Chapter III: The Material of Creation
CHAPTER III: ON THE MATERIAL OF CREATION
§ 19. Again, God created all things out of nothing. Therefore do not look for the material [of creation]; there was none. Out of “not being” God created heaven and earth (2 Macc. 7:28). “He calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17). He ordered light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:6). Heb. 11:3: “The world was created by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of visible things.” So also in Prov. 8:24 Wisdom says: “When there were no depths, I was brought forth.” Observe, then, that when “out of nothing” is said, a limit [terminus] is meant, not a material, and at the same time the relation of a material cause1 is denied: “Out of nothing, that is, not out of something” (Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 45, art. 1). In addition, from Damascenus (Orth. fid., bk. 2, ch. 5) we read: “God made all things out of nothing—some things immediately, other things mediately.” Augustine (De Gen. contra Manich., bk. 1, ch. 6): “Although all the things formed” (the things created on the first day) “were made out of that formless material, yet this very material was made out of nothing at all. For this reason we rightly believe that God made all things out of nothing.”
The chaos of the Stoics.
§ 20. The Stoics should bring their madness to an end. They invented two eternal principles: “mind” or “God” (νοῦς) and “matter” (ὕλης), which they dreamed was a confused chaos in eternal times, and then at a certain time was finally formed out of mind. However, it is said that the more recent Photinians also resist the opinion of a creation out of nothing, but they have not yet attacked this in their public writings. There is a book of Tertullian, Contra Hermogenianos, or “Against the Materialists [Materiarios],” who argued on the basis of Wisdom 11:18 that the world was created not out of nothing but out of a formless material; however, the distinction of Damascenus cited in the preceding thesis [§ 19] explains that passage correctly.
1 The same as the “material” or “matter” of something.