4 Genesis 1:13
seed according to t heir k inds and trees
bearing fruit with seed in it according
to their k inds. And God saw that it was
good. 13 And there was evening, and t here
was morning — the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the
vault of the sky to separate the day from
the night, and let them serve as signs to
mark s acred times, and days and years,
15 a nd let them be l ights in the v
ault of
the sky to give l ight on the e
arth.” And
it was so. 16 God made two g
reat l ights —
the greater l ight to govern the day and
the lesser light to govern the night. He
also made the stars. 17 God set them in
the vault of the sky to give light on the
earth, 18 to govern the day and the night,
and to separate light from darkness. And
God saw that it was good. 19 A nd t here
was evening, and there was morning —
the fourth day.
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with
living creatures, and let b
irds fly above
the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So
God created the g
reat creat ures of the
sea and every living t hing with w
hich
the water t eems and that moves about
in it, according to t heir k
inds, and every
w inged bird according to its kind. And
God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed
them and said, “Be fruitful and increase
in number and fill the water in the seas,
and let the birds increase on the e
arth.”
23 A nd t here was even ing, and t here was
morning — the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the land produce liv
ing creatures according to their k inds:
the livestock, the creatures that move
along the ground, and the wild animals,
each according to its kind.” And it was so.
25 God made the wild animals according
CREATION OF EVERYTHING
OUT OF NOTHING
(CONTINUED)
Genesis 1:1
STORYLINE
The creation account in Genesis 1 makes no mention of prior material. God simply spoke
everything into existence. This truth is echoed throughout the Bible, including the testimony
of such New Testament passages as Colossians 1:16 (“For in him all things were created:
things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers
or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him”), Acts 17:24 (which
speaks of “the God who made the world and everything in it”), and Hebrews 11:3 (“By faith
we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was
not made out of what was visible”).
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1984), 83–90; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 35–37; Gerhard May, Creatio ex Nihilo: The Doctrine
of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 2004); Paul Copan, “Is Creatio Ex Nihilo a Post-Biblical Invention? An Examination of
Gerhard May’s Proposal,” Trinity Journal 17 (Spring 1996): 77–93; Paul Copan and William
Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004).
1. 4th century AD
2. Plato presented God as the wise craftsman who fashioned the world from preexistent matter just as a potter
models a lump of unformed clay.
3. In this poem, he declared, “Nothing from nothing, that is Nature’s law. Because there must be seed from which
they spring.” See Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. Robert Andrew Allison (A. L. Humphreys, 1919), 10.
4. An interesting side note: It was Galen, the second-century Greek physician and opponent of Christianity, who
led out in arguing that Genesis taught creatio ex nihilo. See Galen’s work On the Usefulness of the Parts of the
Body (written approximately 170 AD). He recognized that Moses’ biblical account did not mention pre-existent
matter and thus implied creatio ex nihilo. The physician then rejected Genesis and argued that Plato’s view was
correct.