Creation
Maker of heaven and earth….
The very first words of the Bible are: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1.1) This theme is restated many times in both the Old and New Testaments. Down through the ages, theologians, philosophers and scientists have debated the relationship between God and his creation, and broadly speaking, there are four ways in which the relationship of God to the universe has been conceived.
God is identified with the cosmos and in all aspects inseparable from it and all that exists. This is pantheism.
God is removed from the world altogether after his creation. Any further intervention in his creation is rejected as derogatory to his omnipotence and unchangeableness. This is deism.
God is involved in the world and yet is above and beyond it, at one and the same time sharing life and directing life. He is both immanent and transcendent. This is the Christian view known as classical theism.
God is involved in the cosmos but is not identified with it. God is both within the system and independent of it. This is panentheism.
Panentheism
Eminent biologist and Templeton Prize winner Charles Birch writing on panentheism or the ecological model of God says ‘God is not introduced to fill the gaps left over from science. God is not supernatural. God is natural. What is, is natural. In the ecological model, God is the most natural entity there is… It is a view that attempts to combine the understanding of the best science with the best insights in religion.’
Why did God make the world?
We may speculate on a number of reasons, but we really cannot read the mystery of God’s mind. However, the New Testament teaches us that the Christian concept of God is that God is love. If this is so then perhaps we could say that for God creation is a necessity. William Barclay says, ‘A God of love could not do anything other than create, so that his own love might go out to his creation, and so that the love of his creation might return in answering love to him.’
How did God create the world?
The first two chapters of Genesis give us a poetic view of creation, but simply do not tell us God’s actual method. However, we now do know that life began from the smallest beginnings and climbed upwards and onward until it is what it is today. We have received from God a series of infinite potentialities, which we can work or fail to work out, as we put ourselves in line with, or refuse to put ourselves in line with, the will of God. Again, as William Barclay wrote: ‘The most tremendous thing that man’s increasing knowledge has taught him is that God in his love has given man a share in the work of creation; God did not give men things all complete but made men partners in the work of making a world.’
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