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Course 8 · Lesson 6.1

Creation in Scripture

13 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 8 outline

Module 1: Speaking About God

  1. What systematic theology is and what it can claim
  2. Naming God: analogy, negation and the limits of language
  3. Classical theism defined and compared with alternatives
  4. Beyond the world and present in it: transcendence and immanence

Module 2: The Classical Attributes

  1. Divine simplicity: God is not made of parts
  2. Divine immutability: does God change?
  3. Divine eternity: timeless or everlasting?
  4. Divine omniscience and human freedom

Module 3: The Trinity in Scripture and the Early Church

  1. One God: the Shema and the Old Testament background
  2. Father, Son and Spirit in the New Testament
  3. Early Trinitarian language: Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian
  4. Two early errors: modalism and subordinationism

Module 4: Arius, Athanasius and Nicaea

  1. What Arius taught and why it spread
  2. The Council of Nicaea in 325 and the word homoousios
  3. The long fight after Nicaea and the role of Athanasius
  4. Constantinople in 381 and the deity of the Holy Spirit

Module 5: The Cappadocians and the Shape of Trinitarian Thought

  1. One ousia, three hypostases: the Cappadocian vocabulary
  2. Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa
  3. Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. The filioque and the monarchy of the Father

Module 6: Creation from Nothing

  1. Creation in Scripture
  2. Rivals to creation from nothing: eternal matter and emanation
  3. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo and its development
  4. Creation, the goodness of matter and the Trinity

Module 7: Providence, Sovereignty and Evil

  1. Providence: preservation, concurrence and governance
  2. Divine sovereignty and human freedom across the traditions
  3. The problem of evil: logical and evidential forms
  4. Christian responses: free will, privation and the suffering God
  5. Evaluating the responses and living with what remains unanswered

All courses

Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 6.1

What you will learn

  • Identify the main biblical texts on creation in the Old and New Testaments and the themes they share.
  • Read Genesis 1 and 2 in the setting of the ancient Near East and see what the text emphasizes.
  • Describe the main Christian ways of interpreting the days of Genesis 1 without treating one as the only possible Christian view.
  • Distinguish what Scripture says about creation from what later doctrine adds.

The big idea

The Bible’s accounts of creation are mainly about who made the world and why, not about the technical mechanisms. Genesis 1 presents God speaking the world into order in a series of days, calling it good, and making human beings in his image. Other texts, from the Psalms to John 1, celebrate God’s act of creating by his word, wisdom or Son. The texts agree that God is the only maker, that the world is good, and that it is dependent on God. They are read in different ways, especially concerning how the days of Genesis relate to the age of the earth.

Key terms

Bara
A Hebrew verb for create. In the Old Testament its subject is always God.
Tohu wa bohu
Hebrew words in Genesis 1:2 translated in the King James Version without form, and void. They describe a state of emptiness or disorder.
Ancient Near East
The setting of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Canaan and nearby regions in which the Old Testament was written.
Enuma Elish
A Babylonian poem about the creation of the world from the body of a slain goddess, often compared with Genesis 1.
Image of God
The biblical description of human beings in Genesis 1:26 and 27. Interpreted in several ways, including reason, rule over creation, and relationship.
Concordism
An approach that tries to match the days of Genesis with the findings of modern science.
Literary framework
A reading in which the six days are a structure for presenting creation, with the first three days forming and the second three filling.
Wisdom literature
Biblical books such as Job, Proverbs and some Psalms that reflect on creation and on living well within it.

Background

The opening chapters of Genesis come from a world with its own stories of creation. Babylonian myth told how the god Marduk defeated Tiamat and made the world from her body. Egyptian texts told of gods emerging from primordial waters. Against this background Genesis 1 stands out in its calm. One God speaks and things come to be. There is no battle, no divine birth and no divine matter in the world. The sun and moon, worshiped as gods by neighbors, are described as lamps (Genesis 1:14 to 18). Many scholars see in this a quiet argument that the heavens are not gods.

Genesis opens with two accounts: a sequence of six days and a rest in 1:1 to 2:3, and a more earthy story of the man and woman in the garden in 2:4 to 25. Scholars who use historical-critical methods usually assign them to different sources. Traditional readers have taken them as complementary views of the same event. In either case the church reads the whole book as one Scripture.

The rest of the Bible returns to creation often. Psalm 104 praises God for the sea, the beasts and the seasons. Job 38 to 41 has God answer Job out of the whirlwind with a tour of the creation. Isaiah 40 to 45 speaks of the Creator who stretches out the heavens as a reason to trust him. Proverbs 8 speaks of Wisdom present at the beginning. In the New Testament, John 1 and Colossians 1 speak of all things made through the Word and the Son, and Hebrews 11:3 says that the worlds were framed by the word of God.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: What Genesis 1 says

Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The grammar allows two readings. It can be a summary statement of the whole account, or it can be the first act, followed by a state of the earth in verse 2. The church fathers and most later Christians took it as the act of creating, and found in it the idea that there was a beginning of all things. Some modern scholars read it as a subordinate clause, in which God began to create when the earth was already formless. This is a matter of Hebrew grammar that scholars discuss.

The days of creation follow a pattern. On the first three days God forms the realms: light, then sky and sea, then land. On the second three days God fills them: lights in the sky, creatures in the water and air, and animals and human beings on the land. Each stage is spoken, done and approved with the words that it was good. Humans, made last, are made in God’s image and given rule over other creatures (Genesis 1:26 to 28). God rests on the seventh day and blesses it.

Step 2: Themes across the Bible

Several themes recur. First, God alone creates: Isaiah 44:24 says he stretches out the heavens alone and spreads abroad the earth by himself. Second, God creates by word and wisdom: Psalm 33:6 and Proverbs 3:19. Third, creation is good, including the physical world, as Genesis 1 says and as 1 Timothy 4:4 repeats. Fourth, creation depends on God at every moment (Psalm 104:29 to 30). Fifth, creation is not eternal or divine, and God is not part of it. These themes give the content of the doctrine, whatever one thinks about the details of Genesis 1.

A further theme is the link between creation and redemption. The prophets speak of salvation as a new creation (Isaiah 65:17), and Paul says that anyone in Christ is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). The New Testament says that the Word through whom all things were made became flesh (John 1:3 and 14). The Bible’s story is of one God who makes, rescues and renews.

Step 3: How Christians read the days

Christians have read Genesis 1 in several ways. Some take the days as six ordinary days and the earth as young, which is called young-earth creationism. Some take each day as a long age, the day-age view, which tries to match the days with the sequence of geology. Others hold that the days are a literary framework and that the text is not about when or how long. A further view, defended by the Old Testament scholar John Walton, reads Genesis 1 as an account of God setting up the cosmos as his temple and giving it functions, not as an account of material origins.

These views are not new in kind. Augustine, in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, suggested that God made all things at once and that the days describe a sequence in the mind of the angels and in the order of explanation. Origen doubted that the first days were ordinary days since the sun was made on the fourth. Others, like Basil, in his Hexaemeron, took the days more literally. The question of how the days relate to modern science is open to a range of positions within each tradition, and the relation of this question to the doctrine of creation is taken up in later study.

Step 4: What Scripture does and does not say

Scripture says that God made all things, that they are good, and that they depend on him. It does not give a scientific description of the process or provide dates, and it does not say explicitly whether God made the world from nothing. The doctrine of creation from nothing, taken up in the following lessons, is drawn from texts such as Hebrews 11:3 and Romans 4:17, and from the logic of the biblical claim that God alone is the maker of everything. Most Christians read it as a faithful drawing out of the text. Some scholars argue that Genesis 1 describes the shaping of existing matter, and that the doctrine appears later.

The church has never held that faith depends on settling the age of the earth. Catholic and Orthodox teaching leaves room for various readings. Evangelical Protestants are divided, and some confessions, such as the Westminster Confession, speak of creation in the space of six days. A student can hold a position on this while understanding the others.

  1. What does Genesis 1 teach me about God that I might miss if I only ask about the days?
  2. What do I make of the repeated phrase that it was good?
  3. How do I see the sun and moon described as lamps, and why might that matter?
  4. Which interpretation of the days have I met, and what are its strengths?
  5. How does the New Testament link creation to Christ?
  6. What would it mean for me to see the world as a gift?

Examples

Two accounts of the heavens

The Babylonian Enuma Elish tells that the heavens and earth were made by splitting the corpse of the goddess Tiamat. Genesis 1 says that God spoke and the sky was made. Both speak of order from chaos. Genesis differs by making the maker one and the world not a god’s body.

Augustine’s caution

Augustine warned Christians against speaking foolishly about nature and the heavens when they are ignorant, since unbelievers who know better will mock the faith. He advised that Christians should not make Scripture say what it does not clearly say. His advice is still quoted in discussions of Genesis and science.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching holds that Genesis 1 to 3 teaches truths about creation, the goodness of the world, the dignity of man and the fall, in figurative language. The Church has not defined a reading of the days. Pope Pius XII, in Humani Generis (1950), allowed that the development of the human body from earlier life might be investigated, while holding that each human soul is directly created by God.

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition reads Genesis in the light of the fathers, including Basil’s Hexaemeron, with a stress on the goodness of the world and the liturgical character of creation. Orthodox views on the days and evolution range from literal to symbolic, and there is no single required position.

Protestant

Protestants divide. Many Reformed, Baptist and nondenominational evangelicals hold a young-earth view. Others hold a day-age view or a framework view, among them B. B. Warfield, Old Princeton and many contemporary evangelical scholars. Mainline Protestants usually read Genesis as theological narrative compatible with an old earth and evolution.

Jewish

Jewish interpretation includes literal and symbolic readings. Rashi started from the question of why the Torah begins with creation. Maimonides held that if reason proved the world eternal, the text could be read figuratively, though he thought the proof was lacking. Many modern Jews read Genesis as theology.

Critical scholarship

Most scholars of the Hebrew Bible place Genesis 1 in the sixth or fifth century BC, in the priestly tradition, and read it as part of the ancient Near Eastern world of thought. They differ on how much it responds to Babylonian myth and on whether it describes creation from nothing.

Why it matters

The doctrine of creation is the first article of the creed, and it governs how Christians see the world, work, the body and time. A student who knows the biblical material, and who can tell the main teaching from the questions of method, can approach debates about science with more calm. They can also see that the next lessons in the course, which ask how the church understood creation from nothing, build on what Scripture says.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Christians must hold a young earth.

Correction: Many Christians do, but the major traditions have never required it. Augustine, Origen and many modern scholars read the days differently. The main confession is that God made all things, not a date.

Misunderstanding: Genesis 1 is a myth copied from Babylon.

Correction: It shares themes with its neighbors and answers them. Scholars observe both similarities and sharp differences. Describing it as mere copying overlooks the differences, and ignoring the setting overlooks the similarities.

Misunderstanding: Genesis 1 explicitly teaches creation from nothing.

Correction: Not explicitly. The doctrine is drawn from the whole of Scripture, and the Greek Bible of 2 Maccabees 7:28 states it more plainly. The tradition holds that Genesis 1 implies it, while some scholars read it as shaping.

Misunderstanding: Science and the Bible must conflict.

Correction: Some readings of Genesis do conflict with some scientific claims. Others do not. Christians have defended several ways of relating them. The question depends on how the text is read.

Knowledge check

What are three themes about creation found across the Bible?

God alone is the Creator, he creates by his word and wisdom, and creation is good. Other themes are that creation depends on God at every moment, that it is not divine, and that creation and redemption are linked, as in the new creation language of Isaiah and Paul.

How does Genesis 1 differ from other ancient Near Eastern creation stories?

In Genesis 1 one God creates by speaking, without battle with another god and without making the world from a god’s body. The sun and moon are lamps, not gods. Humans are made in God’s image and given rule. Scholars note both shared themes and these differences.

Name three ways Christians read the days of Genesis 1.

As six ordinary days in a young earth, as long ages in the day-age view, or as a literary framework in which the first three days form and the second three fill. Another view, defended by John Walton, reads the account as God setting up the cosmos as a temple. Augustine suggested creation all at once.

Does Scripture state creation from nothing in so many words?

Not in Genesis 1. The doctrine is drawn from texts such as Hebrews 11:3, Romans 4:17 and the claim that God alone made all things. The Greek book of 2 Maccabees 7:28 states it more plainly. Most Christians see it as a faithful inference, while some scholars think Genesis 1 describes shaping.

Think it through

  1. What difference does it make to read the first chapter of the Bible as an act of praise?
  2. Which of the views on the days seems most natural to you, and what is the best argument against it?
  3. How might the goodness of creation shape the way you treat your body and the physical world?

Independent assignment

Reading Genesis 1

In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Read Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. Make a list of what God does on each day, noting the pattern of forming and filling. Then read Psalm 104 and note three places where it echoes Genesis 1. Finish with a paragraph on what both texts say about how the creature should respond to the Creator. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study