4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2

This continues an exploration of Genesis 1. Previous posts:

4.1 Differing Views of Genesis 1
4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1 

Now 4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2
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4.3.1 Taking Off Our Glasses
Now we get to the verses themselves. At first glance, they may seem simple enough:

In the beginning, God created the skies and the land. But the land was formless and useless, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And a wind from God was blowing over the face of the waters.

There are several opportunities in these verses for us to read modern assumptions into them, including modern Christian assumptions. But if we want to hear them as their first audiences did, we will have to take off our modern glasses and try to get into the ancient Israelite view of the world.

For example, most Bibles read, “God created the heavens and the earth.” It is natural that most readers probably picture a sphere like our contemporary view of the earth. When we hear the word heavens, we may not think of the skies but of the universe or even of the place where God and the angels are located.

We thus have to adjust our thinking to realize that Hebrew did not have a separate word for “sky” and “heaven” as a place where God is. I have translated with the word sky to remind us that the ancient Israelites had a far, far smaller sense of the world than we do today. The word shamayim for “skies” was simply that which is above us.

The word for “sky” in Hebrew is “dual,” which means that it refers to two things. In English, we have singular for one thing (e.g., a book) and plural for multiple things (e.g., books – we often add an s to the end to do this). Hebrew had another number it could use for its nouns, although rarely used. The “dual” in Hebrew referred to two things. For example, because Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, the word for Egypt in Hebrew is always dual (mitzrayim).

The fact that Hebrew thinks of the sky as dual probably reflects the view of the sky we hear about later in Genesis 1. God divides the waters from the waters and puts a space, a dome, a “firmament” in between them (Gen. 1:6-8). There are thus two parts to the sky – the upper part and the lower part. Perhaps for the same reason, the word for “water” in Hebrew is also typically dual (mayim – notice how similarly the word for sky and water are in Hebrew).

Similarly, they did not yet think of the earth as a sphere in the times of ancient Israel. “Land” is a better translation if we want to picture what they would have pictured when they heard the Hebrew word ‘arets. We will see dry land appear in Genesis 1:9. This is not a globe but the relatively flat earth that emerges as you come ashore from an ocean or a lake.

A “wind from God” is another phrase where we as Christians might immediately think of the Holy Spirit if we read a translation that has “the spirit of God” here. It is probably not wrong theologically to hear overtones of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we can apply the verse that way as Christians. But in terms of the original meaning of the verse, it is anachronistic. Ancient Jews did not yet have as developed a sense of God’s Spirit as the New Testament has – or frankly later Christian theology. The Old Testament does have a sense of God’s spirit (e.g., Psalm 139:7), but it is not yet used in a personal way.

The New Revised Standard Version is an example of a version that translates this part of 1:2 with “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” [27] They translate it this way because other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation stories talk about a violent wind from one god blowing against a water goddess (e.g., the Enuma Elish). [28] It is a reminder that the word ru’ah in Hebrew could mean things like breath and wind. In other words, using the word spirit easily can lead us to read many concepts into the verse that were not there originally.

These are just some of the ways that our assumptions can easily lead us to see Genesis 1:1-2 as a mirror of what we already believe. To hear what these verses actually meant, we have to take off our cultural glasses and put on Ancient Near Eastern Israelite/Jewish glasses. [29] Only then will we begin to hear the words in terms of how their first audiences heard them.

4.3.2 The Function of Genesis 1:1
Should we see Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter? Or is it the first moment in the sequence of creation – Day 0, if you would?

On the one hand, some see Genesis 1:1 as God getting his raw materials ready. He creates the materials he is going to use in creation in 1:1 -- the skies and the earth. Then in 1:3 he begins to cook with the ingredients and organize them. 

You might remember the gap theory. God creates an orderly universe in verse 1. But then Satan fell and everything became chaos in verse 2. In the gap theory, God then begins to re-create the world in verse 3. This would be one version of an interpretation that sees Genesis 1:1 as the creation before the creation, if you would. A whole sequence of creation and recreation has taken place before verse 3.

There is little contextual evidence for this gap theory. That is to say, if this is what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying, the verses do not leave us many clues. Isaiah 45:18 may very well allude to Genesis 1:2 when it says that God did not create (bara') the earth to be chaos (tohu). [30] However, the verse most likely refers to the direction and end result of creation rather than its initial state. It is saying that God never intended for the cosmos to end up as chaos. Rather, God created order out of chaos.

John Walton sees Genesis 1:1 as the heading of 1:1-2:3, an introduction to the rest of the chapter. In this way, it functions much like the statements "These are the generations of..." that start eleven later sections of Genesis (e.g., 2:4). [31] He proposes that it is far more likely that the author of Genesis had twelve of these sections -- with Genesis 1:1 starting the series off -- than that there were only eleven of them. Twelve is a special number in Genesis, the number of the sons of Jacob and thus the tribes of Israel.

Another argument for Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter comes from the way 2:1 seems to close this introduction. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created" at the beginning of the chapter. Then 2:1 says, "The skies and the land were finished" at the end. This kind of literary structure is called an "inclusio," where a block of text is put in a kind of parenthesis by similar words at its beginning and end. Here are the similar words: "At the beginning, God created the skies and the land... [read on and I'll tell you how]." Then we have "And the skies and the land were finished" at the end when the creating is done. 

On the whole, then, Genesis 1:1 does not seem to be the creation before the creation. It does not seem to be Day 0 or the creation of the matter that God will then mould in the rest of the chapter. Rather, it seems to be a general statement of the whole chapter. What is Genesis 1 about? Genesis 1 is about God creating the skies and the land. Keep reading and you will find out how he did it.

4.3.3 Creation Out of Nothing?
If Genesis 1:1 is an overview, then we face another question. Where did the waters of Genesis 1:2 come from? Genesis 1:1 already does not mention the waters. If it were the creation of material before the creation, one might suppose that the creation of the waters was implied in it. But if Genesis 1:1 is an overview of the chapter, then the chaotic waters of 1:2 are never created.

Given all the other ancient creation stories, it would not be surprising. All the creation stories of the Ancient Near East begin with water. In the Enuma Elish, the goddess that Marduk fights is Tiamat, a sea water goddess. The Egyptians had Nun, god of the primeval waters. In the Greek Theogony by Hesiod (500s BCE), the creation begins with -- you guessed it -- water. Aristotle distinguished the first Greek philosopher Thales (also 500s BCE) as different because he looked for a natural substance as the basis for the world rather than gods. But guess what substance he proposed as the most basic element of the world? You guessed it. Water.

So the cultural surroundings of Genesis would make it easy for us to think that it too saw water as an eternal given. God would have been meeting the Israelites where they were in their categories and speaking to them from there. [32] 

There are some grammatical features to Genesis 1:1 that are relevant to discuss. The very first word, bereshith, is curious in that it often has a sense of "first of" (e.g., Exod. 23:19). Building on this dynamic, the 1985 translation of the Jewish Publication Society rendered Genesis 1:1 to say, "When God began to create the heaven and earth... God said 'Let there be light.'" The sense it gave was that 1:1 was not a sentence but the setting for what follows. When God began (in the beginning of God creating) -- and the waters were unformed -- he started by saying "Let there be light."

This move seems a little strained (and unnecessary). The word can just mean "first." And the waters of 1:2 seem to be there waiting to be ordered one way or another. Further, as we have argued, 1:1 makes more sense as an overview of the whole chapter.

Another question is the meaning of bara', which means to create. It is not a frequently used word in the Old Testament, and it is always used with God as the subject -- "God created." Some have wanted to read a special meaning in here as in creation out of nothing. However, this meaning is not clear. It simply seems to be a word for making but that specifically refers to God making something.

What then is the meaning of 1:2. At the beginning of creation, there are two entities: God and the useless, non-functioning, chaotic, primordial waters. There is nothing but darkness. But a wind from God blew over the waters. This is the way things are when God decides to start to order the cosmos.

We have already discussed the origins of the doctrine of creation out of nothing in the previous chapter. We have framed it as a consensus of Christian (and Jewish) faith, and implied it is correct as a theological belief. However, we also made it clear that it likely reflects a "development of doctrine." That is to say, it is a belief that probably was not articulated in biblical times. It is not that the Bible opposes the belief -- not at all. It is simply not a thought that anyone had yet had.

Our exegesis of Genesis 1:1-2 supports this sense of development. At the time of the Old Testament, it was more or less assumed that everything had emerged from chaotic, primeval waters. That was not the point of revelation about creation. The point was that the God of Israel -- and he alone, almighty -- was the one who brought order to the cosmos.

[27] So also the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translation.

[28] E.g., Claus Westermann translates it as “wind” in Genesis 1–11 (Fortress, 1990).

[29] The distinction between Israelite and Jewish largely has to do with the Babylonian captivity of 586-538BCE. Since the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 722BCE, only the southern kingdom of Judah was left to go into captivity in 586BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed. Although “Israel” can still be used after this point, it is common to increasingly refer to those who returned as Judahites or Jews after the exile. Accordingly, if Genesis 1 was written after the exile, we might refer to its first audience as Judahites or Jews.

[30] Or it could be the other way around, Isaiah 45 may have helped inspire Genesis 1:2.

[31] Walton, Lost World, 43-45.

[32] It seems like any in depth understanding of Scripture will need to see somewhat of a "flow" of revelation as the understanding gets more precise the further we go in the river. 

3.4 Ex Nihilo and God (Science and Scripture)

So much to write, so little time. To avoid oversaturation, let me skip forward in the chapter. Previous writings in this series have included:

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
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Einstein's general theory of relativity and Guth's inflationary universe both potentially prompt reflection on the concept of ex nihilo creation, creation "out of nothing."

3.5.1 Anachronistic Readings
First, a little background on the doctrine. One dynamic of our interpretation of Scripture is that we inadvertantly read our assumptions into the words of the Bible. For example, we will see in the next chapter that Genesis 1:1-2 probably did not originally picture creation out of nothing. It simply wasn't a perspective that existed at the time. [1]

Similarly, when we read Romans 4:17, which says that God calls into being things that do not exist, we are prone to hear creation out of nothing. However, the paradigms of people at the time did not likely hear such comments in the way we do. For example, when I make a pancake out of various ingredients, I am "calling into existence" something that did not exist before.

In the past, some have seen 2 Maccabees 7:28 as the first instance of creation out of nothing (early 100s BCE). The verse speaks of God not using existing materials to make the skies and the land. However, many currently think it is anachronistic to hear ex nihilo creation here. It seems to fit the time of writing better to think the author is saying God did not use materials as they appear to us but rather formless hyle, as in Wisdom 11:17 (first century BCE or CE).

Hebrews 11:3 would arguably fit in this same category as well: "that which is seen has come to exist not from things that appear." As in 2 Maccabees 7:28, the verse was not likely a denial of God's complete use of any material at all but an affirmation that he did not create the world out of materials as they currently appear (phenomena). We arguably see ex nihilo creation in these passages because it is our existing paradigm, but it arguably was not a paradigm that yet existed at the time.

3.5.2 Gnostic Controversies
Most scholars currently hold that the doctrine of creation out of nothing developed as a Jewish and Christian doctrine during the Gnostic controversies of the 100s CE. [2] Prior to those debates, it was not uncommon for Christian thinking to be dualistic. For example, the Gospel of John says, "That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Despite efforts to reinterpret such comments differently, John seems to assume a metaphysical dualism of some sort. [3]

To be fair, the kind of stark dualism that we find in Descartes in the 1600s did not yet exist either. As Dale Martin has demonstrated, the ancients still saw the heavens as material even if much thinner material than that of our bodies. [4] For example, Aristotle saw the material of the skies as a fifth element, ether, from which we get the word ethereal. [5] The key distinction was more between the corporeal and embodied versus the disembodied spiritual. It was not so much between material and immaterial.

Nevertheless, it is common to confuse any dualisms in the New Testament with the Gnostic dualism of the second century. However, Platonic dualism is not the same as Gnostic dualism. The dualisms prior to the second century CE saw the embodied world as inferior to the disembodied heavenly realm ("the spirit is willing; the flesh is weak" -- Mark 14:38). However, they did not see the embodied world as intrinsically evil. Plato saw the body as the "prison of the soul," a negative connotation. [6] But he did not see the body as evil.

Gnosticism took that next step. Building on the common assumption that God created the cosmos out of underlying, eternal material (hyle), they saw this material substratum as a basis for the existence of evil. In the mid-second century CE, the Christian Marcion went so far as to suggest that a "Demiurge" was the creator of the Old Testament, an evil god different from the Father of Jesus.

In response to this Gnostic dualism, both Judaism and Christianity increasingly asserted that God had not only organized the material of the world -- the previous view -- but that God had created the underlying material of the heavens and earth itself out of nothing. We find this development as early as Theophilus of Antioch around 177CE. [7] As the Nicene Creed would clarify in 381 CE, God is the maker of everything "seen and unseen."

3.5.3 Creator of Emptiness
For two millennia, you could argue that the doctrine of ex nihilo still carried certain cosmological assumptions  of which its proponents were not aware. Namely, I suggest that Jews and Christians throughout the centuries often understood creation out of nothing to be the placement of matter into emptiness. They may not have seen this emptiness as vast. More likely, they saw the imagined space into which God placed material as extremely small compared to our sense of the universe's vastness today. 

Speculation was limited about what might be beyond the earth, the starry firmament above, and whatever underworld might be beneath us. The “edges” of the cosmos were often thought to be bounded by the primordial waters of Genesis 1:7. Even after the heliocentric debates of the 1500s and 1600s, it is doubtful that someone like Isaac Newton envisioned the universe on anything like its modern scale, though by his day the stars were increasingly seen as distant suns scattered through a much larger cosmos than the biblical authors might have imagined.

Einstein's theory of relativity and developments thereafter have given us a sense that space itself can curve and expand. These insights may prompt still further developments in our understanding of creation ex nihilo. It should now be clear that a robust sense of creation out of nothing should not only include the matter within the universe, but the space in which that matter exists. Moving well beyond anything the biblical authors or Christians of the first two millennia envisaged, we should now see creation as the creation of both space and matter.

I alluded earlier in this chapter to the distinction between zero and the empty set. Zero still suggests a framework of numbers. However, the empty set is the set that contains no numbers, not even zero. Let me suggest that, in a post-relativity, inflationary universe framework, creation out of nothing is creation out of empty set rather than creation out of zero. God creates both matter and the space that matter occupies. God created energy, antimatter, and any quantum fields that may anchor space. God created the singularity that expanded into our current universe.

It is difficult for our human minds to imagine what non-space emptiness might be, a nothing beyond both vacuum and emptiness. Yet it would seem that this is the "non-state" of the universe prior to creation. A clear implication is that God created the rules for the universe out of nothing as well. We cannot assume that any prior rules of logic or metaphysics existed that we could fathom. We should suspect that even notions we have of the Trinity and such are analogies rather than literal.

We are speaking of true incomprehensibility, that of which we cannot speak. A via negativa on a level we cannot fathom. [8]

[1] In John Walton's book, The Lost World of Genesis 1 (InterVarsity, 2009), he argues that ex nihilo creation simply isn't addressed in Genesis 1. The point of Genesis is that the creation was "non-functional" before God created. In his view, the question of the materials God used simply wasn't the question they were asking (see especially Propositions 1-4).

[2] For a comprehensive treatment of the doctrine's development, see Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of "Creation Out of Nothing" in Early Christian Thought (T & T Clark, 1994). 

[3] Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Baker Academic, 2008). So also N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), 440-47.

[4] Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (Yale University, 1999).

[5] Aristotle, De caelo 1.268b–269a, 1.3.270b

[6] E.g., Plato, Phaedo 82e. In Cratylus 400c, he calls the body the tomb of the soul (soma sema).

[7] Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum 2.4.

[8] The notion of a "negative way" or via negativa suggests that we can only say what God's reality is not rather than what it is.

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3.3 An Expanding Universe (inflationary cosmology)

3.5 The Cosmological Argument
3.6 The Fine Tuning Argument

3.1 The Creation Rule of Faith 1

Thus far in the outline:

Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
See the previous post.

Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
3.1 The Creation Rule of Faith
1. With regard to creation, the Apostle's Creed simply states, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." The Nicene Creed only adds, "of all things visible and invisible." The Christians of the centuries have taken these words in the most literal of senses: there is nothing that exists that was not created by God.

As we will see, what is included in the "everything" and what it means to create has perhaps expanded over time. Creating may have merely meant something like "forming" to the Old Testament authors, perhaps even the New Testament authors.

Take 2 Maccabees 7:28, which says, "Look at the sky and the land and when you see all the things in them know that God did not make them out of things that are." Given our current understanding, it would be easy to assume that this verse speaks of creation out of nothing as we think of it. But many would suggest that 2 Maccabees is only arguing that God did not make the world out of already formed materials.

So when someone builds a house, they may buy bricks or planks and other materials in bulk from some business. They are making the house out of things that "are" and forming them into a house. In this interpretation, 2 Maccabees would be suggesting that God made the bricks and planks themselves. He would have made them from more fundamental materials that "do not appear" today (cf. Heb. 11:3).

2. It was in the late 100s AD that the Gnostic controversy seems to have pushed both Jews and Christians to a more radical and consistent understanding of creation out of nothing, creatio ex nihilo. The Gnostics of course believed that matter was evil. Already in the New Testament we find the early stages of this teaching. John 1:14, 6:54, 20:27; 1 John 4:2 all may very well address a rising sense that Jesus could not have been pure if he had flesh. If the underlying materials of the universe are evil, so the Gnostic line of thinking went, then only spirit can be pure, not anything material or made of flesh.

After the Gnostic controversy, creation is no longer just forming but the creation of the underlying raw materials themselves. Creation is now truly out of nothing. The Christians of the centuries pictured creation as God taking empty space and creating material that had not previously existed in any form whatsoever.

After developments in physics in the twentieth century, our sense of what creation out of nothing might mean becomes even greater. Again, the sense that God is the creator has remained constant from Genesis to today. But our sense of what it must mean for God to be creator has possibly changed as our sense of the creation has expanded.

So twentieth century physics introduces two new dimensions to the discussion that no individual in history had apparently thought prior to 1900. The first is Einstein's general theory of relativity, introduced in 1915. Space is no longer a fixed emptiness. Now, space itself can expand and contract. For example, around a massive object like the sun, space gets smaller.

The second is the idea of cosmic inflation. Around 1980, Alan Guth suggested that, in the first .00000000000000000000000000000001 seconds, the universe went from being a point to something close to its current size. In other words, space did not exist before creation. If this theory is correct, then God exists outside and beyond anything we can imagine. He was not "in" space when he created "everything," but his essence is somewhere "outside" this universe and its space...

C1. God created everything that exists out of nothing.

I've finished some (Wesleyan-Arminian) reflections on God as part of my "theology in bullet points." Today starts Creation, including the creation of humanity.
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C1. God created everything that exists out of nothing.

The words of the Bible were ripe for the earliest Christians to hear in them the truth that God created the world out of nothing, although the understanding of the biblical authors themselves arguably developed in relation to creation. In its context, the main point we learn from Genesis is that no other gods were involved in the creation of the world. God alone gave order to the shapeless earth and chaotic waters of Genesis 1:2. [1]

In Hebrews 11:3, we learn that God "mended" the creation by a voice command. What we see now did not come to existence from things that we see now. Christians throughout the centuries have generally taken this verse as an indication of God's creation of the world out of nothing. [2] At the very least, Hebrews is certainly saying that God can make things exist that are nowhere to be seen.

But it was arguably in the Gnostic controversies of the second century AD that the doctrine of creation out of nothing really crystallized within both Christianity and Judaism. The Gnostics argued that matter was not just weak and inferior but that in fact nothing could be good if it partook of a material existence. [3] The early Christian Marcion, in about the year AD150, actually argued that the creator god of the Old Testament was a different god than the Father of Jesus Christ.

In response, both Christians and Jews argued that God had created even the materials of creation. This seems to be a question that had not really been confrtonted before. Before this point, everyone seems to have assumed without thinking that some sort of formless matter was there to begin with (cf. the book of Wisdom 11:17). Now, taking cues from the wording of passages like 2 Maccabees 7:28 and Hebrews 11:3, not to mention the Greek translation of Genesis 1:1-2 that the early Christians used, they argued that God had created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo in Latin).

This shift made possible a fuller understanding of God's power and knowledge. A god who engages materials that already exist does not necessarily know those materials from the inside out. That god's power over those materials is, as it were, exerted on them from the outside in. There is a sense in which a god who merely comes to existing materials is not quite as powerful and not as likely to have all knowledge as one who fashions them by their very nature out of nothing.

We can also see, however, how the problem of evil would intensify after this crystallization, as well as how discussions about the nature of predestination would intensify. Before creation out of nothing, evil was something that could, to some extent, be attributed to the inferior nature of flesh and the world. Before Gnosticism, these materials are not seen as evil, but they were thought to be more susceptible to the power of Sin. To some extent, God was more distanced from evil.

But if God created those materials, then he becomes ultimately responsible for their weakness. We can see how eventually, some would suggest that God predestines evil in a thoroughgoing way. The idea of creation out of nothing arguably took these issues to a new level.

You could argue that the theory of relativity as developed by Albert Einstein also takes the question of creation out of nothing to yet another level. If time and space can themselves expand and contract, then we can begin to think of what it would mean not only for God to create the materials in space out of nothing but for God to create the very emptiness in which God put those materials.

When we picture God creating even emptiness out of nothing, we see the question of what it might mean for God to exist "outside time" and "outside space" in a way Christians would not likely have conceived prior to the twentieth century. Prior to the twentieth century, those who pictured creation out of nothing more or less saw God putting things into an empty space that already existed. The question of the creation of space itself simply wasn't a question they thought to ask.

As we have seen in relation to our discussion of God's power and knowledge, there are significant implications for this development to our understanding of God's power and knowledge. It gives force, for example, to the long suggested idea that God's knowledge of the future does not imply that he determines the future. His essence is not in the flow of time. This robust sense of creation out of nothing also helps us unpack more fully the sense that all aspects of human experience are created and therefore known by God.

It may help us understand the dynamics of the Trinity more fully, although we need to be very careful here.  For example, the biblical understanding of the Spirit arguably served two functions. First, spirit-language served to show that God belonged to the realm of the heavens, not to the realm of the earth. Second, spirit-language serves to indicate that God is everywhere present here among us--he is not limited by a body.

When you place these functions within a universe created out of nothing, spirit is no longer the "stuff of heaven." In relation to the first function, "spirit" becomes a metaphor for the fact that God in his essence does not exist "within" this universe. With regard to the second, the Holy Spirit primarily plays the role of God's presence within this universe.

In the end, however, we should be very cautious about such speculations, although the rise of science has understandably caused us to ask questions that had never really been asked before in this form. The key point of creation out of nothing is that God is the creator of all that exists and thus that God has all power and knowledge in relation to the creation. It also indicates that all God created was, at least initially, "very good" (Gen. 1:31).

The Nicene Creed of AD381 made sure to specify that God created everything "seen and unseen." This added clarification made it clear not only that God created the materials of creation but also that he created all spirit-beings as well, including angels, Satan, and demons. Colossians 1:16 puts it this way about Christ: "all things were created by him: both in the heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible. Whether they are thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities" (CEB). [4]

There is thus no question that Christ is superior to everything else in the creation. For our purposes, there is no question that God created all spiritual beings. God created all angels. God created all the fallen angels or demons. And God even created Lucifer, the fallen angel who would become Satan.

God created everything that exists, both seen and unseen. He created it all from nothing, including space itself. He created it all "very good."

Next week: C2. Everything God created was good.

[1] Although Genesis 1 does not explicitly say that God created those chaotic waters. Genesis 1:1-3 can be read grammatically (and especially against its Ancient Near Eastern context) as God giving order to a chaos that already existed. Here is the CEB's translation of Genesis 1:1-3: "When God began to create the heavens and the earth—the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters—God said, 'Let there be light.' And so light appeared."

[2] Although it is easy to read Hebrews 11:3 as a statement of creation out of nothing, many scholars of biblical cosmology think that is an anachronistic reading. The argument is that the issue just did not exist yet at that time. Since we live after such debates, this verse sounds like creation out of nothing (and may in fact have helped give rise to the idea). But the argument is that the author of Hebrews wasn't even addressing that topic. Rather, the argument goes, Hebrews was saying something like 2 Maccabees 7:28.

2 Maccabees 7:28 comes from about 100BC: "I beg you, child, to look at heaven and earth. See everything that is in them and know that God made these things from nothing, and created humankind in the same way" (CEB). Although it is tempting to take this as the first known statement of creation out of nothing, many experts think this is an anachronistic reading. The point, it is argued, is that God could create this son who is about to be martyred and resurrect him, even if he no longer existed, just like God created the world when it did not exist.

The point is that the author isn't having a debate over creation out of nothing or the materials of creation. That just isn't what he's talking about or thinking. Rather, his point is about God's ability to create a living person where there is none. Nevertheless, you can see how easily these verses came to be read in relation to creation out of nothing and may in fact have helped generate the idea in the later context of debates over Gnosticism.

[3] It was arguably not so much the Gnostic view about creation that was of most concern to the early Christians but the fact that Jesus could not therefore have truly become human and remained without sin. Arguably, John 1:14 and 1 John 4:2 were beginning to deal with early forms of Gnosticism.

[4] Most experts on Colossians believe that this "hymn to Christ" literally pictures Christ as the agent of creation. In Colossians itself, it is not clear whether these words are meant literally or whether he is poetically saying that Christ is the wisdom and word of God. These words strongly echo such themes in Jewish literature (cf. Prov. 8:22-31). But in Proverbs and other Jewish literature, wisdom and God's words are not literally beings but personifications of God's wisdom and God's word. So the question in Colossians 1 is whether Christ is pictured literally as the agent of creation or whether the point is that Jesus is the wisdom of God for the creation and Jesus is God's will for the creation.

Greatest Common Denominator: Creation

I'm putting down some notes in case I ever want to write a book something like, "The Common Denominators of Scripture."  A few days ago I sketched out what a chapter on God might look like. Here are some thoughts on what a chapter on Creation might look like.

1. First, if we take creation out of nothing by faith, certain things follow. I will assume that it is appropriate for a Christian to read Scripture with the assumption of ex nihilo creation, even though Scripture does not seem to teach it explicitly, as far as I can tell. We might argue that it is the trajectory of Scripture (e.g., Heb. 11:3).

If God created the world out of nothing, then he presumably has all power in relation to it. He will also know every truth about it and its working. Simply as creator he will know every possible eventuality about it and, as we said in the previous chapter, we believe he knows every actuality about it as well.

2. Sovereignty and providence
The Bible teaches that God has ultimate authority over the creation. Nothing happens without his permission, good or evil. There is a strand of biblical language that sounds like God not only has authority over the creation but that he also determines everything that will happen. This is not, however, the only strand, and it fits better with the common denominator of Scripture to consider this language the unclear rather than the language of God's love and the freedom he gives the creation.

Nevertheless, God does work for good in the creation and he works good for us before we even know it. Indeed, he works good for us even while we are his enemies and even on those who are evil. He has been at work to reclaim us long before we existed.

3. Freedom of the creation
The greatest common denominator of Scripture will privilege those Scriptures in which God wants everyone to be saved and in which he gives substantial freedom to humans and the creation. This is more in keeping with his nature as love than to privilege the opposite. We can extend this basic principle to the way God has made the creation to follow the laws that he has planted within it. Some of the suffering and pain in the world could be simply the playing out of natural laws.

Christians disagree on whether this freedom might include the power to generate new life and indeed, a creative indeterminism on the quantum level, a kind of creational free will.

Theology Sunday: God--Creator out of Nothing

Here is my theology video for the week on God as Creator:

Implications of Ex Nihilo Creation

By faith I believe that God created the world out of nothing, from no material that previously existed.

I believe this because it is the consensus of Christendom since the Gnostic debates of the second century. It is not in any of the creeds exactly. It is not clearly taught in the Bible. A very strong argument can be made that it is not what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying, although Victor Hamilton has given a very intelligent argument that it is what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying. But it is not clear that this is what any biblical text was saying.

But let's assume by faith that it is the Christian position. It seems to me that a number of things follow.

1. If God created the world out of nothing, then it seems to me that He must at least have as much power as the universe He has created. I can't lift 500 pounds unless I am 500 pounds strong. So in order to create the universe, God must at least have as much power of the universe.

This only implies that He is "all powerful" in relation to the universe, not that He is all powerful in relation to whatever "domain" He might occupy, if it makes any sense even to speak of His "domain" outside this universe.

2. If God created the world out of nothing, then it seems to me that He must understand everything there is to know about the universe's structure, fabric, and possibilities. I might coincidentally make something that tastes good in the kitchen because I did not invent the laws of how ingredients mix. But if God created the universe, then He created the rules for how things are and how they mix.

This implies that God knows what it is to be human. God knows what it feels like to sin. God knows what it feels like to suffer. The suggestion that God might have to become human to identify with us seems preposterous--God made every possibility of human existence and experience from nothing. Indeed, God must have made the possibility of evil and thus, in a somewhat figurative sense, "made evil."

Now, perhaps God also knows every specific thing that will happen before it happens (by faith I believe He does), but it seems to me that is not a necessary consequence of God creating everything out of nothing. Creation ex nihilo only requires that God know every possible event. Creation ex nihilo also does not imply whether God determined everything that would happen or whether He built randomness into the created order. Quantum physics currently suggests that He built randomness into the creation, which might possibly serve as a basis for some sense of free will.

3. It is difficult from this "natural revelation" perspective to know whether it makes sense to say
that God might "circumscribe" or envelop that which He has created. However, this idea doesn't seem ridiculous, whatever it might literally mean.

To say that God circumscribes His creation in space is perhaps to suggest that He is aware and has access to every space, whatever this might mean (and I am very uncertain whether we can really speak of space in these terms). From our perspective, we might call this "omnipresence."

To say that God circumscribes His creation in "time" is perhaps to suggest that He is aware and has access to every "point in time,"whatever this might mean (and I am very uncertain whether we can really speak of time in these terms). From our perspective, we might call this "timelessness."

If God has access to every point in time and space, then we might suppose that He is omniscient, not merely in the sense of the Open Theist for whom God knows every possible sequence of events. But if God "circumscribes" both time and space, then we might reasonably suggest that He knows every actual sequence of events.

In this case such foreknowledge does not necessarily imply predestination, for God could simply play the role of observer. However, it does pose the question of whether God gains specific knowledge of the actual sequence of events at the point of creation, at the point when He creates time.

4. If God created the world out of nothing, then in some fundamental sense He exists independently of the creation. "Heaven," at least in the sense of God's fundamental "dwelling" must be "elsewhere." We have no rational basis to say what the rules or nature of such a dwelling are for God, although certainly He is welcome to reveal a bit to us about it. We should strongly suspect, however, that such revelations will come by way of analogy, since it is not clear that we have any firm point of reference from which to understand them.

What we are saying is that we can draw few inferences about what God is in His essence or nature from the perspective of creation ex nihilo, and we strongly suspect that revelations about His "nature" are far more metaphorical than literal. It is indeed possible that what we think of as God's nature is really the face He shows to the world, the "nature" of God as we understand it from where we sit in this universe, the self He has revealed to us.

5. One benefit of this line of thinking is the foolishness of the skeptic's question, "Then who created God?" The cosmological argument suggests that because every effect needs a cause, therefore, there must be a first Cause that is uncaused. David Hume replies, "Then who made God?"

But an ex nihilo perspective renders this objection itself as foolish. The cosmological argument is now, "We observe that effects in this universe generally need a cause (although we can question this idea on the quantum level now). Indeed, it is currently the consensus of astrophysicists that the world had a beginning at a "point in time." It is at least possible that the question, "What caused that beginning?" is a coherent one.

But to say that the universe needs a cause says nothing about that Cause outside this universe. The very argument has been that things in this universe need causes, which says nothing about things outside this universe. The question of where God comes from thus turns not to understand the nuance of the argument.

6. But indeed, most of Christian theology to the present has continued to speak of God as if he were inside the universe in His fundamental "being." Discussions of His nature are of this sort. We must at least set a question mark at the end of any comment in the current rage of using Trinitarian models to talk about everything. We remember that the language of Nicaea and Chalcedon itself was expressed in the world views of the fourth and fifth centuries. I suspect that there will be much ribbing in heaven of all those who have gone beyond the metaphors of "one substance," "three distinct persons" to what will turn out to be gross oversimplications of the reality.

7. In this same vein, one might use the perspective of ex nihilo creation to suggest the possibility that the goodness of God is a matter of how He has created this universe, that good is good here because God says so. Whether language of His nature outside this universe makes sense, we cannot determine. We cannot determine it by reason for we have no point of reference. We cannot determine it by revelation for revelation is "incarnational" in nature and thus often metaphorical without any clear criteria by which to know when revelation is true on a literal level and when it is true on a metaphorical level.

We can thus imagine--although we have no basis to argue that it is so--that God might create other universes that function on the basis of other moralities and indeed on the basis of rules we can't even anticipate in any way.

8. In a sense, Boethius' and Aquinas' notions of simplicity, that God's essence is His existence now make some sense in relation to this universe. In other words, when we consider God's essence in conjunction with the parts of this universe, it somehow makes sense to suggest that His essence has no parts. What we see, however, is that this claim was, as most Christian theology, formulated from the perspective of God in relation to this universe and parts in this universe. It says nothing about God outside this universe.

9. Finally, we see from the perspective of natural revelation, to say that God is the "greatest possible Being" or the "most perfect Being" carries with it the qualifier, "in relation to this universe." By faith we might further affirm these in an absolute sense.