God’s Plan
2. The original act of divine creation is unique. It is unlike human
“creative” acts, which involve fashioning, using the materials at hand. In producing a work of art, the artist must work within the limitations of the medium employed, whether that be the malleability of the metal, the reflective characteristics of the oil paint, the nature of the language used, or the speed and resolution characteristics of the film. Moreover, even the concepts the artist expresses are dependent upon his previous experience. His work will be either an expression of an idea he has
7. Plato Timaeus; Aristotle Metaphysics.
God’s Originating Work: Creation 375
directly experienced or a combination of elements previously expe- rienced into some new whole; a genuinely novel idea, totally new and fresh, is very rare indeed. Even if a writer were to create a new language to embody the ideas he wants to express, the limitations of language in general would still govern what he would be able to do. God, however, is not bound by anything external to himself. His only limitations are those of his own nature and the choices he has made. God needs no materials.
Therefore, his purposes, unlike those of the human “creator,” will not be frustrated by any inherent qualities of material with which he must work.
3. The doctrine of creation also means that nothing made is intrinsi- cally evil. Everything has come from God, and the creation narrative says five times that he saw that it
was good (vv. 10, 12, 18,21,25).Then, when he completed his creation of man, we are told that God saw everything he had made, and it was very good (v.
31).There was nothing evil within God’s original creation.
In any type of dualism, there tends to be a moral distinction between the higher and the lower principles or elements.8 Since the higher realm is divine and the lower is not, the former is thought of as more real than the other. Eventually this metaphysical difference tends to be regarded as a moral difference as well-the higher is good and the lower is evil.
Such a distinction came to be made in the later history of Platonism.
Plato had taught that the Ideas or Forms, the intelligible or invisible concepts, are more real. The perceptible or empirical objects, on the other hand, are mere shadows cast by the Forms. In neo-Platonism, there came to be a moral distinction as well. The material or perceivable realm was thought of as evil, the spiritual or invisible realm as good.
Influenced by neo-Platonism and other varieties of dualism such as Manichaeism, some Christians began to regard the material world as inherently evil.
If, however, the whole of reality owes its existence to God, and if what God made was “good” throughout, we cannot think of matter as inher- ently or intrinsically eviL9 This raises a problem: Christianity, like every system of thought which is in any sense alert to the universe, must come to grips with the presence of evil in the world. Dualisms can resolve this difficulty quite easily. Since God is good, he cannot be the source of evil.
Therefore, whatev?r is not God, that is, the matter with which he had to work, must be the locus of evil. But this expedient cannot and will not be adopted by a thoroughgoing creationism, for it holds that nature has no
8. Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), p. 48.
9. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
376 What God Does
such independent status. Yet according to the biblical account, God, who created everything, cannot be blamed for evil and sin in the world.
The reason he cannot be blamed is not that he did not create the world, but that he created it good, and even very good! Evil today, then, is not the result of an imperfect creation, a flaw in his work.lO Whence, then, did evil arise? We will return to this question in chapter 19.
4. The doctrine of creation also thrusts a responsibility upon man. He cannot justify his evil behavior by blaming the evil realm of the material.
The material world is not inherently evil. Man’s sin must be an exercise of his own freedom. He cannot escape responsibility for his own actions.
Nor can man blame society. Sometimes the sin of individual humans is attributed to the influence of society. The reasoning is that man is moral, but an immoral society leads him into sin. But human society was also part of what God made, and it was very good. To regard society as the cause of sin is therefore an inaccurate and misleading ploy. Since society was originally good, we must ask ourselves the question, How did it get to be the way it is today?
5. The doctrine of creation also guards against depreciating the incarnation of Christ. If the material world were somehow inherently evil, it would be very difhcult to accept the fact that the second person of the Trinity took on human form, including a physical body. Indeed, there were those who, holding the view that matter is evil, consequently denied the reality of Jesus’ physical body. He merely “‘seemed” to possess human flesh. They were called Docetists, from the Greek word 60Kh.0 (“appear”). On the other hand, a correct understanding of the doctrine of creation-what God made was good-enables us to affirm the full meaning of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, his taking of human flesh upon himself.
The doctrine of creation also restrains us from asceticism. Believing that the physical nature is evil has led some, including Christians, to shun the human body and any type of physical satisfaction. Spirit, being more divine, is the proper realm of the good and the godly. Thus, medi- tation is pursued, and an austere diet and abstinence from sex are regarded as conditions of spirituality. But the doctrine of creation affirms that God has made all that is and has made it good. It is there- fore redeemable. Salvation and spirituality are to be found, not by fleeing from or avoiding the material realm, but by sanctifying it.
6. If all of creation has been made by God, there are a connection and
an
affinity among the various parts of it. I am a brother to all other men, for the same God created us and watches over us. Since inanimate material also comes from God, I am, at base, one with nature, for we are10. Ibid., p. 65.
God’s Originating Work: Creation 377
members of the same family. We may be in conflict, but this is a case of familial quarreling rather than warfare against a foreign enemy. The whole creation belongs to God and matters to him. We have a tendency as humans to think of ourselves as God’s only children, and thus as the only recipients of his paternal love. Yet Jesus indicated in an explicit statement that God loves and cares for all of his creation (Matt. 6:26-30;
10:29). It is his, and it matters to him, just as we do.
7. While the doctrine of creation excludes any dualism, it also ex- cludes the type of monism that regards the world as an emanation from God. According to the doctrine of creation, God simply wills things into existence out of nothing. The various objects and beings which are part of the creation are clearly other than God. In the view that the world is an emanation, on the other hand, what we have is an outflow from God’s nature, a part of him separated from his essence as it were. There is a tendency to regard this emanation as still divine; hence the end result of this view is usually pantheism. It is a change of status, rather than a beginning of being, that is conceived of here.
One might think that the effect of the view that the universe is an emanation from God would be to greatly enhance the status of the individual elements of the world, since they are in actuality part of the divine nature. In practice, however, the opposite has tended historically to be the case. The effect has been to deemphasize the independent status of specific objects, even to view independent existence as illusory.
Since all objects and beings are part of God, it is important to reduce as much as possible any distance between God and them. Individuality is to be minimized. The aim is absorption into the one. Instead of being real substantives, entities with their own status, the individual elements of the world have virtually become adjectives attaching to the ultimate reality, God.
Christianity’s doctrine of creation out of nothing rejects all of this.
The individual elements of the world are genuine creatures dependent upon God their Creator. Clearly separate from him (i.e., they are not emanations from his nature), they are finite dependent creatures. Sin does not consist in finiteness; it is not evil to be separate and finite.
Rather, sin consists in misuse of one’s finite freedom, in seeking to be independent of (and thus equal to) God. Further, this finiteness is not done away with in the process of salvation. Salvation does not consist in the negation of creaturely humanness; it rather is the fulfilment, the restoration, of creaturely humanness.
Further, the doctrine of creation points out the inherent limitations of creaturehood. No creature or combination of creatures can ever be equated with God. He always stands over against them as their Maker;
they are not and never will be God. Thus there is no basis whatsoever for
378
What God Doesidolatry-for worshiping nature or for revering men. Nature and men are less than God, and the distance between him and these his creations must ever be kept in mind. God has a unique status, so that he alone is to be worshiped (Exod. 20:2-3).
We sometimes think of the great metaphysical gap in the universe as a quantitative gap falling between man and the rest of the creation. In reality, however, the great metaphysical gap is quantitative and qualita- tive, and falls between God on one side and all else on the other.” He is to be the object of worship, praise, and obedience. All other existents are to be subjects who offer these acts of submission to him.
The Creation Doctrine and Its Relation to Science
There has been a rather long history of conflict between science and Christianity.12 The tension has occurred at various points. It was probably astronomy which provided the first real encounter, with the Copernican revolution challenging the prevailing geocentric conception. Progres- sively the conflict moved from astronomy to geology (the age of the earth) to biology (the issue of evolution) to anthropology (the origin of man). Today the conflict focuses especially upon the behavioral sciences and such issues as freedom versus determinism and the essential good- ness or depravity of man. As the conflict has shifted from one science to another, so it has also moved from one area of doctrine to another. Thus, while the prime area of tension was at one time the doctrine of creation, today it is the doctrine of man.
To some, such as Langdon Gilkey, the question of the relationship between science and theology has been settled; there is no longer any possibility of conflict. Gilkey believes that the conflict in the past was based upon two misconceptions, one concerning the respective roles of science and of theology, and the other concerning the nature of the Bible. The former misconception was a case of failing to understand the differing kinds of explanations offered by the two disciplines. Science attempts to explain what has happened and how it came to pass. It attempts to explain things in terms of efficient causation. When theology was thought of as offering the same kind of explanation, the two disci- plines were seen as providing conflicting alternatives. Theology was giving an explanation in terms of efficient cause which competed with
Although Gilkey has offered a solution to the problems of the rela- tionship between science and Christian theology, his solution cannot be adopted by someone who holds the view of the Bible expounded in the second part of this volume. It is true that in dealing with creation the Bible puts its major emphasis upon why God did what he did-his purposes in creating. But the Bible is also concerned about what God did and even, to some extent, how he did it. And there is indeed a statement about origins which, imprecise though it may be, nonetheless has implications for the proposals of natural science. We must now examine more closely two points at which theology and science do conflict: (1) the age of the universe and (2) the sequence in which the components of the creation appeared and the relationships among them.
Il. Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity, 1968), pp. 94-95.
12. Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in 13. Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth, p. 70.
Christendom (New York: Dover, 1960). 14. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
God’s Originating Work: Creation 379
science’s explanation in terms of efficient cause. Science explained the origin of the world in terms of the cooling and condensation of a nebu- lar mass; theology explained it as the creative act of an almighty being.
This view of theology as a quasi science must be rejected, says Gilkey.
The kind of explanation which theology gives is in terms of a very different type of cause. Its explanations are teleological, that is, in terms of the end or purpose for which something is done. Scientific explana- tions take the form, “This event occurred because of
. . .“;theological explanations take the form, “This event occurred in order that.
. . .”Thus, there really is no conflict with science. Christian theology does not pro- pose to tell us how the universe came into being; it tells us why God made it.13
The second misconception regards the nature of the Bible. According
to Gilkey, the view that Genesis provides us with a quasi-scientific expla-
nation of the origin of the universe stems from a period of belief in the
verbal inspiration of the Bible. Thus, all affirmations in the Bible,
whether of religious or seemingly scientific character, were considered
true. But then alternative views of the Bible arose which did not con-
sider all of its affirmations true. Some people thought of the Bible as a
witness to a revelation which is not primarily the communication of
information, but the self-presentation of a personal God; others thought
of it as a mixture of divine revelation on one hand, and human specula-
tion and myth on the other.14 With these alternative views of the Bible in
mind, Gilkey and others assert that its value and authority lie strictly
within the area of religion. The Bible does not help us understand em-
pirical issues, whether of science or of history. It serves merely to bring
us into the proper relationship with God.
380 What God Does
The Age of Creation
The age of the creation is one point where there is conflict between science and the Bible. On one hand, the biblical statement seems quite straightforward. God created the earth in six days. Since the word used in Genesis is the common term PV (yom), it is presumed that these were twenty-four-hour periods of time. Attempts have been made to calculate the time of creation by using the ages given in the biblical genealogies.
Archbishop James Ussher arrived at a date of 4004 B.C. for the creation.
On these terms the creation is no more than about six thousand years old.
Ussher’s conclusion was satisfactory before the development of modern geology. And that, we should note, is only a rather recent devel- opment. William Smith, the founder of stratigraphical geology, died in 1839; and Charles Lyell, the systematizer of geological learning, died in 1875. Thus, geology of the type that we know today came of age only in the nineteenth century. When it did, however, serious problems arose for the traditional dating of creation. A number of methods have been developed for dating the earth, many of them relating to the characteris- tics of radioactive materials. Out of these methods came a consensus that the earth is several billion years old, perhaps five or six billion or even more. There have been several attempts to reconcile the apparent age of the earth with the biblical material: (1) the gap theory; (2) the flood theory; (3) the ideal-time theory; (4) the age-day theory; and (5) the pictorial-day theory.
1. The gap theory holds that there was an original, quite complete creation of the earth perhaps billions of years ago. That is the creation mentioned in Genesis 1:l. But some sort of catastrophe occurred. The creation became empty and unformed (1:2). God then re-created the earth a few thousand years ago in a period of six days, populating it with all the species. It is this creation which is described in Genesis 1:3-27.
The apparent age of the earth and the fossil records showing develop- ment over long periods of time are to be attributed to the first creation.
The catastrophe is often linked to the fall of Satan (Lucifer). Creation then lay in ruins for a long period of time before God’s rehabilitation or restitution of it.15
2. The flood theory views the earth as only a few thousand years old.
At the time of Noah, the earth was covered by a tremendous flood; there were huge waves with a velocity of a thousand miles an hour. These waves picked up various forms of life; the mud in which these forms were eventually deposited was solidified into rock under the tremendou.4
15. The Scofield Reference Bible, p, 4, n. 3.
God’s Originating Work: Creation 381
pressure of the waves. The various rock strata represent various waves of the flood. Under these unusual forces, there was accomplished in a short period what geologists believe would ordinarily require three bil- lion years to accomplish.16
3. The ideal-time theory says that God created the world in a six-day period a relatively short time ago, but that he made it as if it were billions of years old. This is a genuinely novel and ingenious view. Adam, of course, did not begin his life as a newborn baby. At any point in his life he must have had an apparent (or ideal) age many years older than his actual age (i.e., the number of years since his creation). The ideal-time theory extends this principle. If God created trees, rather than merely tree seeds, they presumably had rings indicating an ideal age rather than their real age. Thus, each element of creation must have begun somewhere in the life cycle.17
4. The age-day theory is based upon the fact that the Hebrew word ni’
(yam), while it most frequently means a twenty-four-hour period, is by no means limited to that meaning. It can also mean epochs or long periods of time, and that is how it should be understood in this context.
This view holds that God created in a series of acts over long periods of time. The geological and fossil records correspond to the order of his creative acts.18
5. The pictorial-day (or literary-framework) theory regards the days of creation as more a matter of logical structuring than of chronological order. Either God’s revelation of creation came to Moses in a series of six pictures, or the author arranged his material in a logical grouping which took the form of six periods. There may be some chronological dimen- sion to the ordering, but it is to be thought of as primarily logical. The account is arranged in two groups of three-days one through three and days four through six. Parallels can be seen between the first and fourth, the second and fifth, and the third and sixth days of creation.19
All of these views have points of strength, and each has some difficul- ties as well.20 We must find the one which has more strengths and fewer
16. George McCready Price, The New Geology (Mountain View, Cal.: Pacific Press, 1923).
17. Philip H. Gosse, Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (London:
John Van Voorst, 1957).
18. Edwin K. Gedney, “Geology and the Bible,” in Modern Science and Christian Faith (Wheaton, Ill.: Scripture, 1948), pp. 23-57.
19. N. H. Ridderbos, Is There a Conflict Between Genesis I and Natural Science?
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957); Ronald Youngblood, How It All Began (Ventura, Cal.:
Regal, 1980), pp. 25-28.
20. For a very complete survey of views attempting to relate the data of geological science and the meaning of 1113 (yom), see Walter L. Bradley and Roger Olsen, “The Trustworthiness of Scripture in Areas Relating to Natural Science” (Paper presented at the Summit on Biblical Hermeneutics, Chicago, Illinois, November 11-12, 1982), pp. 36-39.