Creatio ex nihilo

Meaning

"Creatio ex nihilo" means "creation out of nothing" in Latin. It is the idea that the universe and everything in it were not always there, but were made by a divine act. This belief helps answer the big question of how the universe began.

Comparison with Other Ideas

It is different from other ideas, like "creatio ex materia," which means things were made from stuff that already existed.

Beliefs Supporting This Idea

Some people who believe in a divine creator support this idea. They think that nothing was around forever, and everything started because a powerful force made it happen.

An Older Way of Thinking

The phrase "ex nihilo nihil fit" means "nothing comes from nothing." It shows an older way of thinking where everything must come from something that already existed. But "creatio ex nihilo" says that the universe was made from nothing by a divine power.

Creatio ex materia

Main article: Creatio ex materia

Creatio ex materia is the idea that matter has always existed and our world is a new shape of this old material. Many people believe that nothing can come from nothing.

In old stories from the ancient Near East, the world started from an endless, empty ocean. In Sumerian tales, this ocean was a goddess named Nammu who was always there. In the Babylonian story Enūma Eliš, the ocean was made of fresh water called Apsu and salt water called Tiamat. The god Marduk made the heavens and the earth from Tiamat. In Egyptian beliefs, the early chaos was a watery god named Nun. In Greek traditions, the start of everything was sometimes a river named Oceanus, a place called Night, or water.

In Genesis

The story of creation in Genesis starts with the Hebrew words bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz. People have interpreted these words in different ways. Some think it means that everything began when God created the heavens and the earth. Others believe it describes the state of the world when God started creating, with the earth being empty and shapeless. Still, others see it as background information, showing that God spoke and brought light into the world.

Many today focus on how matter began, but ancient cultures might have cared more about God giving purpose and shape to an empty space. This idea is similar to stories from ancient times near the Middle East.

Creatio ex nihilo in religion

Creatio ex nihilo is the idea that God made all matter from nothing. This belief says the universe began with a divine act. Some ancient thinkers, like Plotinus, thought the world came from God in a different way, but many Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers did not agree with this.

African traditions often believe the world was made from existing things, but some groups, like the Bakongo, share the idea of creatio ex nihilo. In Bakongo belief, the world started empty, and the god Nzambi created everything from that emptiness.

In Christianity, many believe God created the world from nothing. Early Christian writers like Theophilus of Antioch talked about this idea. Some other Christian groups, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believe God organized existing matter instead.

In Hinduism, some texts suggest the world was always present in a basic form. In Islam, most believe God created the world from nothing, similar to Christianity and Judaism. Jewish thinkers have also supported the idea of creation from nothing, though some see the Bible as allowing for existing matter that God shaped.

In modern science

Further information: Big Bang § Pre–Big Bang cosmology, and Cosmogony

The Big Bang theory is a scientific idea. It does not explain why the universe exists. It describes what happened during the first moments of our universe.