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Question: How was the doctrine of creation altered to "creatio ex nihilo"?
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Question: How was the doctrine of creation altered to "creatio ex nihilo"?
Some Greek philosophical ideas influenced the change to "creatio ex nihilo"
Non-LDS author Edwin Hatch noted the influence of some Greek philosophical ideas in the change to creatio ex nihilo:
With Basilides [a second century Gnostic philosopher], the conception of matter was raised to a higher plane. The distinction of subject and object was preserved, so that the action of the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not of evolution; but it was "out of that which was not" that He made things to be . . . . The basis of the theory was Platonic, though some of the terms were borrowed from both Aristotle and the Stoics. It became itself the basis for the theory which ultimately prevailed in the Church. The transition appears in Tatian [ca. A.D. 170][1]
Notes
- ↑ Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 195–196.