In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth!
In our last post we briefly introduced what Genesis 1:1 was; a prelude, or preface, of a hymn of worship. Here we will have to say something about what it is not.
The primary and original meaning here is not creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). There are at least two difficulties Hebrew thought would have with creatio ex nihilo however we might understand it. First, the whole idea of “nothing” cannot be predicated (nothing is …? the absence of something?) and second, it is certain that the ancient Hebrews simply didn’t think in terms of “nothingness.” In fact, for them, “nothingness” is impossible since God fills all things (Jer.23:24), and there is no place where God and His glory is not (Isa. 6:3). A clear window into this thinking is Hebrews 11:3 where we believe by faith that God made everything seen from the unseen (not “nothing”). There was no separation between the spiritual and the physical; the material has its origins in the spiritual and is necessarily connected to it.
This may seem to contradict the Catholic Catechism which states,
295 We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all”; and “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” God creates “out of nothing.”
If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.
Theophilus of Antioch, 2nd Century
296 We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely “out of nothing:”
Lateran Council IV, 1215
Granted, if there really is “something” that is “nothing,” we believe God is certainly able to make something out of it, and so we are not out of harmony with the spirit of Church teaching. But it is clear from these references that the real issue turns not on creation ex nihilo; the problem of “nothing” is left unexplained. Rather, it is about any necessity for God to create, or the need for God to have “materials at hand,” that is, materials He did not create, to build like humans build. The assumption throughout Scripture is that God made the materials at some point (e.g. Isa.45:7 where YHWH created darkness, so St. Basil and St. Augustine). This is in direct conflict with the pagan notion of creation where the victorious creation gods created the habitable earth out of the carcasses of the vanquished chaos gods. What is important to the Genesis 1 Creation Narrative is, as we shall see, the process of “separation.” And so, we can confidently say with the Catechism,
317 God alone created the universe, freely, directly and without any help.
To round up this part of the discussion, we simply cannot say that “In the beginning was God” and “nothing” from which He created everything, but with the Evangelist, “In the beginning was the Word” (so Origin, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom); “nothing,” if it exists, does not co-exist with God! It was all created in Christ.
Takeaway: Genesis 1 is not about creatio ex nihilo, but putting order to the chaos.
Question: Can you reconcile the above takeaway with the Catechism? If not, how do we read Genesis 1? If so, how?
Resources used:
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1994, + Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
Genesis1-11, Andrew Louth, ed. 2001. in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. InterVarsity Press.