Doctrine of Creation (Part 4): Systematic Summary

B.  Systematic Summary

                  1.  Definition of Creatio ex nihilo

We’ve been talking about the biblical data concerning the doctrine of creation and in particular creation ex nihilo. Now as we begin our systematic summary of this doctrine, we want to define more closely the notion of creation.

Intuitively, creation involves God’s bringing something into being so that if God creates some entity e at a time t, then e comes into being at t. We can analyze this notion as follows:

e comes into being at t iff . . .

(i)                  e exists at t. (Obviously if e comes into being at t then e must exist at t.)

(ii)                 t is the first time at which e exists. (e did not exist prior to time t.)

(iii)               e’s existing at t is a tensed fact. (I’ll say something more about that third condition in a moment.)

So e comes into being at t if and only if: e exists at t, t is the first time at which e exists, and e’s existing at t is a tensed fact. This is what it is for something to come into being at a time t.

So to say that God creates e, we can give necessary and sufficient conditions for that as well. God creates e at t if and only if God brings it about that e comes into being at t.

This gives an analysis of creation. If we wanted to add that this creation is ex nihilo, then we need to add another condition here, and that is that e does not have a material cause. That will give you then creation out of nothing.

So God’s creating e involves e’s coming into being, which is an absolute beginning of existence for e. It is not a transition from non-being to being. Rather, it is an absolute beginning of existence. In creation there is no entity on which the creator acts to bring about an effect. So it follows that creation is not a type of change, since there’s no enduring subject that goes from non-existence to existence. Rather, it is an absolute beginning of existence for the object that is created.

The doctrine of creation involves an important metaphysical feature which is typically underappreciated, and that is condition (iii) here – that e’s existing at t is a tensed fact. I think that creation entails (or commits one to) a so-called tensed theory of time, or what is sometimes called an A-theory of time. That is to say, it is a theory of time that involves the objective reality of temporal becoming – things really do come to be and pass away. By contrast, if you adopt a tenseless theory of time (which is sometimes called the B-theory of time), then things don’t really come into existence or go out of existence, rather things are just four-dimensional extended objects. They are not only extended in three dimensions of space, but they are also extended in the fourth dimension of time. They would begin to exist only in the sense that the extension along that temporal dimension would be finite in the earlier-than direction. If you follow the entity out in the earlier-than direction, along that dimension of time you’ll come to a stopping point. But the universe on such a view doesn’t come into being at that point. Whether it’s finite in the past or infinite in the past, the four-dimensional entity just exists tenselessly. It doesn’t really come to be.

What I’m suggesting is that the tenseless theory of time doesn’t adequately capture the idea of creation. Why? Because on this view in a sense the creation is co-eternal with God. God never exists alone. There’s “always” this (“always” in quotation marks) tenselessly existing space-time reality with God. God is not ever alone, and so he doesn’t really bring the universe into being. He doesn’t really create the universe. At the very most you would just say that the universe depends on God ontologically for its existence. It would be conserved in being but not created in being. We’ll talk about conservation later as we deal with doctrine of creation – what is it to conserve something in being as opposed to create something? My argument here is that creation involves inherently the idea of bringing something into existence, and that can only happen on an A-theory (or tensed theory) of time, not on a tenseless theory.

So this third clause, I think, (that e’s existing at t is a tensed fact) is critical to capturing the idea of creation. In the absence of (iii), God’s creation of the universe could be interpreted along the lines of a tenseless theory of time to merely postulate that the universe is ontologically dependent upon God and is finite in the earlier-than direction. I think that fails to capture the intuitive idea of creation, which involves God’s bringing something into being.