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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 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.
Emanationism is a theory in the cosmology or cosmogony of certain religious and philosophical systems, that posits the concept of emanation.According to this theory, emanation, from the Latin emanare meaning "to flow from" or "to pour forth or out of", is the mode by which all existing things are derived from a 'first reality', or first principle.
In the early 2nd century CE, early Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God, and by the beginning of the 3rd century creation ex nihilo had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology. [32] Ex nihilo creation is found in creation stories from ancient Egypt, the Rig ...
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.
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 origins of the argument date back to at least Aristotle, developed subsequently within the scholarly traditions of Neoplatonism and early Christianity, and later under medieval Islamic scholasticism through the 9th to 12th centuries. It would eventually be re-introduced to Christian theology in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas.
In it Hart argues that "if Christianity taken as a whole is indeed an entirely coherent and credible system of belief, then the universalist understanding of its message is the only one possible." [ 1 ] Hart has described the book as a supplement to his The New Testament: A Translation published also by Yale in 2017. [ 2 ]