Lexicon

G2936 - ktizo

Strong's: G2936 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: ktee'-zo Part of speech: verb (active / passive) NT occurrences: ~15 Hebrew equivalents (LXX): H1254 - bara (בָּרָא, "to create"); H6213 - asah (עָשָׂה, "to make"); H7069 - qanah (קָנָה, "to acquire / produce", Genesis 14:19, 22)

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

To create, bring into being, found, divine action of producing what did not previously exist (Romans 1:25; 1 Corinthians 11:9; Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16; 1 Timothy 4:3; Revelation 4:11; 10:6).
To form, fashion, shape, sub-sense focusing on the structuring rather than the bringing-into-being (Ephesians 2:10, ktisthentes en Christō Iēsou; Ephesians 4:24, the new self ton kata Theon ktisthenta).
To found, establish (a city), the classical Greek sense, used for the founding of Athens, Rome, etc. (background sense; the NT does not use this register for cities).

Theological force

In the LXX ktizō becomes the predominant rendering of the Hebrew creation verbs (especially H1254 - bara). This LXX-equivalence carries into the NT, where ktizō names the divine creative act with the same theological weight that bara carries in Genesis: the subject is always God or Christ; the verb is reserved for divine creative action; humans never ktizō in the NT.

1. Christ as agent of creation. Colossians 1.16 uses ktizō twice with Christ as agent: en autōi ektisthē ta panta ("in Him ta panta were created", aorist passive) … ta panta di' autou kai eis auton ektistai ("ta panta have been created through Him and for Him", perfect passive). The double aorist-perfect construction is theologically loaded: the aorist names the punctiliar creative act in the past; the perfect names the standing state of the created order as Christ-mediated. Things were created by Him (event); things stand-created through Him (ongoing relation).

2. New creation in Christ. Paul redeploys ktizō for the soteriological-eschatological register:

Ephesians 2:10, "we are His workmanship, ktisthentes en Christō Iēsou for good works", believers are "created in Christ Jesus"
Ephesians 2:15, Christ creates (ktisē) "in Himself one new man from the two" (Jew + Gentile)
Ephesians 4:24, the new self "ton kata Theon ktisthenta in righteousness and holiness of the truth"
Colossians 3:10, "the new self renewed to a true knowledge according to the eikōn of the One who ktisantos him"

The kainē ktisis of 2 Corinthians 5.17 uses the noun G2937 - ktisis; the verb ktizō names the corresponding act. New creation is not a metaphor stretched from biology but a direct re-deployment of the Genesis-1 verb: God who said "let there be" at creation now "creates anew" in Christ.

3. Anti-ascetic / anti-dualist polemic. 1 Timothy 4:3-4 weaponizes ktizō against early proto-gnostic asceticism: the false teachers forbid marriage and certain foods, "which God created (ektisen) to be received with thanksgiving." The Pauline argument: what God ktizō-ed He pronounced good; the gnostic devaluation of created reality is anti-creational at root. Compare Romans 1:25, the idolaters "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature (tēi ktisei) rather than the Creator (ton ktisanta)", the substantival participle of ktizō names God as the One who creates.

Notable verses

Cosmic creative act

Colossians 1.16, en autōi ektisthē ta panta … ta panta di' autou kai eis auton ektistai, Christ as agent
Ephesians 3:9, en tōi Theōi tōi ta panta ktisanti, God's eternal purpose hidden in the One who ktizō-ed all
Romans 1:25, ton ktisanta (the One who creates) over against tēi ktisei (the creature), the worship-disorder of idolatry
Revelation 4:11, sy ektisas ta panta, kai dia to thelēma sou ēsan kai ektisthēsan, "You created all things, and because of Your will they existed and were created"
Revelation 10:6, God who lives forever and ever hos ektisen ton ouranon and the things in it
1 Timothy 4:3, "foods which God ektisen to be received with thanksgiving"
Mark 13:19 (using cognate noun), ap' archēs ktiseōs hēn ektisen ho Theos

New creation in Christ

Ephesians 2:10, ktisthentes en Christō Iēsou
Ephesians 2:15, Christ ktisē one new man from the two
Ephesians 4:24, the new self ton kata Theon ktisthenta
Colossians 3:10, the new self renewed kat' eikona tou ktisantos auton

Wisdom-tradition Christology

Colossians 1:15 (using cognate noun ktisis), prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs, Christ as the firstborn over (not "of") the creation; the ektisthē ta panta of v. 16 is Paul's own gloss precluding the Arian reading

Patristic / scholarly note

The patristic Creator-creature distinction (Athanasius, Contra Arianos; the Cappadocians; Augustine) takes ktizō and its cognates as the load-bearing lexeme. The Arian formula ēn pote hote ouk ēn ("there was [a time] when He was not") implicitly conceded that the Son was ktistos, a created thing; orthodox christology denied this on the basis of Colossians 1:16 (the Son is the agent of ektisthē, not its product) and John 1:3 (panta di' autou egeneto, kai chōris autou egeneto oude hen ho gegonen, "all things came-to-be through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came-to-be that has come-to-be", note the verb is G1096 - ginomai, not ktizō, but the logic is identical: the agent of all coming-to-be cannot Himself be a coming-to-be).

The Septuagint's choice of ktizō for bara (rather than poieō or plassō) was significant: ktizō in classical Greek had the connotation of founding or establishing (a city, a colony, a polity), and the LXX translators leveraged this to render the Hebrew creation-verb with a sense of authoritative-establishing rather than mere fabrication. The verb thus carries a covenantal-political coloring that pure-fabrication verbs lack, God ktizō the heavens and the earth as a sovereign establishing His domain.

In contemporary scholarship, Sailhamer, Wenham, and N. T. Wright have all noted the doctrinal weight of the ktizō / ktisis word-group in establishing Paul's high christology, the use of these terms with Christ as agent is a category-marker that places Him on the Creator side of the Creator-creature line.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Top-cited references using ktizō: Colossians 1.16, Ephesians 2.10 (when present), Revelation 4.11 (when present).