God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo

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David Bentley Hart

Abstract

The Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not merely a cosmological or metaphysical claim, but also an eschatological claim about the world’s relation to God, and hence a moral claim about the nature of God in himself.  My topic is ... the principle that the doctrine of creation constitutes an assertion regarding the eternal identity of God. It is chiefly an affirmation of God’s absolute dispositive liberty in all his acts: the absence of any external restraint upon or necessity behind every decision of his will.

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