Reading: "Creation" by James Lindsay ISBE

Result 1- CREATION
kre-a'-shun (bara' "to create"; ktisis, "that which is created," "creature"):


1. Creation as Abiding:

A lot of ideas that tend to create a negative basis for the discussion of creation have now been addressed. Creation can no longer be thought of only as the beginning act in which God made all that is. It must also be thought of as including everything that exists in creation to this day. This is because God did not create substance that can exist without Him. Rather, God continually sustains all that is and continues to be. For this reason we cannot think of God's creation as a sort of machine that, once built, will continue to function without further support from its creator. 

2. Mistaken Ideas About Creation

We also cannot think of God’s involvement in creation as only that of a “First Cause,” or an initial interaction from outside the universe that set the universe in motion. The earth, the sun, the moon, and all things in the universe are indeed today as much His creation as the first Creative act recorded in Genesis. We must agree that God is present everywhere. He is still All and in All, but we must be careful to distinguish this from pantheism. The universe is not God, nor is God the universe. Rather, He created the universe of His own free will, which contradicts the Gnostic theories that the universe was created through natural and necessary “emanation.” This rules out the “carpenter” and the “gardener” theories, as well as the “architect” theory of Plato. In addition, changes in creation are shown to be in harmony with creation in that God’s continual involvement in creation can be seen through what He has created. Everything that exists, whether here on this earth or anywhere in the universe, large or small, depends completely upon God for its existence.

3. Biblical Conception of Creation

The doctrine of creation – that is to say, of the origin and continuing existence of everything that exists finitely – as the work of God is a necessary assumption of any Biblical awareness. Biblical awareness or Biblical world and life view is our system of belief, our ability to perceive things beyond the natural or material world as Isaiah 55:9 says, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."(ESV)

Biblical awareness is capable of much deeper insight than science is capable of. The truth of creation is not one that can exist without the presence of God. Rather, the energy and wisdom by which the universe – which once did not exist – came into being were not natural fragments of an already existing universe. Science is only able to record the patterns and history of nature, but in creation something greater than the patterns of nature must have occurred. This greater occurrence must be thought of as the work of a Divine intelligence, present everywhere in the changing and developing universe. God is the Sovereign Creator, always existing everywhere within the universe He created. Other than the story of the origin of all things at the beginning of Genesis, which are written for the purpose of our benefit, the Old Testament doesn’t contain any theoretical account of either the method or the order that God used to create the universe.

4. The Genesis Cosmogony:

The creation account in Genesis was not written to reveal the physical science of the universe. They were written to reveal the order, law and continuing work of creation. The origin account in Genesis teaches a process of continuing to change as well as a creation. . The Old Testament teaches the origin of time-worlds – of successive ages in a linear progression of time – but the emphasis is not on these. The emphasis is on the Divine Word speaking into existence things that formerly did not exist.

5. Created Matter not Eternal:

There is no account in the Old or the New Testament that would lead us to believe that any kind of eternal matter existed before creation. It would be wrong to say that the origin of physical matter was left out of the account of creation found in Genesis. This is even considering Genesis as a poetical and religious account of the way creation was accomplished. However, it is not wise to build our philosophy of the existence of matter and the method of creation on passages in Genesis that do not create a firm foundation for this doctrine to be discussed. Yet, the New Testament also contains the message that matter came into being and was not pre-existing – by this it is meant that matter and time were due to the outflowing Divine Word and the originative Will of God rather than to being built out of the invisible essence of God. This is the best interpretation of Hebrews 11:3: "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."(ESV)

6. "Wisdom" in Creation:

In the books of the Old Testament, for example Psalms, Proverbs, and Jeremiah, God’s work of creation is declared to be the work of Wisdom. This Wisdom is not separate from Goodness, and this can be fully brought out in the Book of Job. The heavens declare the glory of God, an intuitive knowledge of God is revealed through the experience of creation. As Romans 1:19-20 says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in things that have been made. So they are without excuse."(ESV) A fuller knowledge of the purposes of creation are revealed in the Bible and are taken by faith as Hebrews 11:3 says, "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."(ESV)  In this creation the thought of His absolute Wisdom is made a reality by the actions of His perfect Love. We must maintain the philosophy that God is the purpose for which all was created and toward which creation strives. If the purpose of creation were other than and independent of God, then the purpose of creation would restrain and contain Him within its bounds which is impossible.

7. Creation Is A Free, Personal Act:

Our Biblical awareness must maintain that the creation of the universe was a free act by God, not compulsory in any way, and that He is so much greater than the universe that everything that exists does so only because He has given it existence. The scriptures are saturated with this truth from the beginning to the end. Neither Immanuel Kant nor Herbert Spencer have been able to attain the conception of creation through data of what we can perceive with our senses, for they both fail to acknowledge Divine Personality. Spencer has pushed forward the idea that creation is absurd and that a self-existent Creator, by whom and through whom everything that is has been made is not even worthy of consideration. In making this statement, Spencer ignores his own scientific methodology and creates a purposefully deceptive argument that the idea of a Creator holds no merit in philosophy or science because he cannot fathom the existence of such a Creator. He speaks as though a true and sufficient cause were not enough to believe in and seek such a Creator, and as though a Divine act of will were not sufficient to bring into being all that exists. Yet, anything that exists that is dependent for its existence will always, without fail, lead logical thought to the necessary existence of a Being that is not dependent.

8. Creation and Evolution:

Evolution does not by any means disprove creation because it cannot explain where matter came from. Furthermore, evolution is unable to say why motion within matter began in the first place. It is obvious that science, which is concerned only with the matter of processes and patterns, cannot speak to the origins of matter or the Creation of the universe, since these matters are beyond its scope and beyond even mortal knowledge or understanding. We can say that creation did not occur in time, since time itself did not exist prior to the existence of the world. The problems encountered in supposing an ordinary creation in time can never be overcome as long as we continue to view eternity as an indefinitely long time. Augustine was correct in saying that from the human standpoint the world was not made in time, but rather with time. Time is itself something that was created at the same time with, and is even conditioned by, the creation of the world and the movements of the heavenly beings. To say, as many might say, that God performed His work of creation in time would make time independent of God, or it would make God dependent on time. However, because the idea of time is so ingrained in all our psychological experience, the idea of a concrete beginning of time is incomprehensible to us.

9. Creation ex nihilo:

This brings us to the frequent objection that creation could not have come out of nothing, since “nothing comes out of nothing.” This would mean that matter must be eternal. But if matter is eternal and separate from God, it is also independent of God and as a result has the power to limit or condition to him. We don’t have any direct knowledge of the origin of matter, and the idea that it must be self-existent is plagued with so many objections that it becomes absurd, ludicrous, and even hopeless. The axiom that “nothing comes out of nothing” does not contradict creation. The universe comes from God, and God is not nothing. Even so, the axiom cannot be said to apply to creation. It only really applies to the events following its creation. Something does not come from nothing. But there is another truth that is opposite to this, and that is that something exists before something, or in the case of creation, some One.

10. Creation From God's Will:

It is enough to know that God has without anyone or anything else the power and resources sufficient to create the world. We do not need to define the methods He used in creating. If our faith is to be rational, or our spiritual knowledge to be based in reason, we must believe that the entity on which the world is dependent is neither matter nor elements, but a personal Spirit or a creative Will. We have no right to think that the world was made out of nothing, and determine that this nothing is actually God, as Johannes Eriugena did. What we can say with surety is that everything that God creates owes its existence to His will and nothing else. Divine Personality that existed outside of and prior to the world is the foundation and the condition of the beginning of the world.

11. Error of Pantheism:

In a sense, the beginning of the universe can be said to be relative rather than fixed. God is always before the universe – coming before it, the sole Cause of it, and its Creator. It continues to exist only because of Him. If we say, as Victor Cousin did, that God creates eternally from necessity, we risk becoming Spinozistic* pantheists. For we would be identifying God with the impersonal matter of the universe that is without awareness by saying that He does not possess absolute freedom. Similarly, if we take Schelling’s view that God is not truly God but a dark background without rationality which was the original foundation of the Divine Being, we may try to find a basis for the matter in the universe, but this leaves us in danger of becoming aligned with – through ideas tainted with a physical substance or form of god – the form of pantheism that identifies God as nothing but the soul of the universe.

We are certain that the universe has been caused – that is to say, that it must have some reason for existence. Even if our philosophy was so idealistic as to portray all the universe as one grand illusion, an illusion so enormous would still have to be caused by Someone. Even if we do not accept the idea of a First Cause acting on the world from outside the world and before the world in time, this does not take away the need to establish a Cause. Even in this case, an underlying and determining Cause of the universe would still be required to be thought of as its Source..

12. The End--the Divine Glory:

Creation is rife with a purpose that reflects the glory of the eternal and personal God, who is its creator in a full and real sense. And yet we still have more questions about creation, for of His continued work we can say with Isaiah, “Truly You are a God who hides Himself” (Isaiah 45:15, ESV). As we continue to learn more about Creation, its glory, because it reveals God, should always stir up within us a deeper sense of the feeling expressed in Psalm 8:1,9 (ESV), “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

LITERATURE.

James Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 1st edition, 1893; J. Iverach, Christianity and Evolution, 1894; S. Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, 1897; A. L. Moore, Science and the Faith, 1889; B. P. Bowne, Studies in Theism, new edition, 1902; G. P. Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, new edition, 1902; J. Lindsay, Recent Advances in Theistic Philosophy of Religion, 1897; A. Dorner, Religionsphilosophie, 1903; J. Lindsay, Studies in European Philosophy, 1909; O. Dykes, The Divine Worker in Creation and Providence, 1909; J. Lindsay, The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics, 1910.

Taken from an article originally written by James Lindsay and updated by Henry and Pamela Reyenga

*Baruch Spinoza was a mid-17^th century Dutch philosopher who argued that God was abstract and impersonal, and constituted the form of all things, or, to put it more simply, that everything in the universe, when taken in its entirety, was God.