Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The belief that God created matter from nothing is called creatio ex nihilo (as opposed to creatio ex materia). It is the accepted orthodoxy of most denominations of Judaism and Christianity. Most denominations of Christianity and Judaism believe that a single, uncreated God was responsible for the creation of the cosmos.
creatio ex nihilo: creation out of nothing: A concept about creation, often used in a theological or philosophical context. Also known as the 'First Cause' argument in philosophy of religion. Contrasted with creatio ex materia. Credo in Unum Deum: I Believe in One God: The first words of the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed. credo quia ...
Creatio ex nihilo is the doctrine that all matter was created out of nothing by God in an initial or a beginning moment where the cosmos came into existence. [13] [14] The third-century founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, argued that the cosmos was instead an emanation from God.
Christianity affirms the creation by God since its early time in the Apostles' Creed ("I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.", 1st century CE), that is symmetrical to the Nicene Creed (4th century CE). Nowadays, theologians debate whether the Bible itself teaches if this creation by God is a creation ex nihilo.
Under medieval Christianity, the Latin "creatio " came to designate God's act of "creatio ex nihilo " ("creation from nothing"); thus "creatio " ceased to apply to human activities. The Middle Ages, however, went even further than antiquity, when they revoked poetry's exceptional status: it, too, was an art and therefore craft and not creativity.
Craig argues that the cause of the universe necessarily embodies specific properties in creating the universe ex nihilo and in effecting creation from a timeless state (implying free agency). Based upon this analysis, he appends a further premise and conclusion: [43]
The Augustinian theodicy asserts that God created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing), but maintains that God did not create evil and is not responsible for its occurrence. [4] Evil is not attributed existence in its own right, but is described as the privation of good – the corruption of God's good creation. [5]
The second class of answers Schaeffer postulates is that logic exists, and that the subject of metaphysics is open to rational discussion. Within this category, Schaeffer discusses three specific answers: first, existence ex nihilo, that all that exists "has come out of absolutely nothing." Schaeffer labels this answer "unthinkable."