3 Questions on Creation: Who, How, and Why?

Our Creator God

When contemplating the creation of the universe, there are three principal questions we will ask: Who? How? and Why? Of these three questions, the primary query is essentially the most foundational. It is also the obvious. Based on the Bible, God is Creator of all issues seen and invisible.

We can’t overstate the significance the Bible offers to the revelation of God as Creator. “At first, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Studying in English, lets say aseity is the very first thing we encounter about God. At first—earlier than all and unbiased of all—there was God. Within the unique Hebrew, nonetheless, the verb bara (“to create”) comes previous to the phrase Elohim (“God”). This isn’t an uncommon grammatical building for Hebrew, but it surely does imply that even earlier than we’re launched to the phrase for God, we all know that he’s a creator.

Our God is the one by way of whom all issues got here into being. He’s the maker of heaven and earth. Again and again the Bible reminds us that the God of Israel isn’t any territorial deity. Because the folks confessed in Nehemiah’s day, “You’re the Lord, you alone. You may have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that’s on it, the seas and all that’s in them; and also you protect all of them; and the host of heaven worships you” (Neh. 9:6). There is just one Creator, and due to this fact there is just one God. “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he’s God!), who fashioned the earth and made it (he established it; he didn’t create it empty, he fashioned it to be inhabited!): ‘I’m the Lord, and there’s no different’ ” (Isa. 45:18).

When Paul preached to the Gentiles, he emphasised that they need to put away their idols and switch to “a residing God, who made the heaven and the earth and the ocean and all that’s in them” (Acts 14:15). Because the Creator of all issues, God wants nothing from his creatures. Famously, Paul defined to the Athenians that “the God who made the world and every little thing in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made by man, neither is he served by human arms, as if he wanted something, since he himself offers to all mankind life and breath and every little thing” (Acts 17:24–25).

God offers us the reply to probably the most enduring questions: The place did the cosmos come from? Is the universe the results of some free private agent, or did the universe one way or the other create itself? The biblical account teaches that creation is distinct from God (the 2 aren’t the identical being) and on the similar time that creation is completely depending on God. He’s earlier than all issues and on him all issues rely. As we’ve seen earlier than, there by no means was when God was not, however there was when matter was not. Because the psalmist exclaims, “Lord, you will have been our dwelling place in all generations. Earlier than the mountains have been introduced forth, or ever you had fashioned the earth and the world, from eternal to eternal you might be God” (Ps. 90:1–2).

Creation Days

Of the three questions—Who? How? and Why?—the how query is the one the place essentially the most controversy has arisen. On the coronary heart of the how query is the controversy surrounding the creation days. Amongst evangelicals, there are 4 typical approaches.

(1) The six days of creation are regular twenty-four-hour days. This view often means (however doesn’t should equal) a perception in a younger earth (e.g., 1000’s of years outdated as a substitute of billions of years). (2) The Day-Age view argues that the creation days characterize an unspecified size of time and {that a} “day” in God’s reckoning can seek advice from a protracted time period (Isa. 11:10–11; 2 Pet. 3:8). (3) The Framework Interpretation popularized by Meredith Kline maintains that the primary three days characterize creation kingdoms, dominated over by the creation kings of days 4 by way of six. The times, due to this fact, must be learn topically, not sequentially. Based mostly on Genesis 2:5 (“the Lord God had not prompted it to rain”), Kline argues that God oversaw creation by way of strange windfall. (4) The Analogical method understands the times extra typically as divine work days.

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Whereas the occasions recorded could also be broadly consecutive, the size of the time is irrelevant to the aim of the Genesis account. The times are God-divided days or extraordinary cosmic days. Our human week is copied from this creation week, however “copy” is to be thought of analogically not actually. Whereas there are believable causes for every view, and orthodox Reformed representatives will be listed for every of them, I discover the twenty-four-hour view most convincing.

First, there are a number of indications that the Hebrew phrase yom is utilized in Genesis 1 within the regular sense of a twenty-four-hour day: the references to morning and night, the cycles of darkness and lightweight, the truth that we nonetheless have seven days in our week. Most crucially, the chorus of “days, years, indicators, and seasons” suggests we’re coping with regular calendar demarcations.

Second, there are good explanations for the looks of the solar on day 4. For instance, the universe might need been illuminated by the particular, supernatural presence of God. Alternately, one can argue that the solar was already made (Gen. 1:1), however not separated till the fourth day. Mild wasn’t created on the fourth day; moderately, the larger gentle and lesser gentle have been separated (Gen. 1:14).

Third, regular days enable for the world to be comparatively younger, which signifies that loss of life within the animal world needn’t have existed earlier than the autumn.

Fourth, God might have created the world with the looks of age. Simply as Adam on his first day didn’t seem like an toddler, so the universe, although created in six regular days, could look a lot older.

Fifth, this view of the creation days was affirmed by early commentators (Basil, Ambrose), by medieval scholastics (Lombard, Aquinas), by the magisterial Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Beza), by the Puritans (Perkins, Owen, Edwards), and was the one recognized view of the Westminster divines.

Sixth, God didn’t merely accommodate himself in how he defined the work however in how he truly completed the work. As Calvin put it, Moses didn’t converse of six days “for the mere goal of conveying instruction. Allow us to moderately conclude that God himself took the house of six days, for the aim of accommodating his works to the capability of males.”¹

We don’t take a look at the universe rightly until we see in creation an excellent motive to reward the residing God.

The Finish for Which God Created the World

We don’t take a look at the universe rightly until we see in creation an excellent motive to reward the residing God.

“Let all of the earth worry the Lord,” the psalmist tells us, “let all of the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!” And why? “For he spoke, and it got here to be; he commanded, and it stood agency” (Ps. 33:8–9). Equally, Psalm 148 calls on the heavens and the heights, the Lord’s angels and his hosts, the solar and moon and shining stars, the very best heavens and the waters above the heavens to reward the identify of the Lord. The rationale? “For he commanded they usually have been created. And he established them ceaselessly and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not cross away” (Ps. 148:5–6). Briefly, God fashioned us and made us; he created us for his glory (Isa. 43:7).

To make use of the language of Jonathan Edwards’s well-known treatise, divine glory is “the tip for which God created the world.” We must not ever suppose that God created the cosmos out of lack—as a result of he wished a relationship, or he wished somebody to like. God didn’t create the world as a result of he was thirsty. Reasonably, God created the world as a result of it’s the nature of a fountain to overflow. Creation is the superabundance of divine goodness, magnificence, mercy, love, knowledge, energy, sovereignty, self-sufficiency, self-existence, justice, holiness, faithfulness, and freedom.

Edwards places the matter splendidly. We must always decelerate and browse him rigorously:

As there may be an infinite fullness of all attainable good in God—a fullness of each perfection, of all excellency and wonder, and of infinite happiness—and as this fullness is able to communication, or emanation advert further, so it appears a factor amiable and priceless in itself that this infinite fountain of fine ought to ship forth considerable streams. . . . Thus it seems cheap to suppose that it was God’s final finish that there is likely to be an excellent and considerable emanation of his infinite fulness of fine advert further; and that the disposition to speak himself, or diffuse his personal fulness, was what moved him to create the world.²

To place the matter a lot much less elegantly, we will say the creation was God’s choice to go public together with his glory. From the microscopic stage to the cosmic stage, now we have motive to present God reward. Simply think about that by some scientific estimates there are extra stars within the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. The Milky Manner has 150 billion to 200 billion stars, and our galaxy is just one of a whole lot of billions of galaxies. Relying on which estimate you comply with, there are greater than 100 billion trillion stars. Consider the primary adopted by twenty-three zeroes. That’s about what number of stars there are within the universe. The quantity defies human comprehension. And Psalm 147:4 says, “He determines the variety of the celebs; he offers to all of them their names.”

All good theology begins with the start. There is no such thing as a Christianity with out the doctrine of creation. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to obtain glory and honor and energy, for you created all issues, and by your will they existed and have been created” (Rev. 4:11).

This text is customized from Every day Doctrine: A One-12 months Information to Systematic Theology by Kevin DeYoung.

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