It is axiomatic in Patristic theology, both Greek and Latin, that God creates the entire realm of being out of nothing, thus effecting the transition from non-being to being. The first biblical mention of creation from nothing (Latin, creatio ex nihilo) is found in the apocryphal book of Second Maccabees. There it is declared that God created the heavens and the earth, as well as human beings, from what did not exist (2 Macc 7:28; ek ouk onton in the Greek text of the Septuagint).40 This terminology is significant, for ou or ouk is more emphatic than the customary mē used for negation. Accordingly, mē expresses that one thinks a thing is not, while ou that it is not. This reasoning implies that nothing can exist ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God, for time and space are presupposed by the act of creation. Therefore, ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God there is only the nothingness out of which He creates.41 The only occurrence of this doctrine in the New Testament is a passing reference by St Paul, namely that God ‘calls those things which do not exist as though they did’ (kalountos ta mē onta hōs onta) (Rom 4:17). In this way, a new entity is produced which is wholly other, removed from God not by place but by nature (Greek, ou topō, alla physei), in the words of John of Damascus. The created order is therefore not co-eternal with God, but moves from non-being to being.42
The essential nothingness of all beings created by God has been powerfully described by Meister Eckhart. All creatures are a mere nothing, for they are without being; they are not even small, but absolutely nothing. He adds, “Creatures have no real being, for their being consists in the presence of God. If God turned away for an instant, they would all perish.” The German mystic remarks that even if someone had the whole world as well as God, he would have no more than God by himself. “Having all creatures without God is no more than having one fly without God; just the same, no more nor less.”43
For another German mystical theologian, Jakob Böhme, the nothingness out of which God creates is the Ungrund, the bottomless abyss which is neither light nor darkness and neither good nor evil. Commenting on this view, the Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev sketches the deployment of the Ungrund as follows: being-less freedom ignites like a fire in the darkness, and light comes to be (which reminds one of the divine command at the commencement of the creative process in Genesis 1: ‘Let there be light!’). Nothing becomes something, and out of bottomless freedom nature is born. The Ungrund is the Divinity of apophatic theology and simultaneously the no-thing that precedes God. No-thing is more fundamental than some-thing, darkness than light, and freedom than nature.44
The transition from non-being into being through the divine creative activity has been poetically depicted by more recent authors. Referring to the creation of the heavenly beings, which in the traditional Christian understanding preceded the creation of the physical universe, Alan Watts writes: “From beginningless time they were not. And then, by the sudden command of the Word, they appeared—circle upon circle, sphere upon sphere of lesser lights about the Light—points of substantialized nothingness, reflecting in a million ways the central radiance of the Trinity as if they had been great clouds of crystal fragments swirling about the sun.” And in the words of Deirdre Carabine: “The paradox of creation is that the original darkness of God, which is no-thing, becomes light, becomes some-thing. God’s fullness above being is the ‘nothing’ that is the negation of something, but through its becoming, it becomes the negation of the negation: the divine nature becomes ‘other’ than itself: God becomes not-God through the process of ex-stasis, literally, God’s going out from God.”45 Thus, darkness becomes light, nothing becomes something, and non-being becomes being.
In the traditional Christian understanding, it is the creative activity of the Logos, or the divine Word, which brings the universe into being, including all its life-forms.46 The following statement by Philaret of Moscow, a leading Orthodox theologian of the nineteenth century, has to be one of the most evocative depictions of the created order: “All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of the divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness.”47 In other words, all created beings are suspended, so to speak, between the Beyond-being above them and the non-being below them. In their essences, the many (i.e., the world of phenomena) are indeed nothing—their only reality is derived from the One which is the uncreated Ground of all Being.
Being and Nature
One of the prominent metaphysical thinkers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger, opens his Introduction to Metaphysics with the following question: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” This is presented by the German philosopher as the fundamental question of metaphysics, for it is the broadest, the deepest, and the most originary (i.e., causing existence) question. It is the broadest in scope, being limited only by what never is, i.e., non-being; it is the deepest question, aimed at establishing the ground from where beings come and to where beings go; and it is the most originary question, addressing not a particular being but beings as a whole.48 The striving to answer this question underlies the enduring metaphysical quest.
The Greek noun physis, which means the nature or inborn quality of a person or thing, is related to the verb phuō, which means to bring forth, produce, or make to grow. Evidently, the early Hellenic thinkers conceived of ‘nature’ as a creative power rather than a material environment.49 Heidegger suggests that the Hellenic thinkers did not first experience physis in the natural processes, but in poetry and thought physis disclosed itself to them. Thus, ‘nature’ meant the totality of heaven and earth, animals and plants, humans, and even the gods. This wider meaning of physis comprises “what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.” Therefore, although physis can be experienced in the processes of nature, such as birth and growth, it is not synonymous with these. Instead, physis indicates Being-itself, through which beings appear.50
Heidegger contends further that by translating physis into Latin as natura, which means ‘birth,’ the realm of nature became reduced to the world of biological phenomena. This Latin term is therefore said to represent the beginning of the alienation of Western thought on nature from its original essence in Hellenic philosophy.51 However, Plotinus recognized an etymological connection between the noun physis and the verb ephy; in other words, between ‘nature’ and ‘was born’ (Enneads VI, 8, 8).52 In the light thereof, we could say that natura is not limited to physis, but that it is embraced by the latter (which also reaches beyond the biological realm).
The traditional