Great Tradition And The Scriptures Summary

The Great Tradition and the Scriptures affirm creatio ex nihilo, meaning God created everything out of nothing, and this doctrine was developed to keep the heresies of the Gnostics and Greek philosophers out of the church.1 For example, Revelation 4:11 says, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”2 Roger Olson states, “The whole concept of creatio ex nihilo, which is meant to express and protect a mystery: that God spoke or commanded the universe into existence with everything in it— both material and spiritual.”3 However, there have been diversions in the church and speculation that perhaps there was something before God created the

In light of Christian thought and application, this would mean that God has something to start with in his creation of the world as recorded in Genesis one and two. Therefor, Hermogenes was a great believer in pre-existent matter and his aim was to define what this pre-existent matter was. Some believed God made everything out of himself, nothing or something.5 Hermogenes goes to great lengths to prove God did not create out of himself, which is a pantheistic believe; and he also did not create out of nothing. There was indeed something according to Hermogenes. The main question that leads to the debate is: What was God god of, and Lord of, if nothing existed? In response, Tertullian differentiates between the terms God and Lord. Tertullian states, “We maintain that he always has the title of God, but not always that of Lord; for the nature of these two titles is different. God is the title of substance, the divine nature, Lord is the title of

Origen’s main stance is God made order out of pre-existent matter and creation was in no way a matter of chance. If there was not anything prior to creation, Origen finishes the line of thinking by then stating, “God would have nothing to do, not having any matter with which he could have begun his work.”8 Origen believes this to be imposturous and naïve. Therefore, he concludes by stating, “”It must be considered impious to call something ‘uncreated’ which, if it is believe to have been created by God, would undoubtedly be found to be of the same type as that which is called ‘uncreated.’” In some ways, Origen is offended that people remove God’s intelligence and wisdom from creation. All in all, the debate over pre-existent matter still survives in small sections of the church and perhaps more profoundly within the evolutionary sectors of society. Yet the Great Tradition and even the Scripture all support creatio ex nihilo. Olson points out that this doctrine is “simply the clearest and most precise way of expressing the full import of “God is the source of all that there