You ask a person if its raining and they spend hours and days and months telling you everything but the actaul weather, well, something is up.
It is useful to keep talking, only if you’re able to be taught. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time and wearying me.
This is my last post on this thread:
First, I don’t set the standard, God does. His Holy Bible is clear on ex nihilo creation, there is pre-Genesis matter being worked on. That doesn’t destroy the majesty, power and wonder of His creation. It just means it wasn’t, as recored in the Bible, ex nihilo.
Reading it again will help:
Here’s Genesis 1: http://bible.cc/genesis/1-1.htm and 2: http://bible.cc/genesis/1-2.htm
Young’s Literal Translation makes it clearest:
In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,
That’s verse 1 and 2 from Young’s Literal. It is obvious now, no?
The Biblical text states clearly that the earth in its void/formless/empty state was there to be worked on already. It’s existance doesn’t undermine the power, authority or majesty of God.
His first act is contained in Gen. 1:3. He tames chaos/disorder by immediately declaring light. There are a lot of great scientific attributes of light that make this beginning so amazing. There are also wonderful religious metaphors for light, not the least of which is joy.
So enjoy yourself, God and His Holy Word.
Let’s see, first you self-righteously reject the words of men (Church Fathers) and then you hypocritically apply your favored interpretation, pre-existent matter, an ancient concept secretly revealed by disembodied, malign intelligences to MEN, not God.
It is not that Our Lord did not create ex nihilo but rather that proud, willful men who prefer pagan concepts, i.e., of a limited deity and pre-existent matter, reject Truth in preference of the Lie.