Creatio ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning “creation out of nothing.” There are few ideas in the Christian world that are more controversial than this. Yet, it is foundational in so many ways.
Think about it. All good books, novel in their ideas, begin with a blank page or a blank screen. Yet no one questions that the ideas must have arisen in an author’s mind before they appeared on the page. When they wrote it, they used language that had already been formed, paper that was present (while blank) or a keyboard and a computer someone else designed. Every innovation known to man began as something in someone’s mind. But the difference here is that all innovations, new approaches, inventions, and patents began with something–it was an arranging or rearranging of some raw material.
When God created, the idea–the design–was in His mind, but there were no raw materials utilized in what is creation. We cannot pretend to know exactly how God did it, but inasmuch as it will never be duplicated or replicated as a science experiment, Christians are free to understand–by faith–that God created ex nihilo.
