nothing. C&C argue that the reference to creation by the word of God " would conflict with the idea that the visible world was made out of materials in the invisible world." However, we can see from 2 Peter 3:5 just cited that this argument simply begs the question, for 2 Peter 3:5 teaches that God created from the waters by his Word or command. Thus, the notion that creation by God's command or word must assume creation ex nihilo is simply false.
C&C also argue that the reference to those "things which are not seen" teaches creatio ex nihilo because it "denies that the universe originated in primal material or anything observable."52 Yet this is simply argument by assertion without any evidence or reasoning to back it up. Moreover, it is demonstrably wrong. For example, C&C also cite Second Enoch (probably written about the same time as Hebrews - 70 A.D.) which uses very similar language about God's command and things visible created from the invisible. They argue that this text too "reflects the doctrine of creation out of nothing in a couple of places."53 However, they fail to cite the entire relevant text. They cite 2 Enoch 25:1ff as follows: "I command ... that visible things should come down from invisible." However, the entire relevant text provides:
Before anything existed at all, from the very beginning, whatever exists I created from the non-existent, and from the invisible the visible.... For before any visible things had come into existence, I, the ONE, moved around in the invisible things, like the sun, from east to west and from west to east.54
In context it is clear that the "invisible things" are not absolute nothing; rather, they are things which are not visible. That these invisible things already exist in some sense is demonstrated by the fact that God moves among them. The translator, J.I. Anderson, explained: "The impression remains that God was not the only existent being or thing from the very first .... God made the existent out of the non-existent, the visible out of the non-visible. So the invisible things co-existed with God before he began to make anything.... Vs. 4 is quite explicit on this point: Before any of the visible things had come into existence, God was moving around among the invisible things."55 Not only does this text not teach creatio ex nihilo, it teaches the very opposite! The visible things are created out of invisible things. This reading of "invisible things" as already existing realities is also very strongly supported by Romans 1:19-20: "Because that which may be known is manifest in them; for God hath shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power." Note that the invisible things already exist to be seen through the power of God. This scripture fits well with the Mormon view that before God created the earth out of matter which is visible to us, he had already created a world out of spirit that is not visible to us. (See, Moses 6:36) This same view is expressed in Hebrews - things which are not visible or are unseen are still things which already exist. As James N. Hubler observed in his excellent Ph.D. Dissertation on the emergence of the idea of creatio ex nihilo: "the notion of creation me ek fainomenon was comfortable for dualists and Stoics, because it lacked all qualities."56 In other words, both the Platonic dualists and Stoics could easily see the reference to "things invisible" as a type of formless matter that lacks any qualities of individuation, but a form of matter nonetheless.
The view that the "invisible things" are not "absolute nothing" is also supported by Colossians 1:16:
For in him were created all things
in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -
all things were created through him and for him.
He exists before all things. (NTJB)
In this scripture it seems fairly evident that the "everything invisible" includes things that already exist in heaven such as the angelic powers: thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. Further, the "invisible things" are also created by God, yet the fact that they are invisible only means that they are not seen by mortal eyes; not that they don't exist. The reference to invisible things does not address whether they were made out of a preexisting matter. However, 2 Corinthians 4:18 states that these invisible things are eternal: "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
C&C next cite Romans 4:17: "Abraham is our father in the eyes of God, in whom he put his faith, and who brings the dead to life and calls into existence what does not yet exist (kalountos ta me onta os onta)." (NTJB) Keith Norman has already pointed out that it is contradictory for God to call to that which does not exist.57 Hubler comments: "The verse's 'non-existent' need not be understood in an absolute sense of non-being. Me onta refers to the previous non-existence of those things which are now brought into existence. There is no direct reference to the absence or presence of a material cause."58 In other words, the Greek text suggests the view that God has brought about a thing which did not exist as that thing before it was created. For example, this use of me onta is consistent with the assertion that "God called forth the earth when before that the earth did not exist." However, the fact that the earth did not exist before it was created as the earth does not address the type of material that was used to make the earth.
Note also that Romans 4:17 uses the negative me referring to merely relative non-being and not to absolute nothing as required by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. At this point it is important to understand a bit about the ancient concept of matter in the Greek speaking world. We must distinguish between relative non-being (Greek me onta) and absolute nothing (Greek ex ouk onta). Platonic philosophy, both neo-Platonism and Middle Platonism, posited the existence of an eternal material substratum that was, nevertheless, so removed from the One ground of Being that it was often said to not have "real" existence. As Goldstein observed: "Platonists called pre-existent matter 'the non-existent'."59 This relative non-existence is indicated by the Greek negative me, meaning "not" or "non-", in relation to the word for existence or being, ontos.60 When the early Christian theologians speak of creation that denies that there was any material state prior to creation, however, they use the Greek negation ouk, meaning "not in any way or mode." As Henry Chadwick explained the usage in Philo's Stromata: "In each case the phrase he employs is ek me ontos, not ex ouk ontos; that is to say, it is not made from that which is absolutely non-existent, but from relative non-being or unformed matter, so shadowy and vague that it cannot be said to have the status of "being," which is imparted to it by the shaping hand of the Creator."61 Edwin Hatch explained that for Platonists: "God was regarded as being outside the world. The world was in its origin only potential being (to me on)."62 He explained more fully:
The [Platonic] dualistic hypothesis assumed a co-existence of matter and God. The assumption was more frequently tacit than explicit.... There was a universal belief that beneath the qualities of all existing things lay a substratum or substance on which they were grafted, and which gave to each thing its unity. But the conception of the nature of this substance varied from that of gross and tangible material to that of empty and formless space.... It was sometimes conceived as a vast shapeless but plastic mass, to which the Creator gave form, partly by moulding it as a potter moulds clay, partly by combining various elements as a builder combines his materials in the construction of a house.63
Aristotle wrote that things are created from "that which is not" in de Generatione Animalium (B5, 741 b 22 f): "For generation is from non-existence into being, and corruption from being back into non-existence." Here Aristotle says that things are generated "from non-existence (tou me ontos)" and pass back into "non-existence (to me on)" when they decay. He is using the phrase "from non-existence" in a sense of relative non-being where "things" do not yet exist, but only a formless substratum which has the potentiality or capacity to receive a definite form. This substratum is not absolutely nothing, but not yet a thing. It is "no-thing." Thus, to say that God called to existence that which "does not exist," as in Romans 4:17, actually assumes a preexisting substrate which God organizes into a thing that exists by impressing form upon it.
C&C quote James Dunn's comments on Romans 4:17 who says in relevant part: "As creator he creates without any precondition: he makes alive where there was only death, and he calls into existence where there was nothing at all. Consequently that which has been created, made alive in this way, must be totally dependent on the creator, the life-giver, for its very existence and life."64 However, it easy to see that Paul's analogy of God's bringing the dead to life in the same way he creates "things that are not" does not support creatio ex nihilo. Resurrection does not presuppose that the dead do not exist in any way prior to their resurrection. Nor does it presuppose that previously they did not have bodies which are reorganized through resurrection. Just as God does not create persons for the first time when he brings them to life through resurrection, so God does not create out of absolute non-being "things that are not."
C&C also argue that John 1:3 supports the idea of creation out of nothing: "All things were made by him; and without him there was not any thing made that was made." (KJV) C&C assert of this verse: "The implication is that all things (which would include pre-existent matter, if that were applicable to the creative process) exist through God's agent, who is the originator of everything."65 However, this verse says nothing about the creation of "pre-existent matter." One must assume that the word "create" must mean to create ex nihilo to arrive at this conclusion, for this verse only says that if some thing was made, then it was made through the Word. This verse does not address anything that may not have been made. More importantly, it does not address how those things were made. The point of this verse is not how but through whom the creation was made. Anything that was made was made by Christ. However, since the translation one reviews is so critical to interpretation, I will provide another translation: "All things came about through him and without him not one thing came about, which came about."66 The question is whether the final phrase "which came about" is part of this verse, or the beginning of the next verse. As Hubler states:
The punctuation of [John 1:3] becomes critical to its meaning. Proponents of creatio ex materia could easily qualify the creatures of the Word to that "which came about," excluding matter. Proponents of creatio ex nihilo could place a period after "not one thing came about" and leave "which came about" to the next sentence. The absence of a determinate tradition of punctuation as New Testament [Greek] leaves room for both interpretations. Neither does creation by word imply ex nihilo (contra Bultmann) as we have seen in Egypt, Philo, and Midrash Rabba, and even in 2 Peter 3:5 where the word functions to organize pre-cosmic matter.67
Of course, the reality of this text is that it simply does not consciously address the issue of creation ex nihilo. A person who accepts creation from chaos can easily say that there is not any "thing" that came about which is not a result of the Word's bringing it about, but there is a chaos in which there is not yet any "things" which existed prior to creation.
C&C end their treatment of New Testament texts which they allege imply creatio ex nihilo with this charge:
In light of the above discussion, it is a serious distortion to portray the doctrine of creation out of nothing as a purely post-biblical phenomena, as some Mormon apologists have done. Where in the relevant scholarly references to which LDS scholars point is there a rigorous exegetical treatment of the relevant biblical passages on creation? The silence is defeaning.68
Such an assertion by C&C seems to be mere bravado. Keith Norman has provided at least an initial start to such an exegesis which I take up here.69 In addition, there really is no need for Mormons to provide such an analysis because it has been provided by non-Mormons who don't have a theological axe to grind - and indeed by some who accept the doctrine of creation ex nihilo but are honest enough to admit that they cannot find such a doctrine in the Bible.70 The fact is that Hubler's dissertation engages in a fairly rigorous exegesis of the relevant biblical passages. He reaches a conclusion radically different than C&C:
Several New Testament texts have been educed as evidence of creatio ex nihilo. None makes a clear statement which would have been required to establish such an unprecedented position, or which we would need as evidence of such a break with tradition. None is decisive and each could easily by accepted by a proponent of creatio ex materia.71
Similarly, in his extensive study of the origin of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in Christian thought Gerhard May explains why he does not believe that the New Testament texts can be taken to refer to creatio ex nihilo.
The passages repeatedly quoted as New Testament witnesses for the idea of creatio ex nihilo are Romans 4:17, where Paul says that God 'calls into being the things that are not', and Hebrews 11:3 where it says that 'the visible came forth from the invisible.' But these formulations fit with the statements in hellenistic Judaism ... about creation of non-being, or out of non-being, and mean, no more than those, to give expression to creation out of nothing in the strict sense, as a contradiction in principle of the doctrine of world-formation.72
May explains that creatio ex nihilo is a metaphysical doctrine that requires conscious formulation, and such an approach was completely foreign to any of the biblical writers: "The biblical presentation of the Almighty God who created the world ... possess for early Christianity an overwhelming self-evidence and was not perceived as a metaphysical problem. This new question first concerned the theologians of the second century, deeply rooted in philosophical thinking, and wanting consciously to understand the truth of Christianity as the truth of philosophy."73 The truth is that these scholars feel that a "rigorous" exegesis is not needed to show that these biblical passages do not address the issue of creatio ex nihilo because it is fairly obvious on the face of such passages that they do not consciously formulate such a metaphysical doctrine. The argument that these texts must assume the doctrine of creation out of nothing simply begs the question - especially where the text does not address the issue and does not engage in the type of philosophical analysis necessary to formulate the doctrine. To force a view on the text which it does not address with the argument that the view must be implicit always risks simply reading one's own theological preferences into the text. I believe that is precisely what C&C have done. An approach which resists reading creatio ex nihilo into the text unless it is expressly formulated is especially appropriate where, as we shall see, the earliest Christian philosophers assumed that the doctrine of creation from preexisting chaos was the Christian view. The issue simply had not been addressed or settled prior to the end of the second century when the adoption of a middle-Platonic view of God and matter as a background assumption of discourse made adoption of creatio ex nihilo the only rational doctrine to adopt.
C&C also assert that Mormons have simply failed to address the biblical evidence:
One wonders what LDS scholars would take as unambiguous evidence for creation out of nothing in Scripture (or even extra-biblical sources). It seems that they would not be satisfied with any formulation in a given text other than "creation out of absolutely nothing" or the like before admitting the possibility of finding evidence of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Apart from the strong case just made for the biblical doctrine of creation out of nothing, we must note that even if the biblical evidence were ambiguous and took no position on this issue, the LDS view would not win by default.... On the one hand, to date Mormons have neglected to interact with biblical evidence on this subject; on the other, they have put forth no significant exegetical evidence to support their position.74
Well, I can't speak for other LDS scholars, but what I would like to see as "unambiguous evidence" of creatio ex nihilo is evidence that is truly unambiguous and is not better explained by the reading that it teaches the contrary doctrine of creatio ex materia. I would like to see a text that actually addresses the issue of creatio ex nihilo in a conscious way and not a reading that merely assumes or reads into the text the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. I'd like to see an exegesis of the text that does not depart from the erroneous assumption that if the Old Testament differs from ancient Near Eastern accounts in the sense that it does not contain a theogony then it must be utterly different in all respects. Is it too much to ask for a discussion that doesn't ignore the background assumptions of the world out of which the text arises? For if a text is truly taking a polemical position, then it should make clear that it is rejecting a position of creation out of matter and in favor of creation out of nothing. To see a text as teaching creatio ex nihilo coming out of a world that universally adopted creatio ex materia requires a text that actually formulates the kinds of philosophical distinctions that underlie the doctrine in the first place. I want to see an exegesis that doesn't erroneously assume that the word "create" must mean creatio ex nihilo. Not only do the biblical texts not make such a distinction consciously, they in fact adopt the contrary position. C&C ignore the arguments in favor of seeing Genesis 1 as a text teaching creation out of chaos. They ignore 2 Peter 3:5 which teaches the same thing. They ignore the fact that in the ancient world "invisible things" are still things but simply not seen. Thus, it is rather clear that a text they take to adopt creation out of nothing, Hebrews 11:3, actually teaches exactly the opposite. This reading is confirmed by an approximately contemporaneous text, Second Enoch, that uses almost exactly similar language and clearly adopted creation of preexisting realities. Indeed, C&C are so bent on reading creatio ex nihilo into any text that says that God "created that which is from that which is not," that they even read creatio ex nihilo into Second Enoch which rather clearly teaches creation ex materia. In addition, why should Mormons have to defend their doctrine against evangelical exegesis when evangelicals such as Bruce K. Waltke in his excellent book Creation and Chaos have already done a fine job of arguing the very position that Mormons assert?75
C&C suggest that extra-biblical texts from around the time of Christ from the Dead Sea Scrolls teach creation out of nothing. For example, they quote the Manuel of Discipline found among the Scrolls:
From the God of Knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before ever they existed He established their whole design, and when, as ordained for them, they come into being, it is in accord with His glorious design that they accomplish their task without change.76
They also quote 1QS XI, 11 which states:
By his knowledge everything shall come into being,
and all that does exist
he establishes with his calculations
and nothing is done outside him.
They assert that in these texts "we are pointed toward creation ex nihilo rather than away from it."77 However, such a reading forces the text with assumptions that simply are not addressed in the text. These texts do not address whether God used prior material or how God created the earth. All of the texts from the Scrolls cited by C&C address only the fact that God has predestined the course of the world and has knowledge of all things before they occur. The mere assertion that God knew of something before he created it and that he created it through his power are not inconsistent with creatio ex materia. For example, I can say that Mormons consistently believe that before God created the earth he knew its whole design and by his knowledge he created all things that come into existence, and yet God created by organizing a chaos. In other words, there is nothing asserted in these texts that is inconsistent with what Mormons believe (except Mormons reject the all-pervasive predestination that the Dead Sea Covenantors believed in).
C&C next refer to a statement by the first century Rabbi Gameliel as support for creatio ex nihilo:
A philosopher asked Rabban Gamaliel "Your God was a great artist, but he found himself good materials which helped him." Rabban Gamaliel replied, "What are these?" The philosopher said, "Chaos, darkness, waters, wind and depths" [See Genesis 1:2]. Rabban Gamaleil replied, "May the breath go forth from this man. It is written concerning each of these. Concerning the chaos, "Who made peace and created evil" (Isaiah 45:7). Concerning darkness, "Who formed the light and created darkness." Concerning the waters, "Praise him, heavens and the waters, etc. (Psalm 148:4). Why? Because, "He commanded and they were created" (v. 8). Concerning the wind, "For behold he forms the mountains and creates the wind" (Amos 4:13). Concerning the depths, "When the depths were not, I danced" (Proverbs 8:24)78
However, Gamaliel does not adopt the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. David Winston has argued that, "Gameliel denies that any of these cosmic forces aided God in creation. He does not deny that there was a passive material, merely that there was any material which aided God in the construction of the cosmos."79 Hubler places this text in the context of other Rabbinic texts which strictly prohibit any speculation about what there may have been prior to the creation in Genesis. In this context, it seems fairly evident that Gameliel is actually teaching that God did not have any helpers in the creation - but in good rabbinic fashion, Gameliel refuses to go beyond that principle and speculate about what might have existed before the creation.80
C&C next cite The Shepherd of Hermas, a text from the middle second century: "God who dwells in heaven and created that which is out of non-existence (ktisas ek tou me ontos)."81 It is extremely significant that when the first "scriptural" arguments in history were formulated to support the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo by Irenaeus (about 185 A.D.) and Origen (220 A.D.) they do not cite scriptures from the canon accepted by evangelicals and Mormons. Rather, they cite The Shepherd of Hermas and 2 Maccabees 7:28.82 The reason they cite these texts rather than other scriptures is obvious - they did not know of any scriptures which supported the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. It is ironic therefore that even these two texts do not teach the dogma of creatio ex nihilo. It is also significant that Hermas adopts the technical language for creation from relative non-being ek tou me ontos which makes it fairly clear that God created what is from potential being, not from absolute nothing or ex nihilo.83 The same analysis applies to a verse from Hermas not cited by C&C which states: "One must believe that God is one and that he has created and ordered and made them from the non-existence (ek me ontos) into existence...."84 As Hubler argued:
Once again, ek me ontos alone cannot be taken as absolute denial of a material substrate. By itself this definition is insufficient to carry the burden of a decisive and well-defined position because both ek and on are notoriously equivocal. Ek does not necessarily designate material cause, but it can be used temporally. On does not necessarily refer to absolute non-being, but the non-existence of what later came to be. To read creatio ex nihilo in Hermes (sic) goes far beyond the warrant of the text, which makes no clear claims to the presence or absence of material and provides no discussion of the position.85
C&C next cite the Jewish pseudepigraphical book, Joseph and Aseneth, written sometime between second century B.C. and the second century A.D. This documents states: "Lord God of ages ... who brought the invisible (things) out into the light, who made the (things that) are and the (ones that) have an appearance from the non-appearing and non-being."86 However, once again C&C fail to note that God's "making to appear those things which are invisible" actually imputes an existing status to those things which are not seen. Just as in Second Enoch and Colossians, the assertion that God makes visible things "from the non-appearing and non-being" simply refers to the already existing, invisible substrate out of which God creates "visible things." Invisible things are still things, they simply have not been made visible by God.
C&C also cite the Odes of Solomon which were composed about 100 A.D. They state:
And there is nothing outside of the Lord,
because he was before anything came to be.
And the worlds are by his word,
And by the thought of his heart.87
Once again C&C read the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo into a text that simply does not address the issue. This text stresses that before the world was created God existed and that God created the world by his Word. However, such beliefs are not inconsistent with creatio ex materia. In particular, this Ode is a poetic expression of Genesis 1. C&C fail to note that earlier in this same Ode God is said to investigate "that which is invisible" and thus posits an already existing reality prior to God's creation. Before the creation of the world, God begins his creative activity by investigation of the invisible things:
For the word of the Lord investigates that which is invisible,
and perceives his thought.
For the eye sees his works,
and the ears hear his words.
It is he who spread out the earth,
and placed the waters of the sea. (Ode 16:8-10)
As Mario Erbetta noted in his commentary on the Odes of Solomon: "The poet, taking up again the theme of the word of the creator, finds that it examines that which up until now does not appear, it does not exist, but it still unveils the divine thought. This thought is nothing other than the divine plan before being realized in being."88 These invisible things which have not yet been created are not absolute nothing, for they have the power to reveal themselves to God in their potential being and bring about the thought that gives rise to God's plan to create. As such, the invisible things from which God creates the visible things to be seen already exist as a potentiality. This passage is actually contrary to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
C&C next cite 2 Baruch 21:4 as evidence for creation ex nihilo: "You who created the earth, the one who fixed the firmament by the word and fastened the height of heaven by the spirit, the one who in the beginning of the world called that which did not yet exist and they obeyed you."89 However, this text rather clearly does not express creatio ex nihilo, for God calls to "that which did not yet exist" and it obeys him! Ironically, this texts seems almost identical to the expression in the Lecture on Faith, 1, 22 - "God spake, chaos heard, and the worlds came into order by reason of the faith there was in HIM." This text is an especially poignant reminder that the phrase "that which did not exist" is something which exists already in potentiality and has capacities to receive yet greater being from God. In particular, "that which does not yet exist" has the capacity to obey God's command and to be given form by God's word.
The poster-child "scripture" to support creatio ex nihilo in Jewish sources prior to the time of Christ has always been 2 Maccabees 7:28, a text found in the apocrypha and considered scripture by the Catholic Church but not by either Mormons or Protestants. C&C assert that it "states clearly the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo."90 It reads:
I pray you son, look to heaven and earth and seeing everything in them, know that God made them from non-being (ex ouk onton epoiesen auta ho theos), and the human race began the same way.
However, this text is quite unclear as to whether creation from absolute nothing is intended. One reason that many scholars believe that 2 Maccabees teaches creation ex nihilo is because it uses the phrase ex ouk onton, which in the much later Christian apologetic in the late second century was a technical term of art signifying creatio ex nihilo. However, in this context it is inappropriate to see the phrase as a philosophical term of art - after all, it is a mother speaking to her son, not a philosopher addressing learned interlocutors. The text is probably best read as creation from non-being in the sense that "an artist, who by impressing form on matter, causes things to exist which did not exist before."91 An artist creates something completely new by using preexisting materials. Werner Forster maintains that in 2 Maccabees "the non-existent is not absolute nothing, but ... the metaphysical substance ... in an uncrystallized state."92 May states:
The best known, constantly brought forward as the earliest evidence of the conceptual formulation of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, is 2 Maccabees 7:28. The need for caution in evaluating this is apparent from the context in which there is talk of creation 'out of nothing.' There is no theoretical disquisition on the nature of the creation process, but a parenthetic reference to God's power.... A position on the problem of matter is clearly not expected in this context. The text implies nothing more than the conception that the world came into existence through the sovereign act of God, and that it previously was not there.93
Thus, May suggests that the words "ouk ex onton" in 2 Maccabees should be translated "not out of things being, i.e., already existent individual things." Hubler states: "Non-being [in 2 Maccabees] refers to the non-existence of heavens and earth before God's creative act. It does not express absolute non-existence, only the prior non-existence of heavens and earth. They were made to exist after not existing."94
It is virtually certain that several Jewish texts expressly teach the doctrine of creation out of a preexisting matter or substrate of potential matter (potential matter is sometimes called "non being" or "that which does not exist" - to me on). I have already shown that Second Enoch (a document very likely dated to about 70-100 A.D., a time contemporaneous with New Testament texts such as Hebrews and probably the Gospel of Matthew) taught that God created visible things from already existing invisible things.95 Joseph and Aseneth also fairly clearly teaches creation from already existing realities, the visible from the invisible. Similarly, 2 Peter3:5 teaches that God created the world from the already existing waters and Hebrews 11:3 teaches creation from invisible things. Similarly, The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish work dated from 37-41 A.D. by David Winston,96 expressly teaches the doctrine of creation from matter:
For your omnipotent hand found no difficulty even in creating the world from formless matter (ex amouphou hyles). (Wisdom of Solomon 11:17a)
Writing at the beginning of the second century, Philo Judaeus, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, also expressly taught that God created out of already existing matter. He stated: "This cosmos of ours was formed out of all that there was of water, and air and fire, not even the smallest particle being left outside."97 Elsewhere Philo stated: "when the substance of the universe was without shape and figure God gave it these, when it had no definite character God molded it into definiteness..."98 C&C suggest that in Philo's writings perhaps the matter that was organized by God was itself created at a prior instant ex nihilo. However, Frances Young has demonstrated why such a reading of Philo's texts forces an unstated and contrary assumption into the text.99 Indeed, such a reading simply attributes to the text something it doesn't address at all.
Also writing at the beginning of the second century, Clement, Bishop of Rome, stated that God "made manifest (efaneropoiesas) the eternal fabric of the world (eu ten aennaon tou cosmou sistasin)."100 Now Clement is important because he is at the very center of the Christian Church as it was then developing. Clement's view assumed that God had created from an eternally existing substrate. Indeed, he created by "making manifest" what already existed in some form. The lack of argumentation or further elucidation indicates that Clement was not attempting to establish a philosophical position; he was merely stating a generally accepted position that is more tacit than explicit. However, the fact that such a view as assumed is even more significant than if Clement had argued for it. If he had presented an argument for this view, then we can assume that it was either a contested doctrine or a new view. However, because he accepts it as obvious, it appears to be a generally accepted belief in the early Christian Church.
In addition, there are at least four late second-century Christian philosophers who believed that creation out of matter was the established Christian doctrine. Now it must be noticed that as we pass from the biblical texts and into the late-second-century, the scope of discourse passes from a non-technical devotional and revelatory literature to the technical discussions of philosophy. By this time philosophical distinctions and assumptions are used to make sense of the received doctrine. However, the importance of these philosophers is not found in their arguments or philosophies, but the fact that they accepted the background assumption of creation from already existing matter precisely because they thought it was the received Christian doctrine.
For example, Justin Martyr, writing about 165 A.D., taught that Plato had received his doctrine of creation from Moses' writings:
And that you may learn that it was from our teachers - we mean the account given through the prophets - that Plato borrowed his statement that God, having altered matter which was shapeless, made the world, hear the very words spoken through Moses, who, as shown above, was the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers; and through whom the spirit of prophecy, signifying how and from what materials God at first formed the world, spake thus: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And so God said, Let there be light; and it was so.' So that both Plato and they who agree with him, and we ourselves, have learned, and you also can be convinced, that by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses.101
Like Philo, Justin Martyr thought that there was no problem interpreting Genesis in Platonistic terms - God had created by organizing matter. Yet it is Justin's statement that this is a doctrine "we have learned" that gives pause, for he is speaking to Greeks who agree with Plato. He is arguing that he has learned in the Christian tradition that God created by his word all things by organizing matter, and this is a view older than Plato's. The verb used by Justin where he says that God created by "altering matter," is strepsanta, meaning "rotating or turning." Such language echos Plato's view taught in the Timaeus that the demiurge created the cosmos by setting the world soul in rotation and by the same act matter is ordered.102
Athenagoras of Athens, writing about 170 A.D., also taught that God created by crystallizing an already existing substrate. He stated that the Logos or Word "came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay without attributes, as inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up in the purer."103 It must be recognized that Athenagorous's doctrine is thoroughly Platonic notwithstanding the fact that he seeks to defend Christian doctrine. His view of the Logos is derived from Platonism.
From the writings of Tertullian, we also know of another Christian philosopher writing around the end of the second century who believed in creation ex materia. Hermogenes writes after Tatian and Theophilus have formulated the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. By this time, all parties discussing the issue are departing from Middle-Platonic assumptions about God and matter. Tertullian tells us that Hermogenes argued for the existence of eternal matter based on the Middle-Platonic assumption that matter is evil and therefore cannot be created by a good God:
But we find evil things made by him, although not by choice or will. Because if they were made by his choice or will, he would have made something inconsistent or unworthy of himself. What he does not make by his choice, must be understood to be made by the fault of another thing: from matter without doubt.104
Finally, Clement of Alexandria, writing about 220 A.D., also adopted the view that matter is eternal and that God creates by organizing a chaotic substratum. Indeed, Clement uses the phrase "made out of nothing" three times in the Stromata, but each time he uses the technical term ek me ontos which shows that he is discussing creation from relative non-being rather than creatio ex nihilo.105 Clement clearly favored creation ex materia in a poem:
O King...
Maker of all, who heaven and heaven's adornment
By the Divine Word alone didst make;
... according to a well-ordered plan;
Out of a confused heap who didst create
This ordered sphere, and from the shapeless mass
Of matter didst the universe adorn...106
These texts are significant because they show that creation out of matter was still the accepted view. Further, as Frances Young indicates, these texts show that creatio ex nihilo is not an inheritance from either the Jewish or earliest Christian tradition during the apostolic period. Frances Young argues that the reasons for rejecting the assumption of a Jewish origin for the doctrine include:
(i) the sparsity of reference to the doctrine in Jewish texts, and indeed the earliest Christian materials, and the problem of interpreting those materials...
(ii) the contrary evidence of the Wisdom of Solomon and the works of Philo, and in early Christianity, of Justin, Athenagoras, Hermogenes and Clement of Alexandria. All of these authors seem quite happy to adopt without question the Platonic view of an active and passive element, namely God plus matter. The fact that Philo can even so speak of things being created ek ouk onto-n shows that the term could be understood as consistent with the notion of pre-existent matter which he takes for granted elsewhere. Middle Platonism was married with Jewish tradition without any sense of tension.
(iii) the lack of interest in creatio ex nihilo in Jewish tradition prior to the Middle Ages: the Rabbis condemn speculation about creation as much as about the chariot-throne of God!107
Thus, the significance of these texts for Mormons is not that they teach a Mormon view of matter and of God - they do not. Rather, they show that the view that God created ex nihilo was an innovation which occurred around the end of the second century A.D. They show that a wholesale adoption of Middle-Platonist views had overrun the "Christian" apolog
