Sect. 111The Origin of All Things by Creation Out of NothingThe Origin of All Things by Creation Out of Nothing

I. Our conception of God as the only Being existing necessarily, implies that all other beings must, in some way or other, owe their existence to Him. It also implies that these other beings owe their whole substance, with all its accidents and modifications, mediately or immediately, to God. Again, the Divine Substance being simple and indivisible, things outside God cannot be produced from or made out of it: they can only be called into existence out of their nothingness, by the power of God. “God exists of Himself” is the fundamental dogma concerning God; the fundamental dogma concerning all things else is that “they are produced out of nothing by God.” Thus the Vatican Council, following the Fourth Lateran Council, says, “This one God, of His own goodness and almighty power, … at the very beginning of time made out of nothing both kinds of creatures, spiritual and corporal” (sess. iii., c. 1). And again, “If any one doth not confess that the world and all things contained therein, both spiritual and material, have been, as to their whole substance, produced out of nothing by God: let him be anathema” (can. 5). This definition is merely an explanation of the first words of the Apostles’ Creed, by which, from the very earliest ages, the Church confessed the Almighty God to be the Maker, ποιητής, of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. The Latin Church has always attached to the verb creare the meaning of “production out of nothing;” the Greek Church possessed no such specific name, whereas in Hebrew the verb בָרָא already had the fixed signification which the Latin creare afterwards acquired.

When Creation is described as a production from, or out of, nothing (de nihilo or ex nihilo, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων), the “nothing” is not, of course, the matter out of which things are made. It means, “out of no matter,” or, “not out of anything,” or, starting from absolute non-being and replacing it by being. The formula is also amplified into, Productio rei ex nihilo sui et subjecti; by the Greek Fathers, often, ἐκ μηδαμοῦ καὶ μηδαμῶς ὄντων.

II. Holy Scripture, both in the Old and in the New Testament, gives abundant and decisive testimony to the dogma of the creation of all things out of nothing.

1. This dogma is implicitly contained in the scriptural descriptions of the Divine Essence, of the Divine Power, and of God’s absolute dominion over the world. If God in His external works were dependent on pre-existing matter, He could not be described as Being pure and simple, as Almighty pure and simple, as entirely self-sufficient; God would not be “the First and the Last,” “the Beginning and the End,” pure and simple—that is, of all things—if outside of Him anything existed independently of Him.

2. Over and over again Holy Writ represents God as the Principle of all that is, never mentioning any exception. He is the Founder (e.g. Ps. 77:69, 88:12, 102:22), the Supporter, and Conservator of heaven and earth; He is the Author of the spiritual as well as of the material world (Col. 1:16). Pre-existing matter, which, indeed, in the case of simple beings like spirits, would be impossible, is nowhere spoken of. Many scriptural expressions, e.g. Heb. 11:3, can be understood of the fashioning of unformed matter already existing; yet this operation is described as entering into the very substance, so that it supposes a dominion over matter which can belong to none but its Creator.

3. Creation is further clearly contained in the narrative of the first chapter of Genesis. The narrative purposes to give a full account of the origin of the world; had any matter existed previously to the Divine operation, it ought certainly to have been mentioned. Yet the production of heaven and earth is given as the first creative action, as the foundation of the subsequent operations, and, besides, we are told that the earth “was void and empty.” This clearly indicates that before the creation of heaven and earth no finite thing whatever existed. Again, the Hebrew verb בָרָא, although not necessarily designating a production out of nothing, is never used except to express an action proper to God alone, notably the operations of His sovereignty, absolute independence, and infinity. In the narrative of Gen. 1 this verb is used to describe the first production; it does not occur again in the account of the subsequent operations except at the creation of man, ver. 27, because the soul of man is produced out of nothing, and in ver. 21, possibly to indicate that the animals are not the product of water and air but of the almighty Word of God. If we compare the first words of Genesis, “In the beginning God created,” with the first words of the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word,” and also with Prov. 8:22 sqq., we are forced to conclude that time itself began with the creation of heaven and earth, and consequently that, before this creative act, nothing whatsoever existed outside of God. Hence the sense of Gen. 1:1, is undoubtedly expressed correctly by the mother of the Machabees when speaking to her son: “Look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, 2 Mach. 7:28).

III. To the unprejudiced mind the dogma of creation is as plain as the dogma of a self-existing, personal God. The two notions are correlative. Things outside of God must, from the fact that they do not exist necessarily, depend for their existence on some other being, which can be no other than the self-existing God. The notion of creation, or production out of nothing, is free from even a shadow of contradiction, whereas every other notion concerning the origin of things involves a contradiction. It is, we admit, quite a peculiar conception, without any analogy in the operations of creatures; yet our reason plainly tells us that creative power is a necessary attribute of God. Cf. Book II., § 76.

The axiom, Ex nihilo nihil fit (Out of nothing, nothing is made), cannot be urged against the dogma of creation. It is true, indeed, that by nature or art nothing can be made out of nothing, but it is certainly not proved that no being whatever can produce things out of nothing. Scientists who reject the true axiom, Omne vivum ex vivo, and hold that matter endows itself with life, ought to be the last to raise such an objection.

IV. Active creation, implying, as it does, infinite power, is an attribute of God alone. Consequently, all beings outside of God are created directly by Him and by Him alone, without the intervention of any other creature. That no creature, even acting as an instrument of God, has ever actually created anything, was defined by the Fourth Council of the Lateran: “There is one true God, … the Creator of all things visible and invisible.” It is also theologically certain that no creature has the power to create, because this power has ever been asserted by the Church and by the Fathers to be an exclusive attribute of God, in the same way as eternity and omnipresence. The question “whether a creature could be used as an instrument in the act of creation” is answered differently by different theologians. The best authorities and the best arguments are in favour of the negative. See Bannez, in I., q. 45; St. Thomas, De Pot., q. 3, a. 4.