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What does Creation 'ex nihilo' mean?



    
    

Clarify Share Report Asked July 01 2013 Mini Anonymous (via GotQuestions)

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Shea S. Michael Houdmann Supporter Got Questions Ministries
"Ex nihilo" is Latin for "from nothing." The term "creation ex nihilo" refers to God creating everything from nothing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). Prior t...

July 01 2013 0 responses Vote Up Share Report


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Scan14 Michael Tinsley Supporter Retired Army veteran. Love my Bible (Jesus) and fishing.
Creation ex nihilo is the great problem atheistic scientists refuse to discuss or to investigate because their scientifically trained minds (many of them geniuses) won't accept a supernatural explanation for Creation.

They don't know what happened before the universally accepted Big Bang theory but they're sure it wasn't God. With no idea of what was happening before the Big Bang, they won't consider God as Creator.

And, its not just pre-Big Bang, they also can't measure or investigate 95.1% of the universe now, because its made up of dark matter (26.8%) and dark energy (68.3 %) which they 'know' is there but can't feel it, touch it,or measure it in any way other than to provide percentages of how they 'think' it exists and its influence on larger structures, like galaxies and galactic clusters and super-clusters.

So our esteemed atheist scientists can only make provable statements about 4.9% of the universe but they know for sure it wasn't God created. They can't and won't accept a supernatural explanation.

Creation ex nihilo is what we Christians know is true because we believe on faith in our Triune God and all He's done from Genesis to Revelation.

May 26 2014 2 responses Vote Up Share Report


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Mini Mike Dumais Supporter
Know that the Bible is true. It is not a science text, but where it does make reference to scientifically verifiable fact, it is always shown to be correct. 

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Theoretical physicists have developed a very strong theory of how matter was first created. Ex Nihilo. From nothing. Just like the Bible says.

String theory, the prevailing scientific theory of how matter and the big bang started, with sound, is an interesting coincidence when compared to the biblical account. Genesis 1:3 "GOD said".....spoke = sound.

Further, string theory postulates that the "fundamental essence" of matter is sound or a vibration oscillating at the speed of light. Scientists call this the music of the universe. When Christians point out the GOD spoke (sound) the universe into existence as in 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. We are steps ahead in understanding the true theory of everything.

If we do the math on 2Peter 3:8 or PSALM 90:4 "a day with the LORD is as a thousand years", We get the speed of light, the very speed of particle oscillation necessary to create matter. 

"GOD said, 'Let there be light.'" This is a mouthful and appears to be scientific fact as best we can ascertain. Sound, matter and light.

It isn't that our scientific friends are uneducated, it is that they are completely ignorant of the Bible.

December 19 2014 0 responses Vote Up Share Report


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My passport new Arun Kumar Supporter Engineer, Chennai, India
Personally, I suggest that there is some misunderstanding as to what "nothing" means. If it means that those that are existent now did not exist before they were created, then this is acceptable. But if people tend to define it by saying that God created everything from nothing, there are some serious questions to it. 

What is that "nothing"? Was that "nothing" co-existing with God from eternity past? I would say with certainty that God created everything from Himself. I.e., the creation ex-Deo. Because, before everything was created, there was only God and God was self-existent without anything that was equally existent with Him. So the term "nothing" simply becomes ineffective here. "Nothing" did not exist with God before creation. So God created everything from Himself. 

What is word of God? John 1:14 says word became flesh, i.e., Jesus Christ is the material part of God. Colossians 1:16 (ASV) says "....for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible...." that means everything was created in Him and not out of nothing. If it means out of nothing, then it means that God is nothing. That is totally useless view. 

The second part of Colossians 1:16 (ASV) says ".....all things have been created through him, and unto him;"....There is gross difference between "by Him" and "through Him", which simply means everything was created out of Jesus Christ, who is the material being of God. 

Revelation 3:14 says "These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God", what else can this mean other than that out of Jesus Christ everything was formed? Two meanings can be claimed from this verse. One is the one which is stated above. The another claim is that God created Jesus Christ, which is totally absurd. 

So creation ex-deo has an edge over the creation ex-nihilo view. But certainly the hypothesis creation ex-materia, i.e., God created everything from some pre-existent matter is absolutely absurd, which means that there was something which is co-existent with God from eternity past. 

There was neither something nor nothing existing with God. Only God was existing, the all pervading, omnipresent, omni-potent, transcendent, immanent everything of everything. Amen.

January 27 2015 0 responses Vote Up Share Report


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Mini Kenneth Heck Supporter
The doctrine of "creation ex nihilo" has made any reconciliation between science and religion truly difficult. In Heb. 11:3 it is only stated that "the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible." It doesn't state that God made anything from nothing. Why not? Because the idea of nothing doesn't exist in itself. We have no example from nature or from the scriptures of the idea. Natures abhors a vacuum. Even deep space is filled with gravity waves and particles, in the absence of other matter. 

Rather, we could say that the worlds and the things in it were created by the Word of God, through the Mind of God, and are of the mind-stuff of God.
Mind-stuff implies some form of matter - in this case it would be matter 
beyond all conditions of finite existence and found only in the truly supernatural realm. From that matter has come the various grades of finite matter. We know from science that matter exists above the realm of atoms and molecules. The sub-atomic realm includes neutrinos quarks, virtual matter, and other strange concepts that appear to violate finite limitations. Above the dimensions of the physical realm we encounter the dimensions of the spiritual realms which would contain even finer particles much too small to be detected by scientists, but which bear a very real influence on our own physical realm.

Biology strongly indicates that all organisms today had precedents of a less complex nature in the past. This doesn't prove random evolution, only that God has developed today's organisms in a orderly way over a long period of time, not instantaneously from nothing. The Genesis creation account only pertains to the organisms existing at the time of Adam, not everything that existed before but not visible to Adam. 

I believe the creation from nothing doctrine will be ultimately discarded as humanity continues to progress in spirituality and scientific understanding of God and the universe.

February 25 2014 1 response Vote Up Share Report


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