| Ex Nihilo |
Article Index for Ex |
Information AboutEx Nihilo |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT EX NIHILO | |
| latin words and phrases | |
|
A number of philosophers in ancient times attained a highly developed concept of God as the supreme ruler of the world, but they failed to develop the concept of God as the absolute cause of all finite existence. Before the biblical idea of creation, myths envisioned the world as being preexisting matter acted upon by a god or gods that reworked this material into the present world. Only in the Bible and the religious thought that developed out of its world-view do we see the formulation of ''ex nihilo creation''.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04470a.htm : ''Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing.'' (, 100 BC ) ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR Some verses from the Judeo-Christian Bible often cited in support of ex nihilo creation by God are the following:
Another major argument for creatio ex nihilo is the "first cause" argument, which may be summarized as: # Everything that begins to exist has a cause. # The universe began to exist. # Therefore, the universe must have a cause. The scientific consensus now is that the universe had a beginning and that every thing that now exists in the universe had its origin in a large explosion of energy called the ' Big Bang ' ISLAM The Mu'tazili favoured this thought. ARGUMENTS AGAINST Some have argued that this concept cannot be deduced from the Hebrew and that the Book Of Genesis , chapter 1, speaks of God "making" or "fashioning" the universe. However, Rabbi Schneur Zalman Of Liadi (1745-1812) disputed these arguments in section II of his book titled " Tanya ". Thomas Jay Oord argues that Christians should abandon the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oord points to the work of biblical scholars, such as Jon D. Levenson, who acknowledge that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not present in Genesis. Oord speculates that God created our particular universe billions of years ago from primordial chaos. This chaos did not predate God, however, for God would have created the chaotic elements as well. Oord shows that God can create all things without creating from absolute nothingness. A few early Jewish and Christian theologians and philosophers, including Philo , Justin , Athenagoras , Hermogenes , Clement Of Alexandria , and, later, Johannes Scotus Eriugena have made statements that seem to indicate that they do not hold to the concept of the creation-out-of-nothing. Philo, for instance, postulated a pre-existent matter alongside God. Process Theologians argue that God has always been related to some “world” or another. The doctrine may, as the quotation from Maccabees illustrate, have arisen to explain the creative action of a God who is usually referred to in male terms, a patriarchal God even. Males do not gestate living things in the way normally capable of observation, so it had to be explained in a different sense. Critics also claim that rejecting 'creatio ex nihilo' provides the opportunity to affirm that God has everlastingly created and related with some realm of nondivine actualities or another. According to this alternative God-world theory, no nondivine thing exists without the creative activity of God, and nothing can terminate God’s necessary existence. believe that God created everything from pre-existing matter. Latter-day Saint apologists have commented on Colossians 1:16 that the "Greek text does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials, since the verb ''ktidzo'' 'carried an architectural connotation...as in ''to build'' or ''establish'' a city....Thus, the verb presupposes the presence of already existing material.'" {Link without Title} While the idea of God everlastingly relating with creatures may seem strange because of its novelty, even its opponents in Christian history – like Thomas Aquinas – admitted it as a logical possibility. An alternative is offered by physicists Paul Steinhardt (Princeton University) and Neil Turok (Cambridge University). Their proposal is based upon the ancient idea that space and time have always existed in some form. Using developments in super String Theory , Steinhardt and Turok suggest that the Big Bang of our universe is a bridge to a pre-existing universe, and that creation undergoes an eternal succession of universes, with possibly trillions of years of evolution in each. Gravity and the transition from Big Crunch to Big Bang characterize an everlasting succession of universes, though no evidence currently exists to back up the idea. COMPUTER SCIENCE In some computing environments, "ex nihilo" is used to describe various techniques for creating data structures or objects. In Prototype-based Programming languages, an object is created "ex nihilo" if it does not use another object as its prototype. MILITARY ORGANIZATION A unit that is raised ex nihilo is one which was created without the use of significant components from other units. Thus, when a unit that is composed entirely of personnel who had been transferred as individuals from other units it is said to have been raised ex nihilo. Alternatives to this method, which is also known as "cutting a unit from whole cloth", are expanding a skeleton (cadre) unit, assembling a large unit from components taken from other units, and the splitting of an existing unit into two or more skeleton units which are subsequently filled out with additional personnel. In German, this last-named method is called 'calving' (''das Kalben''). In French, it is called 'doubling' (''dédoublement''), but only, as the name suggests, when two new units are formed on the framework of one old one. SEE ALSO
NOTES SUGGESTED READING
|
|
|