Creation Ex Nihilo

In Joseph Smith — Rough Stone Rolling, creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) is the doctrine Joseph Smith’s late theology explicitly rejects. Bushman frames it under Metaphysics: “there is no such thing as immaterial matter,” and the universe is populated by “eternal uncreated intelligences.” In Joseph’s cosmology, God “was bringing order out of chaos rather than making something from nothing.” God’s supremacy comes not from having made everything but from being “the most intelligent of the free intelligences” — “more intelligent than they all” — whose “power grew out of his glory and intelligence rather than his having created everything out of nothing.”

The book draws the radical consequence: rejecting ex nihilo “made individual persons radically free. Their nature was not predetermined by their creator. They were what they were, not what God made them.” God is cast as teacher rather than maker — He “institute[s] laws to instruct the weaker intelligences” so they can “advance like himself.” The universe becomes “a school for these free, self-existing intelligences,” each with an independent, self-existing will, which is why Bushman pairs this idea with free will and the Great Chain of Being.

Context: Creatio ex nihilo — creation out of nothing — is the mainstream Christian doctrine that God created the cosmos with no pre-existing matter. Joseph Smith’s denial of it (matter and intelligences are eternal and uncreated) is one of the sharper theological breaks between Latter-day Saint thought and historic creedal Christianity.

Where this appears

• Joseph Smith — Rough Stone Rolling — Joseph’s rejection of creation from nothing in favor of organizing eternal matter and uncreated intelligences, and the radical-freedom consequence for human nature