On Creation

I'm in the process of writing a paper on several of my doctrinal beliefs for my systematic theology class. I thought I would post excerpts as I complete them. Here's the first...

In Genesis 1, the beginning of time and the existence of the world is defined as God’s creation, ex nihilo, out of nothing. By his act of speech, light appeared, sky materialized, land formed, plants grew, animals walked, fish swam, and man lived. There was no matter prior to this creative Word. The psalmist proclaims this truth in Psalm 33:6, 9. The Evangelist declares it in John 1:3. The apostle affirms it in Colossians 1:16. And the authors of Acts and Hebrews also bear witness to its veracity (Acts 4:24, 14:15; Heb 11:3).

Never, in the entirety of Scripture, is the doctrine of God as Creator questioned or contradicted. Rather, this belief is maintained as a critical tenet of the faith of Yahweh’s chosen people, pervading both Old and New Testaments. In a whirlwind of majestic rhetoric, God questions Job’s knowledge by emphasizing his absence when he brought the earth into existence (Job 38-39). Moses establishes God as his refuge because the Almighty existed even before he created the earth (Ps 90:2). Wisdom speaks of her presence with the Lord “before the beginning of the earth” and while he was creating it (Prov 8:22-31). Through Isaiah, God asks Israel how they can doubt his knowledge of their ways by reminding them that he is Creator (Is 40:27-28). Jesus speaks of “the abomination of desolation” as being more difficult than any other period since God created the world (Mark 13:19). The divine creation of the world is also used to argue the preeminence of Christ (Col 1:15-20). Finally, the song of the twenty-four elders sets the worthiness of God in his creation of all things (Rev 4:11).