Alright, so most traditional Christians believe that God created the universe out of nothing, or, in Latin, creatio ex nihilo. Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, believe that chaotic matter already existed, and God brought order to the chaos, giving it form and purpose. Or, in Latin, creatio ex materia. This is something taught in our scriptures and by our leaders. But in this episode, we’re going to dive into this topic a bit deeper and see what else we can find out about the history of these beliefs.
Creation ex nihilo is a long-beloved doctrine of mainstream Christianity, and I want to be respectful of those beliefs even while disagreeing with them. To that end, if you’re interested in a more traditional defense of creation out of nothing, here are a few resources that might interest you. In the rest of this video, I’ll be offering a different perspective.
Latter-day Saints, among many others, as we’ll see, do not believe that the Bible teaches creation out of nothing. But if not from the Bible, where does this belief come from? Non-Latter-day Saint Bible scholar James Hubler found that creation ex nihilo initially came about as a defense of the Christian teaching of a bodily resurrection in the second century c.e. Let me explain.
This is an oversimplification, but according to Greek thought, in the second century, matter was separate from and inferior to God. Matter could change, it could be corrupted, and it could be destroyed. It could not be eternal. Thus, the goal within this line of Greek thought was to escape materiality. That was one of the advantages of death—you escaped the confines of the physical world. So when Christians came around saying that your physical, material body would one day be resurrected and eternal, Greek thinkers were unconvinced. “The doctrine of bodily resurrection seemed offensive to the Greeks because it implies that persons would be eternally embodied in corruptible material forms.”
To read the entire article: Saints Unscripted/Faith & Beliefs
