_2_The Definition of Creation

While heathen pantheism assumes that the world is an emanation from God and is therefore God Himself, and heathen dualism assumes an eternal matter () of which the deity () formed the world (),2 Holy Scripture teaches that the Triune God created everything outside God, the universe, through His mere will, out of nothing. And “nothing” does not mean a materia ex qua, a nihil positivum (Plato’s , chaos), but it means absolutely nothing, nihil negativum, materiam excludens; for, as Gen. 1:1 tells us, before the creation of the world nothing at all was in existence except God. “In the beginning” means that then the things outside God had their beginning. According to Scripture, God alone, in distinction from all things outside Himself, had no beginning. That is the emphatic declaration of Ps. 90:2: “Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art, God,” and of Col. 1:17: “He is before all things.” Men are bound by the rule: De nihilo nihil fit, but not so God. God follows the rule given Rom. 4:17: “God calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Accordingly, only he knows God who knows that He created the world from nothing.3