(As it is written,
I have made you a father of many nations,
) before him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead, and calls those things which are not as though they were.
All Commentaries on Romans 4:17 Go To Romans 4
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Everything which God did not beget of himself but made through his Word he made not out of things which already existed but out of what did not exist at all, i.e., out of nothing.