Science and the Church of Jesus Christ/Creation and related issues

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Creation and related issues

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• Doctrine & Covenants 77:6 refers to "this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance"
• Death before the Fall
• Belief in a literal Adam and Eve
• Fall of Adam and Eve
• Mormonism and the reconciliation of the Flood of Noah with scripture and Church teachings
• The Mormon view of "Creatio ex nihilo"
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Doctrine & Covenants 77:6 refers to "this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance"

Summary: Do Latter-day Saints believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old? Why does Doctrine and Covenants section 77 say that the history of the earth covers only seven thousand years?

Death before the Fall

Summary: Does LDS doctrine hold that there was no death before the Fall of Adam?

Belief in a literal Adam and Eve

Summary: Do Latter-day Saints believe that Adam and Eve were real?

Fall of Adam and Eve

Summary: If it was God's plan for Eve to eat the fruit, then why did God forbid it? Why did God not simply create Adam and Eve as mortals?

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Articles about the Holy Bible

Latter-day Saints and the Bible	The Bible as the word of God The 8th Article of Faith The King James Version The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible
Reliability of the Bible	Biblical inerrancy Textual variants in the Bible Textual criticism of the Bible Doctrinal completeness of the Bible The Documentary Hypothesis
Creation	Cosmology The Creation Age of the Earth Evolution Adam and Eve as historical figures Death before the Fall of Adam and Eve Fall of Adam and Eve
Genesis	Pre-Flood ages of prophets The Flood Peleg Tower of Babel Sodom and Gomorrah
Understanding the Bible	Scriptural interpretations Tips for studying the bible Leaders on bible interpretation Common issues in interpretation and proof-texting Alleged contradictions in scripture Jonah and the whale Authorship of New Testament books Pauline teachings
Cultural issues	Old Testament practices Violence in the scriptures Slavery in the scriptures Sexism in the scriptures Racism and the scriptures Understanding biblical numbers and stories Joseph Smith and Old Testament practices
The Bible and the Book of Mormon	Bible passages in the Book of Mormon Isaiah and the Book of Mormon KJV italicized text in the Book of Mormon KJV translation errors in the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith Translation and the Book of Mormon The New Testament and the Book of Mormon The Apocrypha and the Book of Mormon The Documentary Hypothesis and the Book of Mormon

Science and the Church of Jesus Christ/Creation and related issues

This page answers scientific and scriptural questions about Noah's Flood.

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Does the Church teach that the Flood was a global event?

"The Deluge," engraving by Dirck Vellert (1544), public domain image from Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Church leaders typically treat the Flood as global

Church leaders typically treat the Flood as global. The challenge comes when Genesis is read as a scientific account. This reading is then contrasted with modern scientific data showing the diversity of plant and animal life, and the complete lack of evidence for a global Flood in the geological or archaeological record.

The concept of a spherical earth did not appear in Jewish thought until the fourteenth or fifteenth century

The concept of a spherical earth "did not appear in Jewish thought until the fourteenth or fifteenth century." The word "earth," as used in the Bible, simply refers to solid ground or land, as opposed to water (see Genesis 1:10—"God called the dry land Earth; and...the waters called he Seas...."). It is, of course, possible that earlier prophets had a more advanced view of the nature of the earth—this perspective could, however, have been lost to later centuries and scribes.

Related article:

How did ancient Israel picture the world and the universe? Summary: A spherical earth with stars and planets was not how Israel understood the world. Instead, they saw it as a flat disc, with an underworld beneath, and a rigid dome over top for the heavens.

Some read these scriptures as describing the point of view of ancient prophets to whom the Flood appeared global.

Genesis 7꞉19-23 reads:

And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

For those who approach the matter in this way, the primary reason for seeing the Flood as global comes from the word "earth." When modern readers see the word "earth," they envision the entire planetary sphere. Dr. Duane E. Jeffery elaborates:

A critical issue in the Flood story in the King James Bible has to do with translations of the Hebrew words eretz and adamah as meaning the entire "earth." What do these terms actually mean? It is widely recognized that Hebrew is a wonderful language for poets, since virtually every word has multiple meanings. But that same characteristic makes it a horrible language for precision. As it turns out, eretz and adamah can indeed be a geographical reference akin to what we usually mean by "the earth." But it is not at all clear that the ancients had the concept of a spherical planet that you and I do. Many scholars argue that the Bible writers thought in terms of a flat earth that was covered by a bowl-shaped firmament into which the windows of heaven were literally cut

Jeffrey goes on to note that ideas of a global Flood may have resulted from a widespread local problem. A current hypothesis that has been gaining ground since 1998 is that a significant flooding event occurred in the area now occupied by the Black Sea. Evidence has been discovered which has led a number of researchers to believe that the Black Sea area was once occupied by a completely isolated freshwater lake at a much lower level than the ocean. The theory is that the sea level rose and eventually broke through the Bosporus shelf, resulting in a rapid flooding event which would have wiped out all life living along the shores of the lake (see p. 34). Whether this is the source for the Genesis Flood remains conjecture.

Thus, with this reading the prophets said and meant "the enitre world" but they had a quite different view of what the whole world entailed than we would.

What is genre?

The difficulty with the above, however, is that it reads ancient scripture to address questions that the scripture was probably never meant to address.

Those who study biblical and other texts often talk about the genre of a piece of writing. Genre describes the type of writing that is being studied.

One genre is history; another genre is fiction; another genre is poetry. Readers usually know what genre they are reading, and they adjust their expectations and their way of reading accordingly.

For example, if someone thought that the Lord of the Rings was in the history genre, they might consider it a terribly deceptive work. It describes events and powers for which we have no other evidence. If, however, the reader understands that its genre is fantasy fiction, then the reader expects different things.

Walter Moberly said:

You cannot put good questions and expect fruitful answers from a text apart from a grasp of the kind of material it is in the first place; misjudge the genre, and you may skew many of the things you try to do with the text.

(The 1999 movie Galaxy Quest plays on this idea of mistaken genre—a group of aliens mistake the genre of a Star Trek-like television show. They refer to the show as "historical documents," and believe that the actors really are spacefarers on a spaceship. This is an error of genre, and much of the movie's humor and plot is driven by the contrasts between the expectations of adventure fiction versus historical reality.)

What is "concordism"?

Modern Church leaders and members have sometimes read the Flood story in the genre of what we might call "scientific history"—that is, they read it as a technical description of physical realities in a scientific context. This assumption is called concordism: "assumption that scripture is speaking in scientific terms, and therefore to be true and inspired, it has to match what science says."

This assumption could be true—but it is an assumption, not an obvious truth as some treat it. (And, we must ask—since science in any form didn't really exist until the 1600s, and our modern science didn't really get going until the 1800s, why did God speak to ancient peoples in a form completely foreign to them? "[T]hese things were not in the mind of the authors of Genesis. That was not the audience, or the genre, or the spiritual needs they were speaking to.")

As John Walton, an evangelical bible scholar put it:

When we approach a text, we must be able to set our presuppositions off to the side as much as possible so that we do not impose them onto the text. It is not wrong to have presuppositions, but it is important to have a realistic grasp of what our presuppositions are so that we can assess their impact on our interpretation. Some of the traditions we carry as baggage are blind presuppositions…. We don’t even realize that they are imported into the text, and we must evaluate their relevance and truth rather than assume them to be accurate.

What is the genre of the Flood story?

'The Deluge' {1531), a stained glass window from Benedictine priory church of Saint-Firmin in Flavigny-sur-Moselle, Lorraine, France.

So maybe we have the genre wrong. What if we are like the aliens who think Star Trek is science fact, not science fiction?

If ... you compare Genesis to other ancient Near Eastern creation and Flood stories on the left side, Genesis looks very, very different. It makes a lot more sense and there’s much less conflict. This essentially establishes that comparing Genesis with science is comparing apples and oranges. It’s not a legitimate comparison to begin with, because it’s based on unjustified and anachronistic concordist assumptions.

As it happens, "Flood story" is a genre all of its own. The people who wrote and the people who heard the Old Testament had friends and neighbors with Flood stories.

Every serious student of the Bible knows that there are other Flood stories from the ancient Near East, particularly from ancient Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria.l What is disputed is not the existence and relevance of these ancient Flood accounts but rather their significance and relationship to the biblical story. ...

The general contours of the Flood story as we hear it in the Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis, and the Gilgamesh Epic are very similar. Due to displeasure with humans, the divine realm decides to bring a Flood against them to destroy them. In each case, the divine realm chooses one individual (Ziusudra, Atrahasis, Uta-napishti, Noah) to save by warning them of the coming Flood and instructing them to build an ark. While the shape of the arks in the various stories differs, remarkably the floor space of the arks is nearly identical.1 After building the ark, the Flood hero and others (family and in some cases even more people) as well as animals enter the ark. The Flood waters rise and finally ebb to the point that the ark comes to rest. ...

As we begin, the reader should not jump to the conclusion that the identification of similarities suggests that the biblical author has borrowed information directly from the Mesopotamian accounts. Everyone in the ancient world knows there was a Flood (just like everyone today knows there was a Holocaust). It is in the cultural river. The question is, what was God up to? Why did he send it? On this point, different texts may offer vastly different interpretations.

How does the message of the biblical Flood story differ from that of the pagan cultures that surrounded it?

Walton continues:

The gods in the [Ancient Near East] were motivated by what can be called the "Great Symbiosis." ... [that is,] the gods created people because they were tired of the work involved to meet their own needs. Gods needed food, housing, clothing, and so on, but they did not want to work for it. Once people were created to serve in this way, it becomes necessary for the gods to provide for people (if there is no rain, crops cannot grow and the gods cannot be fed) and protect them (if they are being harried by invaders who steal their food or burn their crops, the gods cannot be cared for). Throughout the literature of the ancient world, we learn it is the mandate to provide for the gods that stands as the principal feature of their religious practice. Performance equals piety. Offense is failure to meet the needs of the gods. The result is codependence.

Not surprisingly, the Mesopotamian interpretation of the Flood is based on the premise of this Great Symbiosis. The gods have not created people for relationship (as Yahweh [Jehovah] had done). The gods live among the people (in temples) so that the people can meet their needs, but they don't really like people—they need people. Yahweh, in contrast, has no needs and actually desires relationship. ...

The Great Symbiosis is consistently refuted in the Old Testament and has no role in the interpretation of the Flood. In the Mesopotamian Flood account the Great Symbiosis explains the actions of the gods at every turn. For them, the operation of the Great Symbiosis is the basis for order in the world. In the interpretation offered in Genesis, disruption of order is the driving idea, but order from the biblical standpoint has nothing to do with the Great Symbiosis. ...

Instead of being about meeting the gods' needs, in the bible the Flood occurs because of human violence and wickedness. Human behavior is preventing the covenant relationship that Yahweh/Jehovah wants to have with them.

This demonstrates how culture and genre should influence how we read scriptural texts:

Another way to think about the similarities and differences is to acknowledge that the Israelites are embedded in an ancient Near Eastern culture and that God speaks to them there. God gives them revelation that transcends the culture, but he speaks to them within the culture. This is not a matter of imposing the ancient Near East on the Bible (the Bible is an ANE literary document); rather, it involves the acknowledgment that they are within the ancient Near East. It's our responsibility to understand the Flood story within its original context ...

This idea should be a comfortable one for Latter-day Saints, since modern revelation insists that God speaks in the language and thought forms of his people. In the introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of modern revelation) the Lord says:

Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding. And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known; And inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; And inasmuch as they sinned they might be chastened, that they might repent; And inasmuch as they were humble they might be made strong, and blessed from on high, and receive knowledge from time to time ( D&C 1꞉24-28 (emphasis added) ).

In a sense, we might say that God always has to "dumb things down" for us! He speaks in our own language and way so we can understand, just as he spoke to ancient Israelites or ancient Nephites in their culture and language so they would understand.

Our mistake comes when we try to read texts written for them through our culture and language, rather than theirs.

What else can ancient near eastern culture teach us about the Flood story?

In the Ancient Near East the world was understood to have been organized by God (or the gods) out of chaos. And chaos was represented by great roiling waters:

This particular judgment [the Flood] is so devastating that it has even been described as an act of uncreation. Going back to the very opening of Genesis, we read: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty [tohu wabohu], darkness was over the surface of the deep" (1:1-2). Before God brought the earth into functional order, it was "formless and empty." It is likely, if not certain, the author intends for us to think of the earth as undifferentiated water. From this formless and empty watery mass God creates a functional and livable earth. The Flood, then, is a reversion to the watery mass, a tohu wabohu state. The pattern we have identified also explains the abundance of intertextual allusions in Genesis 9꞉1 and Genesis 1–2 as well as Genesis 9꞉18-29. We observe, then, that one way of reading Genesis 1–9 is along the lines of creation—uncreation—re-creation.

For an ancient Israelite, then, the Flood story describes the destruction of God's ordered, created world because of human sin. The world can no longer fulfill its purpose as things stand. ("This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man," [Moses 1꞉39].) A world everywhere full of sin, violence, and rebellion cannot fulfill God's purposes to exalt his children through a covenant relationship.

The Flood is a demonstration of God reestablishing the purpose and order of the world:

Genesis 1–11 is interested in tracking the issue of nonorder, order, and disorder. In this View, the Flood account focuses more on how God is reestablishing a modicum of order in the world as he uses nonorder (the cosmic waters) to obliterate disorder (evil and violence). Of course, the Flood does not totally obliterate disorder, as God acknowledges in Genesis 8꞉21. But it resets the ordering process, and God indicates that the established order will not again be reset by a Flood ( Genesis 8꞉21 ). This view focuses attention on God's continuing plan to establish order (present and future oriented) beyond the act of judging sin (past oriented), though both are legitimate perspectives. ...

When we interpret events like the Flood, we should treat the event as we do with a character. What the narrator does with the Flood is more important than what the Flood does, and what God does through the Flood is most important of all. If this is so, then we need to articulate persuasively what the narrator and God are doing through the Flood.

Does the New Testament tell us anything that can help?

Jesus uses the Flood account to give a similar sort of message. He is probably not particularly worried that his audience understand that the entire globe was submerged by water. That is not what they would have thought about. Instead, Jesus uses the Flood as an example of God's purposes for his children again being fulfilled—through him:

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the Flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the Flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ( Matthew 24꞉37-39 )

The New Testament thus adopts the Flood story as an illustration of the truth that our God is a God who judges sin. He does not tolerate disobedience, since he understands our propensity to promote ourselves above himself does not lead to our flourishing but to our detriment. In this it is used as an archetypal narrative for future eschatological judgment.

Just as the Flood was God's way of reestablishing his purposes for the earth and his children, so Jesus' return in glory will likewise sweep away the things in the world that prevent the full blessing and exaltation of God's children.

What does the Flood story show us happening after the Flood?

If we agree that the Flood is about reestablishing God's purposes, then it is not surprising to see that the Flood is immediately followed by covenants:

The term covenant (berit) appears for the first time in connection with Noah. A covenant, as the English translation rightly implies, is a formal agreement between two parties. In this covenant, God commits himself to the continuance of the world and its inhabitants. Though the words are directed to Noah and his sons, that commitment is given not only to them but to all the creation and its creatures. They don't have to live in fear that God will periodically bring the creation to an end. ... Because this covenant is the first one explicitly mentioned in Scripture, the rainbow is the first sign of a covenant. Later we will see that circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant ( Genesis 17꞉9-14 ), the sabbath is the sign of the Mosaic covenant ( Exodus 31꞉12-18 ), and the Lord's Supper is the sign of the new covenant ( Luke 22꞉20 ). These signs are like brands. They serve as a reminder to the covenant partners of the relationship established between them.

Doesn't the Bible say that the continents were divided immediately after the Flood?

Some Latter-day Saint thinkers have understood the matter as referring to the sudden separation of the continents in a catastrophic event. Others have regarded this as a misunderstanding of the text

The Church has no official position, and it does not play much of a role in LDS thought or discourse.

Genesis 10꞉25 contains a passing reference to man called Peleg, who received his name because "in his days was the earth divided". The Hebrew verb פלג (palag) means "separate" or "divide." And, in Psalms 55꞉9 it refers specifically to a division of languages.

Some Latter-day Saints have interpreted this passage with extreme literalness

Some Latter-day Saints have interpreted this passage with extreme literalness, believing that the earth's tectonic plates, which were once a single land mass, all separated into the continents we know today during the life of a single mortal, instead of over hundreds of millions of years as scientists have theorized. Two of these were Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie.

At least a few leaders of the Church have been of this view that the continents were divided during or after the Flood

Prominently, prior to becoming president of the Church, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote that

in the beginning all of the land surface was in one place as it was in the days of Peleg, ( Genesis 10:25 ) that the earth was divided. Some Bible commentators have concluded that this division was one concerning the migrations of the inhabitants of the earth between them, but this is not the case. While this is but a very brief statement, yet it speaks of a most important event. The dividing of the earth was not an act of division by the inhabitants of the earth by tribes and peoples, but a breaking asunder of the continents, thus dividing the land surface and creating the Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere.

John Taylor also expressed similar views, albeit more briefly. It is perhaps important to note that then-Elder Smith wrote that "By looking at a wall map of the world, you will discover how the land surface along the northern and southern coast of the American Hemisphere and Europe and Africa has the appearance of having been together at one time." Elder Smith was writing between 1953 and 1966; modern continental drift theory was only beginning to gain acceptance during this period (even by 1977, a geology textbook would note that "a poll of geologists now would probably show a substantial majority who favor the idea of drift," while also providing a substantial critique of the theory.

Here again, however, we are at risk of mistaking genre. Elder Smith was reading with modern concerns and preoccupations.

What if we again tried to read as someone in the ancient near east might read?

Scriptures that refer to the earth being "divided" refer to groups of people being separated

A few scriptures, then, refer to the earth being divided:

Genesis 10:25 and 1 Chronicles 1:19: And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg; because in his days the earth was divided: and his brother’s name was Joktan.

D&C 133꞉24: And the land of Jerusalem and the land of Zion shall be turned back into their own place, and the earth shall be like as it was in the days before it was divided.

What do these extensive genealogies at this point in the story tell us?

In perhaps the most important study of Old Testament genealogies in the light of ANE analogues, Robert R. Wilson concluded that

genealogies are not normally created for historical purposes. They are not intended to be strictly historical records. Rather in the Bible, as well as in the ancient Near Eastern literature and in the anthropological material, genealogies seem to have been created for domestic, political- jural, and religious purposes, and historical information is preserved in the genealogies only incidentally.

They are designed to give people an understanding of their identity. ... [G]enealogies, while including lists of real people in a real past, are first and foremost making theological statements ... .

After the Flood, humans continue to sin ( Genesis 11꞉21-29 ). People unite to build a city and a tower that offends God ...

God thus initiates a new strategy of carrying out his plans and purposes beginning with this one man and his wife, Sarah; through their descendants he will reach the world in order to restore blessing on his human creatures.

Notice the dramatic change in the narrative at this point. Whereas the primeval narrative covers the whole world over what must be an incredibly long period of time, now the focus in the second part, the patriarchal narratives, focuses on one individual— Abraham, then Jacob, then Joseph—and devotes considerable narrative space to a relatively short period of time. We observe that such a shift signals a more intense interest in the details of the events associated with the patriarchs as founding figures of the people of God.

There is no serious biblical scholarship that reads these verses as implying a rapid drift of the continents

The verses in Genesis and 1 Chronicles are describing the descendants of Shem. LDS scholar Hugh Nibley viewed Genesis 10꞉25 (which says that in the days of Peleg "the earth was divided") as meaning "the earth was divided among the children of Noah." There is no serious biblical scholarship that reads these verses as implying a rapid drift of the continents—partly because such an idea would have been utterly foreign to writers in that time period.

Additional problems

If we read outside of genre and try to turn this into a scientific account, we run into enormous absurdities. Some conclude that this means the bible must be false, but instead it means they are making a genre mistake.

In the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, 1,000 miles of fault line slipped 50 feet, resulting in a 9.3-magnitude earthquake that created seismic sea waves up to 100 feet high. These tsunamis caused the deaths of nearly 230,000 people. The amount of force required to move the major continents thousands of miles apart in the lifetime of a single individual would cause much worse devastation, a global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.

Thus, to accomplish this without a divine miracle which hid all trace of such an event would be extraordinarily unlikely. But, such a miracle cannot be proven or identified by science or observation.

Those who choose to believe that this is what happen can only rely on faith.

Conclusion—Peleg

If the division is instead one of language, then D&C 133꞉22–23 would refer to the return to a time when languages no longer divide humankind. This will take place during the 1,000 years of peace when the Savior reigns.

Such a return to unity might also symbolize the passing of all the temporary, petty, and earthly matters which alienate humans from each other.

This seems a far more important idea, and a far more likely issue to discuss with bronze age Israelites, than continental drift.

Question: If the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, how did Abraham, Moses and other prophets end up in the Old World?

A variety of approaches have been suggested for this issue

Members and others sometimes ask how Abraham, Moses and other near eastern Bible prophets ended up in the Old World if Adam and Eden were in the Americas. A variety of approaches have been suggested for this issue:

1. Some have conceptualized the earth as having only one land mass (e.g., Pangaea) even into historical time, which was only separated in the days of Peleg (Genesis 10꞉25). Though there are differing interpretations for this doctrine. Some have more exegetical/historical accuracy than others.
2. Those who accept a universal Noachian Flood simply see Noah floating from a New World site to Ararat in the Old.
3. Those who accept a "limited Flood" theory see a similar process occurring whereby Noah traveled down rivers or from sea coasts with the Flood's arrival. (This would, in effect, be a reversal of the Book of Mormon's Old World to New World migrations).
4. Since there is evidence for human migration over the Siberia-Alaska land bridge from Old to New World, some have postulated travel in the opposite direction.
5. It has been suggested that the Lord gave a second site the name of Adam-ondi-Ahman in the Americas, while the original site was located elsewhere, in the Old World (see discussion above). In this model, early Church leaders assumed that there was only one Adam-ondi-Ahman, when there were (in fact) two.
6. Some have seen the concept of Eden as a symbolic idea which acted to "sacralize" the Americas for a new gospel dispensation, without having reference to actual geographic realities. Early members then made this concept more literal than intended.
7. Some see Eden as a place which was always "separate" from the fallen world around it, and so regard questions about the present "location" of Eden as non-sensical.
8. Many, perhaps most, members consider the matter of relatively little importance, and have no strong feelings about the issue at all.

It must be noted that there is little, if any, scriptural or scientific evidence to support any of the above hypotheses over others

The solution chosen by an individual member will probably depend mostly on their attitudes to other issues about which there is no official Church position and a variety of positions espoused by members. These issues include matters such as the issue of Death before the Fall, Evolution, Pre-Adamites, the nature of Noah's Flood, the extent to which scripture ought to be interpreted literally, and related topics.

Notes (click to expand)

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Articles about the Holy Bible

Latter-day Saints and the Bible	The Bible as the word of God The 8th Article of Faith The King James Version The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible
Reliability of the Bible	Biblical inerrancy Textual variants in the Bible Textual criticism of the Bible Doctrinal completeness of the Bible The Documentary Hypothesis
Creation	Cosmology The Creation Age of the Earth Evolution Adam and Eve as historical figures Death before the Fall of Adam and Eve Fall of Adam and Eve
Genesis	Pre-Flood ages of prophets The Flood Peleg Tower of Babel Sodom and Gomorrah
Understanding the Bible	Scriptural interpretations Tips for studying the bible Leaders on bible interpretation Common issues in interpretation and proof-texting Alleged contradictions in scripture Jonah and the whale Authorship of New Testament books Pauline teachings
Cultural issues	Old Testament practices Violence in the scriptures Slavery in the scriptures Sexism in the scriptures Racism and the scriptures Understanding biblical numbers and stories Joseph Smith and Old Testament practices
The Bible and the Book of Mormon	Bible passages in the Book of Mormon Isaiah and the Book of Mormon KJV italicized text in the Book of Mormon KJV translation errors in the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith Translation and the Book of Mormon The New Testament and the Book of Mormon The Apocrypha and the Book of Mormon The Documentary Hypothesis and the Book of Mormon

The Latter-day Saint View of the Creation

This page answers questions about the Latter-day Saint view that God did not create the universe out of nothing, but rather from eternally-pre-existing matter.

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How did the mainstream Christian view that God created the universe out of nothing originate?

The concept of Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century

Mainstream Christianity teaches that God created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), while Mormons teach that God organized the universe from pre-existing matter. The Latter-day Saint God is therefore claimed to be "less powerful" than the God of mainstream Christianity, or "unbiblical."

One non-Latter-day-Saint scholar's conclusion is apt:

Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century c.e. Not only did creatio ex nihilo lack precedent, it stood in firm opposition to all the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. As we have seen, the doctrine was not forced upon the Christian community by their revealed tradition, either in Biblical texts or the Early Jewish interpretation of them. As we will also see it was not a position attested in the New Testament doctrine or even sub-apostolic writings. It was a position taken by the apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Creatio ex nihilo represents an innovation in the interpretive traditions of revelation and cannot be explained merely as a continuation of tradition.

The concept of Creatio ex nihilo is not taught in the Old or New Testaments, or by the early Christian Fathers

Creatio ex nihilo is not taught in the Old or New Testaments, or by the early Christian Fathers, unless one assumes it. The doctrine was a novel idea that altered the beliefs and doctrines of the Jews and early Christians.

The problem of a pre-existent 'something'

The reason why most of modern Christianity demands ex-nihilo creation stems from arguments dealing with the sovereignty of God. If something exists apart from God—i.e., pre-exists the first act of creation, it must be co-eternal with God (and by extension, perhaps co-equal, or potentially co-equal). Likewise, Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that there exists something which is co-eternal with God and potentially co-equal with God in the Book of Abraham. Is God absolutely transcendent over the material with which he works? Is there only one that pre-exists creation (God) or is there more than one?

The Old Testament makes no direct statement of ex-nihilo creation

The Old Testament makes no direct statement of ex-nihilo creation, and so the creation account is scrutinized for clues. Much of the debate over ex-nihilo creation stems from the first few verses of Genesis. And the controversy starts with the very first word: bereshit. The interpretation of Genesis 1:1 faces two questions. 1) Is Genesis 1:1 an independent sentence or a dependent clause, introducing the first sentence? And 2) What is the relationship of verse 1 to verse 2 (and even the remainder of the creation narrative in Genesis chapter 1)?

The Hebrew word roshit occurs some 50 times in the Old Testament. The vowels in the word indicate that is a construct form - that it means "beginning of" and not just "beginning". Of the other 50 occurrences, 49 of them follow this pattern. The exact same construction with the prefix be- occurs in four other places (Jer. 26:1; 27:1; 28:1; 49:34), and in each instance is generally translated as "In the beginning of the reign of ..." The other instances of roshit follow this construct pattern except for one in Isaiah 46:10, where we read: "I am God ... declaring the end from the beginning." Here there can be little doubt that the word cannot be read as a construct. And this one occurrence is often used to justify reading bereshit in Genesis 1:1 as an absolute and not a construct. To which we respond, is a grammatical error in one location reason to justify an adoption of a similar reading here? Why should we adopt the reading favored by one example over the dozens of alternatives?

If beroshit is a construct state, then verse 1 and verse 2 are both subordinate clauses describing the state of everything at the moment which God begins to create, and the beginning of verse 3 becomes the main clause for the first sentence of the Bible. Read this way, the beginning of the Bible reads:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth (the earth being without form and void, and darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of the waters), God said, "Let there be light".

The first act of creation then is the command for light to exist. And all the rest - the earth as a desert and a wasteland (terms that imply an absence of both plant and animal life), the darkness, the deep, and so on, all exist prior to that first act of creation - and by definition are pre-existent.

Apart from this passage, there is often discussion over the meaning of the word bara - "to create". The Hebrew term bara itself is rather indifferent to the question of ex-nihilo creation. Often the claim is made that the word is used exclusively of God, but this clearly isn't the case (see for example Ezekiel 21:19). The meaning of bara here is dependent entirely on how we read the rest of the first line of the Old Testament.

In the absence of any Old Testament expressions of ex-nihilo creation, it seems preferable to follow the view that Israelite religion had not developed this theology. Joseph Smith resolved the interpretive crux in Genesis 1:1 in a rather unique fashion. In the Book of Moses, rather than defining creation in absolute terms (either from nothing or from something), he limits the description of creation in Genesis to a particular place and time. Creation is no longer universal:

And it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Behold, I reveal unto you concerning this heaven and this earth; write the words which I speak. ... Yea, in the beginning I created the heaven and the earth upon which thou standest. (Moses 2꞉1,3)

The New Testament doesn't provide much additional help in resolving the issue

The New Testament doesn't provide much additional help in resolving the issue. It relies heavily on the language of the Old Testament when discussing creation. And the same sorts of ambiguities arise. As James Hubler's Ph.D. dissertation on this very issue noted:

Several New Testament texts have been educed as evidence of creatio ex nihilo. None makes a clear statement which would have been required to establish such an unprecedented position, or which we would need as evidence of such a break with tradition. None is decisive and each could easily be accepted by a proponent of creatio ex materia...The punctuation of [John 1:3] becomes critical to its meaning. Proponents of creatio ex materia could easily qualify the creatures of the Word to that "which came about," excluding matter. Proponents of creatio ex nihilo could place a period after "not one thing came about" and leave "which came about" to the next sentence. The absence of a determinate tradition of punctuation in New Testament [Greek] texts leaves room for both interpretations. Neither does creation by word imply ex nihilo...as we have seen in Egypt, Philo, and Midrash Rabba, and even in 2 Peter 3:5, where the word functions to organize pre-cosmic matter.

List of Quotations from Scholars that affirm that the Bible does not Explicitly Support Ex-Nihilo

The following quotes from scholars demonstrate the near-consensus view that the Genesis in particular and/or Bible as a whole does not explicitly support Creatio ex Nihilo. The quotations are divided into scholars that are commenting on Genesis alone and those that comment on the Bible as a whole. These lists are meant to be representative and not comprehensive/exhaustive.

Not in Genesis

The following scholars affirm that creatio ex nihilo is not taught in Genesis

• Itzhak Benyamini: "As for the antiquity of the world, it appears that in backward extending eternity, not only did God exist, but so also did the world, although chaotic in structure. Still, it did exist, and the divine creation merely set boundaries and organized the matter in that chaos. This moment of creation, as noted, is none other than the moment of the establishment of God as separate from chaos and as its organizer…Creation is not ex nihilo, but from confusion, from chaos. It is the differentiation of being from confusion, which is not nothingness but a distortion of being, and, retrospectively, it understands this. Language alone is what creates this substance and is capable of making it non-chaotic."

"The first primordial material is apparently water, which entails the danger of liquidity. At first, the abyss was water, and water is tohu vavohu, and perhaps the abyss (tehom) is close to vohu.

Water, which is most definitely primordial, is now divided in two: order was created within it, meaning that the beginning of differentiation was within water, between water of one kind and water of another kind. This is an extension of the division between light and darkness. Differentiation is from a single thing to a pair of things: water above and water below, like male and female, like light and darkness, in a binary relation.

This can also be viewed from a slightly different angle: the firmament is a tool of separation, like the essence of light and its function. A tool was created, which enters something in order to divide it in half, and then to commingle with one of the halves. Thus, light separates darkness and becomes half of what was created out of the darkness. The firmament separates water from water and then combines with one half of the water.

This shows that the tools were created ex nihilo (but matter was not created ex nihilo), by bootstrapping, produced by the act of separation that they effectuate. The moment before their creation, they did not exist, but at the moment of their creation, they, in turn, create something else, which is separate from its Other but also from within it. Thus, though slightly differently, creation takes place on the following day as well, when the water within the lower water recedes, and the dry land is revealed. In retrospect, it may be said that the water is a tool of separation not just as material but also because of its liquidity, its flow, which reveals the dry land …. It was stated that the earth already existed, but now we hear that it was created. This is because earth was no longer the confused reality that it was at first. Now it is the name erets (land), which was given to yabasha (dry land), in that it is distinct from water. [. . .]

The rivers were not created by God. They existed before creation. They surround the earth and irrigate it. Like God and Adam, they are partners in the work of creation (which is fertilizing and irrigating, and not creation ex nihilo)."

• Marc Zvi Brettler: "The opposite of structure is chaos, and it is thus appropriate that 1:1-2 describe primeval chaos — a world that is "unformed and void," containing darkness and a mysterious wind. This story does not describe creation out of nothing (Latin: creatio ex nihilo). Primeval stuff already exists in verses 1-2, and the text shows no concern for how it originated. Rather, it is a myth about how God alone structured primordial matter into a highly organized world. Only upon its completion is this structure 'very good.'"
• Thomas L. Brodie: "Genesis apparently is not describing creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing (Sacks, 4; Scullion, 16; however, Jacob, 1, does hold for creation from nothing; and Wenham, 14, is circumspect: 'The phraseology leaves the author’s precise meaning uncertain'). The primary transition is not from nothingness to being but from chaos to order. The creation process begins with something like a formless waste: tōhû . . .bōhû. The first word, tōhû, suggests something shapeless, formless, uninhabitable; and it may also be related etymologically to tĕhôm, 'the deep' (Clifford, 2:4). Bōhû, in rhyming with tōhû—forming an assonant hendiadys—simply reinforces its effect. The text may also be read as referring primarily to emptiness: the earth is 'an empty place. . . unproductive. . . uninhabited' (Tsumura, 1994a, 328)."
• Walter Brueggemann: "It is widely agreed that Genesis 1:1-2 constitutes a remarkable premise for creation, namely, that disordered chaos (expressed in Hebrew onomatopoetically as tohu wabohu) was already "there" as God began to create. That is, God did not create 'from nothing,' but God’s act of creation consists in the imposition of a particular order upon that mass of undifferentiated chaos. For much of the Bible, the energy of chaos (antiform) continues to operate destructively against the will of the Creator, and sometimes breaks out destructively beyond the bounds set by the decree of the Creator. It is an interesting example of 'imaginative remembering' that much later, in 2 Maccabees 7:28, the tradition finally asserts 'creation out of nothing,' a view that since then has predominated in later church traditions of theological interpretation."
• Umberto Cassuto: "Just as the potter, when he wishes to fashion a beautiful vessel, takes first of all a lump of clay, and places it upon his wheel in order to mould it according to his wish, so the Creator first prepared for Himself the raw material of the universe with a view to giving it afterwards order and life. In this chaos of unformed matter, the heaviest materials were naturally at the bottom, and the waters, which were the lightest, floated on top. This apart, the whole material was an undifferentiated, unorganized, confused and lifeless agglomeration. It is this terrestrial state that is called תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu and bohu."
• Paul K. Cho: "There is not an initial conflict and combat between the creator God and the watery forces of chaos….Nevertheless, the primordial sea, תהום, which alludes to Tiamat, and over whose waters the spirit of God purposefully hovers, is there before creation begins (Gen 1:2). And after the creation of light on the first day, which makes the counting off of the seven days of creation possible, God’s first act of creation is to divide the primordial sea in half and to place a firmament in between to keep the halves separate (Gen 1:6–7). The primordial sea, in Genesis as in Enuma Elish, preexists creation, and the initial stages of creation consist of the creator dividing the primordial waters to create a tripartite world, with the celestial waters above, the infernal waters below, and the earth in between."
• John J. Collins: "Whatever the origin of the Adam and Eve story, it stands in sharp contrast to the Priestly account of creation that now forms the opening chapter of the Bible. The opening verse (Gen 1:1) is majestic in its simplicity: 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' Originally, the Hebrew was written without vowels. The vowels were added later as points above and below the consonants. The consonantal text can also be translated as: 'In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. . . .' The Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish, similarly begins with a temporal clause. (There is another possible reflection of the Babylonian myth in Gen 1:2. The Hebrew word for 'the deep' [tehom] is a cognate of the name of the Babylonian monster Tiamat in Enuma Elish.) If the opening words are translated as a temporal clause, it is clear that we are not speaking of creation out of nothing. Already when God set about creating the heavens and the earth, there was a formless void (tohu wabohu), and the wind or spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God proceeds to bring order out of chaos simply by uttering commands."
• Robert Crotty: "The story in Gen. 1.1–2.3 is a priestly document. It does not relate a creatio ex nihilo but describes the ordering of a chaotic cosmos. The narrative distinguishes between works of separation (days 1–3) and works of furnishment (days 4–6)."
• Edwin M. Good: "...It seems clear that the storytellers were not thinking of what later philosophical and theological traditions, speaking Latin as they often did, called creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing,' namely, that the creator was not working with preexisting stuff. But in this story, something was there—the empty, shapeless 'earth,' darkness, the 'abyss,' the wind across waters.
• Ronald Hendel: "On the first three days God creates the major domains of the cosmos by creating new things and using them to separate the primeval materials of chaos…. "In the beginning when God created," or "When God began to create." The grammar of this temporal clause was clarified by the medieval Jewish commentator Rashi, who noted that the Hebrew word for "beginning" (reshot) required a dependent relation—it is the "beginning of" something–and can be followed by a verb. The traditional rendering, "In the beginning, God created," dates to the Hellenistic period (as in the Septuagint), when the details of classical Hebrew grammar had been forgotten. The idea of creatio ex nihlo is dependent on the later rendering. The original grammar, creation is a process of ordering and separation that begins with preexisting chaotic matter. This distinctive clause portrays the primordial state as a dark, watery chaos, an image similar to the primordial state in Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek traditions. Unlike those other traditions, the chaos here is not a god or gods, but mere matter. The wind from God (verse 2) is the only divine substance and seems to indicate the incipient ordering of this chaos."

"Corresponding to תהו ובהו, the [Septuagint] translator wrote ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος ‘unseen and unorganized." Scholars have noted that ἀόρατος is a distinctive philosophical term in Greek, used by Plato to denote the "unseen" preexisting world of ideas (Sophist 246a״ c; Theaetatus 155e; Timaeus 51a; see Hanhart 1992: 367; Harl 1986: 87; Rosel 1994: 31). This choice of a Greek equivalent expresses something of Platonic cosmology in biblical guise, perhaps joining the cosmologies of Plato and Moses, as was a commonplace in Hellenistic Jewish thought, particularly in Alexandria. Hence, we may have a glimpse of the Hellenistic conceptual world of the [Septuagint] translator via the translation of this obscure Hebrew phrase. Note that the phrase is rendered in two words joined with a conjunction, exactly like the Hebrew Vorlage. But within the constraints of a literal translation, something of contemporary Platonic cosmology may shine through."

• Menahem Kister: "At this point we must address another difficulty posed by Genesis 1:1-3, perhaps a more profound one: does Genesis 1:2 describe primordial elements, such as darkness and abyss, which existed before creation? How are these elements related to God, i. e., are they eternal, coexistent with God, or were these elements created by God? The wording of the biblical verses does not give us a reason for choosing the latter. To be sure, the belief in primordial elements from which the Cosmos has emerged, or was created, is shared by many cultures. Yet, the idea that primordial elements coexisted with God (from which it follows that God was not the only eternal entity before Creation) may be potentially more problematic for a monotheistic religion. The author of Genesis, however, does not give us a clue about the way in which he coped with this subtle theological question, if he recognized it at all."
• J.R. Porter: "The biblical accounts of the creation of the world have their background in ancient Near Eastern mythology, in which creation is often depicted as the deity’s victory over the forces of chaos, represented by threatening waters, as a result of which the god is established as a supreme king. A large number of references show that this concept was well-known in Israel also. … Although the watery chaos is still there [in Genesis 1], there is no conflict between it and God, as in the ancient myth. God creates in unfettered freedom by his word or command, and creation is brought about by the separation of the elements of the universe, which produces an ordered and habitable world. Hence creation is not so much dealing with absolute beginning, creation from nothing — though this idea appears later, as in 2 Maccabees 7:28 — as with the world order as perceived by human beings."
• Gary Rendsburg: "A close reading of vv. 1-3 (especially v. 2) reveals that water was preexistent matter, in the form of the deep (Hebrew תְהוֹם tɘhom)—which is to say, water is never created in Genesis 1, but rather is the dominant presence on the earth, comprised of תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu wa-bohu ‘wild and waste’ (v. 2). This water, in turn, represents the cosmic sea or abyss, which in other ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies (most famously, the Babylonian story Enuma Elish) is symbolized by an evil deity (for example, the goddess Tiamat in said story [note that Babylonian Tiamat is cognate with to Hebrew תְהוֹםtɘhom ‘deep, abyss’, which, notwithstanding the lack of a feminine ending, is a feminine noun in Hebrew)"
• Thomas Romer: "This text does not narrate a creatio ex nihilo, as it can later be found in Judaism and Christianity. Quite the contrary, it emphasizes the fact that God did not create the darkness, symbol of evil, nor the tehom, i.e., the waters symbolizing chaos and darkness (that may allude to the sea serpent Tiamat who Marduk, according to the epic Enuma Elish, has to kill before creating the world and humankind). In Genesis 1, Elohim integrates these things in his creation by transforming them (pushing back the waters and brightening up the darkness), but darkness and chaos are not "good" (on the first day of creation, only the light is characterized as 'good'; Gen 1:4)"
• Howard Schwartz: ""The very existence of pre-existing elements, such as light, darkness, chaos, void, water, wind, and the deep, raise doubts about the singularity of God’s accomplishment. Yet there is no explicit mention of the creation of these elements in the account of Creation."
• Hermann Spieckermann: "God’s creation as described at the beginning of the Bible is not a creative act out of nothing. The conception of creatio ex nihilo first came to the fore in Hellenistic Judaism (2 Macc. 7:28). After the heading of Gen. 1:1 comes a description of the world before God’s first deed, the generation of light. Three elements characterize the world at this time: tōhû wābōhû (formless and void), ḥōšek (darkness), and tĕhôm (the deep). Present in Mesopotamian myths and even Old Testament texts, this triad alludes to Chaos. The term tĕhôm betrays an inherent conception of Chaos."
• Marvin A. Sweeney: "Interpreters are accustomed to read the first statement of the creation account in Gen 1:1 as a statement of creatio ex nihilo, or 'creation out of nothing,' which presupposes that nothing existed prior to G-d’s creation of the world. In English, Gen 1:1–2 would then read, 'in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void …' But such a statement conflicts with other depictions of creation in the Bible, e.g., Job 38; Ps 74; and Isa 51, which indicate that G-d overcame a chaos monster as part of the process of creation in which a pre-existing world of chaos was brought into order. Close analysis by the medieval biblical commentator Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, 1040–1105) of the initial words of Gen 1:1, beˇre ̄"sˇît ba ̄ra ̄" "lhym, indicate that they cannot be read as 'in the beginning G-d created,' because the term beˇre ̄"sˇît is a construct form that lacks a definite article. The verb, ba ̄ra ̄", cannot be read as a perfect verb, but it must be rendered as an infinitive that forms a construct chain with the terms that precede and follow. Consequently, the verse must be read as, 'in (the) beginning of G-d’s creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void …' The result is a statement in which the earth pre-existed creation in a state of chaos that was put into order by G-d. G-d’s act of creation then becomes a model for human action in the world, viz., the task of human beings modeled on G-d becomes one of overcoming chaos in the world and placing the world into order."
• William A. VanGemeren: "The root בָּרָא, Genesis 1, or creation by the word (contra Foerster) cannot explicitly communicate a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo."
• John H. Walton: "It has long been observed that in the contexts of bara no materials for the creative act are ever mentioned, and an investigation of all the passages mentioned above [which use the Hebrew word bara] substantiate this claim. How interesting it is that these scholars then draw the conclusion that bara implies creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). One can see with a moment of thought that such a conclusion assumes that 'create' is a material activity. To expand their reasoning for clarity’s sake here: Since 'create' is a material activity (assumed on their part), and since the contexts never mention the materials used (as demonstrated by the evidence), then the material object must have been brought into existence without using other materials (i.e., out of nothing). But one can see that the whole line of reasoning only works if one can assume that bara is a material activity. In contrast, if, as the analysis of objects presented above suggests, bara is a functional activity, it would be ludicrous to expect that materials are being used in the activity. In other words, the absence of reference to materials, rather than suggesting material creation out of nothing, is better explained by indication that bara is not a material activity but a functional one."
• Claus Westermann: "If this is correct—and there is no other convincing attempt to trace the derivation of ברא—then the Priestly ברא is based on a concrete idea, something like יצר. We do not know if the word was used of creation by God in this concrete sense before Deutero-Isaiah and P. One must be cautious about attributing too much to the word as if it could of itself say something about the uniqueness of the creative act of God. It is clear that it was P’s intention to use a special theological word for creation by God. But it is not correct to regard this word as the only one and to neglect such words as עשׂה or יצר. Nor is it correct to read creatio ex nihilo out of the word as such as, for example, does P. Heinisch: "If not always, then for the most part, the word indicates creatio ex nihilo." On the other hand A. Heidel is correct: "This concept (creatio ex nihilo), however, cannot be deduced from the Hebrew verb bārāʾ, to create, as it has been done.… There is no conclusive evidence in the entire Old Testament that the verb itself ever expresses the idea of a creation out of nothing."
• R.N. Whybray: [Genesis] 1:2 refers to the situation before God’s creative action began. There is no question here of a creatio ex nihilo, a ‘creation out of nothing’. The earth (h ̄aʾ ̄ares) already existed, but it was a ‘formless void’ (t ̄ohˆu w ̄ab ̄ohˆu)—not a kind of non-existence but something empty and formless, without light and covered by the water of the deep (t ̆ehˆom). There are echoes here of the Near-Eastern cosmologies. The word rˆuah, rendered by ‘wind’ in NRSV, can also mean ‘spirit’ (see NRSV marg.). Whichever is the correct interpretation, NRSV’s ‘swept’ is a participle, denoting a continuous action; it should perhaps be rendered ‘was hovering’."
• Ziony Zevit: "'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'On the basis of this well-known rendering, it can be argued that the ancient Israelites believed in creation ex nihilo, that is, creation out of nothing. This happens not to be the case. . . . A stricter, non-interpretive translation of the same verse is 'In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth,' which indicates that this verse is not a sentence but a circumstantial clause in a long, complicated sentence spread out over three biblical verses. It describes the state of matter in the cosmos before God set about ordering the chaotic mix of darkness, earth, wind, and water to create the heavens and the earth."

Not Found in the Bible

• James K. Aitken: "Galen (129–c.211) was the first to indicate that the view of creation had to be altered to take into account Christian views of God, leading to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo."
• William P. Brown: "Overall, however, the Priestly cosmogony does not exemplify a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, "creation out of nothing." Syntactically, the first verse of Genesis is a dependent clause ("When God began to create the heavens and the earth . . .") rather than a complete sentence (i.e., 'God created the heavens and the earth.') Indeed, the notion of creatio ex nihilo did not clearly emerge as a doctrine until the second century CE (G. May, Creatio ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of "Creation out of Nothing" in Early Christian Thought [tr. A.S. Worrall; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994], 35-38, 62-84). The vigor and intensity with which both modern and ancient commentators have argued opposing positions betrays the fact that more than simply syntactical precision is at stake; deeply conflicting theological convictions underlie the various ways in which God is viewed in relation to the cosmos. For the Priestly author, however, the preexistence of chaos in no way intrudes on or limits God’s transcendent character, but rather underlines the divine role as the creative orderer of the cosmos. Whereas God is comfortable with preexistent 'chaos' in the Priestly cosmogony, many modern interpreters are not."
• James N. Hubler: "Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century c.e. Not only did creatio ex nihilo lack precedent, it stood in firm opposition to all the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. As we have seen, the doctrine was not forced upon the Christian community by their revealed tradition, either in Biblical texts or the Early Jewish interpretation of them. As we will also see it was not a position attested in the New Testament doctrine or even sub-apostolic writings. It was a position taken by the apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Creatio ex nihilo represents an innovation in the interpretive traditions of revelation and cannot be explained merely as a continuation of tradition."
• Helge S. Krach: "What little was known about the universe in the early Middle Ages included the idea that it was created in toto in a supernatural act rather than shaped out of some pre-existing state of matter. It was a true creatio ex nihilo. Given that this is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and in view of the overwhelming impact of Christian thought on cosmology through a large part of history, it is not irrelevant to repeat that creatio ex nihilo is nowhere explicitly stated in the Bible, neither in the Old nor in the New Testament. It is a doctrine not to be found in the earliest form of Christianity, when the form of creation was rarely a matter of discussion. Only in the second half of the second century can the doctrine be found in its strict sense, as an ontological and theological statement that expresses the contingence of the creation and the omnipotence and absolute freedom of God."
• Andrew Louth: ""It is, indeed, in the context of the struggle against Gnosticism that many scholars locate the emergence of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Certainly, the way Theophilus interprets Genesis would have served him well in his struggle against Gnosticism, and it may well be that struggle that led him to see the significance of creation ex nihilo. For the critical role of creation ex nihilo in the thought of Theophilus (and Tertullian) needs some explanation: the older apologist Justin seems much close to traditional Platonism with his assertion that God created the cosmos out of 'unformed matter' (1 Apol. 10, cf. 59)."
• Gerhard May: "The concept of creatio ex nihilo began to be adumbrated in Christian circles shortly before Galen’s time. The first Christian thinker to articulate the rudiments of a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was the Gnostic theologian Basilides, who flourished in the second quarter of the second century. Basilides worked out an elaborate cosmogony as he sought to think through the implications of Christian teaching in light of the platonic cosmogony. He rejected the analogy of the human maker, the craftsman who carves a piece of wood, as an anthropomorphism that severely limited the power of God. God, unlike mortals, created the world out of ‘non-existing’ matter. He first brought matter into being through the creation of ‘seeds’, and it is this created stuff that is fashioned, according to His will, into the cosmos."

"To rabbinic Judaism the questions raised by Greek ontology were relatively remote. But the chief reason why it did not come to the formation of a specific doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is to be seen in the fact that it was not demanded by the text of the Bible. The mention of chaos in Genesis 1:1 could also support the view that an eternal material existed, which God had merely ordered in creating the world. Jewish thought is in its entire essence undogmatic; in the question of the creation of the world it did not find itself tied down by the statements in the Bible and so possessed wide room for manoeuvre for highly variant speculations on creation. It was left for the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages to develop in controversy with Arabic neoplatonism and Aristotelianism a specific doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. But even then this did not achieve sole validity, but the biblical statements about creation continued to be interpreted in various ways."

• Teun Tieleman: "That God created the world out of nothing seems the most natural way of reading the opening chapter of Genesis. However, as May himself rightly stresses, we must exercise caution when we come across the statement that God created the world out of nothing. Early sources in which this statement is found may merely express the idea of God’s omnipotence. In such cases creatio ex nihilo in its technical sense is not in play. This is generally believed to have resulted from the debate between pagans and Christians in the second century CE—which makes Galen an important witness. Indeed, it seems to have been designed in conscious opposition to a fundamental assumption of the Greek philosophical tradition (cf. also Dillon, this volume, §2). From Parmenides (fifth century BCE) onward it had been axiomatic for Greek philosophers that nothing comes into being from not-being. Accordingly, Plato in his extremely influential Timaeus pictures the divine Craftsman (‘Demiurge’) as bringing order to a pre-existing entity called the ‘Receptacle’ or ‘Mother of Becoming’ or ‘the Place’, which was soon identified by Plato’s readers with Aristotle’s material cause (see below, p. 133). This entity prevents God’s best intentions from being completely realized, thereby explaining such imperfections as remain in a cosmos marked by overall purposefulness and beauty. From the Judaeo-Christian point of view, however, the postulate of the Receptacle goes against divine omnipotence. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, then, seems to be intended as the exact counterpart of the Platonic and other Greek accounts of creation that were based on the axiom that being cannot come from not-being."

What were the early Christian beliefs about the creation?

A belief in ex nihilo creation was not shared by the first Christians

Contrary to the critics' claims, their belief in ex nihilo creation was not shared by the first Christians. The concept of creatio ex nihilo

began to be adumbrated in Christian circles shortly before Galen's time. The first Christian thinker to articulate the rudiments of a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was the Gnostic theologian Basilides, who flourished in the second quarter of the second century. Basilides worked out an elaborate cosmogony as he sought to think through the implications of Christian teaching in light of the platonic cosmogony. He rejected the analogy of the human maker, the craftsman who carves a piece of wood, as an anthropomorphism that severely limited the power of God. God, unlike mortals, created the world out of ‘non-existing’ matter. He first brought matter into being through the creation of ‘seeds’, and it is this created stuff that is fashioned, according to His will, into the cosmos.

Thus, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was first advanced by a Gnostic (a heretical branch of Christianity), and did not appear until more than a century after the birth of Christ.

The idea of God using pre-existing material in creation was accepted by at least some of the early Church Fathers

The idea of God using pre-existing material in creation was accepted by at least some of the early Church Fathers, suggesting that beliefs about the mechanism of creation altered over time, as Greek philosophical ideas intruded on Christian doctrine. Justin Martyr (A.D. 110—165) said:

And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man's sake, create all things out of unformed matter; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received-of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering."

Justin continues elsewhere with such examples as:

• "by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses."
• [the earth,] "which God made according to the pre-existent form."
• "And His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God's ordering all thing; through Him..."

Justin was not the only Father to reject ex nihilo creation. Clement said in his "Hymn to the Paedagogus":

Out of a confused heap who didst create This ordered sphere, and from the shapeless mass Of matter didst the universe adorn....

And, Blake Ostler comments on 1 Clement:

Clement stated: "Thou . . . didst make manifest the everlasting fabric of the world. Thou, Lord, didst create the earth." The terms used here by Clement are significant. He asserts that God did "make manifest" (ἐϕανεροποίησας) the "everlasting fabric of the world" (Σὺ τὴν ἀέναον του κόσμου σύστασιν). He is referring to an eternal substrate that underlies God's creative activity. Clement is important because he is at the very center of the Christian church as it was then developing. His view assumed that God had created from an eternally existing substrate, creating by "making manifest" what already existed in some form. The lack of argumentation or further elucidation indicates that Clement was not attempting to establish a philosophical position; he was merely maintaining a generally accepted one. However, the fact that such a view was assumed is even more significant than if Clement had argued for it. If he had presented an argument for this view, then we could assume that it was either a contested doctrine or a new view. But because he acknowledged it as obvious, it appears to have been a generally accepted belief in the early Christian church.

How was the doctrine of creation altered to "creatio ex nihilo"?

Some Greek philosophical ideas influenced the change to "creatio ex nihilo"

Non-Latter-day-Saint author Edwin Hatch noted the influence of some Greek philosophical ideas in the change to creatio ex nihilo:

With Basilides [a second century Gnostic philosopher], the conception of matter was raised to a higher plane. The distinction of subject and object was preserved, so that the action of the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not of evolution; but it was "out of that which was not" that He made things to be . . . . The basis of the theory was Platonic, though some of the terms were borrowed from both Aristotle and the Stoics. It became itself the basis for the theory which ultimately prevailed in the Church. The transition appears in Tatian [ca. A.D. 170]

Does Colossians 1:16 teach that Jesus created all things out of nothing?

Creedal Christians believe in the post-Biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing)

Creedal Christians believe in the post-Biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Because this is how they understand the idea of creation, they read it into this verse.

Latter-day Saints have no quarrel with these verses. They emphatically believe that the Father created all things by Jesus Christ

An anti-Mormon protester at October 2002 Latter-day Saint General Conference appeals to his reading of Colossians to criticize Latter-day Saint doctrine.

The passage in question reads:

[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.(Colossians 1:15-17.)

The Greek text does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials

As one author observed, the Greek text does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials, since the verb ktidzo "carried an architectural connotation...as in 'to build' or 'establish' a city.... Thus, the verb presupposes the presence of already existing material."

One must not overlook 2 Corinthians 4꞉18, which states that "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal"—suggesting that aspects of the created "unseen world" are eternal, despite the exercise of God's creative power upon them.

Latter-day Saint doctrine sees creation as an act of organizing pre-existing, eternal matter and intelligence. (See D&C 93꞉29, D&C 131꞉7.)

Thus, Jesus certainly participated in the creation of all created thing

Thus, Jesus certainly participated in the creation of all created things—but He worked with preexisting chaotic materials. The angelic ranks of "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" were also created by Christ, for these beings did not assume their angelic status or form without divine creative power, even though some aspect of their "intelligence" pre-dated God's creative acts in their behalf.

Each of us, along with Jesus and Lucifer/Satan, are spirit children of our Father in Heaven. Our personality and character were developed during the long pre-mortal existence. During this time the Savior, as the first born of the Father, developed the attributes that allowed God the Father to trust Jesus with the creation of all things that would be created and to assume the divine role of The Son. With that same process Lucifer developed the attributes that led him into sin and rebellion.

The difference between Jesus and Lucifer is so great that we cannot fully understand it. The rest of God's children are somewhere in between these two extremes. Because of Jesus' role in the creation Satan's premortal powers and status were dependent upon the creative power and authority of God, exercised through Jesus Christ.

The difference between those who followed the Father and those who followed Lucifer is in part dependent upon the eternal aspect of each individual. This may help to explain Satan's antipathy toward Jesus, and his desire to usurp the power and authority of God possessed by Christ (see Moses 4꞉1).

The claim, then, that Jesus and Satan were merely peers, misunderstands and misrepresents the Latter-day Saint doctrine of creation, and Jesus' preeminent role in it.

Related articles:	The Father: A Spirit vs. Embodied
	Corporeality of God
	Creatio ex nihilo
	No man has seen God

Does what Joseph Smith taught about the creation of spirits contradict the scriptures?

It should be noted specifically that Joseph addresses the word "create" as meaning "to organize" and not to "create out of nothing"

Joseph Smith taught that spirits were not created, and that spirits did not have a beginning because they will not have an end. In scripture, however, there are many verses which stated that God created spirits.

• Did what Joseph taught about the creation of spirits contradict the scriptures?

It should be noted specifically that Joseph addresses the word "create" as meaning "to organize" and not to "create out of nothing." Therefore, God can still at some point "organize" whatever composes spirits just as He organized the "chaotic matter" into the world and all that we see. As long as one properly understands that "to create" is "to organize" rather than "to create out of nothing," there is no problem or conflict between God creating spirits and creating the world. In both instances He used some preexistent material from which He organized both.

The statement upon which this teaching is based is actually an excerpt from Joseph Smith's April 7, 1844 talk known as the "King Follett Discourse"

In the 2008-9 lesson manual Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, we find the following in Chapter 17 - The Great Plan of Salvation:

In April 1844, the Prophet taught: "I have another subject to dwell upon, which is calculated to exalt man. … It is associated with the subject of the resurrection of the dead,—namely, the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so; and if you don’t believe me, it will not make the truth without effect. …"

"I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits. … "

The present text of quotes from the "King Follet discourse" as recorded in the lesson manual is from the Grimshaw Amalgamation

The present text of quotes from the "King Follet discourse" as recorded in the lesson manual is from the Grimshaw Amalgamation, which was the work of Jonathan Grimshaw in 1855. Grimshaw was a clerk in the Church Historian's Office assigned to prepare Joseph Smith’s sermons for inclusion in what would eventually become the 7-volume History of the Church.

Grimshaw relied upon the accounts of the four men who made record of the prophet’s words on that day

Since there was no stenographic report of the sermon and no prepared text from which to reconstruct the sermon, Grimshaw relied upon the accounts of the four men who made record of the prophet’s words on that day. Three of these men, Thomas Bullock, Willard Richards and William Clayton, were assigned to do so and the fourth, Wilford Woodruff, made a record for inclusion in his journal.

Thomas Bullock amalgamated together his account and that of William Clayton in 1844, which was then printed in the Latter-day Saint periodical Times and Seasons. Grimshaw took this amalgamation and amalgamated it with the accounts of Willard Richards and Wilford Woodruff in an attempt to provide the most complete account possible. This version of the sermon has been reprinted more than any other and has been published in the Ensign, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is also the source of the quotations noted above from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith.

Does the teaching contradict scripture?

The following quote appeared in the April and May 1971 Ensign on pages 13-17 of each. Within the sermon, Joseph is reported as having said:

"I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven."

The question is: Are there indications within the scriptures regarding creation contradict such a statement? It should be noted that the scriptures themselves clearly state that,

"Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be." (D&C 93꞉29) It would appear that whatever this "intelligence" is, it cannot be "created or made." Precisely what this "intelligence" is and whether it is an individuated spirit being or merely the chaotic precursor to an organized individuated spirit has been the subject of a much of discussion in Latter-day Saint thought. Suffice to say that we existed as this "intelligence" previous to whatever action the Father took that resulted in our becoming His spirit children. This is the manner in which the matter has been understood and expounded upon within Church publications.

Does the fact that we existed as "intelligence" previous to our organization into spirits preclude "creation"? Not necessarily. It would all depend upon how one views the process of "creation." Did God create the world from nothing as most of our Christian brothers from other faiths infer? Joseph did not think so. In the same sermon he stated:

"You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, "Doesn’t the Bible say he created the world?" And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end."

Therefore, it is not merely "intelligence" which cannot be "created or made" but "chaotic matter" or "element." Something existed, some form of primordial "matter" or "element" which "had an existence from the time He [God] had" just as "The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself."

Quotes from Scholars on the Latter-day Saint View of Creatio Ex Materia

Latter-day Saint doctrine rejects Neo-Plantonic accretions, but this does not make them automatically false

Non-Latter-day-Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

Mormon arguments deserve to be examined on their own grounds for internal consistency and biblical adequacy. Not being Platonic is not equivalent to not being rational.

Mormons and creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing)

Non-Latter-day-Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

Thological and philosophical critics of Mormonism often focus on their rejection of the doctrine of creation out of nothing, as if the Mormon relationship to traditional theology is merely negative. What critics miss is the flip side of this rejection, namely, the affirmation of the eternity of matter and how this affirmation functions as the philosophical foundation for a

dramatic revision of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

"Smith would have held his own in debating with" Neo-Platonists, Gnostics, and early Christian theologians

Non-Latter-dayy Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

[I]t would be a mistake to think of Mormonism as simply rejecting the Greek heritage of metaphysics. Paulsen has done more than any Mormon thinker to demonstrate how Smith’s idea of divine embodiment would have been in the theological mainstream prior to Origen and Augustine. In fact, [David] Paulsen, who is also a professor at Brigham Young University, has done more

than any theologian of any denomination to rediscover the metaphysical depths of anthropomorphism in early Christian theology, and his work has been extremely helpful for my own project. Paulsen shows how the Mormon version of the restoration of the Church requires a strong reading of the history of metaphysics. Joseph Smith spoke plainly, but that should not disguise the revolutionary nature of his claims. I have discussed emerging ideas of matter in the context of the Neo-Platonists, the Gnostics, and the early theologians, and Smith would have held his own in debating with all three groups. Smith had the imagination of the Gnostics in his multilayered portrait of the divinities that populate the cosmos. Nonetheless, he would have agreed with the Neo-Platonists and the Christians that the Gnostics erred in identifying matter with evil. He would have liked the Platonic concept of pre-existent souls as well as Plato’s portrait of the Demiurge as being not absolutely different from the world. Indeed, his sense of the rhythmic and cyclical movement of spirits from a refined to an embodied state and back again would have led him to express great interest in the circular framework of Plotinus, but Smith would not have accepted the elitism and intellectualism built into Neo-Platonic thought. He would have sympathized with Christians who struggled to identify nature’s inherent goodness, but he would not have shared their solution in attributing infinity to God. Smith absorbed and revised so many Christian traditions, but negative theology has virtually no room in his thought. In the debates over infinity, Smith, ever the concrete thinker, would have affirmed an actual, as opposed to a potential infinity in order to defend his vision of the afterlife as an eternal progression through space and time. His cosmos was big enough for both the eternity of the divine and the infinity of matter, but his materialism left no room for one entity that is both eternal and infinite. In sum, he would have de-Augustinized theology in order to baptize Greek philosophy anew.

Augustine's views about matter are perhaps less coherent than Joseph Smith's

Non-Latter-day Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

Augustine’s position is actually not as sound as it first appears. If God makes the world out of himself, does it necessarily have all the attributes of the divine? Does it necessarily follow that matter is a substance that equals God’s own power? The problem with Augustine’s position (and the whole of classical theism on this issue) is that he can imagine no middle ground between creating and shaping. From the perspective of classical theism, if God does not create matter out of nothing, then God merely shapes (or adds form to) the matter that is already there, and that means that God is neither infinite nor omnipotent. If matter is too close to God, then God must not have complete mastery over it. Likewise, if matter comes from God, then God must be tainted by it, which means that God shares in its corruptibility. Either way, God would not be God, or at least, God would not be infinite. But what if there is a middle ground? What if matter is one of God’s perfections without the world being divine? If the perfection of matter is already an expression of who God is (indeed, if it is the substance of the Father’s relation to the Son), then matter can come from God without compromising God’s nature. Moreover, God would be neither master nor victim of matter’s nature, since God’s relation to matter would be nothing more than a reiteration of the Father’s relation to the Son.

Non-Latter-day Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb: Creedal Christians can learn from Latter-day Saint views about Jesus Christ and creation

Non-Latter-day Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

[In Latter-day Saint doctrine] Matter as we know it has a beginning, an origin, in Christ, but matter as it can be, in its perfected form, is eternally an attribute of the divine. In this way, the eternity of matter can be conceived without falling into the trap of pantheism, and this possibility, I am convinced, is precisely what Joseph Smith saw, even if he did not put it into these words or this theological context.

Th Mormon Church stakes its whole theology on the coherence of the idea that God formed the world from a material substance that is not totally unlike his own divine nature. That makes Mormonism either a religious oddity in Western history or an utterly crucial metaphysical correction to our understanding of the role and value of matter in God’s creation of the world. At the very least, Mormonism presents a prod to theological thought at the precise time when materiality is more central to public awareness than ever before. Our relationship to the material world, whether it goes by the name of environmentalism, ecology, sustainability, or evolution has never been so urgently pressed before us as today. To respond to this urgency, we need not only an ethic but also a metaphysics of matter.

We cannot know how to treat matter unless we know what it is, and the nature of matter has to include but ultimately go beyond the specificities of science. We need to know what matter is for, where it comes from, and to what extent it is identical to what we are. These are the central questions of our time, and creedal Christians can answer them only in a self-critical and mutually beneficial dialogue with Latter-day Saints—and that dialogue has to begin with an assessment of the life and thought of Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith's theology is not pagan—his theology is vast as the multiverse, and eliminates Neo-Platonism and Augustine

Non-Latter-day Saint Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:

Far from reverting to paganism or simply falling into sloppy thinking, Smith was carrying his confidence in Christ to its fullest possible expression....All things are possible not only for us but also for God, in that this universe does not exhaust the divine creativity. The universe is not big enough to hold the majesty of God’s ingenuity. Rather than reacting negatively to the apparently infinite expansiveness of the universe, Smith called astronomy’s bluff and multiplied the universe by the same expansive factor. Smith was wiping the theological slate clean of the Neo-Platonic metaphysics that had so influenced Augustine.

Notes (click to expand)

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Evolution (official statements)

Summary: What is the Church's stance on the theory of organic evolution?

Unofficial primary sources on evolution

Summary: This page collects the text of various statements about evolution made by a variety of Church leaders and members. These are unofficial statements, but serve to show the variety of opinions that have been expressed on the topic.