Concept

Creatio ex nihilo

Overview

Creatio ex nihilo (Latin, 'creation out of nothing') or nihilogony is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist. It is in contrast to creatio ex materia and foundationalism (creation from matter resulting from logical aseity, also known as Resultante ex Aseitate Logica, but modern foundationalism is cosmological with improvements from the 17th-century viewpoint that are sometimes framed in terms of the dictum ex nihilo nihil fit or 'nothing comes from nothing', meaning all things were formed ex materia—that is, from pre-existing things).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Creatio ex nihilo is discussed.

The Author’s Introduction. The Twenty-Six Propositions employed by the Philosophers to prove the Existence of God 145 CHAPTER. I Philosophical proofs for the Existence, Incorporeality, and Unity of the First Cause 149 II On the Existence of Intelligences or purely Spiritual Beings 154 III The Author adopts the Theory of Aristotle as least open to Objections 156 IV The Spheres and the Causes of their Motion 156 V…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
states what it is; names the idea
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God produces the creature in conformity with the exigency of the preceding instants, according to the laws of his wisdom; and the creature operates in conformity with that nature which God conveys to it in creating it always. The limitations and imperfections arise therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of creatures. Vice…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
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iii), and with reason; for they considered that things flow forth infinitely from the first principle. But because some erred concerning the nature of the first principle, as a consequence they erred also concerning its infinity; forasmuch as they asserted that matter was the first principle; consequently they attributed to the first principle a material infinity to the effect that some infinite body was the first…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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1 As Empty Conception without object, _ens rationis_ 2 3 Empty object of Empty intuition a conception, without object, _nihil privativum_ _ens imaginarium_ 4 Empty object without conception, _nihil negativum_ We see that the ens rationis is distinguished from the nihil negativum or pure nothing by the consideration that the former must not be reckoned among possibilities, because it is a mere fiction—though not…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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_Definitions_ I. By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. II. That thing is called finite in its own kind (_in suo genere_) which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite, because we always conceive another which is greater. So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
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Creatio ex nihilo

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Creatio ex nihilo

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