Non-academics frequently criticize academics for using fifty-cent words when ten-cent ones will do. In some cases that criticism is just; sometimes academics are just showing off. In other cases fifty-cent words carry a lot of freight and eliminate the need for distracting explanations.

The term ex nihilo is not only a fifty-cent word, it is also Latin, which compounds the offense. However, it is a term used by theologians to carry a good deal of meaning regarding the doctrine of creation all by itself.

Its literal meaning is “out of nothing” and it tries to give substance to the biblical statement that God spoke the physical universe into existence. It was not made out of preexisting stuff (nothing is not nothingness, as if it were something), nor, more importantly, did God make the universe out of himself. Rather, there was nothing; and then at God’s command there was something.

In using the term ex nihilo, one intent seems to be to magnify the power of God. A kid who makes a castle out of sand on the beach is not the equal of the kid who first creates sand and then makes a castle. So a God who does not require preexisting stuff to make a universe must be a powerful God indeed.

A second intent is to maintain a separation between God and the creation. There is a relationship between God and his creation; but unlike in pantheistic systems, God is not identified with the creation. God is eternal; the creation is temporal. God is self-sufficient; the creation is dependent. God is a necessary being; the creation is contingent. If God had created out of himself, none of these things would be necessarily true.

Perhaps it is also correct to say that this term implies that creation is a free decision of God. There was no necessity, either internal or external, acting upon God to create. He was complete in himself and could have been so through all eternity without a creation. But he chose not to be. In a way that makes us small indeed. But it isn’t the end of the story. Stay tuned.