Creation Out of Nothing

Chapter 1.—God the Highest and Unchangeable Good, from Whom are All Other Good Things, Spiritual and Corporeal. The highest good, than which there is no higher, is God, and consequently He is unchang

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Chapter 26.—That Creatures are Made of Nothing. Because therefore God made all things which He did not beget of Himself, not of those things that already existed, but of those things that did not exi

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The next question concerns the mode of the emanation of things from the First Principle, and this is called creation, and includes eight points of inquiry: (1) What is creation? (2) Whether God can

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Chapter 5 [III.]—In What Sense Created Beings are Out of God. Now, just because I do not suppose that you, a member of the catholic Church, ever believed the human soul to be a portion of God, or tha

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Chapter 6.—The Simile Reformed in Accordance with Truth. Well, now, you ought to have thought of all this when you were writing, and not to have brought God before our eyes in that favourite simile o

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Chapter XXXIV.—A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogene

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Chapter XXI.—A Retort of Heresy Answered. That Scripture Should in So Many Words Tell Us that the World Was Made of Nothing is Superfluous. But, you will say to me, if you determine that all things w

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Chapter XVIII.—An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing. If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a f

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Chapter XLV.—Conclusion. Contrast Between the Statements of Hermogenes and the Testimony of Holy Scripture Respecting the Creation. Creation Out of Nothing, Not Out of Matter. But it is not thus that

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Chapter XX.—Meaning of the Phrase—In the Beginning. Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter. But in proof tha

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Chapter XV.—The Truth, that God Made All Things from Nothing, Rescued from the Opponent’s Flounderings. Now, if good was neither produced out of matter, since it was not in it, evil as it was, nor ou

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Chapter 10.—Natures Corruptible, Because Made of Nothing. All corruptible natures therefore are natures at all only so far as they are from God, nor would they be corruptible if they were of Him; bec

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Extracts from the Work on Things Created. I. This selection is made, by way of compendium or synopsis, from the work of the holy martyr and bishop Methodius, concerning things created. The passage, “

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In what way all other beings exist through this Nature and derive existence from it. THERE now remains the discussion of that whole class of beings that exist through another, as to how they exist th

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How it is to be understood that this Nature created all things from nothing. BUT we are confronted with a doubt regarding this term nothing. For, from whatever source anything is created, that source

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God is whatever it is better to be than not to be; and he, as the only self-existent being, creates all things from nothing. WHAT art thou, then, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can be conceived?

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Chapter VII.—Out of Nothing God Made Heaven and Earth. 7. And whence and in what manner was this, unless from Thee, from whom are all things, in so far as they are? But by how much the farther from T

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Chapter XXVIII.—The Words, “In the Beginning,” And, “The Heaven and the Earth,” Are Differently Understood. 38. But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest, but shady fruit-bowers, see the f

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Chapter II.—All Creatures Subsist from the Plenitude of Divine Goodness. 2. For of the plenitude of Thy goodness Thy creature subsists, that a good, which could profit Thee nothing, nor though of The

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