Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
15th July 2018

God Made All Things Out Of Nothing!
by Rev. Fr. Joseph Wilhelm D.D., Ph.D.

ALL things outside God have God for their origin and end. Our conception of God as the only Being existing necessarily, implies that all other beings must, in some way or other, owe their existence to Him. It also implies that these other beings owe their whole substance, with all its accidents and modifications, to God. Again, the Divine Substance being simple and indivisible, things outside God cannot be produced from or made out of it: they can only be called into existence out of their nothingness, by the power of God. "God exists of Himself" is the fundamental dogma concerning God; the fundamental dogma concerning all things else is that "they are produced out of nothing by God". Thus the Vatican Council, following the Fourth Lateran Council, says, "This one God, of His own goodness and almighty power, ... at the very beginning of time made out of nothing both kinds of creatures, spiritual and corporal" (Sess. 3, Chap. 1). And again, "If any one does not confess that the world and all things contained therein, both spiritual and material, have been, as to their whole substance, produced out of nothing by God: let him be anathema" (Sess. 3, Can. 5).

This definition is merely an explanation of the first words of the Apostles' Creed, by which, from the very earliest ages, the Church confessed the Almighty God to be the Maker, of Heaven and Earth, of all things visible and invisible. The Church has always attached to the verb creare the meaning of "production out of nothing". When Creation is described as a production from, or out of, nothing (ex nihilo), the "nothing" is not, of course, the matter out of which things are made. It means, "out of no matter," or, "not out of anything," or, starting from absolute non-being and replacing it by being.

This dogma is implicitly contained in the scriptural descriptions of the Divine Essence, of the Divine Power, and of God's absolute dominion over the world. If God in His external works were dependent on pre-existing matter, He could not be described as Being pure and simple, as Almighty pure and simple, as entirely self-sufficient; God would not be "the First and the Last", "the Beginning and the End", pure and simple that is, of all things if outside of Him anything existed independently of Him. Over and over again Sacred Scripture represents God as the Principle of all that is, never mentioning any exception. He is the Founder (e.g. Ps. 77:69), the Supporter, and Conservator of Heaven and Earth; He is the Author of the spiritual as well as of the material world (Col. 1:16). Pre-existing matter, which, indeed, in the case of simple beings like spirits, would be impossible, is nowhere spoken of. Many scriptural expressions, e.g. Heb. 11:3, can be understood of the fashioning of unformed matter already existing; yet this operation is described as entering into the very substance, so that it supposes a dominion over matter which can belong to none but its Creator.