Creation Out of Nothing

So their speculations are empty. But the godly teaching and the faith that is in Christ brand their foolish talk as godlessness. For this faith knows that the universe did not come about of itself, because forethought is not absent from it; nor out of existing matter, because God is not weak. It knows that out of nothing, when the universe had no prior existence at all, God made it exist through his Word. So he says, first through Moses: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And second, in that most helpful book, The Shepherd: “First of all, believe that God is one, who created and framed all things and made them to exist out of nothing.” Paul too refers to this when he says, “By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things that appear.” [a]

For God is good, or rather, he is in his very being the source of goodness, and one who is good could not be stingy with anything. So, begrudging existence to nothing, he has made all things out of nothing through his own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Among these, above all things on earth, he took special pity on the human race. He saw that, by the very condition of its origin, it was unable to remain as it was. So he gave them a further gift. He did not simply create human beings, as he did all the creatures on earth that are without reason, but made them after his own image, giving them a share even in the power of his own Word. In this way, having a kind of reflection of the Word and being made rational, they might be able to remain forever in blessedness, living the true life that belongs to the saints in paradise.

But knowing, once more, that the human will could lean either way, he secured in advance the grace he had given them, by a law and by the place where he put them. He brought them into his own garden and gave them a law. If they kept the grace and remained good, they would go on living the life of paradise, without sorrow or pain or care, and have besides the promise of incorruption in heaven. But if they transgressed and turned back and became evil, they would know that they were bringing on themselves the corruption in death that was theirs by nature. They would no longer live in paradise, but, cast out of it, would from then on die and remain in death and in corruption. Holy Scripture also warns of this, saying in the person of God: “Of every tree that is in the garden, eating you shall eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. On the day that you eat of it, dying you shall die.” And what else could “dying you shall die” mean, but not merely dying, but also remaining forever in the corruption of death?