Forewarning: this is one of my papers for my Masters of Theological Studies class, so i'm assuming some things with my audience in this bit that i might not otherwise assume in a normal blog post. Enjoy! Also, there will be some unorthodox (not heretical) views expressed here. no apologies.
The Significance of ex nihilo
The doctrine of ex
nihilo is one that I think the majority of Christendom just takes for
granted; I know I did. When asked about creation or evolution, the common
evangelical, western Christian just assumes that God would have had to create
the world out of nothingness; to think otherwise would seem to take away from
God’s omnipotence and indeed it does. In the past, I had never looked much past
this obvious function of the doctrine. As I read Zizioulas, I discovered a much
more rich application of the understanding that God created existence ex nihilo. Deeper than a supporting role
to God’s omnipotence, I have found at least four very important applications of
this doctrine that help to shape a believers understanding of our role in
relation to God and existence.
I will present my own discoveries (though I am sure they
have been thought of before) in a progressive order as this is the way I
reasoned them out while reading through Zizioulas’ chapter on creation and
salvation. First, the doctrine of ex
nihilo gives us a particular anthropology to found our understanding of man
on. In understanding all of creation, including humanity, as created from
nothingness, it stands to reason that we as created things contain a “nature of
nothingness” in some way. When we understand this as a fundamental part of what
it means to be a human, we immediately clear up the issue of death in relation
to humanity in particular, but also in the broad decay of nature and all
non-human, created things. As finite beings, this doctrine gives an
understanding to why there is death in the world at all. To be clear, let me
put forth my own definition of the type of death that I am referring to here. I
am speaking of a metaphysical death, beyond the physical. Some would frown on
this as an annihilationist view of death, but I feel like it makes the most
logical sense in light of scriptures. This metaphysical death, I believe, is what
God was meaning when he warned man of the death that would result if he were to
eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2:17. This form of
death is not a punishment for the disobedience of man, but the very natural
regression that creation is prone to by containing this “nil nature”; that is,
we will eventually revert to nothingness if we separate ourselves from God.
This is an understanding of our finitude. If it were not this way, God would
have created demigods essentially in that, after being brought into existence,
we would be eternal as he is on our own power or merit.
When our anthropology contains the understanding that
apart from the creator’s sustenance we revert to our nature of nothingness, we
can start to make sense of the fallen world we live in now. This is the second
major application I took away from the reading. We can start to look at the
fall by starting with the question “what did we fall away from?” In answer to
this, I put forth that what we fell from was not “God’s good side or favor”,
but instead, we fell from the position we were meant to occupy as the bridge
that would connect finite, created things with the uncreated, infinite creator.
Humanity, in its original state, was able to bear this role for all creation as
we are the “only creature who both includes the material world and also exceeds
it”[1] in
the fact that we bear the imago Dei
in that we have souls that reflect God. In choosing to disobey God, man
essentially decided to deviate from God’s plan to bring creation into an
eternal relationship with him. Unfortunately for man, this created a sort of
metaphysical trap in which we revert to our “nil nature” after our physical
death due to the lack of the eternal communion with the creator. This
derailment, however, didn’t cause God to abandon the plan altogether, but only
to come up with an alternative plan to connect creation with God. This view of
the fall and the fallen world we live in not only explains why creation all
around us is slowly reverting to nothingness (in the decay of nature and our
own increasing immorality) but it also explains why the events of Golgotha were
necessary.
The third major application of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is found in the doctrine of
the salvation of man by Jesus Christ. The incarnation, crucifixion and
resurrection were for salvation; this is affirmed by the greater Christian
Tradition. In looking at this idea, I will again start with a question. “What
does humanity, need saving from?” In answer to this, I want to say that there
are two, interrelated main functions of Christ’s sacrifice. The first function
is found in the incarnation of the Son of the Father. This function is in undoing
what man did in choosing against God’s will for creation. In order for man to
be able to do what he was initially intended to do, there had to be
reconciliation between man and God in which a representative of humanity had to
whole heartedly submit to God by their own volition just as Adam (being a
representative of humanity) had said “no” to God by his own volition. Mary
provides us with this in her free choice to say “yes” to God’s plan for the
incarnation to occur through her. “Her consent was the free consent of
humankind to the initiative of God.”[2]
The second function of the incarnation was the crucifixion-resurrection event; this
event was in a very basic way Jesus accomplishing what Adam had failed to in
uniting creation to the creator in his own person by submitting to the will of
the Father. In this act, we are saved from our natural obligation to revert to
nothingness after our physical death as well as gaining the gift of sustained
relationship with God after physical death.
This understanding of the crucifix events gives us the
fourth major application of the doctrine of ex
nihilo in the form of a personal eschatology. Following from the idea that
we are saved from our own nature of nothingness, or our nature of becoming void
of the existence that comes from fellowship with God, is a different
understanding of what “heaven” and “hell” is. If we define “heaven” solely as
eternal relationship with God as I believe we should, then heaven is not a
reward for the righteous in the superficial sense, but instead it is the
natural and logical end to maintaining a relationship with the creator; that
is, after our physical death, we now, through Christ, have the luxury of ongoing
existence through the continued relationship with God. Concurrently, “hell”
defined as eternal separation from God is not a vicious punishment from an all
loving God, but it is the natural and logical end to divorcing oneself from the
creator in the physical existence after which, one would simply revert back to
their “nothing nature” and be eternally – that is permanently – separated from
God. This gives new light to the necessary decision that man is to make on an
individual basis to join in and maintain relationship with God through the
Spirit of the Son or choose otherwise. With the understanding that we come from
nothingness and, apart from God, we will revert to nothingness; the choice to
not have a relationship with God is literally metaphysical suicide regardless
of how moral a person’s life may have been.
While the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is, in my opinion, one of the fewest talked about
doctrine of the church, it packs a load of theological implications. A non-exhaustive
list of those implications are (in summary) an understanding of who we are as
humans in a created and fallen world as well as why Christ came and reconciled
us to the Father and rescued us from our natural reversion to non-existence
and, finally, why it is imperative for us to make the free will decision to
commune ourselves with the creator of existence; namely, so we can continue
existing.
Pax,
The Dread
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