Those who make use of this text will try to cite or quote it as an example of the idea of God having created everything from nothing, and also will cite it in an attempt to show that the view of God’s creating all things from noting is far older than the second century CE. Those who use this verse also are relying on a falsified translation of a verse taken also out of its own context. The reason for that, particularly in their older Bibles, is the translator of the text into Latin for the Latin Vulgate actually did exactly the same thing that the modern translators are doing to the passage at Romans 4:17! They actually turned the text into an explicit reference to creation from nothing by rendering it:
I beseech
thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider
that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also. (Latin: Peto nate
aspicias in caelum et terram et ad omnia quae in eis sunt et intellegas quia ex
nihilo fecit illa Deus et hominum genus)
So that would seem to demonstrate, at least on the surface,
the idea that creation from nothing is an older idea. But on closer
examination we really find that nothing could be further from the truth. The
Greek itself, from which the Latin was derived, does not have that meaning. And
the most recent Latin text translated of the same passage, in the Vatican
edition called Nova Vulgata, recently has removed the words ex nihilo
(Latin: “out of nothing”) from the translation, accordingly.
Worse for the Vulgate translation, the wording of “in the
same way” in the KJV English text speaking of mankind also refutes that idea.
And the Bible states man was created from dust, which already had been present,
meaning that mankind actually was not created from nothing. Worse still, the
words “the same way” also were omitted from the Vulgate, and thus also from the
above English translation’s text. However, the underlying Greek word ουτω (so meaning, “thus,” “likewise,” “in
this manner,” “in this way”) is present in this text. Now the Nova Vulgate (“New
Vulgate”) text has this meaning added back into that same passage—as it
should have been from the beginning. So, if according to the Greek text, the
creation of man was performed in the same way, or likewise to the
creation of the heavens and the earth, it is becomes apparent that the woman
speaking those above words did not have any sort of conception—primitive or
otherwise—of a creation from nothing.
D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye Are Gods:
Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic
Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and
Supplemented)
(North Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2018), 317-18; 2 Maccabees 7:28 in the
Biblia Sacra luxta Vulgatam Versionem, Fifth Revised Edition reads: "peto
nate aspicias in caelum et terram et ad omnia quae in eis sunt et intellegas
quia ex nihilo fecit illa Deus et hominum genus"