What do we mean when we use the word “creation”? Is our answer obvious and unambiguous? Christian theologians have tended to use the term in either or both of two ways:
In reference to the activity of God in creating
In reference to the result of God’s creative activity
A H. Strong and Karl Barth were among those theologians who employed the term “creation” to mean God’s creative activity. Strong offered two definitions illustrative of this trend.
“Creation is designed origination, by a transcendent and personal God, of that which itself is not God.”
Furthermore, creation is “that free act of the triune God by which in the beginning for his own glory he made, without the use of preexisting materials, the whole visible and invisible universe.”
According to Barth, “Creation comes first in the series of works of the triune God, and is thus the beginning of all the things distinct from God Himself.”
Thus, chronologically and logically creation is the first of the mighty acts of God.
E. Y. Mullins utilized the term “creation” in reference to the result of divine activity. “By creation is meant all that exists which is not God. " Accordingly “creation” becomes the synonym of “created universe” and “the whole creation.”
The activity of creating which results in the created universe involves, according to the Bible and to Christian tradition, a personal Creator, God. Essential to the doctrine of creation is the role and office of the divine Creator.
I. THE BIBLICAL WITNESS TO CREATION#
The task of explicating the Christian doctrine of creation at the beginning of the twenty-first century does not begin with scientific observation or with philosophical speculation or with legislative maneuvering; rather it begins with the exegesis of pertinent texts in the Old and the New Testaments and their proper correlation. The Bible bears witness to the creative activity of God, and that witness is fundamental to anything that Chritians today can believe and teach about creation.
A. THE OLD TESTAMENT#
1. The Pentateuch (Torah)
a. The Early Genesis Accounts (1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-25)
1) Their distinctive features
a) Genesis 1:1-2:4a
At least from the time of Basil the Great (c.330-379) and Ambrose of Milan (c. 339-97) Christian authors have been attracted to the task of expounding the “six days of creation” account. Modem expositors have undertaken this task vis-à-vis the teachings of the geological, anthropological, and biological sciences. The basic elements of that exposition may be summarized as follows:
Creation of"the heavens and the earth”
Speaking of light into existence and separation of the light and the darkness (day and night) (1st day)
Making of a firmament for the separation of the upper and lower waters (2nd day)
Separation of the dry land (earth) from the waters (seas) (3rd day)
Earth’s yielding of seed-bearing plants and trees (3rd day)
Making of the sun, moon, and stars for chronology and for light (4th day)
Creation of fish and fowl (5th day)
Making of cattle, creeping things, and wild animals (6th day)
Creation of man, male and female, in the image/ likeness of God with dominion (6th day)
Rest (7th day)
Latin theologians distinguished between God’s opus divisionis (work of division) during the first three days (Gen. 1:3-13) and his opus ornatus (work of ornamentation) during the fourth, fifth, and sixth days (Gen. 1:14-31). Whereas the chronology advanced by James Ussher (1581-1656) concluded that creation occurred in 4004 B.C., Bernard Ramm has written: “There is no date nor time element in the record except the expression ‘in the beginning.’ The account is simple, brief, majestic, and monotheistic.”
b) Genesis 2:4b-25
This account stressed the formation of man “of dust from the ground” and with “the breath of life,” the Edenic garden, the Adamic naming of the animal creation, and a distinct formation of woman from man. Some consider this account to be more anthropomorphic, that is, more expressed in human categories, than Gen. 1:1-2:4a.
Those who hold strictly to a source documentary view concerning the Pentatuech usually conclude that the P and J documents arose in Judah and included creation accounts, whereas the E and D documents, originating in Israel, had less emphasis on creation.
2) The Genesis accounts and the Babylonian Enuma Elish
Soon after its discovery George Smith (1840-76) published a monograph with translated texts of Enuma elish under the title, The Chaldean Account of Genesis. For more than a century scholars have debated the issue as to whether and how much the Genesis accounts were dependent upon the Babylonian epic.
Although some have pressed the similarities and hence the dependence of Genesis, noting, for example, that Tiamat, the Babylonian monster of chaos, is similar to tehom, the term in Genesis for “the deep,” the radical differences between polytheism and monotheism and between “chaotic instability” and orderly progression argue for a minimum of dependence.
According to Eric C. Rust, Enuma elish “is a representation of the rhythm of the cosmos and not of its creation,” and in Genesis the Creator and the created are clearly differentiated without compromising the sovereignty of the Creator.
William George Heidt (1913-) has concluded that Enuma elish “is not a ‘creation account’ at all… but,” in view of its having been a Sumerian epic into which Babylonian deities were inserted, “a justification for the political hegemony of Babylon during the era history associates with Hammurabi” and hence a “splendid piece of political propaganda.”
3) The Genesis accounts and the language of “myth”, “symbol”, and “saga”
During the twentieth century it was not uncommon for Christian theologians to apply to the Genesis accounts of creation, together with Genesis 3, terms such as “myth,” “symbol,” and “saga” in an effort to emphasize the distinctive character of these accounts. Whether such usage has been strongly influenced by cultural anthropology and/ or literary criticism is an open question.
This employment of the term “myth” in an intended favorable light to refer to biblical events of the remote past-or indeed also of the future-has encountered both contrary biblical usage and popular Christian resistance. In every New Testament usage-almost all in the Pastoral Epistles 18-of the word “myths” the connotation is uniformly negative. The popular Christian mind can hardly be convinced that a term which has only negative nuances in the New Testament can ably serve as the tool of modem theologians for classification of the Genesis accounts of creation.
Somewhat more promising has been the use of the term “saga” by Karl Barth. Geoffrey William Bromiley (1915-) and Thomas Forsyth Torrance (1913-2007) wrote of Barth’s usage: “Saga, or more simply ‘story,’ is the telling of a historical event which cannot be historiographically expressed.” A.H. Strong early in the century had favored “the pictorial-summary interpretation” of the Genesis accounts.
Indeed some special term is needed in the human and Christian effort to describe the awesome, unique activity of God in creation, of which no human was an eyewitness.
b. Other Pentateuchal Passage
The creation is not a prominent theme in the remainder of the Pentateuch.
In the Melchizedek passage (Gen. 14:19, 22), ‘El ‘Elyon is said to be the “maker of heaven and earth”.
In Deut. 4:32 allusion is made to “the day that God created man upon the earth”
Deut. 32:6 is probably a reference to the “creation” of Israel as a covenant people rather than to the creation of all things.
2) The Prophetical Books
According to Jeremiah, Yahweh “made the earth,” including human beings and animals (27:5), “established the world,” and “stretched out the heavens” (10:12); indeed Yahweh “formed all things” (10:16).
In a lament concerning the king of Tyre, Ezekiel alluded to “the day that you were created” and blamelessness until sin was committed (28:13, 15).
In Isaiah 40-55 the Hebrew verb “to create,” is used 16 times.
“Wherever this latter verb appears in the Old Testament, God is always the subject, and it surely refers to a unique creative action which he alone can perform. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (40:28a,b).
Yahweh “created the heavens” (42:5; 45: 18) or “stretched out the heavens” (42:5; 44:24; 45:12) or “spread out the heavens” (48:13).
He “spread forth the earth” (42:5) or “made the earth” (45:12, 18) or “formed the earth” (45:18) or “laid the foundation of the earth” (48: 13).
He “created man” (45:12) or gave “breath” and “spirit” to humans (42:5).
“I [Yahweh] form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe” (45:7) so that there has been no eternal dualism wherein evil has coexisted with God.
He “did not create it a chaos” (45: 18), for he has cut to pieces Rahab the monster and dried up “the waters of the great deep” (51:l0a).
His creative work was so comprehensive as to include both the blacksmith and the destroyer (54:16).
3) The Wisdom Writings
In poetic words ascribed to Job (26: 7-14) God’s comprehensive work of creation was celebrated, and Yahweh questioned Job (38:4-11) as to his whereabouts when the foundation of the earth was laid.
Prov. 8:22-31 affirmed that wisdom was “brought… forth as the first of his [Yahweh’s] works” (NIV), prior to any other activity of creation.
Psalm 8 is a celebration of the creation of humankind with dominion over the heavens as well as the earth. Yahweh made the heavens (Ps. 96:5) and founded the world on subterranean seas (Ps. 24: 1-2). He “established the mountains” (Ps. 65:6, RSV) and created south and north (Ps. 89:12), the depths and the heights, the sea and the dry land (Ps. 95:4-5), and the sun, the moon, and the stars (Ps. 74:16; 136:7-9; 147:4; 148:3-6). Creation was wrought by “the word of the LORD” (Ps. 33:6), and the eternal God preceded and will succeed his creative work (Ps. 90:2; 102:25-27). God’s mighty work of creation is celebrated in Ps. 77:16-19, and Psalm 104 unites God’s work of creation and his sustenance of the created order.
In the Psalms (74:13-15) and in Job (26:12), as well as in Isa. 51:9b, Yahweh is said to have overpowered the sea monster Rahab or Leviathan.
B. THE NEW TESTAMENT#
Passages in the New Testament which specifically refer to creation are fewer in number than in the Old Testament, but the writers assume the reality of creation, and creation is mentioned in each of the four principal types of New Testament literature.
1) Gospels
Allusions to creation appear in a strongly eschatological text (Mark 13:19) and in a Logos text (John 1:3), in which the agency of the Logos in creation is emphasized.
2) Acts
A Creator formula was used in Acts, namely, the God who “made the heavn and the earth and the sea and everything in them”. It was used by Peter and John in Jerusalem (4:24b), by Paul in Lystra (14:15c), and by Paul in condensed form in Athens (17:24). This Creator, according to Paul, “gives to all men life and breath and everything” and indeed “made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth” (17:25b, 26a).
3) Epistles
Paul quoted the commandment of light in creation (Gen. 1:3; 2 Cor. 4:6), put idolatry as creature-worship in stark contrast to the intended worship and service of the Creator (Rom. 1 :25), and referred to Abraham’s God as the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4: 17c). He mentioned the Creator in connection with the divine plan of the ages (Eph. 3:9) and in relation to the image-renewal that brought the new nature in Christ (Col. 3:10). In Col. 1:16-17 one finds the most detailed statement in the New Testament concerning the role of Jesus Christ in creation and in the sustenance of all things.
According to Peter, the persecuted can “entrust their souls to a faithful Creator” (1 Pet. 4: 19), and in the roll call of faith (Heb. 11 :3) we read: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.”
4) Apocalypse
In an exalted scene God is acclaimed as worthy of worship because he “didst create all things” and by his will “they existed and were created” (4:11). The Creator formula of Acts appears in slightly altered form in Rev. 10:6.
C. THE RELATION OF BIBLICAL TEXTS TO THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION#
The biblical texts that speak of creation have posed a special problem for some Christian theologians during the modem era, and hence the question as to whether and to what extent these texts should be used in formulating the Christian doctrine of creation needs to be addressed.
F. D. E. Schleiermacher, after noting certain New Testament passages, called for the rejection of “any more definite conception of the Creation.” Quite recently Hendrikus Berkhof expressed the same skepticism as to the doctrinal value of these texts. After citing ten passages in the Old Testament as being the “most important statements about creation in the Old Testament,” he then opined that the biblical concepts of creation were on a “secondary level” and concluded that the systematic theologian cannot “make direct use of any biblical statement on creation for the construction of his doctrine of creation.”
What can be said in response to such a claim?
First, one should acknowledge that theologians should handle responsibly biblical texts, recognizing context and literary genre and utilizing the best results of the work of biblical exegetes.
Second, skepticism regarding the doctrinal import of biblical texts on creation, if applied widely to other doctrines of the Christian religion, would soon make impossible any Christian theological system with deep roots in the Bible.
Third, biblical statements about creation are essentially religious, no matter in what literary form they are expressed, and whenever they are brought into dialogue with the findings of the geological, anthropological, and biological sciences or with modern philosophies of origins, this essential religious nature must be preserved and recognized.
II. A FORMULATION OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF CREATION#
The Christian doctrine of creation must not only be built on the foundation of biblical affirmations but also take into account the history of Christian doctrine, both its contributions and its challenges.
A. THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CREATION#
1. Dependence of the Created Order
By its very nature the created order is dependent. It is not eternal or ultimate. Nothing created “is absolute.” The creature is finite and mortal, like the grass and flowers (Isa. 40:6-8). Consequently, idolatrous worship of the creaturely is sinful (Rom. 1 :25). Instead creation should point to the eternal sovereignty of God (Ps. 90: 1-2).
But created existence as dependent is nevertheless real existence. Christians, in answer to pantheism, have insisted upon the genuineness of creaturely existence. According to Harold Barnes Kuhn (1911-), the created order has “a conferred reality.”
2. Creations as the Free Activity of God
Creation is an expression of the free activity of God as Creator. Strictly speaking, creation was not necessary. God did not create in order to bring Himself to completion. Nor did He create because He was driven to do so by external compulsion. Rev. 4:11 bears witness to the voluntary nature of God’s creative work.
The Christian doctrine of creation is contrary to any necessitarian view, whether that of ancient Babylonian myths or that of modern pantheism. This doctrine helps us to understand God’s “freedom, His self-sufficient, and His uniqueness as an eternal Existent”.
3. Creation out of Nothing (creatio ex nihilo)
Creation, at least as taught in the New Testament, involved the bringing into existence of that which had not previously existed. It was not merely the reshaping or re-formation of existent materials.
Eric C. Rust has contended that in the Genesis accounts of creation there is “no indication of a creatio ex nihilo.” Instead “already a primeval chaos existed,” and God created “the world out of this formless world-stuff.” The teaching of creatio ex nihilo in Jewish writings, therefore, did not become “explicit” until the time of the Maccabees (2 Mace. 7:28).
On the other hand, J. Oliver Buswell has held that creation ex nihilo was implicit in the Hebrew verb hara. Two New Testament texts (Rom. 4:17; Heb. 11:3) seem to teach that creation was without the use of preexistent materials.
The term creatio ex nihilo was chosen by Christian thinkers in response to Christianity’s encounter with various dualisms, especially Greek and Gnostic.
Not every early Christian author taught creation ex nihilo. Theophilus of Antioch did teach the doctrine, but Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria taught Plato’s doctrine “that the universe was made from pre-existent matter.”
In embracing creatio ex nihilo early Christian thinkers were not only rejecting the Platonic view but also the theory that all things issued or evolved from God himself, whether Gnostic emanationism or Hindu monism. In the present era process philosophy/theology seems to deny creation ex nihilo.
4. The Goodness of Creation
Creation was in the beginning such a resultant state as to be pronounced “good” by the Creator (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). The “gap” theory concerning Gen. 1:1-2 finds it necessary to interpret this goodness as applying to a reordering or restoration of a created order that had fallen into disorder, but such a theory has weak exegetical support.
Against all dualisms that would make the created order to be evil or the product of an evil or angry deity, be they Marcionite, Gnostic, or Manichean, the Christian teaching has insisted on the goodness of creation. Thus “nothing in existence can be intrinsically evil.”
5. Creation and Redemption
Creation is the background for and the correlate of redemption. The God who redeemed Israel and who redeems in Jesus Christ is the same God who has created the entire universe, including humankind. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament God’s creatorship followed from the covenant or from redemption: the God of the covenant was said also to be the Creator. Both redemption and creation are major themes in Isaiah 40-55 and in Col. 1: 13-17. The biblical authors did not merely infer from God’s creative work that he was also the Redeemer of humanity.
Faced with the threat of the Gnostics and of Marcion, Irenaeus repeatedly insisted during the second century A. D. that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, that the Creator is the Redeemer. The one God had chosen in his Son to redeem/reconcile sinning human creatures. All attempts, from Marcion and Gnostics onward, to divorce creation from redemption have ultimately been taken to be contrary to the biblical and distinctively Christian viewpoint. Furthermore, any present-day tendency to fuse creation and redemption by interpreting redemption as being only the recognition of the created origin and state of human beings is equally deficient in respect to the biblical perspective.
6. Creation as History, but Not Ordinary Recorded History
Creation may be said to belong in a sense to the category of history, but not to history in the ordinary sense of recorded history. Eyewitnesses there were for the Exodus and for the death of Jesus, but not for creation. Creation is not reportable by ordinary methods of history writings, and hence divine revelation and inspiration are essential.
Augustine of Hippo was the first Christian thinker to teach clearly that time originated with creation. Hence creation cannot be “explained” by human and historical analogy.
7. Creation an Affirmation of Faith
Creation is an affirmation or article of faith; that is, it is known through faith. The Apostles’ Creed meaningfully commences with the words, “I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The Christian acknowledgment of creation as the work of God cannot ultimately rest or depend on deduction from metaphysics or induction from science. It is an affirmation of religious faith. This fact does not mean that issues posed by sciences and/or philosophy do not have to be faced by present-day Christians; rather it means that they are to be faced from the stance of faith.
Creation is a faith-affirmation of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In the early Christian centuries the biblical doctrine of creation was “a scandal to the pagan mind.” So it may be today.
B. THE PURPOSE OF CREATION#
Christians have commonly and understandably raised the question as to why God did create all things. They have sought answers even though there are biblical texts (e.g., Rom. 11:33-35) that can be taken to discourage such quests. The Bible itself, however, is not replete with statements that clearly seek to answer why God created.
The most frequently given answer is that creation occurred for the glory of God himself.
Isa. 43:7b (“whom I created for my glory”) seems clearly to offer that answer.
God is glorified by the created order (Ps. 19:1) and by both creation and sustenance (Ps. 104:31).
The final subordination of the Son of God to the Father is to have the result “that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28, NIV), and even when human beings cannot fathom the mind and ways of God, God is to receive “the glory forever” (Rom. 11:36).
A second answer is to be found in God’s having created in order to give expression to his own nature. Such an answer must be separated from any necessitarian view of creation.
Augustine of Hippo, agreeing with Plato, emphasized the goodness of God as “the most sufficient reason” for the good creation.
According to Henry C. Sheldon, creation expressed God’s “nature as holy love” in that God ultimately will have brought “many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10, RSV, NIV).
If according to glorification God is essentially passive, this second answer sees him as very active.
Others have identified the purpose of creation as God’s provision of fellowship with his creatures, especially human beings. According to E. Y. Mullins, “the end of God was the communication of his own life and blessedness to created beings,” but Mullins coupled this with the divine glory.
Whatever answer or answers are adopted, God’s purpose in creation must be kept in tandem with his purpose in redemption (Eph. 3:9-11 ).
C. THE TRIUNE GOD AND CREATION#
1. God the Father
The Old Testament refers to Yahweh or ‘Elohim as the Creator. In the New Testament, most of the references to God as Creator can be understood as allusions to the Father. The Apostles’ Creed identifies creation with God the Father. Present-day Christians tend to speak and think of creation primarily in reference to God the Father.
A reminder is needed, therefore, that the full consequence of biblical teaching is that the Triune God is the Creator of all things.
2. The Son of God, or the Logos
Not only the first Genesis account (1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24, 26) but other Old Testament passages (Ps. 33:6; 148:5; Isa. 48:13) specified that creation occurred through the Word of God. In the light of the advent and saving work of Jesus Christ the New Testament writers specifically attributed to him a role in creation.
In Col. 1: 15-17, in a context in which he likely was countering an early form of Gnosticism, Paul declared the Son of God, who preceded and stands over the created order, to be the agent of creation, the sustainer of the creation, and the goal or end of creation.
Heb. 1:2 (NIV) identified the Son of God as the one “through whom” God “made the universe.”
According to the Johannine prologue “all things were made” through the eternal Logos, who “was with God in the beginning” (1:3a, 2 NIV). “God’s instrument of creation was the Word of power in which He uttered Himself.”
3. The Spirit of God
Basic to the first Genensis account of creation is the declaration that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (1:2b). It is appropriate to ask to what extent there was hypostatic distinction of the Spirit from God in the mind of Moses and the shapers of Genesis. Ps. 104:30 connects the Spirit of God with the sustenance of the created order, though not with creation.
The New Testament does not develop this theme. Eric C. Rust has articulated a doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the immanent agent of evolution, speaking even of “the kenosis [self-emptying] of the Spirit”.
4. The Triune of God
Christian theologians have been prone to want to allocate or specify the roles of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in creation. For example, Strong identified “the Father as the originating, the Son as the mediating, [and] the Spirit as the realizing cause” of creation. The more classical approach was enunciated by Pieper: “Creation as an opus Dei ad extra is the work of the Triune God.”