Theological Introspection
Did God Create Chaos?
Understanding Chaos
Gazing at the night sky, we become awed at what we see. Depending on your location in the world, you can see just the constellations and planets or see comets, meteor showers, and nebulas paint the heavens in ways you never thought possible. Some people see spectacular light shows while others enjoy the quiet stillness of the planets looking down at us.
Such vastness of the night sky truly dazzles us. We know from Genesis that God created it all in the beginning. Everything we see came from divine hands who crafted something mesmerizing as a sign of his omnipotence.
As a child, I was fascinated by all this. I remember being astonished to see the moon follow me home during late-night drives, not yet realizing it followed all of us wherever we went. Astronomy has always been one of my favorite subjects, as I love learning about the vast cosmos we reside in and the mystery behind it all.
Yet, it is still mysterious. The universe’s creation has been a mystery we have sought to solve since the beginning. From Parmenides onwards, there has been a debate whether the universe falls under the belief of Creatio ex nihilo (“Creation out of nothing”) or Ex nihilo nihil fit (“Nothing comes from nothing”). The former asserts the belief that matter is not eternal but was created by a divine act, while the latter suggests the elements came from pre-existing material.
In Genesis 1:1–5, when God created the heavens, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” God commanded the light to come forth from this darkness. In the original Hebrew, formless and void lead to the word chaos or tohu vabohu (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ). Many creation stories involve disorder in some form, but in Genesis, it is not clear for we can either take away that God created chaos to create the cosmos or spoke to it to form the world.
Regarding Genesis, the original Hebrew is ambiguous and implies either the cosmos had an absolute beginning or it began after God started creation. This flexibility is the point of contention between those who favor the belief God created the world from nothing and those arguing such a feat is impossible.
The question is difficult to directly answer as there is hardly any metaphysical content in the Hebrew Scriptures. Unlike the Ancient Greeks, the Old Testament did not probe into cosmology or physics because the Hebrews did not see the need to discuss such philosophical and scientific views. However, there is some insight sprinkled here and there, like in Wisdom 11:17, where God is a force who “created the world out of formless matter” and Jeremiah 4:23, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”
Further complicating matters is how the Scriptures sometimes imply that God molded the universe from pre-existing material and contradicted itself. However, it could also be due to a faulty translation or scribal error, so we should take this argument with a grain of salt.
With a lack of insight from the Scriptures, the early church fathers turned to Greek writings on cosmology and metaphysics to solve the dilemma regarding the question of God’s creation of the universe.
Creatio ex nihilo came about in the second century CE as an attempt to be a biblically compelled piece of metaphysical theology. Although heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, it is not a Greek doctrine as thinkers like Aristotle thought it absurd because they argued if there were a time nothing existed, nothing would be here now.
Developed by early Christian and Jewish thinkers, Creation ex nihilo is an alternative response to the consensus that nothing comes from nothing, which they saw as a threat to their understanding of divine freedom and God’s origins of the world. Writers like Plotinus and Theophilus of Antioch argued God created the world from his essence and was the Architectus Universitatis, or Architect of the Universe.
At the center of the question is a conflict between religious monism and philosophical dualism, whether God alone is eternal or if God and matter are both eternal.
The doctrine of Creatio ex nihilo arose from conflict with the Gnostics, who claimed there was a distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. They viewed the former as a lesser deity than the other and thought the world was evil considering its matter could not come into contact with God.
While Scripture is clear that God created the world, how it came about was one of many struggles at the heart of early Christianity. If such a matter were evil, why would God want to create a world full of it?
Quoting a lost part of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, Lactantius argued if God did not create matter, neither could he make the elements. A benevolent God would not bring forth evil if his intentions for creation were good. Origen suggested the Gnostics were at fault by pointing out how the matter was good since God ushered it forth himself to create the earth.
The Catechism tells us God created from nothing to show his power through what he made. He is infinitely greater than his works and, through his free will, formed the world without any help.
The church fathers regularly referenced 2 Maccabees 7:28 as proof of their theory,
“I beseech you, my child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed.”
Church doctrine states the world depends on God for its existence. There was no pre-existing matter God could rely on to create the universe. Everything was required to come from nothing by His will.
Some suggest the Big Bang Theory points to the traditional metaphysical picture of Creatio ex nihilo, for it predicts a definitive beginning to events in time and time itself. God was God before creation. Scripture shows us he ordered it and brought it into order.
Philo Judaeus thought of a Jewish counterargument to the concept, but it was more Greek than Jewish. Philo was interested in God’s sovereignty and sought to answer if there was an ontological principle that existed independently alongside God or if everything outside of God was utterly dependent for its existence on the sovereign will of the Creator.
As with many of his writings, though, Philo backs himself into a corner by contradicting his position. He rejected the Greek thought of creation since he refused to follow Aristotle’s belief the world existed eternally without any creative act. In Philo’s eyes, God was involved with the act of creation.
However, problems with his view arise when he suggests the existence of preexistent matter during creation. This paradox creates a Linus test of Philo’s faithfulness to the biblical worldview. Philo’s creation model comes from Plato’s Timaeus, where logos converts unshaped pre-existing matter into four primordial elements.
Instead of creating from nothing, Philo believed God used logos to shape formless matter into intelligible beings. As a Creator, God made use of assistants: hence the plural “Let us make man in our image” in Genesis 1:26. Philo upheld the Platonic view of the preexistent matter but implied God made it too. He reconciled his Jewish theology with Plato’s philosophy by poising Plato’s Theory of Ideas as God’s eternal thoughts, which God created as real beings before he created the world. Such ideas, however, are “impious in any degree to attempt to describe or even to imagine.”
Philo believed God continuously ordered matter through his thoughts. The pattern of creation in Genesis echoed metaphysical support of Scripture elaborated through Platonic intelligible notions. God never stopped creating
“For [his] will is not posterior to him, but is always with him, for natural motions never give out.” — On Providence, Fragment I
Instead of beginning the world at a definite time, God eternally applies himself to His creation.
Philo’s argument attempts to avoid imputing God as an inactive force, but it is immediately absurd. Genesis 2:2 tells us that God rested on the seventh day after being satisfied with all that he created. If God eternally created using logos, then he would never have rest. It does not help Philo that he argues God made the heavens after the earth, which contradicts Genesis. In his mind, God did this so
“None would suppose that the regular movements of the heavenly bodies are the causes of all things. For he has no need of his heavenly offspring on which he bestowed powers but not independence for… he guides all things in what direction he pleases as law and right demand, standing in need of no one besides: for all things are possible to God.” — On the Creation, Chapter XIV
The problem with Philo is he either modifies Greek philosophy to conform to Orthodox Judaism or subordinates his faith to it. When arguing that God used preexistent matter in creation, Philo amended it to imply such elements are not independent of God’s sovereignty. At the same time, he teaches that nothing exists besides God and that all else is a shadow of reality. The ideas lack cohesion with each other. Merging Moses with Plato results in a confusing mess that raises the possibility of dual forces, which Philo tried to reject.
To better understand why this is so, we must look at Plato’s Timeaus and see where Philo finds himself in a bind.
Timaeus is the main work of Platonic cosmology. Written toward the end of Plato’s life (c. 360 BCE), the dialogue deals with the universe’s purpose, creation, elements, and properties. It is tedious and menacing but an insightful read on ontology and natural theology from the Greek perspective.
In Plato’s view, the universe’s beauty and order resulted from a rational creator who created through harmony and mathematics. It is a manifestation of the divine’s intellect and a model for rational souls for us to understand.
Plato’s God is the Demiurge, the divine craft maker. Using the world of forms, he set about to create our world from disorder. The Demiurge brought order of substance by imitating an unchanging and eternal model, coming forth from his mind as the ananke, or the necessary. The elements were unbalanced, mixed with shapeless and constant motion. Order is favorable to disorder, so the creator had to bring about order to clarify his substance for
“God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.” ¹
Plato sought to prove the universe was an intelligible creature bestowed with intelligence and soul by God. At the center of Timaeus is the dogma of the soul and stars; to understand how our world is the only one created by the Demiurge.
However, despite everything, Plato’s creator is not free. He is limited to matter and properties he could use. The substance the creator worked with did not have a starting point- thus, he could not give the world its complete existence in an ontological sense.
Although good by nature and striving to create an image as good as himself, Plato’s idea of God is more limited than God in Genesis as it deals with the space where matter resides. Plato’s idea of God never created a world out of nothing. The Demiurge fashioned the world out of materials provided by a pre-existing “chaos” or jumble of matter, organized into four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. These formed the “body” of the cosmos, endowed with a “soul” or its eternal movement. According to Plato,
“The body of heaven is visible, but the soul is invisible, and partakes of reason and harmony, and being made by the best of intellectual and everlasting natures, is the best of things created.” ¹
It creates a problem as Plato’s idea of God and the universe are both weighed down by mathematical harmonies, complicating their metaphysical structure. They can only move in spheres, and the complex design works against God’s capabilities because it can only calculate the desired result and not predict anything in advance.
Plato’s idea God, therefore, could not create. It could only bring order from disorder. If matter and movement existed before creation, it limited what God could do, so it sought to move the world in the right direction and use forms to create the beautiful cosmos we admire. It generated the universe from an intelligent realm that became perceived by our senses.
The origin of matter has always been a crucial theological question centered around the universe’s creation. We must not fault Genesis for such a conflict, for it never coped with the theological questions such an account would someday pose. The prophets always said God made everything out of the nonexistent. He existed before the ages as nothing was coeval or lacking with God. His will made the world and everything about ourselves.
It is wrong to limit God’s capabilities as He called the universe into being out of nothing, not out of formless matter coeval with Himself. God alone is the Creator of all things finite. It is elaborated upon throughout Scripture as the original creation of the world from a chaotic state was from nothing while the remaining part came from the matter he called forth.
God alone is a being, and every being has its origin from God. He brings into being what is not. God is distinct from the world; It is neither equal nor part of His being. He created it freely.
Unlike the Demiurge, God did not need chaotic, pre-existent matter to create the world. Creation is an everlasting relationship between God and his creation. He is not separated from it and has a connection between all its elements. Everything in creation is interrelated to God, who fills all things in every way (Ephesians 1:23).
It includes chaos. Chaos could not come into being until God ordered it when he divided the world. It came forth from matter, which originated from God’s creative word. Its form, life, and properties could not have existed without divine intervention.
Chaos brought forth the order needed at creation as God created it to let the cosmos come into being. It is impossible to think the universe has always been eternal when God created it at some point. We may not know when he made it, but natural theology allows us to logically comprehend our understanding of the universe and God’s ability to create the heavens.
Science can work alongside religion to prove how the universe came into being as science discloses the method of the world but not its cause; faith discloses its cause but not its method. Creatio ex nihilo is apparent from the nature of the source as chaos owns its existence to God’s creative power.
Footnotes
¹ The Dialogues of Plato (Volume III), translated by Benjamin Jowett, Macmillian & Co. (1892). Quotes come from Timaeus, pages 613–14 and 619.
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