Henri A. G. Blocher
Luther once dubbed the first chapter of Genesis “the foundation of the whole Scripture.” He discerned that the truth it expounds of God’s creation presupposes everything the Bible tells. The pride of place the passage enjoys in the Bible, by God’s providential design, fittingly symbolizes that role. The Bible addresses the topic of creation, however, in other passages in various ways.
Reconnoitering Biblical Data
The sober and majestic prologue through which one enters the biblical library (Gen 1:1—2:3) condenses major themes of a theology of creation. Among these is the goodness of God’s work (Gen 1:31). This provides the basis for the story of the fall in Gen 3: evil is not part of creation; it is an intruder. At the same time (and time is emphasized), the opening chapters show history unfolding in the wake of the initial creation, in the context of the created order. They also introduce the motif of de-creation (the flood).
Prophets
The prophetic books do not focus on creation, but they do refer to it. God’s power as displayed in the universe shows his ability to carry out threats and promises (Amos 4:13; 5:8–9; 9:5–6; Zech 12:1). The Lord as Creator contrasts with the petty “gods” of the nations (Jer 10:11; cf. Isa 40–48; see Acts 17:24). More specifically, salvation is a “new creation” (especially Isa 40–66); the “new exodus” will be so radical that it will beget new heavens and a new earth (Isa 51:9–16).
Psalms
The Psalms celebrate the Lord as the Creator, the object of trust and praise—some of them closely akin to the Genesis chapters (Pss 8; 104). God’s handiwork reveals his character, his glory (Ps 19:1–6, the counterpart of God’s revelation in his law, vv. 7–10). It testifies to his might and wisdom as well as to his loving care (Pss 36:6–9; 147). The psalmists insist on the stability God grants the world (e.g., Ps 93:1), though it is a mere perishable image of the Lord’s immutability (Ps 102:25–27).
Wisdom
The Wisdom books are strongly interested in creation. The book of Job aims at casting down human arrogance, reminding creatures of dust of the awful mystery of God’s works—how unfathomable his intelligence and untraceable his ways (Job 38–41)! God promises precious fruit to those who inquire into his works of creation, provided they do so with a humble, teachable spirit and in the fear of the Lord. By wisdom and understanding, God set the heavens, the earth, and the deeps in place (Prov 3:19–20), so that observing creatures can make one wiser (Prov 6:6–8), although one must access wisdom first through the word of the Teacher (e.g., Eccl 11:1–6; 12:11). The concordance between the wisdom embedded in the structures of reality and the wisdom taught in Scripture, both proceeding from God, is the key to the efficacy of wisdom. Since wisdom agrees both with God’s word and with the world he has made, it reflects reality itself, and so leads to success, life, and happiness.
Prov 8:22–31 boldly develops the role of wisdom in creation. Wisdom personified introduces herself as the Lord’s child, begotten from eternity, and the craftsman by his side when the Lord founded the earth. This poetic but evocative description of wisdom’s role in creation prompts reflection on the very nature of God. The theme was richly elaborated in Judaism, especially in the deep Apocryphal book called The Wisdom of Solomon (first century BC). Echoes of it in the NT suggest that the development was part of God’s revelatory design (e.g., 1 Cor 1:30–31; 2:6–16; Col 1:9; 2:2–3).
New Testament
The “new creation” theme is prominent in Paul’s epistles and in Revelation. The catastrophic damage done to the old creation by the fall is now already being overturned by the new creation, which itself will be brought to perfection and completion at the end of the age (Rev 21). The major advance relates to the role of Jesus Christ: the NT presents him not only as both the agent of the new creation and the new Adam but also as the agent of the first creation, cocreator with the Father. He is Wisdom come in person, come in the flesh. In his not-yet-incarnate state, he shared in the work of creation: through him all things were made, whether earthly or heavenly. Three passages draw on the Wisdom tradition (springing from Prov 8) and apply its insights to Christ: (1) John 1:1–10 parallels Gen 1, (2) Col 1:15–20 (cf. 1 Cor 8:6) poetically evokes the work of the preincarnate Christ (“the firstborn over all creation,” Col 1:15) and the incarnate Christ (“the firstborn from among the dead,” Col 1:18), and (3) Heb 1:2 (cf. Heb 3:3–4) is a crowning revelation. Paul uses the doctrine of creation as theological grounds for doing away with clean/unclean categories in things such as foods (1Tim 4:3–4).
The Meaning of Creation
The meaning of creation is bound up with an array of interpretive challenges. The data just surveyed are found in a variety of literary genres, and more than half are couched in the language of poetry. A cautious, tactful reading avoids projecting on to the text modern questions, interests, or would-be certainties—unless our questions enjoy enough of a kinship with a passage’s scope and intention. Certainly, while we may not ignore extrabiblical evidence, we should place greater weight on parallels and developments within the Bible itself—on the “analogy of faith.”
The Hebrew verb translated “to create” (bara’) is used only for a divine work, but “to make” is found as its parallel (already in Gen 1). Creation is one mode of origination: after the analogy of workers who make things to exist that did not exist before. Other words enrich our understanding of God’s work: form or fashion (Gen 2:7–8, 19; Zech 12:1); organize or arrange; lay the foundations (e.g., of a building; the world is God’s temple, Ps 29:9; this is one of the many parallels between the “foundation” of Eden and the “foundation” of the tabernacle); acquire or beget (Gen 14:19); and terms for specific elements such as stretch, fix, and plant. The NT vocabulary is less rich and the verb “to create” less tightly defined, but the NT terms do not otherwise paint a contradictory.
Is there something specific about this mode of creation? Tradition says that it is made from nothing. Scripture does not use those very words, although Rom 4:17 comes close. God speaks of the created order as coming from himself—“from whom all things” (1 Cor 8:6)—not in the sense of an emanation of his being, for God chose to create all things, he did not simply radiate them or emanate them as an inevitable function of his being (Acts 17:25; 1 Cor 12:18). The idea rules out any second principle in the constitution of reality, any pre-existent matter. The invisible source of all visible creatures is the power of the living God (Heb 11:3). This agrees with the use of bara’: even when “matter” is present (as it is in the new creation), the emphasis is on newness (Isa 48:6–7; 65:17). Cf. the same emphasis on newness in the dreadful judgment of Num 16:30: “But if the LORD brings about something totally new” (or “if the LORD creates a creation”).
Taken together, the teachings of Scripture lead to defining “creation” by a non-symmetrical structure. That God creates all things rules out dualism, even the faintest trace of a particle of being that would not proceed from God. That the distinction between Creator and creature cannot be erased rules out pantheism. The world totally depends on God, yet God is absolutely independent of it. Such a pattern is unique. People talk loosely of the “myths of creation” found in the ancient Near East, as if they share much common ground with Genesis because they exhibit curiosity about origins, but creation strict and pure is found only in the Bible. This nonsymmetrical structure between God and the creation is repeated in the dominant biblical depictions of covenant, where again the two partners are not in a symmetrical relationship. Structurally, creation and covenant go together.
What does creation confer? The Bible does not promote a concept of “being” in some abstract philosophical sense, but it has its own interest in being. The creative commands God utters in the six days use various words for the creation of earthly creatures, but we read “let there be” for the heavenly ones (Gen 1:3, 6, 14). A few verses expressly focus on the gift of being, of existence (Isa 66:2; John 1:3; Heb 11:3; Rev 4:11). The God Who Is (Ex 3:14; Rev 1:4, 8) opposes and exposes rival gods as nonentities, entities without any real being. Creation also institutes orderly form: we move from chaos to cosmos, and thus to beauty. This is the function of separation and order, and it is accomplished by the word: the sword of the Word cuts through confusion and establishes identities which may, then, be related (Gen 1; Col 1:17). Creation infuses life, implying fruitfulness and growth. This is the locus of blessing and belongs to the Spirit, the divine Breath who hovered over the primeval waters (Gen 1:2). The blessing of life implies growth. Therefore, creation opens the possibility of a meaningful history flowing from the gift of life—it brings a task and therefore a calling, an implicit promise and therefore a hope (Gen 1:28).
The calling and the promise are first and foremost for humankind: God’s image, which God erects in the universe that is his temple. The meaning of creation is concentrated in that paradoxical creature, earthly and yet a little lower than God ( ʾ ĕlōhîm; Ps 8:5). Humankind is to represent God for the earth, and represent the earth for God.
From Creation to New Creation
The sequence is well known. History follows, but in dramatic change. Human disobedience brings creation under the bondage of decay. But God does not abandon his covenant-partner. The good news of redemption (freedom recovered through a ransom payment) is told in terms of a new creation.
The new creation is not “another” creation, somewhere else, “from nothing.” It is the renewal of the “old” creation, washed clean (as after the flood), reformed and made alive; otherwise it would not mean salvation. It is called “creation” because it requires (at least) as much power, wisdom, and love as God’s first work.
This implies that humankind’s betrayal disfigured but did not abolish creation. God granted the world a grace of preservation. A substantial portion of his creational gifts was maintained—for which many psalms praise him indeed. This entails consequences for ethics: the normative structures established in creation remain in force; redemption may transpose some but does not make them null and void.
New creation means restoration: undoing the damage (1 John 3:8). Yet, mysteriously, it also implies a plus. Paradise regained is a more glorious paradise! From the garden to the city and the multitude (Rev 7:9; 21:2)! From the fine agreement of heaven and earth to their intimate union in the Lamb’s wedding (Rev 21)!
How has this transition come about? The Lamb is the Lord! The new Adam is from heaven: the Wisdom who was with God, through whom all things were made and remade.