CATEGORIES OF CREATION

The term "creatio ex nihilo" refers to God creating everything from nothing.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).  Prior to that moment there was nothing.  God, therefore, did not, as some have argued, produce the universe from preexisting building blocks but rather from scratch.

Just to clarify, the Bible never expressly states that God made everything from nothing, but it is implied.  In Hebrews 11:3 it states, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”  Scholars interpret this to mean that the universe came into existence by divine command only, with nothing pre-existing.

This is difficult to comprehend.  The “first law of science” states that matter (the stuff the universe is made of) is neither created nor destroyed.  Matter can be converted from solid to liquid to gas to plasma and back again.   Atoms can be combined into molecules and split into their component parts, but matter cannot be created from nothing or be completely destroyed.  And so this idea that God created everything from nothing is not natural to us.  Creation was supernatural is why.   Judeo/Christian denominations, most of them, hold this view.

The next category, accordingly, is "creatio ex materia."  This is creation out of some pre-existent eternal matter, which is the belief of the Mormon church.

"Creatio ex deo" is creation out of the being of God and is where Vedanta is found.  Here, God IS creation.  God, in this viewpoint, literally shares in the existence of everything created through everything’s experience of it.  And as everything grows and develops so does God.

A fourth category of creation is no creation.  The universe, in this instance, had no beginning and will never end.  One model of this is an endless series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches lasting trillions of years, with God present the whole time.   God, here, is a separate phenomenon, an interpenetrating entity, or existence itself.   God is not the creator, though. 

The fifth possibility is also no creation, but this time there is no God present at all.   The universe is merely a phenomenon that always was and always will be.   Again, it might go through phases, such as a chain of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, but no God is involved with it.   This category is where Buddhism would be, since it does not accept that God ever existed, much less a creator-God.