The Wisdom of Solomon
11:17 takes it to be self-evident that this means God created the world out of
pre-existing formless matter (εξ αμορφου υλης), a point on which it does not
sound very different from Plato, Aristotle or for that matter Philo of Alexandria,
for whom it also seems to be unproblematically the case that creation is a
matter of giving shape and identity to what is shapeless. (Markus Bockmuehl,
"Creatio ex nihilo in Palestinian Judaism and Early Christianity," Scottish
Journal of Theology 65, no. 3 [2012]: 255-56)
It is certainly true
that frequently cited Septuagintal and New Testament passages which assert
God’s creation of what is seen from what is not seen, or things which are out
of things which are not, should not be short-circuited into statements about
creatio ex nihilo. Exegetes are today in widespread agreement on this point. 2
Maccabees 7:28, for example, affirms not that God made the heavens and the
earth out of ‘nothing’, merely that he made them ‘not out of existing things’
(ουκ εξ οντων). The writer applies this principle to human conception in the
womb, which is clearly a case of God making human beings out of what is not a
human being. Other examples could be multiplied. If God makes ‘out of non-being
the things that are’ this need not be ex nihilo but merely his making out of
shapelessness the things which have shape.
Romans 4:17,
likewise, links God’s ‘calling into existence things that do not exist’ to
Abraham and Sarah’s preternatural biological conception, also comparing it to
resurrection from the dead. Other New Testament passages which are less
explicit than is often assumed include John 1:3, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 11:3.
While we may all agree that such statements are compatible with God’s sovereign
creation out of nothing, what they actually affirm seems to be rather less than this.
(Markus Bockmuehl, "Creatio
ex nihilo in Palestinian Judaism and Early Christianity," Scottish
Journal of Theology 65, no. 3 [2012]: 257-58)
The origins of
creatio ex nihilo and Christian theology
What is the
significance of all this for Christian theology? Creatio ex nihilo is a
doctrine that cannot be straightforwardly established by a sola scriptura
approach, despite Protestant
theologians’ persistent claims to the contrary. (Markus Bockmuehl,
"Creatio ex nihilo in Palestinian Judaism and Early Christianity,"
Scottish Journal of Theology 65, no. 3 [2012]: 268)
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