Creation
III. DEFINITION
Creation may be defined as the bring- ing of the universe into existence by God. It is a calling into being that which did not exist before. In the language of Hebrews 11:3, just following the state- ment about the universe being created by the word of God, are the words “so that what is seen is not made out of what is visible” (NIV), that is to say, out of any preexistent reality.
Creation, accordingly, is absolute or- igination. What was created by God did not come from preexisting material. It is creatio ex nihilo, “creation out of noth- ing. ” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”-so reads Gen- esis 1: 1. There is no statement about any material or source that God drew upon. What is pointed to here is without analogy6 in human experience, because
“This is “utterly beyond all undlerstanding . . .
shaping of some given material”
what we know as creation is always the (E. Hrunner. The Christian Doctrine of Creation and 98
human creative activity always involves some shaping of material that is already in existence. With God, however, it is totally different: H e a l o n e t r u l y creates -from nothing. The Hebrew word for create, btirti’, as in Genesis I : 1, is a word that is never used in the Scriptures with anyone other than God as the subject, and it refers essentially to creation out of nothing’-that is, absolute origination.
Incidentally, the biblical affirmation of creatio ex nihilo was totally foreign to ancient philosophical and religious understanding. For example, in the phi- losophy of Plato the world was viewed as having been formed out of some kind of primal matter. The “demiurge,” Pla- to’s “Maker,” shaped the world out of what was already there, but he did not create it.* It would have been nonsense to suppose that the world came from nothing, for “out of nothing nothing comes.“9 In Babylonian mythology, which contains the highest creation picture of the ancient world, the god Marduk struggled against Tiamat, the
CREATION monster of chaos, and slew her, and the world was composed out of fragments of her carcass. Here again it is not creation out of nothing, but out of something. It is a making of the world but not a creation of it. Any such view is utterly contrary to the biblical pic- ture, namely, that the whole movement of creation is not from the preexistent to the existent, but from nothingness into existence.10
In this same context it may be pointed out that creatio ex nihilo indi- rectly denies both metaphysical dualism and pantheism. Dualism in various ways views the world, or some other reality (as in Plato’s philosophy and Babylonian mythology), as eternally existing alongside God, or even strug- gling against Him. 11 From the biblical perspective this denies God both as Creator and as Lord. For if something always has been outside of and along- side God, He is obviously not the Creator; if it affords some eternal oppo- sition’ to Him, He is not the Lord of all. Pantheism in whatever form,lJ
Redemption, 11). This is a “creative activity which in principle is without analogy” (G. von Rad, Genesis, 47).
“‘B&a’ . . . is never connected with a statement of the material” (ibid.). This does not necessarily mean that no material is involved; for example, God who created man (see hereafter) did it by using dust (clay). However, God brings something totally new into the situation. “The primary emphasis of the word bara is on the newness of the created object”
(TWOT, 1: 127). Erickson writes that b&a’ “never appears with an accusative which denotes an object upon which the Creator works to form something new” (Christian Theology, 368).
8 See Plato’s Timaeus.
yEx nihilo nihilfir-the philosophical expression usually set over against creatio ex nihilo.
Some contemporary philosophy speaks of God as creating out of “non-being” (for example, Berdyaev and Tillich) where “non-being” is viewed as having a kind of semi-real status.
However, this is still contrary to the biblical picture of absolute origination. “Nothing” is not “something,” no matter how refined or defined.
lOThe basic movement of creation is “not from unformed matter to formed object, but from the non-existent to the existent” (L. Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth, 53). Gilkey also speaks of this as “absolute origination.”
11 Aristotle spoke of the eternal coexistence of the world and God. In the Zoroastrian religion the great god Mazda, the god of light, has as his eternal counterpart Ahriman, the god of darkness. Mazda eternally struggles against Ahriman to overcome him.
‘!Satan. in biblical and Christian faith, is not an eternal adversary. He is a creature, albeit fallen, and his doom is sure.
1 ‘This includes a modified form of pantheism called panentheism, which views God as 99
wherein God and the world are some- how identified, also is a denial of crea- tion. Pantheism is essentially a monism in which God and the world are eternal- ly one: they are inseparable from each other. All philosophies of emanation, wherein the world is viewed as eternally flowing out of God (and perhaps return- ing to Him), are likewise pantheistic and contrary to creation. The world no more is made out of God than out of preexisting matter. God is the Lord!
It is urgent to affirm that the universe is God’s creation. It has not always existed. In the beautiful words of the psalmist: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou ad God”
(Ps. 90:2). “In the beginning,” accord- ingly, is not a statement about God, as if in His beginning the world was cre- ated (for such a statement again leads back to mistaken philosophical and mythological views). “The beginning”
refers rather to the beginning of space and time-the whole spatiotemporal universe (or the space-time-matter con- tinuum)-which God infinitely tran- scends. God was there before and be- yond the beginning: God is the Creator of space and time, and anything there is outside Himself.
Creation is not only absolute origina- tion; it is also a completed work of God.
“In the beginning God created,” and the word “created” refers to something
that has been completed. This does not mean that everything was done at once, for Genesis 1 depicts creation as contin- uing over a period of time. Moreover, the final word is Genesis 2: 1-“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.“‘4 There were six “days” in which all of this was accomplished. Furthermore, the word
“created” (b&i’) is used not only in Genesis 1: 1 but also in 1:21 (referring to the fifth day) and in 1:27 (referring to the sixth day). However, with the final act of creation, it has now all been done. God accordingly does not con- tinue to create the universe or new things within it. It is not creatio contin- ua (“continuing creation”), though, of course, there are strikingly different aspects, formations, and activities in the vastness of the heavens and earth that seem new. However, God has finished His work of creation: all has been given-time, space, energy, life, man-that there ever will be in this present universe.15
This understanding of the universe, incidentally, is contrary to so-called steady-state views of the universe that hold that there is a continuous creation of new matter (hydrogen atoms) throughout space. This newly created matter condenses thereafter to form new heavenly bodies (stars, galaxies, etc.) within the old; thus there is a steady state or constant spatial density.
In this view, now increasingly outmod- partly identical with the world. Philosophies that depict God as at the same time both infinite and finite are panentheistic: God identical with the “all” (pan) but also “in” (en) the all.
IdSome commentators have viewed “the host” to signify angels. Thus, in addition to the heavens and earth, God made “the host of angels.” However true it is that the angels are God’s creatures and thus made by Him, Genesis 2: I seems rather to point to the total sphere of the physical universe, hence the heavens and the earth and everything in them (as outlined in Gen. I). In Deuteronomy 4: 19 Moses warns Israel: “And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them.” “’The host” in this place clearly refers to the totality of the universe visible to man, and not to angels (cf. also Deut. 17:3; Ps. 33:6). It seems that Genesis 2: I is pointing to the same thing.
“In scientific terminology this is the law of mass conservation, namely, that although matter may be changed in size, state, and form, the total mass remains the same. This means that no creation or destruction of matter or energy is happening anywhere in the universe.
ed, the universe is without beginning and end. It is continually creating itself afresh.
Also, the understanding of creation as completed is quite distinct from the philosophical-religious view that sees in creation only an expression of the rela- tionship between God and the world.
Schleiermacher,l6 for example, held that the doctrine of creation is an ex- pression of man’s absolute dependence on God. The doctrine in no way points to the actual beginning of the universe (which, in Schleiermacher’s view, may be a concern of science or philosophy, but has no relation to the sphere of religion), but to the fact of a relation- ship between God and man that is the heart of everything in the world. Such a view, again, is foreign to the biblical perspective of creation as an event that has happened in the past. Of course, relationship between God and man is at the heart of faith; however, that very relationship presupposes a prior act of creation.17 Creation is the absolute and completed origination of the universe by the act of God.
IV. SOURCE
We turn next to a consideration of the source of creation.
A. The Source of Creation Is God
“In the beginning God created.” Or to use the words of Genesis 2:4, the source is “the LORD God”: “in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” God is Elohim, the LORD God is Yahweh Elohim.
This says at least two things. First, the majestic, all-powerful God, namely Elohim, who is sovereign over all things, is the creator of the universe.
C R E A T I O N
He is called “God Most High [ E l Elyon], maker of heaven and earth” in Genesis 14:19,22. Second, the one who creates is also Yahweh, the LORD, the peculiarly personal, covenantal name for God (later to be revealed in its full meaning to Moses [Exod. 3:15]). Gene- sis 1 depicts Elohim, majestic and au- gust, but almost distant and impersonal, creator of the universe and man; Gene- sis 2 shows Yahweh God, in His per- sonal planting of a garden, breathing into man the breath of life, making a covenant with him, and forming man and woman for each other. Thus the creation of all things by Elohim (or El Elyon) and Yahweh Elohim is a mag- nificent picture of God, both as al- mighty and majestic and as personal and covenanting. It is this God who is the Creator of all things.
Since the source of creation is God, this rules out several mistaken views. It means, for one thing, that the universe is not a chance incident or accident; it did not just happen. Again, the world is not the work of some artificer less than God (as, e.g., Plato’s “demiurge”).
Further, the universe has not always been here (as in a “steady-state” view of the universe or an “oscillating” one in which the universe is viewed as forever expanding and contracting in a multibillion-year cycle). Once more, the universe is not self-existent, as if by some kind of spontaneous generation it came to be or keeps coming into being.
B. The Source of Creation Is the Triune God
The name of God as Elohim contains not only the idea of the majestic, all powerful deity, but also that the One who creates is a plurality within Him-
IhAn early nineteenth-century German theologian. See in his chief work, ?‘llr Christirrn Fuit!, .he section on “Creation.”
” -‘Creation speaks primarily of a basis which is beyond this relationship and makes it possible; of a unique, free creation of heaven and earth by the will and act of God” (Barth, Church Llogmutics, 3. I. 14).
IO1
self. ’ ‘Elohim” is sometimes called a
“plural of majesty,” but it may better be described as a peculiar plural that contains inner differentiation. Elohim could be called “the Godhead”;‘* thus it is the Godhead that speaks in Genesis 1:26--” Let us make man. . . . ” And although there is no explicit Trinitarian reference’9 in Genesis 1, there are intimations that point the way to the being of Elohim, the Godhead, as Tri- une. This is further intimated in Genesis 1 by the operation of three forces: God, His spoken word, and the Spirit. There is Elohim who creates (v. l), the Spirit of God that moves “over the face of the waters” (v. 2), and the word spoken:
“And God said . . . and there was”
(v. 3 and several times thereafter). The word spoken in Genesis may sound little like a personal reality; however, in the New Testament it is patent that it is the Word (capital “W”), the eternal Son, through whom God created all things (John 1:l; Heb. 1:2). Thus we may now look at the source of creation, reading Genesis 1 in the light of the New Testament, as the Triune God.
1. God the Father
God the Father is peculiarly the Crea- tor. In the Old Testament, though the name of “Father” for God is not fre- quent, there is one clear reference to God as a Father who created: “Is not he your father, who created?” you, who made you and established you‘?” (Deut.
32:6; cf. Mal. 2:10). A New Testament example is this statement: “For us there is one God, the Father, from
whom are all things . . . ” (I Cor. 8:6).
God the Father is He “from whom”
all things come. Accordingly, He is the fountainhead (the fans et origo) o f creation.* 1 It belongs to Him peculiarly to be the Creator; it is His external act.** So reads the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
Thus creation derives not from some impersonal source, but from one who is Father. The very title “Father” sug- gests one who cares, one who is inti- mately concerned about His creation and all His creatures. This is an impor- tant truth to know and affirm in light of the question often raised, “Is there Someone ‘up there’ who cares?” Did He, perhaps, in deistic fashion, make the universe, and leave it to go on its own? No, God the Creator is Father.
The universe is the creation of One who is far more concerned than any earthly father about His child or children.
2. God the Son
God the Son is the instrument o f creation. It was through the Son, the eternal Word of God, that the universe came to be. Using the language of Genesis, “And God said . . . and there was,” it is evident that God spoke the universe into being. Thus it was through the word of God that the universe and everything in it was made. This is also beautifully portrayed by the psalmist:
“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made. . . . For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth” (Ps. 33:6, 9). The word is the instrument or agent of creation.
This, of course, is all the more appar- lXAccording to the Old Testament scholar W. Eichrodt, ‘Pl6hTtn is “an abstract plural . . . [that] corresponds to our word ‘Godhead’ ” (Theology of thr Old Tc.rtrunent, I: 185).
“Refer back to the discussion of this in chapter 4, “The Holy Trinity,” pages 84-85.
"'NASH has “bought” instead of “created.” Whatever may be the best translation, the verse (as NASB also shows) continues with the theme of creation: “who has made you and established you.”
?I Even as He, prior to all creation, is the fountainhead in the Trinity: the Son eternally being begotten and the Spirit eternally proceeding from Ilim.
‘?See chapter 4, “The Holy Trinity,” pages 93-94.
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ent in the New Testament. In the mag- nificent prologue of John’s Gospel we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . all things were made through23 him” (1: 1, 3). Also, we may now continue with the passage previously quoted that began, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things,” by noting the words “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:6). One further Scripture that is quite relevant is this: “In him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).
The Son is the instrument-note:
“through him”-of all creation.
has redeemed us was the channel through whom all things came into being. Thus we can all the more rejoice that whatever is distorted and broken in the universe (and much has been spoiled through the work of Satan and the entail of sin and evil) is subject to His redemptive care. Hence, since the Son is both Redeemer and the channel of creation, it is God’s purpose and plan (hear this!) “through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20).
It is popular but misleading language to speak of the Son as One who made the world. For example, the Living Bible paraphrases John 1:3-“He [the Word] created everything there is- nothing exists that he didn’t make.”
But this is to give to the Son the role or activity that belongs to God the Father.
Surely, since the Son is also God, and God is the Creator, He is totally in- volved in creation. But His function is not that of being the fountainhead of creation. Rather, He is the medium or instrument through whom God the Father does His creative work.
Now, having made this important refinement, we can rightly rejoice in the fact that everything comes through the Son. This means that the same One who
One further reflection on the creation of all things through the Word may be relevant. Since “Word” by definition signifies rational utterance, creation through the Word also suggests that the universe God has made is a place of order and meaning. The universe, ac- cordingly , has “Logos-structure”; it is a place of pattern and coherence, of direction and purposefulness. With the word spoken, that which is without form and void (Gen. 1:2) takes on structure: light, firmament, dry land, etc. (1:3ff.). All moves from chaos to cosmos,24 from primeval formlessness to increasing form and complexity. Cre- ation through the Word points up the amazing orderliness and meaning- fulness that essentially holds together the universe in all of its components. It is possible that the New Testament refers to the same thing in saying of the Son: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col.
*3The Greek word is dia. The KJV and NASB translate diu as “by,” which is misleading.
“By” suggests that the Son is the Creator Himself. In the two passages above that follow- I Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians l:l6-where RSV (as quoted) reads “through,” KJV and
NASB again have “by” (NIV has “through” in 1 Cor. 8:6 and “by” in Col. l:l6). Since the Greek word is diu in each case, the better translation is “through.”
24“The theological thought of ch. I moves not so much between the poles of nothingness and creation as between the poles of chaos and cosmos” (von Rad, C;enesis, 49). Von Rad is by no means denying creutio ex nihilo, to which he refers in commenting on verse I ; but with creation out of nothingness as a given, the rest of the narration beginning with verse 2 moves from chaos, or formlessness, to cosmos, or order.
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CREATION