Of Creation

1. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, (Heb. 1:2, John 1:2–3, Gen. 1:2, Job 26:13, Job 33:4) for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, (Rom. 1:20, Jer. 10:12, Ps. 104:24, Ps. 33:5–6) in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good. (Gen. 1, Heb. 11:3, Col. 1:16, Acts 17:24)

Comments –

1) There was a point in time, and it was the beginning of time, when God created. This creation included the production of substance from nothing (ex nihilo) as well as the formation of all things from that product. God did not use a portion of Himself in the creation, and hence, nothing in the creation is divine. While we are called to be stewards of the world (and that for God’s purposes, not our own), we should never worship the environment.

2) God created, and all three persons of the Trinity were involved in the work of creation. (Add 1 Cor 8:6 to the list of references in the WCF). While God created the world from nothing, we are not told HOW He did this. We are to understand THAT He did this by faith (Heb 11:3). It is important to note that “creation-science” will always be, by definition, at war with unbelief.

3) God created everything in six normal days. It is true that ‘yohm’ in the OT can mean ‘a period of time’, but never when it is described as ‘the second day…the third day’, nor limited with ‘there was evening and there was morning’.

4) Yeah but what about the stars that are millions of light years away? Well, how about the 27 year old bottle of Merlot created in an instant in John 2:1-11? Why can we already see the light of those stars? Because God wanted us to? How is it that we are able to? Only God knows – Jesus didn’t give His recipe for the wine either.

5) God created the stuff of the world, and when He did so, He said it was all very good. It would be good for us to say the same. This is the fight against gnosticism.

6) There are many battles over the doctrine of creation going on in our day. Closest to home is the fight among reformed evangelicals over the interpretation of Genesis 1. To counter certain trends, the CRE published this Memorial last year:

The doctrine of creation lies at the heart of Christian living, deeply embedded within our assumptions about worship, knowledge, faith, celebration, beauty, and redemption. In recent decades, many conservative evangelicals have been moved by the science of the day to oppose the historic view of creation in six sequential days of common length, several millennia in the past. Instead, they hold that the bare ideas of creation presented in Genesis have little to do with the actualities of creation. Falsely pitting poetry and symbolism against history, they distort the text of Scripture and divorce ideas from the created order in ancient Gnostic fashion.

Science changes like the wind, and therefore its authority ought to pale beside the Spirit-led, traditional exegesis of creation in six days of common length. Intimidation by apparently more sophisticated non-Christian knowledge-priesthoods is not new. Over the centuries, God has regularly tested the Church’s courage to stand loyal to His revelation over against the ever-changing sciences of the day, those “profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.”

2. After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, (Gen. 1:27) with reasonable and immortal souls, (Gen. 2:7, Ecc. 12:7, Luke 23:43, Matt. 10:28) endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image, (Gen. 1:26, Col. 3:10, Eph. 4:24) having the law of God written in their hearts, (Rom. 2:14–15) and power to fulfilit: (Eccl. 7:29) and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. (Gen. 3:6, Eccl. 7:29) Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (Gen. 2:17, Gen. 3:8–11,23) which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God,and had dominion over the creatures. (Gen. 1:26,28)

1) Mankind is created in two kinds – male and female. Each bears the ‘imago Dei’ individually. It is not necessary to be married (as Barth proposed) to be image bearers of God. Mankind is also immortal; not in the same way that God is Immortal though. We are immortal only after being created, and that only contingent upon God’s gift to us, not essentially because of our essence. Please also notice that the creation account leaves no room for Theistic Evolution. Adam is formed from the dust, not from primates. Life is brought to him directly from the breath of God, not through the evolution of lungs.

2) The Old Testament tells us that we are created in the image of God, but two important texts in the New Testament explain more to us about what that means. Col 3:10 and Eph 4:24 teach us that mankind was created in knowledge, holiness and righteousness. It is interesting to note that knowledge corresponds to being a prophet, holiness to being a priest, and righteousness to being a king.

3) God created man with the law of God written on his heart. Note that the promise of the New Covenant is to again write the law of God upon the hearts of men. From the beginning, man has had a true sense of right and wrong built into him.

4) Nothing in Adam’s nature hindered him from obeying God. He had the true possibility of obedience. But being in a state of probationary innocence, Adam as well had the possibility of disobeying. A lengthy quote from Hodge is helpful –

“That Adam, although created holy and capable of obedience, was at the same time capable of falling, is evident from the event. This appears to have been the moral condition in which both angels and men were created. It evidently was never intended to be the permanent condition of any creature. It is one, also, of the special elements of which we can have no knowledge, either from experience or observation. God, angels, and saints in glory are free, but with natures certainly and infallibly prompting them to holiness. Devils and fallen men are free, with natures infallibly prompting them to evil. The imperfectly sanctified Christian is the subject of two conflicting inherent tendencies, the law in the members and the law of the Spirit; and his only security is that he is ‘kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.’”

5) Until the fall, mankind was content with his fellowship with God, exercising dominion over the beasts of the earth. In this state, it was very good.