By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
What does the religious doctrine of creatio ex nihilo a Deo necessarily imply metaphysically?
One thing that this doctrine necessarily implies metaphysically is that, as Hartshorne puts it, "Contingency with us is negative as well as positive. It includes the null state of nonexistence as a possible case; with deity the null state is excluded as logically impossible. The contingency of the particular positive states, however, remains intact" ("Religious Aspects of Necessity and Contingency": 152).
The other thing the doctrine necessarily implies metaphysically, of course, is that anything other than God and anything that God, in turn, necessarily implies once was in the null state of nonexistence whose possibility belongs to its contingency, in radical contrast to God's-hence "ex nihilo" -- and would not be, or have been, really possible but for God's creative action -- hence "a Deo."
25 April 2005
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