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Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. [1] It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist.
Chaos (Ancient Greek: χάος, romanized: Kháos) is the mythological void state preceding the creation of the universe (the cosmos) in ancient near eastern cosmology and early Greek cosmology. It can also refer to an early state of the cosmos constituted of nothing but undifferentiated and indistinguishable matter .
A creation myth is usually regarded by those who subscribe to it as conveying profound truths, though not necessarily in a historical or literal sense. They are commonly, though not always, considered cosmogonical myths , that is, they describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness.
The literal translation of the phrase ex nihilo is "from nothing" but in many creation myths the line is blurred whether the creative act would be better classified as a creation ex nihilo or creation from chaos. In ex nihilo creation myths, the potential and the substance of creation springs from within the creator. Such a creator may or may ...
Medieval Kabbalah depicts a linear descending hierarchy of Ohr "Light", the ten sefirot or divine attributes emerging from concealment in the Ein Sof "Divine Infinity" to enact Creation, with the Four Worlds unfolding sequentially until physical creation. Lurianic Kabbalah, in contrast, describes dynamic processes of exile and redemption in the ...
Hesiod's Theogony, (c. 700 BCE) which could be considered the "standard" creation myth of Greek mythology, [1] tells the story of the genesis of the gods. After invoking the Muses (II.1–116), Hesiod says the world began with the spontaneous generation of four beings: first arose Chaos (Chasm); then came Gaia (the Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all"; "dim" Tartarus (the Underworld), in ...
Therefore, the creation act was the process of ordering this unordered matter. [10] The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius expressed this principle in his first book of De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) (1.149–214). According to his argument, if something could come from nothing, it would be commonplace to observe something coming ...
In this dynamic myth, the first act in Creation was Divine Self-Withdrawal, the opposite of Creative revelation. Tzimtzum is a paradox as Creation depends on God also being present in the vacuum and resulting existence: Tzimtzum, the self-withdrawal of God's Infinite Light to create the Ḥālāl "Vacuum" [19]