Q9. What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.
We have seen already that the Christian doctrine of creation is inseparable from the decree of God. That is why we placed the idea of creation ex nihilo (which Question 9 addresses) with our discussion of the decree. In doing so, we saw that the Christian doctrine immediately contrasted itself with two early errors. Those were the Greek versions of materialism and immaterialism. Materialism was the oldest view among the Greeks and it held that the material universal had always been. With the rise of philosophy among the Greeks (and this is especially clear in Plato), an immaterialism emerges. By the time we arrive at the coming of Christ, a Neoplatonism had begun to teach a doctrine of emanation, so that the physical universe was a lower gradation of being coming from the One. We also saw that the doctrine of Providence was set against the modern era of Deism.
Now we have to notice another way that our understanding of creation stands over two other extreme errors: Gnosticism and Pelagianism. In these two errors we have the nature-hater and the nature-worshiper. Both dishonor God. The one because it despises his gift and, in feigning adoration by denying that he could make something so filled with evil, subtly blames him by including in “evil” that which is good. The other because it exalts the capacities of nature in man so as to make grace unnecessary. Both deny the gospel. The one by making the humanity of Christ a charade and the new creation a carnal fantasy. The other by substituting Christ’s legal work in our place for our own moral work. Believe it or not, exposing these two opposite errors begins with a robust, biblical doctrine of creation. Bavinck summarizes the place of this truth:
“From the very first moment, true religion distinguishes itself from all other religions from the fact that it construes the relation between God and the world, including man, as that between Creator and his creature.”1
Creation in Six Days
The most obvious ideas that our doctrine of creation stands against are those of Modernity. I must insist that we say it this way. The habit of Christians have gotten themselves into, in the wake of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, is to unwittingly join the unbeliever in pitting religion against science. We maintain that Christian theology alone is consistent with real science, and that scientists who are busy doing genuine research understand the point. There are two main views on how to interpret the Genesis account (not just in Genesis 1-3, but in the Flood account in Genesis 6-9). That is the Old Earth view and the Young Earth view. So the question is over what is the intent of the inspired author: Is God giving to him information to communicate the exact age of the earth or not? The YE view will say Yes and the OE view will say No. But we do need to know that there are other labels and interpretative approaches that we should at least know about so as to avoid confusion.
One more obscure view is called the Gap Theory, according to which the space between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3 represent a “gap” of time the is really the interruption of what was an original creation that went wrong. In fact there is no so gap to speak of in the text. Instead, verse 1 is a comprehensive summary and verses 2 through 31 the detailed unpacking of the whole. Note that verse 2 begins with “The earth …” narrowing in the lens of Moses’ viewpoint from the more general “the heavens and the earth” of verse 1. The notion of a gap between them is unwarranted in the ordinary language, and has no support from any other passage in Scripture.2
Needless to say, there are other views held by professing Christians. For example, there is the “Day-Age” (or analogical) view concerning the Genesis account. C. John Collins is today’s foremost representative of the Day-Age, view of the Genesis account. The days are “God’s work days,” and the length of these days is “neither specified nor important.” The purpose is to frame God’s order as a template for our own vocation. What sort of textual arguments would he make? Collins argues that there are three “indications” or “uncertainties” in the text of Genesis: (1) In 1:3 it marks the beginning of the work week, but it doesn’t follow that it is the beginning of time. The time between 1:1 and 1:3 is unspecified. There is common ground with the Gap Theory here, though the two views are not the same. (2) 2:5 mentions ha-aretz (הָאָ֔רֶץ). While the KJV renders this “earth,” so that the infant earth is being watered by a water rising up; yet newer translations like the ESV renders this the “land,” leaving room for specific location. Verse 12 has vegetation emerging on Day 3, so harmonizing 1:12 and 2:5 becomes a need that the Day Age view is thought to better reconcile. (3) After the constant refrain, “And there was evening and there was morning,” but then, of the seventh day in 2:4, the refrain is missing. This is the perpetual Sabbath. Hebrews 4:9-10 speaks to this.3
Augustine held that God could not create “in” time or “at points of” time at all. From this Augustinian insight, some have argued that on the first day, God had created ex nihilo, or immediately, and then began to create with that which already was.
The majority position throughout church history has been to interpret the days of Genesis 1 as six, twenty-four hour days. Here is a summary of the exegetical case for this view: (1) In Hebrew the vav-consecutive construct, followed by a verb in the imperfect, which Hebrew always uses to give historical narrative: 51 times in Genesis. (2) Within the text itself, “day” (yom) clearly speaks of a 24-hour period. The volume of uses of the word in the Old Testament is overwhelmingly used in the literal sense. So we should assume this use unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. (3) The days are numbered, so it is naturally sequential. The use of ordinal numbers next to days especially makes this case. (4) Genesis 1 has no indication of figurative or poetic language: e.g. parallelism. (5) “Evening and morning” occurs 37 times outside of Genesis and is an ordinary day in each case. (6) On the fourth day, the sun and moon are made to “rule over the day and night.” (7) If Moses had intended a more indefinite period, he could have easily used olam, meaning “age.” (8) The rest of Scripture views it literally. No text views it figuratively: Ex. 20:8-11, Ps. 104).4
The framework of those six days brings up one more view before one can move to exegesis of the individual verses of Genesis 1. There is what is called the Framework View. Now it should be noted that what it points to is something that Young Earth Creationists can point to as well. I refer to the way that Days 4 through 6 answer to Days 1 through 3. Let us take note of this first and then we will compare the different views. God literally creates a “space” on Day 1 and then luminaries for that space on Day 4. He creates skies and waters on Day 2 and then birds and fish on Day 5. He prepares the land with its vegetation on Day 3 and then animals on Day 6. In other words, he creates three different “stages” in the first set of three, and then three corresponding groups of “actors” in the second set of three.
What the Framework View sees in this is the totality of God’s covenant with his creation, where even the non-human aspects of creation are summoned into existence and given a role, each dutifully answering back to the refrain of “God said.” As Exodus 20 points back, this “work week” of God, ending in Sabbath rest, has the additional element of covenant theology, particularly in the mold of Meredith Kline who left his stamp at Westminster Seminary West.5 This brand of covenant theology tends to draw a bridge between this creation story and Mosaic authorial purposes. God was the Great King over his people Israel, and as all great kings (or “Suzerains” as they were called in the Ancient Near East) did, God made a covenant with the people he had saved. That included a covenant treaty. All such treatises flowed in a certain order, which just so happens to be the same order as the Pentateuch. Genesis comes first in the same way as a historical prologue would come first in one of these documents.
Creation in Good
Returning to the Genesis text, note that the constant refrain “It is good” is for the benefit of the reader and for the proper ordering of our worldview. While it may not be at the front of our minds, the fact of the matter is that not every worldview or religion can accept this fact. In the Gnostic view, nothing in the creation could ever be good. In some dualistic views that have traces of Gnosticism, good may be hoped for, but it is not clear that it has ever been good, or that good and evil are not in some irresolvable struggle. Modern materialism and postmodernism cynicism makes some of these same errors, and so the text of Genesis winds up speaking to a latent Gnosticism in every age.
We may think that we are immune from needing this correction, but then before we notice, we become enticed by views that tell us that certain biological functions, or social orders, or available natural resources, or gender distinctions, are somehow in need of fallen man’s reordering.
These only gain currency on the presupposition that x, y, or z are “not good.” Thus the refrain “it was good” and the final stamp in verse 31 about all that he had made, “it was very good”—all of this is an explosion at the foundations of the spirit of the age, in every age. The good of creation is an idea that may be held consistently in the biblical view and cannot be justified in any other view.
What then is the scope of this ALL that is created VERY GOOD? All physical things are created by God, and all angels and the spiritual dimension of humans are created by God. So far there would be no controversy. But then we come to relationships between man and the physical creation, and between human beings. Augustine called these the orders of creation, while others will call them by names like “institutions” and “spheres.” One way to answer the question of all that must be created good is to ask: Which of those things did God make in the original creation? Whatever those are we can call “good,” but whatever came later we can call “bad.” However, there are two basic problems with that—and likely other problems—first, we have already seen that God ordains all things as time goes on as well; second, treating the narrative text of Genesis 1 and 2 as if it were meant to give us an exhaustive and explicit list of those things that are good is frankly absurd. Think of the obvious examples the non-mention of planets, molecules, and thoughts in Chapter 1, or of books and buildings in Chapter 2. I would say children and voluntary exchange, but someone may reply that such things are implied. I agree. I could also add clothes and helping someone in danger, but then someone will reply that such things are only relative goods given the fall. I agree again. However, are we not going back on our original quest? Notice how the Bible talks after Genesis 1 and 2. For example, Paul tries to get Timothy to bring correction to a groups of people in Ephesus,
“who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:3-4)
What is good? Marriage and food. When is it good here? In the first century in Ephesus. In other words, that which is good in the original design is still good in the design. We understand that the exact same things are also under the curse. So we come to a paradox here. Thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton and E. L. Mascall detected a kind of Gnosticism and even Manicheanism in Reformed theology. While they blamed the wrong things and inflated their case (Mascall made the subject of his attack Barth and Brunner, who really were guilty!) we can hardly fault them. The truth is that the soteriological critique of nature and reason among the Reformed became a fixation within the generation of the Modernist controversy. Whether in the Barthian strand or the Van Tillian strand, a suspicion of nature has been the rule among the Reformed. This is out of step with the tradition that the original Reformation had shared with all of Christendom—that the nature which God made good is still to be considered good in itself. The fall makes for a corrupt nature in things as falling, but not in those things as objects through which we are still duty-bound to glorify God. Failure to make this distinction between two objects which natures is not surprising given our post-philosophical age.
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1. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:407.
2. Bavinck’s argument against this view is thorough for being concise — Reformed Dogmatics, II:417.
3. C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2006).
4. Henry Morris chronicles “165 passages in Genesis that are either directly quoted or clearly referred to in the New Testament. Many of them are alluded to more than once, so that there are at least two hundred quotations or allusions to Genesis in the New Testament” (The Genesis Record, 21). Walter Brown lists 71 such references, showing stricter ways of counting them (In the Beginning, 59).
5. cf. Meredith Kline, The Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963).
