The Creation of the Universe

by Benjamin Dean

EPIGRAPHS

1. GOD’S LIFE IN HIMSELF

  • The nature of the Creator is the basis of creation
  • The absolute difference between uncreated and created
  • God creates from complete needless perfection
  • God’s perfect life is infinite, personal, loving, and free
  • God shares his perfect life with his creatures

2. CREATION BY GOD THE ALMIGHTY FATHER

  • Creation in relation to the being and purpose of God
  • God created the world as a home for humanity
  • The world belongs to God
  • God governs the world with matchless power, love, and goodness

3. OUT OF NOTHING BY GOD’S WORD

  • Far removed beyond all human imagining
  • The Creator’s absolute supremacy
  • God spoke creation into being
  • Life-giving power to create and recreate
  • The universe does not have to exist
  • God has no need for the world
  • An infinite difference between Creator and creature
  • The world and everything in it is not divine
  • Creatures are entirely dependent on their Creator

4. THE TRIUNE CREATOR

  • The communication of Triune love
  • The creative work of each Divine Person
  • Creation is common to Father, Son, and Spirit
  • The unique contribution of each Divine Person
  • The Father’s originating work
  • The Son’s executive role
  • The Spirit’s implementation

5. THE REASON FOR CREATION

  • An arena of loving fellowship
  • To richly bless in love

6. GOD’S MOTIVE IN CREATING THE UNIVERSE

  • The value of sacrificial love
  • The glory of redemptive love
  • The glory of God in the everlasting happiness of his people

7. THE GOODNESS OF CREATION

  • Essential excellence
  • God’s perfect goodness
  • Creation reflects the Creator’s perfect goodness

8. THE GOODNESS OF MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE

  • Excellence applies to all elements of creation
  • God took on created human nature
  • The invisible world is totally real and significant

9. AN EXCELLENT BEGINNING ASSUMES A MORE EXCELLENT END

  • Creation looks forward to its conclusion
  • A perfectly good outcome is inevitable
  • The promised end helps us cope with present difficulty

10. CREATURES IN RELATION TO THEIR CREATOR

  • Dependence
  • Life is a gift
  • Security, freedom, rest, peace, and happiness

11. CREATION AND PROVIDENCE

  • The continuing exercise of God’s creative care
  • Preservation and government
  • God provides for the needs of all his creatures
  • Omnipotent and trustworthy
  • Always present and always active
  • Complete confidence in the Creator’s personal care and concern

EPIGRAPHS

‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.’1Gen 1:1.

‘Creation is not inpouring, but the beginning of essence out of nothing.’2John Calvin, Institutes,1.15.5; Battles, 191.

‘What then are you, Lord God, you than whom nothing greater can be thought? But what are you save that supreme being, existing through yourself alone, who made everything else from nothing? For whatever is not this is less than that which can be thought of; but this cannot be thought about you. What goodness, then, could be wanting to the supreme good, through which every good exists? Thus you are just, truthful, happy, and whatever is better to be than not to be – for it is better to be just than unjust, and happy rather than unhappy.’3Anselm, Proslogion, 5; in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited with an introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 1998), 89.

1. GOD’S LIFE IN HIMSELF

The Nature of the Creator is the Basis of Creation

God’s life in himself is the fundamental condition of God’s work of creation. We start therefore with consideration of the identity and nature of the Creator, for biblical teaching about the act of creation grows out of what Scripture suggests about the perfect life of God. Clarity about the character of the Creator ensures that the relation between the Creator and his creatures is accurately represented.

The Absolute Difference Between Uncreated and Created

The most massive contrast in all reality is the boundless, literally infinite difference between what is created – the heavens and the earth – and what is uncreated – God. God and creation are fundamentally different orders of reality. God is a reality other than creation and creation is a reality other than God. God and creatures are absolutely ‘distinct in being.’4St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 17; trans. St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (1944), 45. God is greater than his work of creation. God is by definition independent, whilst creatures are by definition contingent and dependent. Precisely because God is uncreated, he is capable of being creative.

God Creates from Complete Needless Perfection

Creation is an outward work of God determined by the inward movement of God’s eternal life and character, i.e., by ‘his invisible nature’ (Rom 1:20). God exceeds creation and creation in no sense contributes to God’s being and character. God creates out of a plentiful fullness that is his to share, rather than from an empty neediness that must have others upon which to draw. God creates out of sheer perfection, from entire, needless self-sufficiency. God’s own inward experience is one of infinite adequacy, for in himself God is free interpersonal love, an eternal fullness of fellowship, delight, mutual regard, rest, and satisfaction.

This infinite adequacy – God’s inconceivable and unsurpassable excellence, blessedness, bliss, competence, value, and worth – is more than mere superiority to human beings, though certainly it is that. God’s quality and type of life is in reality in a category and class beyond comparison to ours, for God has life in himself.

God’s Perfect Life is Infinite, Personal, Loving, and Free

God’s life in himself, his self-existence, his perfect self-sufficiency, is exactly identical with his everlasting being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is to say, God has life in himself essentially, i.e., in terms of his one Being, and God also has life in himself personally, i.e. in terms of each particular Divine Person. The Father has life in himself (John 5:26; 6:57), as does the Son (John 1:4; 5:26; 6:57; 14:6; Acts 3:15; Col 3:4; Heb 7:16; Rev 1:8), and the Spirit (Rom 8:2; 2 Cor 3:3.). God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a manifold richness of life completely by and in themselves, determined through one another, without dependent or necessary relation to any others besides themselves. That perfect life is not a mystical nothingness or silence, but an eternal intercommunion or fellowship between the Persons, a fellowship of knowledge and love and action. ‘For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing (John 5:20).’ This is ‘what it is for God to be God.’5Webster, God Without Measure,1:89. It is common to distinguish between the inner works of God and the outward works of God. God’s internal works are the divine processions, the eternal generation of the Son and the breathing out of the Spirit. God’s external works are directed outside of himself toward what is not God in nature and grace (Webster, ‘Creation Out of Nothing,’ in Christian Dogmatics, eds. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Zondervan, 2016), 127-28).

In this manner, biblical teaching about creation stretches back to the being of God.  God’s perfect life means that he is totally durable and entirely stable regardless of any relation to creation. It is God’s stability that undergirds the origin of the cosmos. Being already complete and entire in himself as a Trinity of infinite Persons, God does not stand in a relationship to creation marked by necessity, compulsion, or desperation, but in a relation of universal Lordship and Fatherhood. As the universe passes from nonexistence to existence, God remains the same.6Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 5.3.13; 1:440. Entire in himself, God is in the utterly unparalleled position of being able, capable, freely, voluntarily, to become the absolute cause, origin, and principle of all things beyond himself. ‘As the one who has life in himself he can give life to the world, he can be infinitely generous without self-depletion.’7Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 138.

God Shares His Perfect Life with His Creatures

As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then, God is self-existent and exists necessarily. Creation has a nature of its own in distinction from God, having a kind of existence which is essentially unlike him, but nevertheless, as we will explore later, images him. Creation is not necessary, but exists by participation, by sharing and borrowing its being from God. God gives life and shares life because he is life. In this way, then, biblical teaching about the creation takes its cue from biblical teaching about the Creator.8‘[T]he doctrine of creation is first a doctrine of the creator … to contemplate the work is to contemplate the worker in his work’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 139).

2. CREATION BY GOD THE ALMIGHTY FATHER

Created in Relation to the Being and Purpose of God

In view of their location and profundity, the opening pages of Holy Scripture are elementary for Christian teaching. During the modern period they have often featured as the focus of vigorous argument about the hypotheses of natural-physical sciences and the claims of biblical faith. There is a place for such considerations, but they are not of first importance because the focus of biblical teaching lies elsewhere, largely concerned to present the origins of the world in theological context. That is to say, the main focus and function of the Genesis account is to express the character of God’s act of creation. It does this by setting out the nature and position of all created things in relation to the being of God and, more specifically, in relation to the purposes of God.

The concentration of Genesis 1 is essentially twofold: (1) God being absolutely powerful, good, wise, purposeful, communicative, and relational; (2) creation being derivatively magnificent, wonderful, purposeful, designed and directed toward a goal of untold potential and value.

God Created the World as a Home for Humanity

The single most fundamental, straightforward, and significant assertion conveyed by the Genesis account is assumed and echoed at various junctures: there exists a ‘Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them’ (Acts 4:24). The Lord God Almighty, we are told, brought ‘all things’ into existence through the freedom of his will (Rev 4:11). The cosmos itself and the vast range of creatures within it are the direct, exclusive, immediate, creation of the one true God. To the fundamental questions, ‘What is this world? Where did it come from? Where is it going to? Why?’,9Peter Cotterell, This is Christianity. Revised edition (OMF, 1997), 5. the Bible’s response is that God created the world. The universe is not accidental.  Neither is the world eternal. Rather, the cosmos is uniquely created, established, ordered, and intended to be a unique home for humanity.

Human origins, indeed, the origins of the entire universe, are reckoned solely due to God’s decision that they be. God is their absolute cause. ‘What is seen was not made out of things that are visible’ (Heb 11:3), but is purely and completely the product of divinely willed decision and action, plus nothing. This essential idea – that ‘God … made the world and everything in it’ (Acts 17:24) – naturally includes humanity, as a whole, and each of us as particular individuals. People are ‘God’s offspring’ (Acts 17:29).  That is why we matter. God the Creator, ‘Lord of heaven and earth’, is the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:24, 28.) He is the basis and ground of our worth.

The World Belongs to God

Such thoughts indicate not only that God, having caused our existence, is the only Creator and therefore the principle of our being.10Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2.6; trans. Anderson, 36.  They also signal the Creator’s enjoyment of incomparable qualities, for instance, revealing perfections such as breath-taking majesty, stupendous intelligence, boundless grandeur, as well as remarkable goodness and power (Job 38-41; Isa 40:12-26).11‘God’s truth is known in several ways through the things which are made. Indeed, from the perpetuity of creatures, the Creator is understood to be eternal; from the greatness of creatures, all-powerful; from their order and disposition, wise; from his governance over them, good’ (Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 1.3.1.6; trans. Guilio Silano (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007), 20). Upon all ‘his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent.’12Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.1; 52. Additionally, the work of creation discloses ownership.  The world belongs to the one who built it. Reality is a realm over which the LORD holds sole possession. ‘The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein’ (Psa 24:1). ‘God Most High’ is ‘Possessor of heaven and earth’ (Gen 14:9, 22; cf. Psa 89:11). This is the force of the LORD’s claim: ‘Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine’ (Job 41:11; cf. Isa 40:28). In other words, the entire universe and everything contained in it is God’s property.

God Governs the World with Matchless Power, Love, and Goodness

The One who creates and owns is also the One who governs. The Creator’s direction of and rule over the world is that of a single, unchallenged, infinite, utterly transcendent King. Yet the Creator is a King and LORD who is – eternally and simultaneously – an Almighty Father (2 Cor 6:18).13Cf. ‘Have we all not one Father? Has not one God created us?’ (Mal 2:10). Qualities of boundless ability and energy, knowledge, wisdom, supremacy, authority and so on, are the exclusive source of life in heaven and earth. But the Almighty Father’s authority is a loving authority, indeed, a perfectly good authority that takes personal responsibility. The Almighty Father and Creator is one in whom immeasurable goodness, matchless power, superlative understanding, and ultimate responsibility are combined, perfectly and eternally, forever. The unconditional claim laid upon all things by God, precisely because it is a Father’s claim, is moved by ‘steadfast love’ (Gen 24:12; Exo 34:6; Psa 136). The Father’s ‘lovingkindness’ ensures that everything – without exception – is determined and managed for the good of his creatures. He is one, therefore, to whom is due profoundest thanks, exclusive allegiance, ultimate honor, and total worship (Psa 136:1-9). Moreover, that God spoke the universe into existence – repeating for most obvious emphasis, ‘and God said’ (Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29) – means that trust in God’s Word, committed confidence in the speaking Creator, is a core reality of all created existence, people included. More on this below.

3. OUT OF NOTHING BY GOD’S WORD

Far Removed Beyond All Human Imagining

Creation ‘out of nothing’ is the concept which best captures the biblical explanation of how God created the cosmos. It also best captures the identity of the Creator and the nature of the relation to the Creator in which creatures stand. Our minds are compelled to accept and confess creation from nothing, but what does creation from nothing mean? The actual nature or character of such an act by God is too great to be expressed in words and remains far ‘removed beyond all human imagining.’14May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, 180. Explanation is impossible and description only approximate and partial. The notion defies comprehensive understanding, being quite inconceivable and unfathomable to created intelligence.15‘It is a great and most rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole corporeal and incorporeal creation and found it mutable, to pass beyond it by effort of mind and arrive at the immutable substance of God, there to learn from God himself that nature which is not what God is has been made by him alone’ (Augustine, The City of God, 11.2; trans. Dyson, 450). Why? Because we experience things coming to be out of something. But for God to create out of nothing ‘is to cross an absolute gulf, to bring about being, not merely to modify it.’16Webster, ‘Creation Out of Nothing,’ 130. ‘The one who creates all things also creates knowledge of his creative work’ (132). The concept eludes us because it refers to an event that is the basic prerequisite and fundamental condition of all human experience.  Therefore, it is by definition an event which cannot be experienced by us. Hence the Creator’s challenge: ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding’ (Job 38:4).

The Creator’s Absolute Supremacy

In the Bible, then, God’s position is presented as peerless, as absolute, and as the exclusive source of everything other than himself: ‘For from him and through him and to him are all things’ (Rom 11:36; cf. John 1:3; Rom 4:17; Eph 3:9). The world is not eternal. It is not necessary. It did not have to exist. Space, time, and matter, being aspects of the created order, have an absolute beginning. Only God is eternal, everlasting, and unoriginated. That is to say, the Creator, ‘the pinnacle of being,’17William Lane Craig, God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (Oxford University Press, 2016), 2. is alone without beginning. He was present before the mountains were born, and before the earth and the world were formed (Psa 90:2).

Creation ‘out of nothing’18The expression seems first to have appeared in 2 Maccabees 7:28 (variously dated, c. 2nd century BC – 1 century AD). The differences between the understanding of Jewish theology and early Christianity is presented in a study of origins by Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of “Creation Out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought (T&T Clark, 1994, 2004), xi, 6-7, 16. signals an essential distinction between God and the world. It affirms that God’s is an absolutely and utterly unique status. The God of the Bible is the only Creator, and he alone ‘is to be conceived as the sole ultimate reality, the Creator of all things apart from Himself’.19Craig, God Over All, 206. God makes space for creatures and for every place and part of the cosmos, all of which spring forth out of nothing, nothing that is, other than God’s sheer determination that they be. Creation out of nothing expresses and safeguards ‘the omnipotence and freedom of God acting in history.’20May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, 180. Such is God’s effortless supremacy as Creator, that out of sheer goodness he invites, admits, and welcomes into being another reality besides his own eternal perfection. God’s work of creation is completely independent and unaided. In the act of creation out of nothing God works alone, by himself, without assistance, instantaneously, in a moment (Isa 44:24).21Ambrose, Hexameron, 1.1.3; Basil, Hexameron, 1.6. The origin and continuance of all things is nothing other than God’s announcement: God’s word of command that it be so. That creation commences by God’s spoken command expresses the Creator’s freedom, determination, and forethought.

Creation is effortless for God in the sense that he does not create in the face of opposition, in the course of conflict with rival forces. Creation by God involves no engagement with adversary or enemy.22‘God acts “against nothing”: God is infinitely and an antecedently capable, and so beyond contest or exertion’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 141). In addition, creation does not involve God’s crafting or ordering of pre-existent matter or reality. It is the absolute beginning of all things apart from God. There was no pre-existing material. Besides God, everything which now has being was absent and nonexistent.23‘The act of creation is the beginning of all other being and action, not an act alongside or on them’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 141). Everything that now exists was made by God from what did not previously exist. ‘[C]reation is the production of a thing in its entire substance, without presupposing anything, either uncreated or created.’24Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.65.3; Basic Writings of St Thomas Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis, 1:614. This is what it is to create, to be the Creator. Creatorship is not craftmanship. In creation, God does not work with what is already there. He begins with absolutely nothing whatsoever.

God Spoke Creation into Being

Heaven and earth and all that is in them were established solely on the basis of God’s power, wisdom, understanding, and speech (Jer 10:12-13). The uncreated God speaks, issues a command, and all created things gain the total content of their existence and life. ‘By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. … For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm’ (Gen 1:3; Psa 33:6, 9; Isa 48:13).  God alone can achieve this. The breath of God, furthermore, is said to have directly shaped the initial individual human being, calling the first self-conscious man and woman out of dust to exercise responsible dominion over the non-human creatures (Gen 2:7).25Cf. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Volume 1: Lectures on Genesis. Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Concordia, 1958), 55-65. God is one who speaks. Indeed, in Scripture God is the first speaker. From the beginning, it is the Word of God which constitutes the created world. ‘When he utters his voice there is a tumult … in the heavens’ (Jer 10:13). The voice of God is the creative basis of reality. The language of God is the foundation of all created life. It is God’s speech that defines and determines the world. The initial existence and continuation of all things involves God’s Word. Everything besides God exists because God chose to speak things into being. The Word of God is inherently creative and completely definitive for all aspects of reality. Creation is by definition that which is addressed by God. ‘If the Word is spoken, all things are possible … through this rule of language those things that are impossible become very easy.’26Luther, Lectures on Genesis, LW1:49. God spoke reality into existence and there is no greater determining reality than God’s Word.

Life-Giving Power to Create and Recreate

It is more than noteworthy that in Romans 4:17 the concept of creation ex nihilo (‘out of nothing’), of God calling ‘into existence the things that do not exist’, is linked to God’s power in resurrection, ‘[giving] life to the dead.’ But that is to get ahead of ourselves. The writer to the Hebrews captures the present matter most incisively: ‘By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible’ (Heb 11:3). God’s act of creation is the introduction of being entirely.27‘It must be said that everything, that in any way is, is from God’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.45.1; Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, 1:427). In creation out of nothing, God first produces and subsequently orders all things. Being life in himself, God bestows life to others.

In addition to God’s obvious ownership and direct responsibility, a number of other entailments follow from teaching about the creation of all things apart from God out of nothing, nothing that is, other than the verbal expression of God’s personal will and determination.

(1) The universe does not have to exist. Only God exists necessarily. Creation is contingent. Life and identity may not be taken for granted. They are pure gift.

(2) God has no need for the world and its creatures. However, far from being arbitrary (without reason) or born from some lack in God, creatures are the result of God’s free generosity. Indeed, God’s total, unfettered freedom combined with God’s staggering, unbounded goodness determine reality.  He creates out of an overflowing fullness, from an excess of life-giving energy and love, and not because he requires the world to be himself fulfilled. Although it is God’s intention is that the world serves his gracious purpose, the world neither enhances nor completes God’s life.  We do not add to him anything that was previously lacking. Having said this, without making up something that is deficient, creation does become ingredient in God’s glory. We shall return to this.

(3) There is an absolute, complete, infinite difference between Creator and creature. God (as uncreated) and the world (as created) are two entirely distinct levels of reality.  God is not the same as the universe and the existence of the universe is utterly distinguished from the being of God. There is a universality to God’s work of creation. Everything that is not God is produced by him: ‘the Bible knows only two categories of being: God and what God made. … All is either God or from God.’28Joel R. Beeke, ‘The Universality of the Work of Creation’, Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Man and Christ (Crossway, 2020), chapter 2. From this follows God’s unique position of absolute power, all-embracing dominion regarding all things other than God.

(4) The infinite distinction between God and the world which came forth by God’s Word out of nothing tells us that the world and everything in it is not divine.  God did not create the world out of himself.  Nor is the world part of God. Even as God remains constantly active within and continually related to creation, he is above us, ‘over all the earth’ (Psa 47:2), transcending infinitely the world that he has made. 

(5) Creatures are entirely dependent on their Creator. The German philosopher Friedrich Schelling observed: ‘It seems universal that every creature which cannot contain itself or draw itself together in its own fullness, draws itself together outside itself.’29Cited by Slavoj Žižek, ‘Selfhood as Spirit’, in Radical Evil, ed. Joan Copec (Verso, 1996), 3. The first part of Schelling’s remark is true: we only become mature creatures by going outside ourselves. But the second part is at best half-true, for a creature can never truly or fully ‘draw itself together.’ Our life as creatures ‘out of nothing’ is gifted, received entirely from outside of ourselves.  People owe the origin, middle, and end of their existence to their Creator. The Triune God is that upon which everything else depends. Creatures come into and continue in existence at his pleasure rather than from their own resources: ‘It is he who made us, and not we ourselves.’ (Psa 100:3). As some would have it, though, the very idea of pure gift, conceived of as ‘no strings attached,’ is problematic. For ‘the moment a gift is recognized by the other as such, as gift, it is no longer a pure gift but is already caught in the logic of exchange.’30Žižek, ‘Selfhood as Spirit’, 7. However, God’s absolute authority and position in relation to his life-giving work is gratuitous, not despotic or arbitrary but perfectly gracious and good. Biblical wisdom trusts that such giving by God and receiving by creatures, with all associated need and obligation, is in fact inherently appropriate, honorable, and noble. We are in safe hands.

4. THE TRIUNE CREATOR

The Communication of Triune Love

God’s complete sufficiency without creation is the basis of his unreserved commitment and determination to be for, with, and over creation. The eternal communion of Triune relationship comprised by mutual knowledge, love, and honor between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is what God is. Creation is the communication and extension of God’s Triune love, calling into existence creatures that are designed precisely to reflect, share in, and glorify the God who does such wonders.31So it is that ‘[t]he task of the Christian doctrine of creation is rational contemplation of the Holy Trinity in the outward work of love by which God established and ordered creaturely reality, a work issuing from the infinite uncreated and wholly realized movement of God’s inner life in himself’ (Webster, God Without Measure 1, 83). Being Creator is not essential to God’s Fatherhood. ‘God is, and always is, Father, but to create something out of nothing utterly different from himself is an act of his will and freely follows from what he eternally and intrinsically is. … The truth of the matter, then, is that while God was always Father, he was not always Creator or Maker.’32Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, 87. God is God the Father without creativity, without working outside of himself. The eternal generation of God the Son by and from God the Father, and the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from God the Father and from God the Son, show that productivity and movement are inward within the Triune Being of God. Comparing the inner existence of the triune God with his act of creation it may even be said that 

‘Without generation, creation would not be possible. If, in an absolute sense, God could not communicate himself to this Son, he would be even less able, in a relative sense, to communicate himself to his creature. If God were not triune, creation would not be possible.’33Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 269. 

The first principle of creation ‘out of nothing’ is, therefore, the eternal fullness of the Holy Trinity, and teaching about the Trinity is the background and underpinning for teaching about creation.

The Creative Work of Each Divine Person

Teaching about creation then requires Trinitarian exposition. In fact, all God’s works are fashioned by a cooperative tri-personal structure. There is a threefold unity to God’s work of creation, as well as to God’s work of redemption and consummation. Whilst there is personal distinction in every work of God, there is no inequality in the special creative work of each Divine Person, and their respective activity is indivisible.34‘To say that through the Son and the Spirit God the Father makes the heaven and earth is to repeat that God alone acts in creating’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 142). The creativity of the Three is mutually collaborative, coordinated, and co-active, shared among the Father, Son, and Spirit, each playing their particular individual role in God’s undivided operation with what he has made.

Some of God’s works – for instance, incarnation, resurrection, and ascension – terminate particularly on just one of the Three Persons. But all of God’s outward works, all of his actions toward creation (including incarnation), are threefold, with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit expressing themselves in unified yet distinct ways in every external operation. The Three Persons work according to the same will, wisdom, and power, wrote Owen, and ‘all divine operations are usually ascribed to God absolutely.’ ‘Every person … is the author of every work of God, because each person is God … and this ariseth from the unity of the person in the same essence.’ Having said this, Owen continues, ‘there is no divine work but is distinctly assigned to each person.’35John Owen, ‘Pnematologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume3(Murray and Gibb, Printers), 93. Note that the distinct work of each Person does not exclude the other Persons. Rather, the Three Persons are co-active such that when one Person works, they do so according to the influence of the other two Persons.

Creation is Common to Father, Son, and Spirit

Biblical monotheism is totally unique and to be sharply distinguished from other monotheisms, in crediting creation out of nothing – the origin of all things – to the common yet differentiated work of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.36See the discussion by Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, chapter 8. Genesis 1 itself presents a threefold character and structure to God’s creative work: (1) command, that is immediate, direct, spoken, that calls into being from nothing without pre-existing material; (2) formation, that is moulding, separating, shaping of what has been brought into existence; and (3) influence, whereby development and growth is built into the actual nature of creatures themselves. Furthermore, the text clearly distinguishes God, and God’s speech, and God’s Spirit. The overall character of God’s creativity is depicted as communicative, deliberative, personal, relational, unified yet diverse and plural.37Letham, Systematic Theology, 275-77.

Although God the Father is the initiating principle of all in God and the initiating source of all creation, the Father created the world through the Son together with the Spirit. Thus, the Nicene-Constantinoplitan Creed (AD 381) attributes the work of God in creation ‘of all things visible and invisible’ not only to the Father, but also to the Son by whom ‘all things were made,’ and to the Holy Spirit, who is named ‘Lord and Life-Giver’. God does not create by way of any intermediary or instrument, including angels.38This matter was discussed definitively by Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.2, Anti-Nicene Fathers 1, 361; and 4.20, 487. God himself creates through his Son (John 1:3; 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16; Heb 1:3; cf. Rev 3:14) and through his Spirit (Gen 1:2; Psa 33:6; 104:30). To create, therefore, ‘is common to the whole Trinity. … God the Father made the creature through His Word, which is his Son; and through His Love, which is the Holy Ghost … who quickens what is created by the Father through the Son.’39Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.45.6; ed. Ave Maria, 237-38.

The Unique Contribution of Each Divine Person

The unique contribution of each Divine Person in the creation of the cosmos may – in drastic summary – be expressed something like this:

The Father’s particular work in creation is to originate, purpose, intend, will, direct, ground, generate, and author. The Father is the beginning of God’s creative work. ‘It is the Father from whom everything that exists has been formed.’40Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, 2.6; trans. Stephen McKenna (The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 39. ‘[T]he Father of the Logos [Word] was the primary Creator because he commanded his Son the Logos to create the world.’41Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 375. God the Almighty Father is the one from whom all created things issue and to whom all the creatures are directed.

The Son’s special creative role is executive and performative.42Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 270. The Son is the one by whom all things ‘in heaven and on earth’ were created (Col 1:16). Being God’s Word and Wisdom – the Son is the Mediator of creation, the one through whom and for whom God the Father communicates, expressing his thoughts and understanding. The Son is not an intermediary between God and the world. Nor is he an instrument with which God creates. The Son is ‘the immediate Creator and … direct Maker of the world.’43Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Chadwick, 375. As the Person who mediates between God and the world, the Son is both the source of created life and the one to arrange, form, fashion, and organise all creation in tune with the Father’s determination, including human creatures after God’s image and likeness. As the God-man, too, God the Son is the point of contact between the Creator and human creatures, serving as a model for the Creator-creature relationship through voluntary loving obedience to the Father’s loving will. The Son’s creative power is clearly exhibited in Christ’s nature and healing miracles. Union with the Son is said to be the goal of all created things (Eph 1:9-10).44‘God’s eternal electing purpose to be God in Christ, governing the cosmos, in union with humanity, is the great underlying theme’ (Letham, Systematic Theology, 290).

The Holy Spirit’s particular work is implementation, putting the work of the Triune God into effective action, operating directly within creation through the immanent, immediate, present exercise of God’s personal power and vitality. The Spirit, as God-in-action energises God’s life-providing activity, by establishing, shaping, and sustaining the world in being, and by empowering the Creator-creature relationship. The Spirit is also the one whose individuality brings creation to its appointed destination in ultimate regeneration and renewal. ‘By the Spirit’s motion, creatures fulfil their natures.’45Webster, God Without Measure,1:97. As with the Son, the Spirit is not an intermediary or an instrument of God’s creativity. In terms of absolute deity and absolute personhood the Holy Spirit is co-equal with the Father and the Son. The Spirit is precisely the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son, and as such he is Lord and God and Life-Giver. By the work of the Holy Spirit, creatures come to life.

Basil of Caesarea liked to refer to the Father as ‘the original cause’, to the Son as ‘the creative cause’, and to the Spirit as ‘the perfecting cause.’46De Spiritu Sancto, 16:38, in Basil: Letters and Select WorksNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2:8, 23. The following sets out the surrounding context of this remarkable statement as follows:

‘When you consider creation I advise you to first think of Him who is the first cause of everything that exists: namely the Father, and then of the Son, who is the creator, and then the Holy Spirit, the perfector. … The Originator of all things is One: He creates through the Son and perfects through the Spirit. The Father’s work is in no way imperfect, since He accomplishes all in all, nor is the Son’s work deficient if it is not completed by the Spirit. The Father creates through His will alone and does not need the Son, yet chooses to work through the Son. Likewise the Son works as the Father’s likeness, and needs no other cooperation, but He chooses to have his work completed through the Spirit. “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the Spirit of His mouth.” [Psa 32:6]’47St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 16:38, trans. David Anderson (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 63. ‘The creation thus proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit in order that, in the Spirit and through the Son, it may return to the Father’ (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 271).

5. THE REASON FOR CREATION

An Arena of Loving Fellowship

A most significant realization grows out of this: that the creation of the world, as a work of the whole Trinity, is a free product of glorious love known and shared eternally among the Three Divine Persons. ‘God’s freedom, including his freedom exercised in the making of all things, is his freedom to enact his counsel or loving purpose.’48Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 139. Creation is determined by God’s love, is derived from God’s love, and is designed as the arena for loving fellowship with him. In this, creation is consequent on God being who he is.

By way of background, the New Testament neatly divides reality into two quite distinct phases:  (1) ‘before the world existed’ (John 17:5), ‘before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:24; Eph 1:4; 1 Pet 1:20; Rev 13:8), ‘before the ages began’ (2 Tim 1:9; Titus 1:2; cf. Gen 1:1; Psa 90:2; Prov 8:22), and (2) ‘from’ or ‘since the foundation of the world’ (Matt 13:35; 25:34; Luke 11:50; Heb 4:3; 9:26; Rev 17:8). God precedes the world, not in the sense that he is logically prior to the world, but God is temporally prior to creation, for time itself is created by God in the beginning. God is, from our perspective before all time, for ‘there was never a “time” when time did not exist.’49Augustine, Confessions 11:13; trans. Boulding, 295. The universe was not created ‘in time, but with time.’50Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 272; referring to Augustine’s discussion of the creation of the world and the beginning of time and space as being simultaneous with one another, in The City of God, 11.4-6; cf. 12:15-17. Before creation, from our perspective, when God existed alone, his activity, energy, and love, were totally contained within himself, ceaselessly moving between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who together shared perfect fulfilment, honour, satisfaction, and glory. God did not call the universe into existence in order to supply something lacking in his being. Neither did God create so as to complement or congratulate himself. Why then is there something rather than nothing? Why did the world come to be? For what reason did God sent history in motion? ‘Why did it please the eternal God to make the heavens and the earth, when He had not made them before?’51Augustine, The City of God, 11.4; trans. Dyson, 452.

To Richly Bless in Love

Biblical teaching responds with insistence upon the sovereign counsel, decree, deliberation, ideas, mind, and will of God, alongside an equally strong insistence upon God’s design and purpose to richly bless in love (Eph 1:4-10). The decisions of God are hardly arbitrary. In biblical teaching, creation cannot be comprehended apart from the God of love or understood apart from the love of God. With the wisdom and kindness which flow from love, the Triune God wished to communicate his goodness by giving himself in companionship and fellowship, ‘especially to the intelligent creatures, as their absolute good and for their possession and enjoyment.’52Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (repr. Wipf & Stock, 2007), 195. In other words, God wished to bring into existence creatures ‘which would enjoy his benefits and share in his goodness.’53John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 2.2; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2.9, 18b. The broader paragraph is worth recall: ‘Since, then, God, Who is good and more than good, did not find satisfaction in self-contemplation, but in His exceeding goodness wished certain things to come into existence which would enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness, He brought all things out of nothing into being and created them, both what is invisible and what is visible. Yea, even man, who is a compound of the visible and the invisible. And it is by thought that He creates, and thought is the basis of the work, the Word filling it and the Spirit perfecting it.’ The Triune God’s identity and character, supremely blessed and infinitely satisfied, is such that it is almost inconceivable that he should not share the happiness of such a life with others beside himself. Holy love and fellowship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God’s essential nature, and the outgoing, creative love of God is the ethical and moral context of all God’s works and the reality upon which all created things are established. The One true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, elected to create out of love and for love, from abundant freedom rather than needy necessity, born of a desire to share his own eternal happiness by bringing endless and rich blessing to those who are not himself (Eph 1:4-5). That blessing is to live together a life of loving fellowship with each other and him, of relationships characterised by selfless love that seeks the good of the other.

We can see this intent by God in the creation narrative. He made us in his own image and likeness. In the context of Genesis 1 and 2, and its later deployment to describe Jesus Christ and his redemptive work (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15, 3:10; Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18), the meaning of ‘the image of God’ is multifaceted. In Genesis it at least means our moral ability to say ‘yes’ to the commands of God and ‘no’ to the deceits of the devil (Gen 2:15-17, 3:1-24). And we also image God in our sovereignty over creation, for he has made us vice-regents over the rest of the material creation (Gen 1:26). But a third meaning is also present, in the structure of Genesis 1:26-27 and in the narrative that follows.

In Genesis 1:26 the image of God (singular) corresponds to the ‘internal’ plural of God, and yet is a single image. By contrast, in verse 27 the singular and plural are distributed in the opposite way.  God (singular) created the human being (singular), as man and women (plural) he created them (plural).  Here the human plural corresponds to the divine plural. Here, it is man and woman, Adam and Eve, together who are in God’s image. And as the continuing narrative shows, and restoration of that image by the person and work of Christ, this means not just a differentiation in relationship, but also the wealth of relationship in the differentiation,54Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM, 1985), 223. lives which seek to serve each other as men and women, in mutual love. That is, humankind only relates to God as persons-in-fellowship (read Luke 10:25-28, 1 John 2:7-10 ff.). We have been created for relationship. That is how we ‘image’ him. Within God himself fellowship is between the Persons and Relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the human situation fellowship is between male and female, and thus as this foundation in Genesis expands, between all human beings.  The link then between ‘the us’ as the image of God and God himself is fellowship; fellowship not in the abstract, but fellowship in the way God has decreed it.

 Out of gracious holy love God has created us in his image, for relationships of love and service with each other and him.

6. GOD’S MOTIVE IN CREATING THE UNIVERSE

The Value of Sacrificial Love

Having said this, creation is not a sufficient final end in and of itself. God did not decide to create purely for the sake of people. God elected to create the world in love for the purpose of his own glory, which is centred on his Son, ‘the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him (Col 1:15-17).’ Creation is Christ-centred, and thus God-centred. Hence the great importance of redemption in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, in which, through his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and present heavenly rule all things are being reconciled back to him as their true Saviour and Lord (Col 2:19-20).

In that way we see that God created out of desire to display his love for what it really is: as precisely the sacrificial type of love that serves others and rescues creatures from the consequences of sin and evil at immense and ultimate cost to God himself. Redemption has a strong claim to be an overarching theme of Scripture. As Augustine understood, the Creator ‘foreknew that evil things would arise out of good,’ and that it would then be for ‘his most omnipotent goodness even to do good out of evil things rather than not to allow evil things to be at all.’ Augustine is saying that God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to not permit any evil to exist. ‘[T]he God and Lord of all things,’ Augustine explained, ‘so ordained the life of angels and men that in it he might first of all show what their freedom was capable of, and then what the kindness of his grace and the judgment of his righteousness was capable of.’55Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1:5, 482. In another place, Augustine expands the insight: ‘As the Supreme Good, he made good use of evil deeds … In their very act of going against his will, his will was thereby accomplished. … [I]n a strange and ineffable fashion even that which is done against his [God’s] will is not done without his will. For it would not be done without his allowing it – and surely his permission is not unwilling but willing – nor would he who is good allow the evil to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out of evil’ (Augustine, Enchiridion, 26; trans. A. C. Outler (The Westminster Press, 1955), 399). Cf. Great Truths, ‘The Origin of Sin.’ The outward love of God for creation is essentially redemptive love, and the chief aim of God in creation is directly and immediately linked to God’s final goal of complete redemption.

The Glory of Redemptive Love

It is particularly the glory of God’s redemptive love that is praised and celebrated when Scripture regularly and repeatedly speaks of the manifestation of God’s glory as the overarching goal and ultimate motivation in all his works and ways (Isa 43:7; Rom 11:36 etc). For to the reason of love, we must add the motivation of honor and glory. God fashioned creation ‘out of nothing, to the glory of his majesty.’56Tertullian, Apology, 17; trans. Gerald H. Kendall (Harvard University Press, repr. 1977), 87.

The greater glory of God has to be conceived and articulated with considerable care.  It is not, to be sure, mere self-satisfaction, self-interest, or self-aggrandizement. Rather, when God’s glory is understood as the manifestation of God’s goodness and greatness in redemptive, sin-bearing, wrath-averting love in Christ, then God’s greater glory clearly includes human happiness and mysteriously may even be enhanced by it. The glory of God and the blessing of creatures are not opposed, for in pursuing his glory God accomplishes our glory by communicating and sharing his own supreme excellence with us.

God’s essence is, far from selfish, exactly love and friendship between Three infinite Persons. His express intention is that human creatures be drawn into permanent contact with that love and friendship. The original motive and ultimate goal, the end for which God created the world, is then God’s glory – the demonstration of his incomparable value – through human flourishing. ‘God’s honor does not diminish human honor and value but enhances it.’57Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 273. Indeed, the glory of God achieves and establishes human happiness. We reach and express that friendship, our human happiness, when we call upon, submit, and love God truly, as ‘our Father’, in Jesus Christ, his Son, our elder brother (Heb 2:5-18).

The Glory of God in the Everlasting Happiness of his People

This matter was captured impressively by Jonathan Edwards. ‘God’s glory and the creature’s good [ought not] to be spoken of as if they were properly and entirely distinct,’ he wrote. Doing so would assume that ‘God’s having respect to his glory and the communication of God to his creatures, are things altogether different.’ But this is not so, for ‘God in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures: because the emanation of his glory … implies the communicated excellency and happiness of his creature. … God in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself: and in seeking himself … he seeks their glory and happiness.’58Jonathan Edwards, ‘Concerning the End for which God Created the World’, Works of Jonathan Edwards [Yale WJE], 8:458-59. As Edwards has it, God creates out of self-regard, and because God values himself, he both seeks and ‘delights in the knowledge and love and joy of the creature.’ Moreover, God ‘aims to satisfy his infinite grace or benevolence, by the bestowment of a good infinitely valuable, because eternal.’59Edwards, WJE 8:533.

So, the glory of God is to be supremely displayed in the everlasting happiness of his people, established upon the infinite value of Christ’s blood-bought sacrificial death and resurrection. ‘To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood … to him be glory and dominion forever and ever’ (Rev 1:5-6; cf. 5:9; 19:13). But there is a shadow side to this, again ably expressed by Edwards, a dark, tragic, tormented counterpart to everlasting felicity.  For the glory of God is manifested also by the satisfaction of God’s retributive ‘justice in the eternal damnation of sinners.’60Edwards, WJE 8:536. We shall have to return to this particular matter in due course.

7. THE GOODNESS OF CREATION

Essential Excellence

God is not solitary but characterized by reciprocal glory and interpersonal love. To identify the nature of creation as a product of God’s holy love, and to discern God’s chief motivation in creating as the extension of his glory, may be amplified by consideration of God’s goodness. Via the idea of creation, there is in fact a strong connection between teaching about God’s fullness of life in himself and God’s complete and necessary goodness.

In the first instance we recall that each aspect of the world created by God was pronounced ‘good’, without qualification, and cumulatively, ‘very good’ (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). Much of the goodness ascribed to the various elements and dimensions of the created order is bound up with the astonishing complexity, diversity, unity, and richness of what God made.61‘There is the most profuse diversity, and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation of both diversity and unity is God’ (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:435-436). There is an inherent and natural goodness to everything created purely by virtue of being created rather than not being created, by virtue of having existence rather than remaining non-existent. Later it becomes disordered and damaged, but heaven and earth did not originate in plight or emerge from chaos. Now the world we inhabit has a staggering capacity for harm, loss, destruction, and death.  Yet at the beginning all, including humanity, was repeatedly declared by God to be ‘very good’, i.e. it was most excellent. That there are created things which exist that are ‘very good,’ signals that their Creator must be essentially and supremely good, indeed, who must be goodness in itself, the original operating cause of all good, and so the good of all good.62Augustine, The Trinity, 8.3, and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.6.1, as expounded by Paul Helm, ‘Goodness,’ in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, eds. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, 199), 244.

God’s Perfect Goodness

Biblical teaching avoids the worship of nature by attributing the goodness of created things to the goodness of their Creator. The goodness of creation proceeds from the perfect goodness of God and indeed shares in it. Here is Augustine:

‘Solely by your abundant goodness has your creation come to be and stood firm, for you did not want so good a thing to be missing. It could be of no profit to you, nor equal to yourself as though proceeding from your own substance, yet there was the possibility of it existing as your creation.’63Saint Augustine, The Confessions, Book XIII.2.2; trans. M. Boulding, ed. J. Rotelle (New York, NY: New City Press, 1997), 343.

And again, in alternative translation:

‘Your creation has its being from the fullness of your goodness. In consequence a good which confers no benefit on you, and which not being from you yourself is not on your level, can nevertheless have its existence caused by you and so will not lack being.’64Augustine, Confessions, XIII.2.2; trans. John Webster, God Without Measure, 1:92.

The older versions translate God’s ‘fullness’ or ‘abundance’ of perfect goodness as ‘plenitude’, i.e., an unimaginable reserve, resource, degree, and level of goodness and generosity.  Plenitude means that God’s nature overflows infinitely with a super-abundance of supremely gracious plenty, plenty that is at once delightful, restful, purely satisfied, tranquil, and in a sense utterly effortless.

Creation Reflects the Creator’s Perfect Goodness

God’s goodness is transparently communicative. Creation is capable of receiving and representing that communicated goodness. Creation is good because it shares in the Creator’s goodness. Creation’s goodness is not complete or self-reliant but finite and dependent. Creation continues in goodness to the extent that it remains in appropriate relation to the character and commands of God’s perfect goodness.

Creation’s initial, primordial, excellence meant that it was inherently marvelous, properly ordered, entirely worthwhile, and fit for its designated purpose.65On original goodness, see Frame, Systematic Theology, 845-48. ‘Very good’ did not, however, mean that creation was a finished project. Even in its original state of stupendous, untarnished grandeur, creation’s goodness did not entail completion, and we know that creation’s original goodness was prone to defection.66‘[C]reation is relatively perfect. It was made very good but destined for fulfilment in the end’ (Letham, Systematic Theology, 279). Rather, what God made was equal to his intention and sufficient to fulfill its potential within his purposes. With all its inconceivable beauty and complexity, the original creation was placed and positioned by God exactly how and where he wanted it. Everything was endowed with the condition, ability, and afforded opportunity to fulfill God’s intentions.  The point is that integral to creation’s original goodness was inbuilt potential for growth, and the expectation of development in every regard: moral, physical, rational, volitional, relational.

Creation reflects God’s perfect goodness, and points to it coming to creatures as a gift. Evil is not then inherent to creation, but an imposter and perverter, the contemptuous abuse of original goodness. Further, astonishing goodness remains, despite horrendous evil.67‘[T]he problem of evil, considered as an issue of logical consistency, is more or less acute depending upon what the moral values which comprise the divine goodness are thought to be. … Perhaps a good God has purposes wider or different from those which are concerned with human happiness (the fulfilment of which is often thought to be the sole criterion of the operation of divine goodness), to which human happiness is subordinate’ (Helm, ‘Goodness’, 248). Although the world has fallen very deeply from its original state of goodness, even within the endless frustration, pain, and intractable difficulties born out of the twisted nature of the world, the genuine goodness of creation continues now.  Moreover, its current tragic condition is not irretrievable. Clearly, there is enormous tension here.  Yet creation’s beauty and harmony at so many levels, despite much irreparable tragedy, are such that it remains an astonishingly good (if profoundly imperfect) world.

8. THE GOODNESS OF MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE

Excellence Applies to all Elements of Creation

Goodness, then, is a property that creation in general and human creatures in particular have, purely on the basis of being created by the God of perfect goodness. Gaining existence through God’s creativity, and having responsible moral character – originally upright, then corrupted, redeemed, and eventually to be perfected – is to benefit from and participate in the Creator’s perfect goodness. This – derived goodness, consequent goodness – is by definition a good thing.68On the metaphysical and moral senses of God’s perfect goodness, to Helm, ‘Goodness,’ 243-49. This applies to all elements and realms of creation.

On the one hand, biblical teaching testifies to the clear value of the material and physical realm. This is not the kind of naturalistic materialism that reckons physical matter and energy to be most basic, even to have eternally existed. Material existence is contingent and temporal. Yet the Creator’s affirmation of material goodness reinforces the utility, value, and – note – the beauty of human physical and bodily life.69‘Now if we ponder to what end God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. Thus the purpose of clothing, apart from necessity, was comeliness and decency. In grasses, trees, and fruits, apart from their various uses, there is beauty of appearance and pleasantness of odor. …. And the natural qualities themselves of things demonstrate sufficiently to what end and extent we may enjoy them. Has the Lord clothed the flowers with great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor? What? Did he not so distinguish colors as to make some more lovely than others? What? Did he not endow gold and silver, ivory and marble, with a loveliness that renders them more precious than other metals and stones? Did he not, in short, render many things attractive to us, apart from their necessary use?’ (Calvin, Institutes, 3.10.2; 720-21).

God Took on Created Human Nature

The strongest possible declaration of material life as valuable is God’s own resolution to take on human nature, engaging with everything physical that comes with it, and to participate first-hand in human history. Exactly because of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, it may be argued that Christianity is the most materialistic of all faiths: ‘the Word became flesh’.70John 1:14. The point is memorably made by William Temple, in Nature, Man, and God; see Thomas Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:258. Here is Justin Martyr, commenting on the value of physical human life:

‘It is evident … that man made in the image of God was of flesh. Is it not, then, absurd to say, that the flesh made by God in His own image is contemptible, and worth nothing? But that the flesh is with God a precious possession is manifest, first from its being formed by Him, if at least the image is valuable to the former and artist; and besides, its value can be gathered from the creation of the rest of the world. For that on account of which the rest is made, is the most precious of all to the maker.’71Justin Martyr, On the Resurrection, Fragments, Chapter VII; Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:495.

Moreover, the physical bodily resurrection of Christ confirms this, and the eventual regeneration of the whole cosmos (including people’s bodies),72Matt 19:28. displays and further reinforces both the inherent and the ultimate worth of bodily human life. The material and visible is not to be worshipped. Neither is it to be rejected or exploited, but appropriately enjoyed, employed, managed, and nurtured.

The Invisible World is Totally Real and Significant

But Christianity is also the most spiritual of faiths, for creation includes God’s generation of ‘heaven,’ the vast spiritual, non-physical, un-bodily world, which for the time being remains (usually) invisible to us. In Scripture, the spiritual world is massively affirmed.  God created sun, earth, water, air, and physically living creatures, and then also human souls, the heavens, angels, principalities and powers, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. Christian teaching about creation asserts therefore the inherent excellence both of matter (against Platonism and Hinduism, for example) and of spirit (against atheist naturalistic materialism). The Genesis creation narrative reaches its climax with the creation of humanity in the image of God as ‘a sort of connecting link between the visible and invisible natures,’ presenting humankind ‘as a unique microcosmic tension,’ coupling these two distinct realms of creation, the material and the spiritual.73Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:258; citing John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 1.12. God created the universe, both material and spiritual, to express and support relationships of loving friendship with him and each other.

9. AN EXCELLENT BEGINNING ASSUMES A MORE EXCELLENT END

Creation Looks Forward to its Conclusion

Leaping ahead, it is of capital importance to register that biblical teaching about creation extends forward into its teaching providence and redemption. The work of God in creation is directed toward a definitive conclusion. The full meaning and significance of the creation of all things by God, and especially the creation of God’s image in human beings, is determined by the eventual outcome, with the completion of God’s original purpose in creation by way of redemption. In fact, the emphatically ‘very good’ beginning by a perfectly good God indicates that there will be a superlative end, for behind the excellent initial achievement lies Divine intention backed up by boundless power and goodness. In and of itself, that is, God’s original commendation of his ‘very good’ creation implies reaching an ultimately greater and stupendous goal despite intervening darkness. ‘To be good is to achieve one’s end.’74Helm, ‘Goodness’, 244.

A Perfectly Good Outcome is Inevitable

A perfectly good outcome, of all God’s works, is inevitable. The dignity and worth with which creation was endowed when originally caused by God carries with it the potential for far greater dignity once completed through re-creation and final perfection. The wonder of the cosmos and the wonder of humanity then is not embedded merely in what originally was or in what actually is a now but is bound up with what the universe and its inhabitants are surely destined to become. Creation is going somewhere. ‘God’s work of creation is not only the production of matter but also the establishment of temporally unfolding fellowship between the creator and Adam’s race.’75Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 136. The beauty, and value of people created after God’s likeness is linked to the endless, expanding possibilities promised by God in the everlasting future. As has been memorably expressed: ‘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.’76Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 464.

The Promised End Helps Us Cope with Present Difficulty

From the beginning – actually, from before the beginning – the great architect of the cosmos has been dedicated to the task of moving all creation, including human creatures, toward perfection. Whilst what God has done in the past builds toward and ensures what he will do in the future, it is equally true that what God has decided that he can best do in the future impacts evaluating the condition and worth of the present. The promised end, the inevitable objective and outcome, may have been much of what caused the ‘morning stars’ and ‘sons of God’ to shout together for joy at the original emergence of the cosmos when God ‘laid the foundation of the earth’ (Job 38:4, 7). Furthermore, genuine estimation of humanity’s dignity and worth cannot be adequately gauged without considered thought about how life is eventually to be experienced in the perfect world which lies ahead. Meditation upon perfectly good created life to come in the future, deep appreciation of God’s final goal with the whole affair, encourages deep understanding for conducting ourselves and directing each other towards it now in the present, caught up as we are in relentless transience, difficulty, dissatisfaction, pain, loss, and death.77Calvin, Institutes, 3.9; 712-19.

10. CREATURES IN RELATION TO THEIR CREATOR

So, the world need not have been, but it is. This most basic of facts actually exceeds human comprehension. Yet despite our comparative smallness and its limits being compounded by sin, we do have true knowledge of and about the world which corresponds to actual reality as well as true knowledge about our place within it. From one perspective, the capacity for rational human intelligence is hard-wired, in-built. From another, true understanding and knowledge comes from outside instruction by God.

Dependence

A first vital feature of created existence is dependence. To speak of creatures is immediately to assume a Creator, and creatures by their very nature depend on their Creator, who does not himself depend upon them. Created life is an effect produced by God. ‘And everything that exists in any way is necessarily from God. … [H]e necessarily causes existing in everything that possesses existing.’78Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 1.68; trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2009), 53-4. The creature owes to its Creator its very existence and its characteristic nature. God’s work of creation is how we, and all things apart from God, came to be. To be a creature is then by definition to be in a relation of radical reliance upon the one who introduced us into existence. We do exist and can exist only and solely in relation to God. ‘[A]ll creatures are ordered to God both as their source and as their end, since the order of the parts of the universe to one another is by the order of the whole universe to God. … [C]reatures are necessarily really related to God, and the relation is something in creatures.’79Thomas Aquinas, The Power of God, 7.9, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2012), 220. Attempting to remove human beings from relation to their Creator is to undo people of their very reason for being, for without relation to God we simply would not be.

Life is a Gift

A second feature of created life is that of gift. Our being is gratuitous, for we did not have to be. Existence cannot therefore be merely assumed, according to right. Creatures are not necessary. That we are here, alive, existing, conscious of being so, and actively engaged in the rich web of experiences, interactions, and relationships we call life, is actually a matter of great surprise, even astonishment. It is also a matter of gratitude, for the Creator’s work is the effect of gracious goodness, willing the benefit of others without regard to their own resources and despite deserving.

Security, Freedom, Rest, Peace, and Happiness

The Book of Revelation recognizes created life as dependent and given through repeated reference – some twenty times – to ‘living creatures’ (Rev 4:6-9; 5:6, 8, 11, 14; 6:1, 3, 5-7; 7:11; 8:9; 14:3; 15:7; 19:4), who ‘give glory and honor and thanks’ to the one ‘seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever’ (Rev 4:9)  and  ‘to the Lamb’ 5:9-14), who has restored us back to the Father. 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 from his. We did not call ourselves into being. We cannot sustain ourselves in existence now or in the future. That our life is, that it is good, and that it remains in goodness, is by and through God’s inestimable goodness and love. It is recognition of God as Creator and Maker that establishes the ground of all ‘security, freedom, rest, peace, and happiness.’80Wilhelmus à Brakel, ‘Exhortation to Meditate Upon the Wonder of God’s Creative Work,’ in The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:277-284; 278. For a creature to assume or attempt to attain independence from its Creator is in fact for the creature to revolt against its Creator and to place itself in absolute jeopardy.  Our rebellion is a flight away from the source of all goodness, the Good God, and thus into chaos, hatred, corruption and death, i.e., evil.81See Athanasius, De Incarnatione, 3-5, in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 138-47. Teaching about creation reinforces faith in God and strengthens confidence in him. Knowing that we receive our very life and being by pure gift from an absolutely good, infinitely powerful Heavenly Father, encourages childlike trust and utter reliance on the one who created humanity according to his image and re-creates us according to the image of his Eternal Son.

11. CREATION AND PROVIDENCE

The Continuing Exercise of God’s Creative Care

Teaching about creation concerns God’s original work, summoning the world into being from nothing, and establishing all aspects of its existence in relation to him. Genesis speaks of God resting from his work of creation to indicate that following the initial six-day period, he ceased bringing new types of things into existence out of nothing (Gen 2:2-3). From this point on, God’s activity moves from creation to preservation and providence. Teaching about providence concerns the continuing exercise of God’s creative care, by and through which he sustains his creatures in the course of their current conditions of existence, directing the world and everything in it toward its ultimate goal and purpose.

Creation is not, as some have taught, continually called into existence from nothing moment by moment. Creation is a completed event, the introduction and production of something entirely new. Yet the ‘absolute initiation’82Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 147. of created existence begins a process to be sustained over the course of time. It is not that God’s work within and toward creation does not continue. There is a sense in which God’s providence – conservation, upholding, government, preservation – is continually creative and new. But the two concepts – creation and providence – are distinct. God’s creative work to which the world is continually open is relatively rather than absolutely different from anything which went before. ‘Creation brings forth existence; preservation is persistence in existence.’83Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 300. Creation references God’s original relationship to the world, whilst providence references God’s continuing relationship to it.

Preservation and Government

These two teachings – that the world originally established by God is kept in continued being by him – are clearly linked in Scripture. We learn, for instance, that ‘heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them,’ were made by the God who now, in this very moment, ‘preserve[s] all of them’ (Neh 9:6). In the present, God ‘himself gives to all mankind like and breath and everything. … In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:25, 28). A similar pattern of thought, moving from God’s original work of creation to his continuing maintenance of creation, is particularly associated with God the Son. ‘By him all things were created … [and] in him all things hold together’ (Col 1:16-17). The Son, we are told, ‘upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Heb 1:3). Behind God’s work in creation and providence there is the conscious purpose of everlasting committed love (Psa 136:4-9). God constantly grants life in the present to everything, without limit. God’s compassion and mercy has an immensity to it, effecting every part of his creation (Psa 145:9); ‘the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD’ (Psa 33:5; also 36:7; 119:64). All such statements are unintelligible without recognition that God’s active care for creation by upholding and direction of humanity are basic.

Providence regards God’s ongoing relationship to the world he has created, whereby what he has made develops and proceeds under his care and government. God ‘directs all the things which He has created in such a way that they may perform and exercise their own proper movements.’84Augustine, The City of God, 7:30; trans. Dyson, 306. It is God’s unremitting action in the present that preserve and governs the life of his creatures in order that they realize the purpose of his designs for them. Providence as upholding is God’s creative power taking care of things in the present in preparation for the future. God’s providential intention is expressed in the form of covenants and promises regarding God’s ways and will and ensures that his creation reaches perfection. In the light of the Fall and the ongoing goodness of God towards his creation it is no surprise that God is first addressed as ‘Providence’ in the context of redemption. As Abraham takes his son Isaac up the mountain for a sacrificial offering, he states: ‘God will provide [‘ELOHIM YIR’EH]’ (Gen 22:8).

‘My Father is working until now,’ Jesus said, ‘and I am working’ (John 5:17). In classic definition, providence is ‘the will of God through which all existing things receive their fitting issue.’85John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2.29; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2.9:41b.  The One who created the world continues to govern and guide the world and all of its inhabitants toward the ends and objectives that he has set. Providence combines God’s knowledge with God’s will and God’s work. It is God’s active determination, acting by preservation and government in advance and anticipation of the future. The structures and processes of physical nature, as well as the vast detail of human history, are directed, regulated, and ordered by God such that things move surely, unceasingly, forward in time such that everything eventually reaches an appropriate outcome. The eternal Kingdom of God will come (Matt 6:10; Rev 11:15; 12:10).

God Provides for the Needs of all His Creatures

Creation then always remains radically dependent upon God’s goodness for its continuing life; it is never self-sufficient.  Human history at large and the personal history of individual people, always comes as a gift, contingent, perpetually reliant on God’s goodness, beginning, middle, and end. Creation and providence each involve the expression of God’s kindness, power, and wisdom. Working with measureless energy, knowledge, and resources, the Creator is comprehensively capable to provide for the needs of his entire creation. This applies to all things in created reality, across heaven and earth, to the natural non-human world, and also to people individually. By virtue of boundless intelligence and inventiveness, God is more than able to devote 

‘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 and his full friendship as though we were his only friend.’86D. B. Knox, Selected Works 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).

The scriptural teaching on providence offers Christian believers great comfort and assurance (Rev 21:1-8).

Omnipotent and Trustworthy

As with all of God’s works, providence is rooted in God’s nature. God’s constancy and faithfulness means that he is committed to deliver whatever is necessary. God’s omnipotence means that he will never be defeated, diverted, or frustrated in doing so. God’s absolute sovereignty is such that he is able arrange all events, whether those he deliberately intends or those he deliberately allows, so that his good and wise plans are satisfactorily fulfilled. The presence of sin and evil in the world means that God’s manner of provision frequently appears to be intermittent, strange, and enigmatic.  Rather than being immediately obvious, his ways and means are often secret – hidden from us – and correspondingly difficult for us to accept or understand. But God’s perfect trustworthiness means that he can be relied upon to operate literally everything for our best ultimate benefit (Rom 8:28). Knowledge of God’s power in providence across the cosmos, counterpart to knowledge of his creative goodness, is designed to arouse gratitude, humility, peace, praise, restfulness, combined with the assurance that eventually, sooner or later, all shall be well.

Always Present and Always Active

Further, God’s providence means that he is always present with his people and active for them. As God’s creatures and especially as God’s children we are placed in a position before him where we may be confident of remaining in his care, permanently. Nothing happens by mere accident. No situation is beyond his reach. No circumstance or event can occur outside of his allowance or without him being aware. God is involved in some way at every point, at all times, in all places. Things are in his hands. Although there are malevolent cosmic powers and chaotic forces at large, human beings are never victims of blind chance.  God is active, present, and aware of everything. He is closer to us than we think and more involved for us than we can conceive. ‘[A] man,’ counselled Calvin,

‘cannot go about unburdened by many forms of his own destruction, and without drawing out a life enveloped, as it were, with death. … 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, I say, is to know that his Heavenly Father so holds all things in his power, so rules by his authority and will, so governs by his wisdom, that nothing can befall except he determine it.’87Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.11; 223-224.

Complete Confidence in the Creator’s Personal Care and Concern

Understanding of God’s work of providence, grasping how he achieves what he does, is much less important than confident recognition that he inevitably does and ultimately will accomplish what he intends and promises. Personal confidence in God’s providential care for creatures guards individuals against unfounded fear and undue anxiety, both in moderately worrying and also in genuinely terrifying circumstances. Calamity, deprivation, threat, however severe, even death itself, cannot divert the Creator’s fundamental care and help (Psa 46:1-3; 91:5-6, 11; 121:2; Isa 37:16-17; Matt 6:25-30; 10:28).

If God can create and conserve the vast expanse of the cosmos, he can undoubtedly be relied upon to protect, provide, restore and renew. The Maker of heaven and earth is One whose blessing may be relied upon unconditionally (Psa 134:3). More broadly, because of the Creator, we may have general confidence in the sustained basic stability, regularity, and bounty of the natural order (Psa 65:9-13). It may be taken on trust that things will go on and continue to operate in the way that they do, season by season. We may quite legitimately expect the future to follow the pattern of the past; ordinarily, the unexpected does not happen.  The objective foundation for these assumptions is the creative providence of God. This is the sole stable basis upon which lives may be built and plans for the future laid. The consummation of God’s creation purposes in the coming of the new heavens and the new earth is assured (Rev 21:1-8).88My heartfelt thanks to Robert Doyle for comments and improvements on an earlier version.

  • 1
    Gen 1:1.
  • 2
    John Calvin, Institutes,1.15.5; Battles, 191.
  • 3
    Anselm, Proslogion, 5; in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited with an introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 1998), 89.
  • 4
    St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 17; trans. St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (1944), 45.
  • 5
    Webster, God Without Measure,1:89. It is common to distinguish between the inner works of God and the outward works of God. God’s internal works are the divine processions, the eternal generation of the Son and the breathing out of the Spirit. God’s external works are directed outside of himself toward what is not God in nature and grace (Webster, ‘Creation Out of Nothing,’ in Christian Dogmatics, eds. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Zondervan, 2016), 127-28).
  • 6
    Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 5.3.13; 1:440.
  • 7
    Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 138.
  • 8
    ‘[T]he doctrine of creation is first a doctrine of the creator … to contemplate the work is to contemplate the worker in his work’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 139).
  • 9
    Peter Cotterell, This is Christianity. Revised edition (OMF, 1997), 5.
  • 10
    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2.6; trans. Anderson, 36. 
  • 11
    ‘God’s truth is known in several ways through the things which are made. Indeed, from the perpetuity of creatures, the Creator is understood to be eternal; from the greatness of creatures, all-powerful; from their order and disposition, wise; from his governance over them, good’ (Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 1.3.1.6; trans. Guilio Silano (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007), 20).
  • 12
    Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.1; 52.
  • 13
    Cf. ‘Have we all not one Father? Has not one God created us?’ (Mal 2:10).
  • 14
    May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, 180.
  • 15
    ‘It is a great and most rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole corporeal and incorporeal creation and found it mutable, to pass beyond it by effort of mind and arrive at the immutable substance of God, there to learn from God himself that nature which is not what God is has been made by him alone’ (Augustine, The City of God, 11.2; trans. Dyson, 450).
  • 16
    Webster, ‘Creation Out of Nothing,’ 130. ‘The one who creates all things also creates knowledge of his creative work’ (132).
  • 17
    William Lane Craig, God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (Oxford University Press, 2016), 2.
  • 18
    The expression seems first to have appeared in 2 Maccabees 7:28 (variously dated, c. 2nd century BC – 1 century AD). The differences between the understanding of Jewish theology and early Christianity is presented in a study of origins by Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of “Creation Out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought (T&T Clark, 1994, 2004), xi, 6-7, 16.
  • 19
    Craig, God Over All, 206.
  • 20
    May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, 180.
  • 21
    Ambrose, Hexameron, 1.1.3; Basil, Hexameron, 1.6.
  • 22
    ‘God acts “against nothing”: God is infinitely and an antecedently capable, and so beyond contest or exertion’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 141).
  • 23
    ‘The act of creation is the beginning of all other being and action, not an act alongside or on them’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 141).
  • 24
    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.65.3; Basic Writings of St Thomas Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis, 1:614.
  • 25
    Cf. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Volume 1: Lectures on Genesis. Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Concordia, 1958), 55-65.
  • 26
    Luther, Lectures on Genesis, LW1:49.
  • 27
    ‘It must be said that everything, that in any way is, is from God’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.45.1; Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, 1:427).
  • 28
    Joel R. Beeke, ‘The Universality of the Work of Creation’, Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Man and Christ (Crossway, 2020), chapter 2.
  • 29
    Cited by Slavoj Žižek, ‘Selfhood as Spirit’, in Radical Evil, ed. Joan Copec (Verso, 1996), 3.
  • 30
    Žižek, ‘Selfhood as Spirit’, 7.
  • 31
    So it is that ‘[t]he task of the Christian doctrine of creation is rational contemplation of the Holy Trinity in the outward work of love by which God established and ordered creaturely reality, a work issuing from the infinite uncreated and wholly realized movement of God’s inner life in himself’ (Webster, God Without Measure 1, 83).
  • 32
    Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, 87.
  • 33
    Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 269.
  • 34
    ‘To say that through the Son and the Spirit God the Father makes the heaven and earth is to repeat that God alone acts in creating’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 142).
  • 35
    John Owen, ‘Pnematologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume3(Murray and Gibb, Printers), 93.
  • 36
    See the discussion by Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, chapter 8.
  • 37
    Letham, Systematic Theology, 275-77.
  • 38
    This matter was discussed definitively by Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.2, Anti-Nicene Fathers 1, 361; and 4.20, 487.
  • 39
    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.45.6; ed. Ave Maria, 237-38.
  • 40
    Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, 2.6; trans. Stephen McKenna (The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 39.
  • 41
    Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 375.
  • 42
    Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 270.
  • 43
    Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Chadwick, 375.
  • 44
    ‘God’s eternal electing purpose to be God in Christ, governing the cosmos, in union with humanity, is the great underlying theme’ (Letham, Systematic Theology, 290).
  • 45
    Webster, God Without Measure,1:97.
  • 46
    De Spiritu Sancto, 16:38, in Basil: Letters and Select WorksNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2:8, 23.
  • 47
    St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 16:38, trans. David Anderson (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 63. ‘The creation thus proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit in order that, in the Spirit and through the Son, it may return to the Father’ (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 271).
  • 48
    Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 139.
  • 49
    Augustine, Confessions 11:13; trans. Boulding, 295.
  • 50
    Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 272; referring to Augustine’s discussion of the creation of the world and the beginning of time and space as being simultaneous with one another, in The City of God, 11.4-6; cf. 12:15-17.
  • 51
    Augustine, The City of God, 11.4; trans. Dyson, 452.
  • 52
    Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (repr. Wipf & Stock, 2007), 195.
  • 53
    John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 2.2; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2.9, 18b. The broader paragraph is worth recall: ‘Since, then, God, Who is good and more than good, did not find satisfaction in self-contemplation, but in His exceeding goodness wished certain things to come into existence which would enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness, He brought all things out of nothing into being and created them, both what is invisible and what is visible. Yea, even man, who is a compound of the visible and the invisible. And it is by thought that He creates, and thought is the basis of the work, the Word filling it and the Spirit perfecting it.’
  • 54
    Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM, 1985), 223.
  • 55
    Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1:5, 482. In another place, Augustine expands the insight: ‘As the Supreme Good, he made good use of evil deeds … In their very act of going against his will, his will was thereby accomplished. … [I]n a strange and ineffable fashion even that which is done against his [God’s] will is not done without his will. For it would not be done without his allowing it – and surely his permission is not unwilling but willing – nor would he who is good allow the evil to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out of evil’ (Augustine, Enchiridion, 26; trans. A. C. Outler (The Westminster Press, 1955), 399). Cf. Great Truths, ‘The Origin of Sin.’
  • 56
    Tertullian, Apology, 17; trans. Gerald H. Kendall (Harvard University Press, repr. 1977), 87.
  • 57
    Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 273.
  • 58
    Jonathan Edwards, ‘Concerning the End for which God Created the World’, Works of Jonathan Edwards [Yale WJE], 8:458-59.
  • 59
    Edwards, WJE 8:533.
  • 60
    Edwards, WJE 8:536.
  • 61
    ‘There is the most profuse diversity, and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation of both diversity and unity is God’ (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:435-436).
  • 62
    Augustine, The Trinity, 8.3, and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.6.1, as expounded by Paul Helm, ‘Goodness,’ in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, eds. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, 199), 244.
  • 63
    Saint Augustine, The Confessions, Book XIII.2.2; trans. M. Boulding, ed. J. Rotelle (New York, NY: New City Press, 1997), 343.
  • 64
    Augustine, Confessions, XIII.2.2; trans. John Webster, God Without Measure, 1:92.
  • 65
    On original goodness, see Frame, Systematic Theology, 845-48.
  • 66
    ‘[C]reation is relatively perfect. It was made very good but destined for fulfilment in the end’ (Letham, Systematic Theology, 279).
  • 67
    ‘[T]he problem of evil, considered as an issue of logical consistency, is more or less acute depending upon what the moral values which comprise the divine goodness are thought to be. … Perhaps a good God has purposes wider or different from those which are concerned with human happiness (the fulfilment of which is often thought to be the sole criterion of the operation of divine goodness), to which human happiness is subordinate’ (Helm, ‘Goodness’, 248).
  • 68
    On the metaphysical and moral senses of God’s perfect goodness, to Helm, ‘Goodness,’ 243-49.
  • 69
    ‘Now if we ponder to what end God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. Thus the purpose of clothing, apart from necessity, was comeliness and decency. In grasses, trees, and fruits, apart from their various uses, there is beauty of appearance and pleasantness of odor. …. And the natural qualities themselves of things demonstrate sufficiently to what end and extent we may enjoy them. Has the Lord clothed the flowers with great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor? What? Did he not so distinguish colors as to make some more lovely than others? What? Did he not endow gold and silver, ivory and marble, with a loveliness that renders them more precious than other metals and stones? Did he not, in short, render many things attractive to us, apart from their necessary use?’ (Calvin, Institutes, 3.10.2; 720-21).
  • 70
    John 1:14. The point is memorably made by William Temple, in Nature, Man, and God; see Thomas Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:258.
  • 71
    Justin Martyr, On the Resurrection, Fragments, Chapter VII; Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:495.
  • 72
    Matt 19:28.
  • 73
    Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:258; citing John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 1.12.
  • 74
    Helm, ‘Goodness’, 244.
  • 75
    Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 136.
  • 76
    Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 464.
  • 77
    Calvin, Institutes, 3.9; 712-19.
  • 78
    Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 1.68; trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2009), 53-4.
  • 79
    Thomas Aquinas, The Power of God, 7.9, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford University Press, 2012), 220.
  • 80
    Wilhelmus à Brakel, ‘Exhortation to Meditate Upon the Wonder of God’s Creative Work,’ in The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:277-284; 278.
  • 81
    See Athanasius, De Incarnatione, 3-5, in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 138-47.
  • 82
    Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 147.
  • 83
    Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 300.
  • 84
    Augustine, The City of God, 7:30; trans. Dyson, 306.
  • 85
    John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2.29; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2.9:41b.
  • 86
    D. B. Knox, Selected Works 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).
  • 87
    Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.11; 223-224.
  • 88
    My heartfelt thanks to Robert Doyle for comments and improvements on an earlier version.

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