The Character of Creation

A half century ago, several scholars who specialized in the Old Testament, came to the realization that they hadn’t been reading the Bible’s stories of the Creation carefully enough.  Despite all they knew about ancient history and primitive languages, they had taken too lightly the stories of God’s creation of the world. 

Starting in the 1970’s, these academic theologians turned with great interest to the Bible’s story of creation.  In those days, the new environmental movement had just burst into the public’s attention.  The first Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency got their starts within six months of each other.   And leading theologians such as Bernard Anderson, Terence Fretheim, Jon Levenson, and George Hendry began to uncover useful and under-appreciated understandings of the Bible’s creation texts and published a small library of books, which preserve their discoveries.

What were they finding out?  The theologians’ insights, notably the idea that the Creator continues to create and does not absolutely control the future, aligned with similar convictions among process theologians.  Process thought had been developing throughout the 20^th century. 

Unfortunately, this scholarly recovery of the Bible’s creational dimension has exerted much less influence in America’s church congregations than it deserves.  Process theology today is a niche perspective centered at Clairmont Theological Seminary and in scholarly enclaves around the world. 

As for those Old Testament scholars’ books: they sit on shelves in seminary libraries.  Their print runs are finished, their pages are yellow around the edges, and used copies are available only from book sellers. 

Fortunately, these books still exist.  Because the church needs to know what they would teach us about Creation.

When I tell my friends that I’m interested in creation, they assume that I want to weigh in on the old debate between evolution and creationism. 

I don’t.

All the World’s a Stage?

Most people have made up their minds about how the world got here, whether by divine hand or natural process.  Genesis’ first two chapters are hardly interested in the evolution verses creation debate.  Unfortunately, we have been interested in little else, at least as far as the world’s origins are concerned. 

It isn’t only the professor types who have passed lightly over Creation.  The entire church is thinking, “Hey, the world is here.  Who cares how it came to be in the first place.”  In popular piety, which means in everyday congregations, the world as the stage, even a temporary stage.  On the stage the drama of God saving people is played out. 

What we’ve missed is Creation’s insights into God’s nature, what will happen to created things, the role of people, and animals.  This is important stuff. Fortunately, it doesn’t need a Hebrew language scholar to decipher it from ancient scrolls.  If we read Genesis and other OT books, even superficially, we would find amazing information about what I’m labeling as creation’s character. 

Now, creation language (words like “create” and “make”) and creation images (chaotic waters or reproduction) pervade the Old Testament.  Genesis introduces characteristics of the created order in its earliest chapters.  These characteristics in turn thread through many passages especially in the Psalms, the Prophets, and especially in the Wisdom Literature. 

For example, the Creator separates waters in Genesis 1 and then separates waters again at the Red Sea and Jordan River.  The taming of chaotic waters is the most familiar creational theme.  And the Bible doesn’t restrict stories of water taming to the original taming of chaos.

To appreciate other characteristics of creation role in the Bible one must survey the entire Bible conducting word and theme studies.  This need for tedious work is a key reason why non-specialists may not be aware of the characteristics and theology of creation that I’m talking about.

Take, to give a single example, the status of animals.   Even after years of reading the Bible, I had little idea of what my faith thought about the non-human living world.  I had never put together the fact that God made both humans and animals on the sixth day of creation, that Noah’s Ark rescued mating pairs of all animals, that judgment falls on animals as it does on humans, and that created things will inherit a glorious destiny. (Colossians 1.15-20). Someone needed to point out to me that I’d missed the animals as I have missed other important features in the creation texts.  The “someone” has been Terence Fretheim, Bernhard Anderson and others who have done a lot of tedious combing through the scriptures and pioneered the rediscovery of Bib

Creation’s Character

The point of this essay is to invite the reader to ponder several details in the creation stories that will appreciably refresh our sense of the world’s value, our own value, and God’s presence and activity in our world. 

The chart below is an annotated version of Genesis 1.  The colored boxes locate words and phrases which suggest exciting new ways of looking at what Tripp Fuller calls “big God questions.”  Below are paragraph-length expansions on the different highlighted texts.

Genesis 1.1,2, and 3: “In the Beginning”

The Bible’s very first clause is ambiguous. Did matter, namely the heavens and the earth, exist before God began to create?  At issue is whether verse 1 is a temporal clause dependent on the main clause, which is verse 2.  Alternatively, and more traditionally, is the first verse a simple declarative sentence?  Church leaders and scholars have taught generations of Christians and their ministers that God created ex nihilo “out of nothing,” which has implications for God’s power and purposefulness.  But this tradition rests on shaky grammatical ground.  Here are four translations of the first verse.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (NIV, RSV, JB, NJB, REB).

“In the beginning of God creating the heavens and the earth” (Data Over Dogma Podcast)

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” (NRSV, NAB, NEB).[1]

“To begin with, God created the heavens and the earth” [2]

These renderings of the Hebrew hardly account for all the grammatical and definitional issues in the Bible’s first three verses.  The above alternatives do however indicate how consequential the creation texts are to both our working theology and personal piety.

How one resolves this issue guides our idea of whether the God created by decree from outside or whether God’s creative activities approximate the way humans make and arrange existing material.  I’d call the organization of existing stuff “creation from within.”  Hopefully, we’ll find other passages that will clarify the question of pre-existing material.

Genesis 1.1: “Created”

The ongoing recovery of creation theology has expanded the meaning of the concept creation from the simple making of all things (originating creation) to God’s ongoing work in the world to bring about the repair and development of the world and its creatures (continuing creation).  Put differently, creation and redemption merge in the Old Testament. 

I would speculate that traditional biblical scholars and popular piety see God’s creative actions to conclude with the first seven days.  More scholars today understand creation as a comprehensive idea that entails originating creation plus God’s work throughout history doing amazing things that are reminiscent of creation in the first place. 

The Bible itself persuades us to adopt the broader definition.  Surprisingly, creation language crops up more often beyond Genesis first two chapters than within the “creation stories.” By “creation language,” I mean the Hebrew words: bārā’ (“create,” Gen 1:27); ‘āsāh (“make,” Gen 1:26); pā’al (“make,” Prov 16:4); and so on.[1]  Additionally, the Bible’s reiterates the chaos motif, birth and birthing metaphors, botanical and building images and other recollections of the original creation, which suggest that the same intelligence and love that brought the world into being continues to work in the world. 

These images are abundant in Isaiah 40 – 66.  And even more importantly, creation faith underlies the OT Wisdom tradition (Proverbs 8), and much of the Psalter.  Finally, the OT prophets bristle with creational ideas, especially the linkage between sin and its negative impact on plant and animal life.

Why is the idea of continuing creation important?  For Christians today the thought that God is still busy with creation work can stir hope and awaken a sense of calling to service.  While climate change is bringing the living world to collapse, we learn from the Bible that the creator God is engaged in countless ways bringing forth the opposite.  Faith in this ongoing creation can also fire God’s people to toil at God’s side as did Noah, to resist and participate in the emerging new thing that defies the specter of death.

The Importance of God’s Word

God repeatedly speaks to creation.  God speaks light and dry land into existence.  Beyond Genesis 1 and 2, OT passages mention creation by sheer declaration (Psalms 33.9; Psalms 148.5).

Most of the time the Creator speaks or commands and then proceeds to separate or make something.  (Genesis 1.6-7; Psalms 33.6, 9; Psalms 147.15-18; 148.3-5; Isaiah 48.13; Isaiah 55.10-11).[1]

The fact that God creates both through naked decree and also through human-like making activity suggests that continuing creation doesn’t necessarily have a miraculous quality.  By miraculous, I mean that a divine intervention into the world from outside.  Continuing creation may be very much like what humans or the “natural” order can do. 

I write this thinking about the classic Disney movie-length cartoon, “Cinderella” where the birds and woodland animals make Cinderella’s dress and coach to elevate her from degradation at the hands of sinister forces.  Less charming but of comparable import might be the fleas, flies, and frogs conspiring to free the Hebrew people from the Egyptian empire.

The fact that the Creator God speaks and speaks again in creation underscores the relational character of the biblical creation.  God never stops speaking with what God makes.  Everything that God makes possesses a relationship with its Creator.  Biblical creation is high touch.  All of the created elements not only relate with God but also each other.

When the first humans introduce sin into the world their most fundamental breach of the created order is not eating the fruit but ceasing to trust and talk with God.

Creation as the Organization of Chaos

The most original tension we encounter in biblical faith is between God and disorder.  And disorder in Genesis 1 is not evil.  Older middle eastern cultures also used watery chaos in their creation myths.  Marduke the creator god in Babylonian mythology needed to defeat Tiamat, the menacing dragon who was the embodiment of salt water.  Creation for the Babylonians was much more of a combat than the Bible’s creation as organizing. 

Evil is not something that God brings into being in originating creation.  Of course, bad things happen and sin enters the world through creaturely malfeasance.  Most church-going Christians would be surprised to learn that there is no devil or oppositional character anywhere before the Babylonian Exile. 

The Devil is an arch enemy of Jesus in the Gospels.  But demons are not all that imposing in Jesus’ ministry and he treats them as pests more than equal rivals.  Paul and John ignore them.

The fact that God creates by organizing messy pre-existing things gives us a clear vision of what is happening when human sin causes creation to roll backwards.  In Genesis 7.11 when Noah had finished the Ark and the “rain” began, it’s important to understand that the flood was the result of creation running backwards, or becoming disorganized. 

In the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. Genesis 7.11

In Genesis 1.6,7 we read how God had not only pushed water aside horizontally, but also vertically:

And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ ⁷So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.

Some interpreters see the punishment for sin to be slide into disorder that the creation undergoes when leaders, society, and individuals behave wickedly and in a manner that is incompatible with God’s intention for Creation.

This understanding of creation advancing and retreating provides a compelling interpretation of our current climate crisis.  Scientists agree that the earth is out of balance.  Disorganized.  The planet is no longer an exquisitely harmonious place intricately balanced so that life may flourish.  Instead, wicked people—the rich in the developed world–have so plowed up the delicate order that a chain reaction of disorder in the form of heat, floods and storms threatens all of life.  The drama of creation verses chaos continues even today.

The Creator Evaluates

On six occasions in Genesis 1, God declares what he has made is “good.”  Biblical religion is fundamentally positive and God sets a tone of love for all he has created.  A useful point of comparison is Manichaeism, a religious outlook that assigned goodness to what was spiritual and negativity to what was material.  Put bluntly, the Manichean’sworld was filthy and dark. 

Manichaeism was popular in the centuries that followed the rise of Christianity and found its way into all religious communities.  A typical Manichaeism attitude was for the adherent to withdraw from earthly pleasures and prepare for an after-death ascent through heavenly spaces to a higher-than-earthly existence.

The biblical Creation accounts reject this good bad binary.  The devoted Christian or Jew is blocked by clear biblical witness to reject any part of the world as dispensable.  This ethos of prizing the created order extends to animals and all persons. 

The most compelling confirmation that all created things will be restored and lifted to a state of splendor can be seen in the Book of Revelation when the Creator will inaugurate a new and glorious re-creation of the heavens and the earth. (Revelation 21)

There’s a second implication arising from Genesis 1’s repeated use of “good.”  “Good” does not imply perfect or complete.  If what God made were perfect then it would not have so quickly collapsed into sin and almost total destruction which we see in Eden and then dramatically in the Flood story.  Perfection like omnipotence is one of those divine attributes that resembles King Midas’ ability to turn objects and even people into gold. 

Biblical creation marks the beginning of characteristics that define the world, people, and God that will continue until the culmination of all things.  Chaos is not finally defeated and will surge and retreat throughout history.  The love relationship between God and the world will always be real. 

Theologians use the word “recapitulation” to signify a new manifestation of something from the past.  Recapitulation is like a fragrance.  Everyone has smelled something that reminds them of an experience from years before.  The characteristics of creation, which we are reviewing here, are always present, but not obvious.  Occasionally, however, something will happen that bears the fragrance, speaking metaphorically, of those first seven days.  When Rome and the religion leaders crucified Jesus, the world turned dark (Luke 23.44 and parallels).  We know from the creation stories that human behavior, especially evil behavior, registers in what we would call the natural order.  We know that creation is in pain and moving backwards as we witness the crucifixion, note the disturbances in the daylight, and recall that creation’s first day brought light.

The Creator’s joy at the goodness of all that God had made signals value rather than perfection.

God Does Not Create Alone

Genesis 1.26, which has God talking to unknown spiritual beings, saying: “Let us make humankind in our image…”, is one of the most curious verses in the Bible.  Christians sometimes impose a Trinitarian explanation on this verse reasoning that God the Father is consulting with God the pre-existent Son on the creation of humanity. 

The central problem with this tack is that the Christian Trinity did not come into full focus until several centuries into the Common Era.  Rabbis who assembled and edited Genesis, did their work many centuries earlier.  Put bluntly, Genesis’ human authors and their readers would have had no idea about the Second Person of the Trinity and most certainly would not have understood how Christ may have had a role in the world’s creation.

It doesn’t matter who is meant by “us” in Genesis 1.26.  What is far more interesting is the Creator involving someone beside Godself in the making of the world.  The involvement of others does not end with 1.26.  God enlists the earth in 1.11 and the seas in 1.20 to bring forth creatures.  God enlists humanity to take up some creational work.  Humanity’s vocation as co-creators with God is so important that God crafts men and women after his own image and assigns them care and management duties over the world. 

For example, God not only creates but also names, “day,” and “night.”  Later, in Genesis 2, God makes the animals in response to human need and then brings them to the human for naming.  What God did originally has become a human responsibility.

God makes the Man and then the Woman.  But the further making of people falls upon the people themselves. 

The image of the Creator God speaking everything into perfect existence is not a nuanced understanding of originating creation.  Creation is a process and God, while certainly a prime mover and planner is also a partner and co-worker not only with humanity but the rest of creation as well.

The Creator Makes Mistakes

As we move into the second chapter of Genesis, we have a second Creation narrative, which entails God’s interaction with humans.  Once humanity enters the picture any sense that the world is a pristine and ideal place begins to erode.  First, it appears that the sequence of creation with bare ground and no rain and no farmer (Genesis 2.5) hints at some discombobulation in the sequence of things.  Several verses later, the story takes a concerning turn when God plants trees and, on pain of death, forbids Adam from eating from one of them.   

Following this prohibition, the Creator decides that his human creation is lonely.  Apparently, the companionship between man and the Creator is insufficient.  To meet the human’s need, the Creator brings forth animals and commissions the human to name them.  While the animals are great friends, there remains a void for the human.  God solves this continuing loneliness by surgically removing a bone from Adam and using it as the basis for a new kind of human—the woman.  

The tactic of dividing the man and building a mate succeeds spectacularly.  Nevertheless, it takes a couple of tries to get the loneliness problem solved, which does not go as smoothly as say, making by decree light and habitable space in the first chapter. 

I imagine someone who does well in school, is successful in the work world, liked by all and a model parent.  Life looks easy for this person until their third child is born.  The third offspring brings out the worst in her parent.  In every other life situation the parent commands personal resources to solve the most harrowing of problems.  Except one.  Even into her adulthood, the third child keeps her parent off balance and humbled.

Something like this happens with the Creator, who by degrees moves from being transcendent and powerful into being humanlike.  By Genesis 6 the entire human world has succumbed to wickedness and violence.  And humanity’s creator is grief struck and regrets having started the world in the first place (Genesis 6.6-7).

Creation and Climate Change

I recently reviewed what the Westminster Confession of Faith had to say about Creation.  I was surprised to see that the word “creation” appeared only twice in the document.  Further, the confession made no effort to explore the characteristics the biblical texts in Genesis or beyond.  Put plainly, Westminster is a representative example of how Creation has been neglected in the Protestant/Reformed world.

Westminster uses creation as a pretext to credit to God long lists of extreme attributes.  At the same time, Westminster’s discussion of creation burdens humanity with a pile of accusations.  The whole thing comes off as a parental-type scolding of an errant teenager, whose main problem is lack of respect.  This confessional elevation of the Creator into a transcendent realm of perfections and power is matched by a slap down of individual humans as ignorant, wicked, and without excuse. 

To quote the heart of the confession’s passage on Creation:

It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.

After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female,2 with reasonable and immortal souls,3 endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after his own image,4 having the law of God written in their hearts,5 and power to fulfill it; and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change.6 Besides this law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;7 which while they kept they were happy in their communion with God,8 and had dominion over the creatures.

A thoughtful consideration of the actual text in Genesis as we have done in this post gives us a very different image, not only of the Creator, but of humanity, and the non-human world as well.  Created things and beings in Genesis are utterly valuable and the object of God’s sustained attention.  Humanity, though sinful, also carries God’s image and charge to care for not only humanity but also animals and the non-living world.  Additionally, people are uniquely equipped to work with God in renewing the world. 

In contrast, the God of Genesis and the entire Old Testament for that matter, is a bundle of emotions.  God delights in the fresh made newness of the world, feels crushed by the man and women’s mistrust and gullibility in the garden, has second thoughts about the whole creation project, feels anger by the cruelty of people, and weeps at his creatures’ self-destructive wickedness. 

As we recover a text centered, biblical view of creation, we receive tools which can contribute to a new consciousness necessary to enable humanity to cease plundering both nature and the poor.  The world is precious because it’s precious to God who works in countless ways to bring it to full restoration and splendor.  We have responsibility to join God in God’s ongoing creative work. 

That outlook should be the passionate heart of the Christian church’s proclamation to a world drowning and burning as a result of the same—to use the language of Genesis–wickedness, corruption, and violence which led to the Flood.

Finally, as we ponder the complexity and scope of our climate problems, we can enjoy the assurance that God has always worked brilliantly in chaos and that created beauty and goodness will never stop appearing.

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[1] Ibid. 974.

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[1]Fretheim, Kindle Locations 288-290.

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[1] Fretheim, Terence E.. God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Kindle Location 993). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] Löning and Zenger, To Begin With, p21.