The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not a claim about how the universe came into being, but why. It is the Christian response to the question that Martin Heidegger held was the beginning of all metaphysics: why is there being rather than nothing? If the question seeks a reason within being itself, it is doomed to remain unanswered. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo insists on the fundamental poverty of the universe: the universe has no intrinsic ground for existence. When all else has been said, when the heavenly spheres fall silent, Augustine knew, the great truth that must be proclaimed is that we—all of us individually and together—did not make ourselves. And so Francis saw that it was neither an act of human self-denigration nor an effusion of poetic personification to address the sun and the moon, the fire and the earth, and all animate and inanimate creatures as his brothers and sisters; it was the simple truth.

¶ 5:08 AM