All that is not God

For the Christians, as for the Jews, the story did not begin with all that is but with God’s creation of all that is not God. The world had a beginning. It had not always been here but was instead created by the one and only God and was distinct from him. The story that unfolds in Scripture is thus the story of God’s dealings with all that is not God.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 216