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​Creation out of Nothing, Reimagined:

Process Theology and the Primordial Decision of God
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Abstract: Process philosophy offers a helpful way to interpret and appreciate the idea of creation out of nothing. In traditional theology, creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) has meant both that God created the universe without pre-existing materials and that God alone is self-creative. Process philosophy reinterprets this by affirming that all actual entities, not just God, are self-creative, even finite entities inherit influences from the past. The primordial nature of God, however, arises out of no actual world. God’s primordial and decision to order potentialities—a non-temporal, contingent act—makes possible a universe of finite, relational beings rather than a chaos of isolated events. This vision invites a religious understanding of God as gracious and vulnerable, whose very existence is a contingent act of creative generosity rather than sovereign necessity. God's way of creating out of nothing, which could have been otherwise, is pure grace.

In traditional theology, creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) has had two meanings. It has meant (1) that the universe was brought into existence by God without the use of pre-existing materials and (2) that God and God alone, is self-creative.

Process philosophy proposes, by contrast, that while each actual entity creates itself out of a pre-existent past actual world, each entity is also, to use Whitehead's phrase, self-creative in its response to the world. In this sense, process philosophy affirms part of what traditional theology meant by creation out of nothing: namely, the emphasis on self-creativity. However, it broadens this self-creativity to include not only God but all actual entities.

Two Meanings of Nothing

This opens the door for saying that the entire unfolding universe creates itself out of nothing, at least in the second sense.  Given that each entity creates itself from pre-existing materials in the past actual world, it does not create itself out of nothing if by "nothing" we mean an absolute absence of inherited conditions. The past offers inherited data, influences, and possibilities—it shapes the "raw materials" of experience. Yet, the self-creative response of the entity—the very act of deciding how to respond—is not itself generated from the past. It arises freshly. In this sense, each entity does create itself out of nothing, though the meaning of "nothing" here is different.

Clearly, then, the word "nothing" carries two distinct meanings in these contexts:

• Nothing as Absence of Pre-existing Materials: In the first context (creation without pre-existing materials), "nothing" refers to an absolute absence of conditions—an ontological void.
• Nothing as Spontaneous Self-Creativity: In the second context (self-creative response), "nothing" refers to the absence of pre-determined causation for the creative decision itself.

In this second sense, creation out of nothing is not a one-time cosmic event but a continual happening: an act of creation in the now/here, occurring everywhere throughout the universe—including in God. It is the spontaneous self-creativity of an actual entity—a novel response to the past, influenced but not determined by it, introducing something genuinely new that did not previously exist. Here, "nothing" means the non-being of predetermination.

The Act of Decision

At the heart of self-creativity is what Whitehead calls an act of decision: an act of cutting off certain possible ways of responding to the past actual world while actualizing others. In this way, the entity creates itself through a selective response—shaping a new actuality from among many possibilities.

Thus, self-creativity is spontaneously contingent: it happens this way, but it could have happened otherwise. And this contingency applies not only to finite actual entities but to God as well. Whitehead speaks of a primordial decision in God—a decision at the very heart of divine becoming, by which God evaluates and orders the pure potentialities of the universe to make possible the self-actualization of finite creatures. This side of God,  says Whitehead, is "neither great nor small because it arises out of no actual world."  It is "the decision of God's nature."

To reiterate, this primordial decision of God is non-temporal and not preceded by pre-existing influences. In this respect, it parallels the first meaning of creation out of nothing spoken of at the outset: it occurs without inherited conditions, without a past world shaping it.

God's primordial act is, like traditional creatio ex nihilo, an emergence from "nothing" in both senses of nothing; it lacks pre-existing materials and it is spontaneously self-creative, It is also, says Whitehead, incapable of rationalization.  Here is how Whitehead puts it:

The doctrine of the philosophy of organism is that, however far the sphere of efficient causation be pushed in the determination of components of a concrescence—its data, its emotions, its appreciations, its purposes, its phases of subjective aim—beyond the determination of these components there always remains the final reaction of the self-creative unity of the universe. This final reaction completes the self-creative act by putting the decisive stamp of creative emphasis upon the determinations of efficient cause. Each occasion exhibits its measure of creative emphasis in proportion to its measure of subjective intensity. The absolute standard of such intensity is that of the primordial nature of God, which is neither great nor small because it arises out of no actual world. It has within it no components which are standards of comparison. But in the temporal world for occasions of relatively slight experient intensity, their decisions of creative emphasis are individually negligible compared to the determined components which they receive and transmit. But the final accumulation of all such decisions—the decision of God's nature and the decisions of all occasions—constitutes that special element in the flux of forms in history, which is ‘given’ and incapable of rationalization beyond the fact that within it every component which is determinable is internally determined.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 47). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
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To say that God is contingent in this way is to suggest something radical: that God might not have made the primordial decision at all—and thus might not have become "God" as we understand divine reality in process thought. God could have not been loving, compassionate, or on the side of life. For some process theologians, for example, an unloving God would not be rightly named "God."  The idea of love, of grace, and for that matter existence, is essential to the definition of God. for such theologians, Anselm's ontological argument for God's existence works. "That than which no greater good can be conceived must exist, or it would not be that than which none greater can be conceived." However, in my view, Whitehead would disagree. God, for him, is not first and foremost an idea in the find, definitions for which can render God's existence provable, God is rather a living reality in the universe, beyond definitions, which we may well experience as love, and rightly so, but which could have been otherwise and, for that matter, could not exist at all. It is a happy, wondrous, and surprising fact of the universe, not an ontological necessity, that we and the entire universe find ourselves in the presence of a loving God. This happy fact is divine contingency.

This kind of contingency in God is an existential dimension of the divine life. It does not pertain to the "idea of God" as it might exist in our minds when we ask the question: Is it necessary to posit God's existence in order to explain the universe? Many process philosophers answer "yes" to this question, while others answer "no." But the necessity invoked in such discussions is a logical or conceptual necessity.

The contingency of God I am speaking of is of a different kind: it is existential. It concerns not a necessity of thought, but a necessity grounded in the very structure of actuality itself. It follows from what Whitehead calls the ontological principle—the principle that decision, understood as spontaneous and not predetermined, is the essence of actuality. God's existence, in this sense, is contingent because it involves a primordial act of decision, freely undertaken, without external compulsion, which could have been otherwise. 

God as the Primordial Accident of Creativity

Another way to speak of this existential contingency is to say that it is an "accident" of creativity.

In Whitehead's philosophy, creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. It is not normative; it does not have preferences; it does not make decisions; it is not on the side of good or evil; it is not an agent or a creator. Yet it is at the heart of the universe.
Creativity, as I understand it, involves two activities: (1) The spontaneous self-creativity (concrescence) of each actual entity as it emerges—however it creates itself and (2) The passage or flux of time, such that after an entity creates itself, subsequent entities likewise create themselves out of what has been created, resulting in a creative advance into novelty.

Whitehead speaks of God not as creativity itself, but as its primordial accident. He writes:

"In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity’; and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed ‘The Absolute.’ In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate."
— Whitehead, Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927–28), p. 7, Free Press, Kindle Edition.

In speaking of God as an accident of creativity, Whitehead is saying that God is that reality within the universe which makes a primordial decision: a decision to value and order the pure potentials so that there can be a universe filled with finite entities, each in relation to others, each actualizing potentials relevant to its situation.

Can we imagine a universe without such an accident? I believe that we can—but it would be a universe without patterned relationships or enduring forms. It would be a pure chaos of events, a non-social nexus of isolated occurrences, such as the empty expanses of non-organized space. There would be no "finite creatures" as we know them—no stars, no atoms, no living beings.

But this universe without finite creatures of not the universe we experience, nor the one of which we are ourselves instances. Instead, there seems to have been a primordial decision for there to be a universe filled with finite creatures and social order.That non-temporal, finite decision—the timeless act of God—is itself contingent and thereby gracious and grace-filled: the primordial accident of creativity.

It should be noted that all that has been said above can hold true whether the universe has a temporal beginning—prior to which there was but one instance of creativity, namely God—or whether it has no temporal beginning, such that there have been multiple cosmic epochs extending into a beginningless past. Either way, there would still be a primordial act of creativity—namely, God—by virtue of which finite creatures emerge.

It should also be noted that this way of thinking about God and creativity makes full space for creaturely self-creativity. While Whitehead speaks of each actual entity receiving, within itself, an initial phase of its subjective aim for satisfaction, coming from God, it is the entity itself—not God—that actualizes this aim through its own act of self-creativity. The entity inherits possibilities, but the decision is its own.

The Religious Significance of God's Contingency

The idea that God's existence, as understood in process philosophy, is contingent rather than necessary carries profound religious significance. It invites a vision of the divine not as a static, impassible Absolute, but as a living reality whose very being involves risk, decision, and generosity.

God’s primordial decision to value and order pure potentialities—thus enabling a universe of finite creatures and relational becoming—is not an act of sovereign imposition but an act of grace. It is a gift freely given, without external compulsion and without guaranteed outcomes. In this sense, God's existence is itself an act of love: a self-offering to the possibilities of relationship, complexity, beauty, and even tragedy.

The contingency of God highlights the vulnerability inherent in love. It suggests that the sacred heart of reality is not closed upon itself but open, adventurous, and self-giving. God's act is not rooted in necessity but in creative generosity. Religion, then, is not about submission to an all-powerful ruler but about participating in a cosmic adventure rooted in mutual becoming.

This perspective invites reverence not merely for a God "beyond" the world but for a God intimately involved in the world’s unfolding—at every moment offering possibilities for greater richness, greater harmony, and greater love. It deepens the meaning of trust and faith: to trust God is not to trust an unchanging omnipotence but to trust the ongoing creativity, responsiveness, and lure toward goodness that God embodies and offers.

Finally, it invites a humility before the sheer gratuity of existence itself. We live in a universe that did not have to be—and certainly did not have to be as it is. We live in a universe made possible by a primordial, gracious decision, one that continually calls us into deeper creativity, compassion, and co-creation with the divine life from which all things flow.