Creation out of Nothing – What Does This Mean?

A common game we play with children doesn’t have a name, but we can call it, “Where did it come from?” For example, we might ask where do eggs come from? A young child will say, the store. Where did the store get it, we ask. From truck, to farm to chicken we go. When we ask where did the chicken get the eggs? We get giggles. What we are teaching is that everything has a cause. The principle is called “cause and effect.” But where does that chain begin? Or end? Human logic breaks down at this puzzle. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? That riddle goes. Christians have an answer to the question: God!

In theology, we call God the First Cause or the Prime Mover. It was first clearly explained by Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the Middle Ages. He began with Aristotle’s idea that the Universe doesn’t explain itself. There must be Someone that got the chain of cause and effect started. Scripture answers the question of who that it is when it tells us — God created the Heavens and Earth. (Genesis 1:1) The word Moses used for “created” (בָּרָא=bara’) is used only for this act of God. What did he use to make all things? Nothing at all. God’s work was creatio ex nihilo — creation out of nothing.

So, far, so good. Yet logically it doesn’t make sense. Logic asks: “but where did God come from?” The most common answer from non-Christian philosophers is to explain where the creator god comes from or do not believe in a god at all. Everything has always been an eternal chain of cause and effects. Mormons answer it by claiming God the Father is really a flesh and blood man who has grown to be a god. He has a father, who, in turn, has a father and so on. Others maintain that creation was formed from God’s spirit itself or from the eternal material universe. Modern philosophers, beginning with scientific theories, do not answer the question at all.

Some well-meaning Christians, who want to accept creation theories based on science, have tried to harmonize them with the truths of Scripture. What they fail to realize is that the two ideas do not fit together. To take up a theory that has no first cause destroys the teachings that God is the creator, that he is necessary to hold it all together and that he can save us. This is why the Church confesses that God created the world out of nothing at all.