Ex nihilo

Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning 'out of nothing'. It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning 'creation out of nothing', chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but it also occurs in other fields. As otherworldly expectations become increasingly important, the problem of the basic relationship of god to the world and the problem of the world's imperfections press into the foreground of thought; this happens the more life here on earth comes to be regarded as a merely provisional form of existence when compared to that beyond, the more the world comes to be viewed as something created by god ex nihilo, and therefore subject to decline, the more god himself is conceived as a subject to transcendental goals and values, and the more a person's behavior in this world becomes oriented to his fate in the next. 'No special philosophical problems are raised by this view: If it is intelligible to hold that the existence of God requires no explanation, since something must exist necessarily and 'of itself,' then it is not unintelligible to hold that that which exists necessarily is God and a realm of non-divine actualities.' Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning 'out of nothing'. It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning 'creation out of nothing', chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but it also occurs in other fields. In theology, the common phrase creatio ex nihilo (lit. 'creation out of nothing'), contrasts with creatio ex materia (creation out of some pre-existent, eternal matter) and creatio ex deo (creation out of the being of God). Creatio continua is the ongoing divine creation. The phrase ex nihilo also appears in the classical philosophical formulation ex nihilo nihil fit, which means 'out of nothing comes nothing'. When used outside of religious or metaphysical contexts, ex nihilo also refers to something coming from nothing. For example, in a conversation, one might call a topic 'ex nihilo' if it bears no relation to the previous topic of discussion. Ancient Near Eastern mythologies and classical creation myths in Greek mythology envisioned the creation of the world as resulting from the actions of a god or gods upon already-existing primeval matter, known as chaos. An early conflation of Greek philosophy with the narratives in the Hebrew Bible came from Philo of Alexandria (d. AD 50), writing in the context of Hellenistic Judaism. Philo equated the Hebrew creator deity, Yahweh, with Aristotle's primum movens (First Cause) in an attempt to prove that the Jews had held monotheistic views even before the Greeks. However, this was still within the context of creation from pre-existing materials (i.e., 'moving' or 'changing' a material substratum.) The classical tradition of creation from chaos first came under question in Hellenistic philosophy (on a priori grounds), which developed the idea that the primum movens must have created the world out of nothing. Theologians debate whether the Bible itself teaches creation ex nihilo. Traditional interpreters argue on grammatical and syntactical grounds that this is the meaning of Genesis 1:1, which is commonly rendered: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' They find further support for this view in New Testament passages such as Hebrews 11:3—'By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible' and Revelation 4:11, 'For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.' However, other interpreters understand creation ex nihilo as a second-century theological development. According to this view, church fathers opposed notions appearing in pre-Christian creation myths and in Gnosticism—notions of creation by a demiurge out of a primordial state of matter (known in religious studies as chaos after the Greek term used by Hesiod in his Theogony). Jewish thinkers took up the idea, which became important to Judaism, to ongoing strands in the Christian tradition, and—as a corollary—to Islam. The first sentence of the Greek version of Genesis in the Septuagint starts with the words: ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν, translatable as 'in the beginning he made'.