Every passage describes how the world came to be, and most begin from a confusion of matter later sorted into earth, sea and sky. They divide over who does the sorting. Hesiod has gods born from Chaos and Earth; Lucretius allows no maker, only atoms meeting by chance. Timaeus, Ovid and Boethius give a maker who orders what was already there. The Psalm, St John, Josephus, Augustine and Dante speak of one God who makes everything, and Augustine insists there was nothing to make it from.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
The psalmist praises God, who stretches out the heaven like a pavilion and founds the earth.
And art clothed with light as with a garment. Who stretchest out the heaven like a pavilion: Psalm 103 →Chaos comes first, then Earth, Tartarus and Eros; Earth bears Heaven, the hills and the sea.
Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; … Poem 2 →Timaeus says the creator, being good and free from jealousy, brought order out of disorderly motion.
Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be. … Part 2 →Atoms, meeting without plan or counsel, sort themselves into earth, sea, sky and stars.
… But in what modes that conflux of first-stuff Did found the multitudinous universe Of earth, and sky, and the unfathomed deeps Of ocean, and courses of the sun and moon, I'll now in order tell. For of a truth Neither by counsel did the primal germs 'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind, Each in its proper place; nor did they make, Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move; … Book 5 →An unnamed god ends the strife of Chaos, separating earth, sea, air and sky.
At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things, were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass, and nothing more than an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing, heaped together in the same spot. No Sun as yet gave light to the world; nor did the Moon, by increasing, recover her horns anew. … Book 1 →The Word was in the beginning with God, and all things were made by him.
In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God. John 1 →Josephus retells the six days of creation from Moses, beginning with light and darkness.
… In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. But when the earth did not come into sight, but was covered with thick darkness, and a wind moved upon its surface, God commanded that there should be light: and when that was made, he considered the whole mass, and separated the light and the darkness; … Book 1 →Augustine asks how God made heaven and earth, and answers that he spoke and made them in his Word.
… But how didst Thou make the heaven and the earth? and what the engine of Thy so mighty fabric? For it was not as a human artificer, forming one body from another, according to the discretion of his mind, which can in some way invest with such a form, as it seeth in itself by its inward eye. And whence should he be able to do this, unless Thou hadst made that mind? … Book 11 →Philosophy’s hymn to the maker who shaped the world from shapeless matter after a pattern of the good.
Maker of earth and sky, from age to age Who rul'st the world by reason; at whose word Time issues from Eternity's abyss: To all that moves the source of movement, fixed Thyself and moveless. Thee no cause impelled Extrinsic this proportioned frame to shape From shapeless matter; but, deep-set within Thy inmost being, the form of perfect good, From envy free; and Thou didst mould the whole To that supernal pattern. … Book 3 →Beatrice tells how God, in his eternity outside time, brought matter and form into being together.
… Not to acquire some good unto himself, Which is impossible, but that his splendour In its resplendency may say, ‘Subsisto,’ In his eternity outside of time, Outside all other limits, as it pleased him, Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded. Nor as if torpid did he lie before; For neither after nor before proceeded The going forth of God upon these waters. … Paradiso 29 →