For omnipotence, rightly understood, does not imply that God can do anything, but that God can do anything that any possible agent could possibly do. It would be unavailing to say that God, being omnipotent, can do anything, including making something come out of nothing. But if (ENN) is true, how can (CEN) be true? How can God create out of nothing if nothing can come from nothing? It is not a truth of logic - since its negation is not self-contradictory - but it does appear to be a truth of metaphysics, indeed, a necessary truth of metaphysics. The latter principle seems intuitively obvious. Less clear is how creation ex nihilo (CEN), comports, if it does comport, with the following principle:ĮNN: Ex nihilo nihit fit. This phrase of course carries a privative, not a positive, sense: it means not out of something as opposed to out of something called ‘nothing.’ This much is crystal clear. Classical theists hold that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing.
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