Creation isn’t a finished painting hanging on a wall. It’s a story still being told — and the ending has already been decided.
Creation is going somewhere.
The Beginning Tells You About the End
Biblical teaching about creation extends forward into providence and redemption. God’s work in creation is directed toward a definitive conclusion — which means the full meaning of everything he made, especially his image in human beings, is determined by the eventual outcome, when his original purpose is completed by way of redemption.
The logic runs opposite to how we usually think about the future. We extrapolate from present trends, and the present offers plenty of grounds for gloom. This argument reasons instead from the character of the one who started the work.
An emphatically ‘very good’ beginning by a perfectly good God indicates that there will be a superlative end, because behind that excellent start lies Divine intention backed by boundless power and goodness. God’s original commendation of his ‘very good’ creation implies reaching a stupendous goal despite intervening darkness. ‘To be good is to achieve one’s end.’1Helm, ‘Goodness’, 244.
The Outcome Isn’t in Doubt
A perfectly good outcome of all God’s works is inevitable.
The dignity creation received at the start carries potential for far greater dignity once completed through re-creation and final perfection. So the wonder of the cosmos and of humanity isn’t embedded merely in what originally was, or in what is now, but in what they are destined to become.
Creation is going somewhere. ‘God’s work of creation is not only the production of matter but also the establishment of an unfolding fellowship in time between the creator and Adam’s race.’2Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 136; slightly amended. That phrase catches what a static picture misses: God didn’t manufacture a world and set it running. He started a relationship developing through time toward a destination.
As it’s been memorably put: ‘One has to realize that God is the measure of all that is real and proper, that eternity comes first and then time, and therefore the future comes first and then the present.’3Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.1, trans. G. W. Bromiley, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (T&T Clark, 1975), 464. We treat the present as the solid thing and the future as guesswork. On this account it’s the reverse.
Which Changes How You Live Now
From the beginning — actually from before the beginning — the great architect of the cosmos has been dedicated to moving all creation, human creatures included, toward perfection.
What God has done in the past builds toward what he’ll do in the future. But equally, what he has decided he can best do in the future affects how we evaluate the present.
That promised outcome may be much of what caused the ‘morning stars’ and ‘sons of God’ to shout for joy when God ‘laid the foundation of the earth’ (Job 38:4, 7) — joy not only for what had appeared, but for what it had set in motion.
And you can’t estimate human dignity without thinking about how life will be experienced in the perfect world ahead. Meditating on that encourages us to direct each other toward it now — caught up as we are in relentless transience, difficulty, pain, loss, and death.4Calvin, Institutes, 3.9; 712-19. A creation with a destination can be endured differently from one without.
What It Means to Be a Creature
So the world need not have been, but it is. That basic fact exceeds human comprehension. Yet despite our smallness we do have true knowledge of the world and our place in it — partly because rational intelligence is hard-wired, partly because true understanding comes from outside instruction by God.
First feature: dependence. To speak of creatures is to assume a Creator, and creatures by nature depend on him, who doesn’t depend on them. ‘And everything that exists in any way is necessarily from God.’5Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 1.68; trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2009), 53-4. ‘[A]ll creatures are ordered to God both as their source and as their end … [C]reatures are necessarily really related to God, and the relation is something in creatures.’6Thomas Aquinas, The Power of God, 7.9, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2012), 220.
Catch that last clause. The relation isn’t a label stuck on from outside — it’s something in creatures, part of what we are. Try to remove human beings from relation to their Creator and you undo their reason for being, because without God we simply would not be.
Second feature: gift. Our being is gratuitous; we didn’t have to be. Existence can’t be assumed as a right. That we’re here at all, alive and conscious of it, is a matter of great surprise. Familiarity dulls it — we wake into our own existence as though it were the most ordinary thing going, when it’s the least ordinary thing imaginable. It’s also a matter of gratitude, since the Creator’s work is the effect of gracious goodness, willing the benefit of others despite deserving.
Where Security Actually Comes From
Revelation recognises created life as dependent and given, referring some twenty times to ‘living creatures’ who ‘give glory and honor and thanks’ to the one ‘seated on the throne’ (Rev 4:9) and ‘to the Lamb’ (5:9-14). God’s supreme value in relation to us is that he ‘created all things, and by [his] will they existed and were created’ (Rev 4:11).
Our life is derivative. We didn’t call ourselves into being, and can’t sustain ourselves now or later. Recognising God as Creator establishes the ground of all ‘security, freedom, rest, peace, and happiness.’7Wilhelmus à Brakel, ‘Exhortation to Meditate Upon the Wonder of God’s Creative Work,’ in The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 1, trans. Bartel Elshout, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Heritage Books, 1992), 1:278 [277-284].
That inverts a common assumption. We imagine we secure those things ourselves, and that dependence threatens them. The reverse is argued here: for a creature to attempt independence is to revolt and place itself in absolute jeopardy — a flight away from the source of all goodness, and therefore into chaos, corruption and death.8See Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 3-5, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson, Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 138-47.
He Hasn’t Let Go
Genesis speaks of God resting from his work to indicate that after the six-day period he stopped bringing new types of things into existence out of nothing (Gen 2:2-3). From there, God’s activity moves to preservation and providence — the continuing exercise of his creative care, sustaining his creatures and directing everything toward its goal.
Creation isn’t continually called into existence moment by moment; it’s a completed event. Yet that ‘absolute initiation’9Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 147. begins a process sustained over time. ‘Creation brings forth existence; preservation is persistence in existence.’10Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 300.
Scripture links them plainly. Heaven and earth and ‘the seas and all that is in them’ were made by the God who now ‘preserve[s] all of them’ (Neh 9:6). The same movement attaches particularly to the Son: ‘By him all things were created … [and] in him all things hold together’ (Col 1:16-17); he ‘upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Heb 1:3). Behind it lies the conscious purpose of everlasting committed love (Psa 33:5). God ‘directs all the things which He has created in such a way that they may perform and exercise their own proper movements’11Augustine, The City of God, 7:30; trans. Dyson, 306. — direction that doesn’t override creaturely action but enables it.
Undivided Attention
Creation always remains radically dependent on God’s goodness for its continuing life; it’s never self-sufficient. Working with measureless energy and resources, the Creator is fully capable of providing for his entire creation, and by virtue of boundless intelligence is more than able to give
‘full attention, care and protection to every person throughout the world with the same intensity of concern that he would give if he were related to a single individual only. … Our heavenly Father gives each of us his undivided attention … as though we were his only friend.’12D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works (Matthias Media, 2000), 1:57. Tying creation and providence closely together, the following declaration of Luther’s is justly famous: ‘I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that he has given me and still preserves to me body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason and all my senses; and also clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and child, land, cattle, and all my property; that he provides me richly and daily with all the necessaries of life, protects me from all danger, and preserves and guards me against all evil; and all this out of purely paternal goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine; for all which I am in duty bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. This is most certainly true’ (Luther’s Small Catechism, 2.1, in The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 3, The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, ed. Phillip Schaff (repr. Baker, 1985), 76).
That addresses a worry most of us feel without articulating it — that in a universe this size, attention must be rationed. God’s capacity isn’t divided among his creatures; it’s given whole to each.
His faithfulness means he’s committed to deliver whatever is necessary; his omnipotence, that he’ll never be defeated. His sovereignty is such that he can arrange all events — those he intends and those he allows — so his good plans are fulfilled.
Be honest about the difficulty, though. Sin and evil mean God’s provision frequently appears intermittent, strange, enigmatic. His ways are often hidden and correspondingly hard to accept. But his perfect trustworthiness means he can be relied on to work everything for our best ultimate benefit (Rom 8:28).
Nothing Is Outside His Reach
God’s providence means he is always present with his people and active for them. Nothing happens by accident. No situation is beyond his reach. No event occurs outside his allowance or awareness. Though malevolent cosmic powers are at large, human beings are never victims of blind chance.
‘[A] man,’ Calvin wrote,
‘cannot go about unburdened by many forms of his own destruction … Yet, when that light of divine providence has once shone upon a godly man, he is then relieved and set free not only from extreme anxiety and fear that were pressing him before, but from every care. … His solace is to know that his Heavenly Father so holds all things in his power, so governs by his wisdom, that nothing can befall except he determine it.’13Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.11; 223-224.
Understanding how God achieves what he does matters far less than confident recognition that he will accomplish what he intends. You don’t need to trace the mechanism before you can rest in the outcome.
If God can create and conserve the vast expanse of the cosmos, he can be relied upon to protect, provide, restore, and renew. More broadly, we can have confidence in the sustained stability and bounty of the natural order (Psa 65:9-13). The objective foundation for that is the creative providence of God — the only stable basis on which lives may be built and plans laid. The consummation of his purposes in the new heavens and the new earth is assured (Rev 21:1-8).14My heartfelt thanks to Robert Doyle for comments and improvements on an earlier version.
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- 1Helm, ‘Goodness’, 244. ↩︎
- 2Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 136; slightly amended. ↩︎
- 3Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.1, trans. G. W. Bromiley, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (T&T Clark, 1975), 464. ↩︎
- 4Calvin, Institutes, 3.9; 712-19. ↩︎
- 5Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 1.68; trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2009), 53-4. ↩︎
- 6Thomas Aquinas, The Power of God, 7.9, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2012), 220. ↩︎
- 7Wilhelmus à Brakel, ‘Exhortation to Meditate Upon the Wonder of God’s Creative Work,’ in The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 1, trans. Bartel Elshout, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Heritage Books, 1992), 1:278 [277-284]. ↩︎
- 8See Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 3-5, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson, Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 138-47. ↩︎
- 9Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 147. ↩︎
- 10Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 300. ↩︎
- 11Augustine, The City of God, 7:30; trans. Dyson, 306. ↩︎
- 12D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works (Matthias Media, 2000), 1:57. Tying creation and providence closely together, the following declaration of Luther’s is justly famous: ‘I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that he has given me and still preserves to me body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason and all my senses; and also clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and child, land, cattle, and all my property; that he provides me richly and daily with all the necessaries of life, protects me from all danger, and preserves and guards me against all evil; and all this out of purely paternal goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine; for all which I am in duty bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. This is most certainly true’ (Luther’s Small Catechism, 2.1, in The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 3, The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, ed. Phillip Schaff (repr. Baker, 1985), 76). ↩︎
- 13Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.11; 223-224. ↩︎
- 14My heartfelt thanks to Robert Doyle for comments and improvements on an earlier version. ↩︎