CREATION is regarded as belonging to the most extraordinary order of causation. Many dismiss it as an impossible idea, or, at least, extremely unlikely. This is because creation requires a personal Deity, Whose capacity or work is not measured by mathematics, physics and chemistry. Creation, it is certain, cannot both be beginning and end. Nor is it the limit of the One Who originates it, though it is the primary evidence of the Creator. Not only is the commensurate intelligence and volition required, but also One Who is creation's Superior, and Who gives both reason and purpose to it, in love and in righteousness.
It must be realized that creation is not the simple question of the material side, which we know so intimately. In all our knowledge and analysis of it, we barely start to understand what reality lies within creation's mode. That of which creation is the mode remains all too vague. This seems to be so because the mode is not regarded as the achievement of the imperceptible power and divinity of Him Who would, by creation, descry His invisible attributes. To accept such knowledge from Him at once directs us to find the basis of creation to be out of Deity.
In His first movement, the Deity gave character to His creation, for the Original of creation was the Son of God's love. This thought concerning creation is one which humans rarely entertain. In fact, its perception requires a penetration which only revelation can alert. The creation of God's Son, as the prelude to the whole of creation, presses the mind into its proper place; humans must exercise faith and believe God. To creation His Son gives spiritual character and righteousness for from Him flows all which makes creation to accord with the divine.
In the creating following Him Who was His creative Original, God did not specifically express His Sovereignty. That must always remain integral and implicit in His creation. It is left for His creatures to discover to themselves whether they are self-sufficient, or, alternatively, that there is need and reason to control and rule them, directing them toward His purpose. This position is both requisite and important, for it serves to edify the creatures, not only concerning themselves, but, pointing them back to Him, it affords that situation whereby God will show His glory and its multifarious wisdom, and, in addition, His love.
Humans are baffled in the quests concerning the universe. Their theories are evidence of this. Yet they are carried along by them. They seem to find support, for their formulations and deductions appear to give them results, of a kind. Success entices. Does seeming success also delude? Is it not obvious that even such an axiom as "like begets like" is but the true expression of a straight line which could never start? It should be discerned that, in its simplest and most profound aspect, creation manifests God's imperceptible power, and also the qualities of divinity which pertains to Him.
Astronomy seems to have carried the day, and philosophies of the universe have been moulded to comply with the cosmologies required by the changing outlook of astronomy. The concept of a primeval atom is now a vogue; in fact, it is accepted almost as an idea competing for acceptance or preference with continuous creation. The primeval atom is not only moulded by astronomy, but it seems to be modulated by the required methods of that science. Hence, the theory of an expanding universe is now propounded to comply with the claimed observations as to space. With such ideas it is customary to associate time. Is the primeval atom, together with time, intended to allow a beginning? If so, does the beginning still remain nebulous and without purpose?
The expanding universe is announced with much disregard to the point that an atom, to be such, must really be in a "steady state." The quantum is needed to cover the change in the atom, unless the expansion is to become evidence that the electrons of the primeval atom refuse to be restricted to their orbits? Is equilibrium, after all, non-existent, or is it an impossibility to human thought? Must humans prefer to think in terms, which, though named "steady state," are, after all, but the obverse of evolutionary thought?
The supposition, that the earth's history originated from the cooling of primeval gas, is an idea as crude as the chaos it is thought to produce. Chaos is an idea which is far from practicable in relation to creation. The idea, as proposed, of the earth arising from the cooling of such a gas, is but an endeavor to avoid admitting creation. Not only are we left to discover the origin of the primeval gas, and its qualities, but the proposition is that present experience and phenomena are the limits from which creation could come. It is a proposition of a supposed chance occurrence amid the spiral nova.
Must we suppose that creation would produce a chaos? A cooling gas certainly would produce a chaos. To extrapolate the uniformity of physical law is not admissible in the field of creation. That range of uniformity was wrought into creation. It is the Creator Who has wrought the uniformity of law into the material mode.
The gamma ray, seemingly emanating from the depths of distant galaxies, when detected, brings no news which can be interpreted for faith. Yet that spirit, which originated the element out of which the ray arises, that spirit has, in the Scriptures, spoken much more clearly of creation and of its values. In the words of that spirit, we read very definitely of God and His ways, and learn of that Obedient One, the Firstborn of Creation, Whose humiliation will lead every knee to bow and every tongue to acclaim to the glory of His Father.
The notion that God created out of nothing is veritably absurd. There must be something fundamental from which to create. The opposite couples well with the chaos usually present in the human mind when thinking on this subject. We dismiss such a thought, not only as being irrational, but also because it is truly unscriptural. The Scriptures plainly assert that all is out of God, and this, of necessity, includes creation, in all of its categories. We should investigate scriptural statements which, so far as this is possible, will lead us to understand creation, not merely as a term, but as the method which belongs to Him Who would thereby reveal Himself. Creation is a divine matter and method.
The word spirit can express that abstract category termed existence. For this reason, the word is suitable to describe the Deity in His own absoluteness, as well as His essence (John 4:24) and the basis of His achievements in creation. Spirit is back of the movement when Deity begins to reveal Himself. By implication, the term designates the divine power manifested in such invisible and intangible operations.
Prior to these divine operations, we accord to spirit all those personal qualities which, in their nature, do not destroy themselves since they are essentially benign. These qualities exhibit all the values of intelligence and volition, such qualities as righteous action would display. Thought and affection not only originated the revealing, but they guided it, for purpose corresponds with the beginning which obviously must be that of creation.
Creation must be out of Deity, yet the creation cannot be any limitation of Him. The degree to which creation moves away from the absoluteness of spirit is outside estimation. Certain it is that not every value or potency were impounded into the material creation. Rather is creation a diminishing, a lessening of possible energy. Even so, it is not a degrading of spirit. Rather it is a construing of spirit, in order to reveal Him Who is Spirit.
Spirit then is the fundamental of creation. As such, spirit was the absolute energy, that energy which did not radiate. It was not kinetic, for it was without discontinuity or rhythm. Around spirit, there was no such idea as the quantum. It was neither corpuscular nor vibratory, in any sense. We make plain also that it would be inaccurate to deduce the inference that spirit must have any static value comparable to inertia. Spirit was absolute, and within it was the possibility of infinite mode. The absolute must, due to precedence, deny the features of the relative.
In some sense, creation must have made space to become evident. Thus we move from the invisibility of spirit over to the tangible and visible, and so, in a very distinct sense, to the category of the perception of space. To this realm of tangibility came to belong the idea that creation does occupy the heavens.
Space seems now to be regarded as a vacuum. This finds its agreement with the idea that matter is atomic, behind which lies a structure of electron and proton particles. The discontinuity, which makes possible the energy radiation of the atom, requires the conception of the quantum. Quantum-mechanics seem to be at home in a logic which adds a third value to the excluded middle principle. This is comparable to the non-euclidian geometry of relativity. Have we not moved to analogies akin to cobwebs without any background of time and space?
Gravity is required to complete and control such features. Thus cohesion is complemental to gravity. At some periods, space was regarded as a plenum, but the idea of gravity seemed to deny it, even when ether was entertained as a compromise. Must it not be that, in the ultimate analysis, space has no such feature as gravity? There is no real direction to gravity, no vertical distance, up or down, admitting of higher or lower, and so outer space does not have the capacity which admits any equivalence to being on varying planes or altitudes. Essentially, these are the experiences related to the terrestrial. Truly, faith finds the cohesion of the universe in Him in Whom all was created. This is fully satisfying, for it leaves matters in the hands of His God and Father.
To follow the human outlook in respect of the idea of time, brings us into all the vagaries which seek to express its infinity. The Scriptures speak of the eons, and these have their relation to the system which God has created. Duration and continuity can be measured by the movement of the material objects of creation. Human vanity endeavors to speak of the universe in terms of billions of years. One is probed to ask; why so much? Or, why so recent? Does it not hide that the vistas are so expressed to avoid the admission that, in this relation, we also have met, head on, the idea of absoluteness? Such is the impact that it stuns thinking, preventing the vanity of the notions from being perceived!
To consider metaphysics or ontology affords fleeting values. The very term "universe" has deceptive aspects, unless we do realize, from the Scriptures, that the universe is the contrivance or deed of God. Then only can the term have values which are agreeable to sanity and faith. With the Scriptures we must regard the Deity in terms of the work He undertakes in order to reveal Himself. The word "God" has but a vague content, and must be filled out by His activities, gleaned from the Scriptures. Only then do we consider Him subjectively. This is what the Scriptures enjoin us to do. Yet first, the Scriptures in the use of the several titles of Him, describe His operatings and show His wisdom in them, thus indicating a revealed objective, in which He delivers, justifies and reconciles His creation through the Son of His love.
Our quest concerning creation is that perception of it which the terms and statements of the Scriptures give. We pass from the absoluteness of spirit, through stages which arrive at the modes of matter such as humans know today upon the earth. Creation requires spirit to become the material of the universe. And, when creation of the material stage is achieved, it requires the imposing of a measure of spirit in order to give life to the creatures related to creation's mode.
Spirit must first be made to exist in what amounts to a concentrated form of energy. This will describe the primordial state of elements. These primordial elements must then be reduced in volume, yet still retain that original force which constituted them at the moment they passed from the realm of spirit.
Though we speak of spirit as the basis of creation, yet spirit must not be judged by the features which have come to exist in the mode. Apart from invisibility, all other features will lead the mind astray as to spirit. This is so even in respect of the term "energy ", for the ordinary definition of energy requires ideas which are far removed from absolute spirit.
Using the present formula of scientific thought, the problem comes to pose the question; did creation build by fusion from the hydrogen end of phenomena? Or, is the view a fission from the opposite uranium end? There is no real ideal other than that we, indeed, commence out of God, and continue under His ordering. It is obvious that before creating reaches values which belong to the atomic stage, it has moved from spirit in its fundamental characterless mode. Preceding the atom, creation moved to energy units which give the atom an internal structure. None of the physical features of matter, comprised within heat, light and sound or electronics, are creative factors. Nor do their latent properties or critical stages belong to creative possibility.
Creation is an orderal procedure, out of the Deity, purposed and directed by Him at all stages. The universe is viewed by the Scriptures as God's contrivance. As such it was undertaken in wisdom. That wisdom coincided with the beginning, and wisdom accompanied all the stages of procedure, even the aforetimes of the earth which produced the habitance. Ample evidence of the orderly procedure of Ieue's work is stated in Proverbs 8:23-29. In wisdom Ieue reached the top soil of the habitance. This was before the submerged chaos, or the sinking of the mountains. And Job 38 tells of creatures, designated sons of God, who break forth into jubilation at what' Ieue achieves, even at so early a stage.
That position of creation is reached which is summed up in Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. The earth is not a chaos. It has the various strata, regular and undisturbed, with the top soil of the habitance. The Deity has controlled all features in His creating, and upon the earth's surface can grow vegetation, in conditions which are ideal and far different from those which now obtain. Yet there was no human! The time of his making was not yet come.
Creation must be considered and regarded as that which Ieue undertakes in order to reveal Himself to creatures who will ultimately return to Him thanks and praise and enjoy His glory. To this end His creatures must have desire and will, but these must be educated and operated in them ere they can operate to God's glory. Creatures whose natural volition glorifies the Deity do not feature or comport with the situation which the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, seeks. He must be All in all. For this, humans though as a first stage, made in the image of Alueim, yet by this they are not immediately suitable to display the ultimate glory He will achieve for Himself. The sentient is but first, and thereupon is to be the spiritual.
For this reason, creation of the heavens and earth was not the final. That was a beginning, into which evil must be introduced so as to display the glory of God's righteousness and love. Evil came to operate through the Adversary and his office, and at a point much anterior to Genesis 3. This was to promote God's glory, though immediately, in appearance, it produced the opposite. The chaos of the second verse ensued after that earlier stage of God's creating had been reached.
The remainder of the details of the first chapter of Genesis do not give more details of creation, but rather are they explaining the readjustment which, following the chaos that had ensued, made the earth ready for humanity to be placed thereon. Even so, humanity thereafter also came to be under the dominance of the Adversary. History now proceeds to unfold. It is history which will ultimately reveal the glory of our God. It will unfold until it makes evident to all creation the Son of God in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. These are, indeed, the matters which reveal and glorify God. Such treasures explain the why and wherefore of creation from spirit, through the material, and forward to the higher glories of the new creation.
That new creation will be displaying the spiritual excellences of our God. The pathway to it, this has been incidental. Humans, at present, regard the incidental as fundamental, and hence they give little attention to the Son of God. His excellence lies in the fact that He is Saviour. Humans will yet find that they require more than either Example or a Teacher. God's Son is certainly both, in the proper relation, but Saviour is the basic glory.
There is no dualism in the foregoing. Nor is there any dualism in the Scriptures. There is no fight between good and evil. God is not carrying on any struggle in that regard or sense. God is revealing Himself in creation, not only as to His power, but rather as to His love and righteousness. Because this is the position, He needed His obedient Son, Christ Jesus. Apart from Him not even one thing came into being which has come into being. (John 1:3) It is equally certain that all which has come into being will yet glorify our God. God's Son should be, and must yet be, the One in Whom we find our faith, and in Whom our faith resides.
This, indeed, makes it possible, as well as practicable, for His God and Father to become All in all. That is what God's obedient Son will achieve for His Father and His God. That too is what all sons of God desire. Our ultimate joy will be, not our blessings from God, but rather that He is glorified in us. This is creation's objective achieved through the blood of His cross.
