External Evidence of Pre-Existence / Non Ex nihilo

Early Jewish

1. The first mention of "out of nothing" is in 2 Maccabees 7:28 which says, "look upon heaven and earth and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also" (Douay Version, or DV). The Greek is ex ouk onton. This phrase "out of nothing" is best understood as "out of non-being" or "out of invisible matter" because at that time they still believed in the preexistence of matter. Matter was consider eternal (Goldstein, 1983, 307-10).

2. The Wisdom of Solomon 11:17 states, "For thy almighty hand which made the world of matter without form" (DV). This verse teaches that God made the world out of formless (eternal) matter (Winston, 1971-2, 185-202; Goldstein, 1984, 127-35). In chapter 7:25 wisdom is seen as a "pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God" (DV).

3. Philo sees Genesis 1:1-3 through platonic eyes. This is the creation of the invisible world of ideas (On the Creation, 26-37, compare Plato’s Timaeus 29E). The book of Hebrews also seems to follow platonic ideas. The visible world comes from invisible matter (Heb. 11:3). Philo sees preexistent matter alongside of God at the beginning. This invisible matter was eternal (On the Creation, 12). God is the active principle, the formless matter is the passive principle (May, 10). Philo even uses the phrase ek mh ontwn, meaning "out of non-being," and not "out of nothing" (Allegorical Interpretation III. 10). Clearly, there is no ex nihilo creation in Philo.

Early Christian
1. The early church fathers seem to believe the platonic idea of eternal matter from which God fashioned the world. Justin Martyr is an example. In The First Apology of Justin he says, "He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man’s sake, created all things out of unformed matter" (Chapter 10). Justin and Plato in Timaeus both agree that everything came into being through God (Apology I:20, 4). Justin says that Plato took his ideas about God making the world out of unformed matter from Genesis. Justin states, "Plato borrowed his statement that God, having altered matter which was shapeless, made the world (Apology I:59). The world was made out of preexistent matter.

2. The successor of Justin Martyr was Athenagoras who was an Athenian philosopher who became a Christian. His Apology or Embassy was presented to Emperors Aurelius and Commodus about 177 AD. He explicitly believed in the pre-existence of matter (Chadwick 1966, 12, 47).

3. Clement of Alexandria three times "declares that the world is made 'out of nothing', but in each case the phrase he employs is ek me ontos, not ex ouk ontos; that is to say, it is made not from that which is absolutely non-existent, but from relative non-being or unformed matter" (Chadwick 1966, 46).

4. May in his book Creatio ex Nihilo argues very persuasively for the second century AD development of the doctrine of "creation out of nothing" (1994). It was not until the second century AD that the church fathers saw a theological problem with eternal matter. It was their conflict with the Gnostic and middle platonists that developed the idea of God creating "out of nothing."

5. Christian groups in the early Christian centuries taught the same doctrine (cf. Origen, De principiis 1:7; 2:8; 4:1), and that it is also to be found in Jewish belief of the same period, including Philo (De mutatione nominum 39; De opificio mundi 51; De cherubim 32); in some apocryphal writings (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20; 15:3); and among the Essenes (Josephus, Jewish War 2.8.11, as well as in the Jewish Talmud and Midrash).

6. Clement of Alexandria, commenting on the scriptural passage in Jeremiah 1:5 (which is also addressed more fully in the next section), generalized the doctrine as having universal application. He wrote:
"…the Logos is not to be despised as something new, for even in Jeremiah the Lord says, 'Say not "I am too young," for before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee, and before thou camest forth from thy mother I sanctified thee.' It is possible that in speaking these things the prophet is referring to us, as being known to God as faithful before the foundation of the world."6

7. Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254 AD). Writing in the third century, he stated a belief that differences evident among men on earth were attributable to differences in rank and glory attained by those men as premortal angels. According to Origen, God could not be viewed as "no respecter of persons" without such a premortal existence. In fact, if the differences of men on earth were not related in some way to our premortal condition, then God could be viewed as arbitrary, capricious, and unjust. Origen felt that just as there would a judgment after this life, that a sort of judgment had already taken place based on our premortal merit, with the result being the station to which we were appointed in this life. As an example of this concept supported in the Bible, Origen referred to the Old Testament story of Jacob being preferred over Esau. Why was this so? According to Origen, because "we believe that he was even then chosen by God because of merits acquired before this life."7

8. In the course of his writings the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about the beliefs of the Essenes. He reported they believed "that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever." He further related that the Essenes believed that the souls of men "are united to their bodies as in prisons" and that when the spirits are set free they are "released from a long bondage" and ascend heavenward with great rejoicing.8 Josephus' description of Essene doctrine has surely taken on greater validity in light of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Together these records provide primary evidence that contemporaries of Christ and the apostles believed in a premortal life—

9. St. Augustine entreated the notion, and there had developed four hypothesis concerning the pre-existent doctrine: In De Libero Arbitrio III.20 & 21 (circa 395 C.E.), when Augustine first attends to the question of the soul's origin in a manner that focuses upon particular possibilities, he does so as part of an anti-Manichean theodicy intended to show that it is the human soul rather than God that is responsible for the presence of moral evil in the world. Thus, as he later points out in Letter 143 (circa 412 C.E.), he is not concerned to adjudicate between these competing hypotheses, but merely to show that each is consistent with a non-Manichean, Neoplatonizing account of moral evil. Nonetheless, the four hypotheses he does advance are important evidence about how he understands the conceptual landscape [O'Daly 1987, pp. 15-20; Mendelson 1998, pp. 30-44], and the anti-Manichean polemic notwithstanding, it is instructive that he makes no attempt to choose between or even to offer a tentative ranking of them. { Saint Augustine - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Mendelson, Michael, "Saint Augustine", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2000 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)} To further articulate the nature of Saint Augustine and his understanding of the Pre-Existent of Man's soul, Mendelson continues:Interestingly enough, two of the four hypotheses require the soul's existence prior to embodiment. On the first, the soul is sent by God to administer the body (henceforth the "sent" hypothesis); on the second, the soul comes to inhabit the body by its own choice (henceforth the "voluntarist" hypothesis). In later presentations of these hypotheses (though not in De Libero Arbitrio III), Augustine treats the voluntarist hypothesis as involving both a sin on the soul's part and a cyclical process whereby the soul is subject to multiple incarnations [Letter 166.27]. The other two hypotheses, the "traducianist" and the "creationist," do not involve pre-existence, but there is nonetheless a significant contrast between them. On the traducianist account, all souls are propagated from Adam's soul in a manner analogous to that of the body, thus linking each soul to all previous ones by a kind of genealogical chain. On the creationist hypothesis, however, God creates a new soul for each body, thus creating a kind of vertical link between God and each individual soul. { Ibid.}And to which concept and logical possibility did Saint Augustine give himself over concerning one of these four hypotheses that were prevalent in his time:These hypotheses do not exhaust the logical possibilities, but they were the main contenders in Augustine's time. There remains controversy over the extent to which Augustine himself was inclined towards either of the hypotheses that required pre-existence [O'Connell 1968, O'Daly 1987, pp. 15-20; O'Donnell 1992 II.34-5], but there are passages in the Confessions [see Confessions I.6-8] and elsewhere [e.g. De Genesi Contra Manicheos 2.8 (circa 388-9 C.E.) and De Genesi ad Literam Imperfectus Liber 1.3 (circa 393 C.E.)] that have led some to regard it as a possibility he takes very seriously indeed, perhaps even preferring it, at least until the early part of the fifth century [O'Connell 1968; Teske 1991]. Moreover, given the Neoplatonic architectonic of the Confessions, this would not be all that surprising, for the notion that the preexistent soul falls into the body is a conspicuous feature of Plotinus' thought as well as of Neoplatonism in general [e.g. Plotnius, Enneads IV.8; Origen, On First Principles 1.4.4]. In this regard, it is also not surprising that Augustine should have come to identify the hypothesis of the soul's voluntary descent into the body as involving both sin and cyclicism. Not only are these features reminiscent of what he eventually came to learn of Origen's view, but given the Neoplatonic framework underlying his conception of the soul's origin, it is difficult to construe the soul's choice of embodiment in positive terms. {Ibid.}


Current Christians
1. Thomas Jay Oord - The vision of an essentially relational God that I propose corresponds well with the creation narrative of Genesis 1 and with various Christian voices of the early Church. Regarding Genesis, Jon D. Levenson leads a growing number of scholars who openly acknowledge that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not present therein. “We must face the implication of the affirmation that God, as the creator of the world, confronts forces that oppose divine creation,” he suggests. “To say that creation is directed against something should be taken as a denial of the venerable doctrine of creatio ex nihilo” (Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994; New York: Harper & Row, 1987], xix). Early Christian theologians and philosophers, including Philo, Justin, Athenagoras, Hermogenes, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen of Alexandria found no good reason to affirm the creation-out-of-nothing hypothesis. Philo, for instance, postulated “a pre-existent matter alongside God” (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Thought (trans. A. S. Worrall [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994], xiii). My proposed vision of an essentially relational deity finds much in common with these early church scholars and with the Christian canon. For other work arguing the inadequacy of creatio ex nihilo, see Sjoerd L. Bonting, Chaos Theology: A Revised Creation Theology (Ottawa: Novalis, 2002), James Edward Hutchingson, Pandemoneum Tremendum: Chaos and Mystery in the Life of God (Pilgrim, 2000), David Ray Griffin, “Creation out of Chaos and The Problem of Evil,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, 2nd ed., Stephen T. Davis, ed., (Atlanta: John Knox, 1999), Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (Routledge, 2003), and Michael E. Lodahl “Creation out of Nothing? Or is Next to Nothing Enough?” in Thy Nature and Name is Love, 217-238. Amos Yong offers an

2. David Ray Griffin - DRG: I think of the doctrine of creation out of nothing--in the sense of absolute nothingness--as the root of all theological evil. That's an exaggeration, of course, but this doctrine, which even Darwin continued to presuppose, does lie behind many of our problems. Although it has been widely accepted on the assumption that it is the biblical doctrine, the Bible, like Plato, presupposed creation out of chaos. The ex nihilo doctrine was affirmed only at the end of the second Christian century. (I have summarized Jon Levenson's and Gerhard May's arguments for this view in the new edition of Encountering Evil, edited by Stephen Davis.) Although Hermogenes warned his fellow theologians that this innovation would lead to blaming God for evil, theologians such as Irenaeus and Tertullian went boldly--and foolishly--forward, saddling God with a kind of power that would not have required billions of years to create a universe and that could have produced all the goods of our universe without the risk of all the evils. Process theism returns to the view of Plato and the Bible--that the creation of our world is not the beginning of finite existence as such (Genesis 1 does not describe a "singularity," in which time itself began), and that, as Plato put it, God creates as much good "as possible." Given process philosophy's assertion that the creatures have their own degree of power--we share Berdyaev's view that our world was created out of relative nothingness, hence out of "meontic freedom"--we can understand why a world such as ours had to be created through a long, step-by-step process (with saltations, to be sure, but no supersaltations). We can also understand why, in spite of the perfect goodness of the creator, so much evil has been possible--especially after the emergence of human beings, whose extraordinarily high capacity for good necessarily entails an equally high capacity for evil.