The Doctrine of Creation
I. Creation Ex Nihilo
The biblical creation narrative is just close enough to those of Israel’s pagan neighbors (especially the Babylonian “Gilgamesh Epic”) to fulfill the polemical function of mocking the idols, yet is radically different in content.
1בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית
Egyptian texts use this phrase with various prepositions to refer to the period during which creation took place. Since Egyptians believed that creation was reenacted every day with the rising of the sun, they used this word to differentiate the first time that creation took place from the endless daily repetitions of creation. The Egyptian phrase then refers to “when the pattern of existence was established and first enacted.” All of this information leads us to conclude that the “beginning” is a way of talking about the seven-day period rather than a point in time prior to the seven days.
Six Days
וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר יֹ֥ום אֶחָֽד׃ פ
The creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 is not intended as either a scientific description or as a myth conveying ostensibly higher and eternal principles. Rather, it announces God’s historical act and claim upon all of reality. It is the preamble and historical prologue for the Law (Torah), with its stipulations and sanctions.
A. The Documentary Hypothesis
II. The Trinity and Creation
The Greek version of pagan cosmology continued to cast its spell over some early Christian theologians. This is particularly true of the catechetical school in Alexandria led by Origen. Like the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria a century before him, Origen tried to accommodate the Bible to Platonism. Origen held that creation is eternal, in part because of his assumption that if God became a creator, he could not be immutable (unchanging). His cosmology was therefore far from historical and linear; it was cyclical, with each soul being reincarnated until all spirits (including Satan and his angelic coconspirators) become purged of their attachment to matter through moral and spiritual education.
All of these points underscore the fact that creation is the result of a free decision and activity of intratrinitarian love, the product of an extravagant exchange of gift giving between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit rather than of some event of primordial violence that would cause a tear within the fabric of nature itself.
In this trinitarian economy, God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent, utterly distinct from creation yet actively involved in every aspect of its existence and preservation.
III. Creative Communication
It is significant that the biblical doctrine represents God’s living speech as the means by which the Trinity creates the world. How unlike the analogies of physical force applied to a particular object, a clever watchmaker, or a world that causes itself, is the analogy of the Father speaking in the Son and bringing the effect of that speech to fruition through the agency of the Spirit. As a result of this Trinitarian speech act, the creation itself answers back in its own voice of praise
In this way, we can see that “covenant” is not added to the relationship between God and creation, but is intrinsic to that relationship. The creation of Israel, like the creation of the world itself, is the result of divine speech, evoking a human response. Walter Brueggemann observes, “As Israel believes that its own life is covenantally ordered, so Israel believes that creation is covenantally ordered; that is, formed by continuing interactions of gift and gratitude, of governance and obedience.”
The Father who eternally speaks forth his hypostatic Word in the Spirit also spoke the world into existence through the Son and the Spirit. Nevertheless, the two acts of speaking are qualitatively distinct. The word that God speaks in bringing forth creation is an act of his energies, while the hypostatic Word is God in his essence. God is free to speak or not to speak his words of creation, redemption, and consummation, but the Son is the eternally begotten and eternally necessary Word of the Father.
Creation exists because God has spoken p 334 it into existence, sustains it in this existence by his Word (both hypostatic and energetic), and thereby creates a society of speakers as an analogy of the Trinity.
IV. The Integrity of Creation
Creation exists because God has spoken p 334 it into existence, sustains it in this existence by his Word (both hypostatic and energetic), and thereby creates a society of speakers as an analogy of the Trinity.
Key to the ex nihilo doctrine of creation is the conviction that creation has its own space—not that it is independent of God, but that it is different from God. Human beings have their own way of reasoning, experiencing, willing, and acting that is analogical of but not identical with God’s. This difference is good; it is when human beings perversely imagine that they can reason, experience, will, and act as gods themselves that they reflect their fall from an original integrity.
Roman Catholic theology translates the ancient philosophical dualism of matter and spirit into a dualism of nature and grace. Grace is always necessary to elevate nature beyond itself, toward the supernatural. The lower and higher realms of Plato linger throughout the history of Christian theology. However, in Reformation theology, nature is not in trouble, so to speak, until the fall—a historical and willful decision of the covenant partner to transgress God’s law. It is not nature and grace, but sin and grace, that define the problematic with which biblical theology is occupied. The context is a historical covenant, not a metaphysics of being and becoming. Not even the human intellect or soul is higher than the body. The dividing line is between the Creator and creation, not between spirit and matter or even “supernatural” and “natural.”
Beyond God of the Gaps: Genesis and Scientific Apologetics
The remonstrance of Yahweh over against the idols of the nations forms the bookends of the Old Testament. Beginning with Genesis 1–2 (lordship in creation) and Exodus (lordship in deliverance), it continues in the historical books with the intrigue surrounding the contest between Yahweh and the idols that is even waged in the typological Promised Land. David’s royal heirs often fight on the wrong side, and idolatry is the chief charge in the case of Yahweh versus Israel in the Prophets. Just as the figure
The opening chapters of Genesis, therefore, are not intended as an independent account of origins but as the preamble and historical prologue to the treaty between Yahweh and his covenant people. The appropriate response is doxology:
A. The “God of the Gaps” Apologetic
Many modern Christians have assumed what has been called the “God of the gaps” apologetic. Typically, science will unravel a natural mystery up to a point and then, running out of data, acknowledge gaps in knowledge. This is where God comes in, according to this apologetic strategy. (Another term for this is deus ex machina [“god from the machine”], taken from the dramatic device of literally wheeling or dropping in a god onto the stage in ancient Greek tragedy. Whenever the plot seemed insoluble, the gods would appear out of nowhere to bring easy resolution.) Of course, the problem arises when scientists make further discoveries that close those gaps. Over time, God gets squeezed out of the equation. Already in the late eighteenth century, answering Napoleon’s question as to why his work did not include any references to God, the French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace is said to have answered, “I have no need of that hypothesis” (Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là).