Creation

The world's origination from a source - and whether that is an event in time or a relation of dependence.

Theme: Cosmos, the sacred and ultimate reality
Tradition: Cross-tradition
Term fixed: c. 400

In plain terms

Two very different claims are called creation.

One is temporal: there was a first moment, before which nothing. Augustine's reply to the question of what God was doing beforehand is that there was no beforehand - time began with the world, so the question has no subject.

The other is a relation of dependence, and it does not require a beginning at all. On this account the world depends on its source at every moment, as a song depends on the singing, and it would make no difference to that dependence if the world had always existed. Aquinas held both that the world had a beginning and that this could not be proved by reason - only by revelation.

Which means the discovery that the universe has a finite age settles less than it appears to.

As a philosopher would put it

Creatio ex nihilo distinguishes the Abrahamic doctrine from Greek cosmogony, in which the demiurge orders pre-existing matter. Augustine's treatment of time - that it is created with the world rather than a container for it - answers the standard objection and anticipates a great deal of later physics.

The crucial distinction is between temporal beginning and ontological dependence. Aquinas argues that a created eternal universe is coherent: creation means being held in existence, not being started, and whether the world began is not demonstrable philosophically.

Islamic philosophy divides sharply here. Ibn Sīnā and al-Fārābī hold an eternal universe emanating necessarily from the necessary existent; al-Ghazālī attacks this in the Incoherence as incompatible with a free creator, and the kalām cosmological argument for a temporal beginning develops from that dispute.

The Indian traditions largely dispense with the question, treating the world as beginningless and cycling, so that origination is not the problem it is for the Abrahamic traditions.

Where you meet it

In 1927 Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and physicist, derived an expanding universe from general relativity and proposed in 1931 that it originated from what he called the primeval atom.

In November 1951 Pius XII addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and argued that contemporary cosmology confirmed the doctrine of creation - that science had traced back to the fiat lux.

Lemaître objected. He arranged, through the Academy's director, to ask the Pope not to repeat the claim, and the argument did not appear in later addresses. His stated position was that the primeval atom hypothesis was a physical hypothesis and remained entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question, and that a scientist should have no preconception either way.

The person best placed to weld cosmology to creation declined to, on the grounds that the two answer different questions - which is the distinction the theology had already drawn and the popular argument keeps collapsing.

What is actually disputed

Whether creation requires a beginning.

The temporal reading treats a first moment as essential, which makes cosmology relevant and puts the doctrine at risk if the universe turns out to be eternal or cyclic. The dependence reading treats creation as a relation holding at every moment, which insulates it from cosmology entirely and strikes critics as insulating it from evidence.

Aquinas holds the dependence reading and accepts the temporal beginning on revelation, which is a consistent position and gives up the apologetic use.

The deeper disagreement is with the emanationist tradition. If the world proceeds necessarily from its source, as Ibn Sīnā held, then creation is not a free act and the source could not have refrained - which al-Ghazālī took to be a denial of God's freedom and therefore of God. Whether necessity or freedom better honours the source is a dispute the Abrahamic traditions have never resolved.

Commonly confused with

the Big Bang A physical model of the universe's early expansion. Whether it bears on creation depends on which sense of creation is meant, and the person who proposed it said it did not.
the first cause A conclusion of one argument. Creation as dependence requires no first anything.

Defined against

Chance Whether the world's existence and order proceed from a source or from no source at all is the division the doctrine exists to mark

Philosophers

Augustine of Hippo Time created with the world, not before it
Thomas Aquinas Creation as dependence rather than as a beginning
Al-Ghazali The attack on an eternal universe
Avicenna Emanation from the necessary existent
Plotinus Emanation without will or beginning
Maimonides Creation defended against the eternity of the world

Works

Confessions The eleventh book, on time and creation
Summa Theologiae Creation as a relation of dependence
The Incoherence of the Philosophers The case against eternity
The Book of Healing The emanationist scheme
Enneads Emanation from the One
The Guide for the Perplexed The question of eternity examined

Schools

Augustinianism Where time begins with the world
Thomism Where creation is dependence
Avicennism Where the world emanates eternally
Ash’arism Where creation is a free act at a moment
Neoplatonism Where the source overflows without choosing
Maimonideanism Where the question is treated as undecided by reason

Related concepts

Cosmos c. 530 BC · God c. 1270 · Time c. 397 · Causation c. 330 BC · Nature c. 330 BC

Creation from nothing is not the plain sense of Genesis and is developed in the second century in argument with Greek philosophy, where matter is eternal and the demiurge shapes what is already there.