Hebrews 11.3 has also been cited as an example of creatio
ex nihilo in the New Testament:
By faith we understand that the ages
were ordered by the word of God, so that the visible came about from the
unmanifest. (Hebrews 11.3)
However, the notion of creation μη εκ
φαινομενων was comfortable for Platonic dualists or Stoics,
because it lacked all qualities.
Because all things in heaven and on earth were created in him, the
visible and the invisible; whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities
or powers, all things were created through him and for hm. (Colossians 1.16)
Colossians would eventually provide strong support for proponents of creatio
ex nihilo, but for proponents of creatio ex materia the creation of
all things visible and invisible is limited to what immediately precedes and
follows in the verse: “all things in the heavens and upon earth.” The invisible
are in the angelic powers: the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers.
Paul attributes the cause of the blessings of Abraham to his faith in
God:
Just as it is written, “I have established you as the father of many nations,”
because he trusted in God who raises the dead and calls the non-existent. (Romans
4.17)
The verse’s “non-existent” need not be understood in an absolute sense
of non-being. Μη οντα 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.
In sub-apostolic writings one text above all others has been cited as
evidence of creatio ex nihilo:
First of all one must believe that God is one and that he has created
and ordered and made them from the non-existence into existence and contains
all, but is alone uncontained. (Hermes Mandate 1)
Once again, εκ
μη οντος
alone cannot
be taken as absolute denial of material substrate. By itself the phrase is insufficient
to carry the burden of a decisive and well-defined position because both εκ and ον are notoriously
equivocal. Εκ does not necessarily designate material cause, but it can be used temporally.
Ον does not necessarily
refer to not absolute non-being, but the non-existence of what later came to
be. To read it as creatio ex nihilo in Hermes 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.
The use of the phrase εκ
του μη
οντος in both a relative
and absolute sense can be illustrated from the writings of Aristotle. He uses
it in a relative sense to describe natural generation:
For generation is from non-existence into being, and corruption from
being back into non-existence. (de Generatione Animalium B 5, 741 b 22
f.)
Here Aristotle uses
εκ του
μη οντος
to refer to
the previous non-existence of that which is generated. He does not mean to deny
the material cause for generation.
To take εκ
του μη
οντος in
the stronger
absolute sense requires a clear context which denies a material cause for generation
or creation. That cannot be found in Hermes or the Wisdom of Solomon (see
chapter 3) or any other text before the second century C.E.
In the later second century, the positions with respect to matter in
creation became better defined. Nevertheless, it is clear that the position was
not predetermined, as both creatio ex materia and creatio ex nihilo
were taught by Christian writers of the second century. Some Christians, Justin
and Hermogenes, accepted the dualism in the Middle-Platonists with its eternal
matter. (James Noel Hubler, “Creatio
ex Nihilo: Matter, Creation, and the Body in Classical and Christian Philosophy
Through Aquinas” [University of Pennsylvania, PhD diss., 1995], 108-11)
