The Act Of Creation
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
The original Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:1 primarily “means to create out of nothing” This meaning agrees with the general understanding of the idea of creation but it is necessary to be clear about what God did in the beginning and not confuse it with other meanings which the word could have in other situations.
What Is Creation?
The idea of God’s work of creation in the beginning refers to His free act, whereby, according to His sovereign will and for His own glory, brought forth the whole universe, visible and invisible, physical and spiritual without the use of any pre-existing entity, and thereby gave it an existence distinct from His own and yet always dependent on Him.
Certain issues derive from the above declaration which need to be looked at in greater detail:
The first is that creation is temporal and not eternal. God created in the beginning – that is, in the beginning of time-based existence. Time itself was created in the beginning as also were Space and Substance. Therefore, there was no creature in existence before the beginning, Such a privilege is reserved for God alone (Father, Son and the Holy Spirit).
The second issue is that creation was effected freely by God out of His pleasure without any internal or external pressure compelling or necessitating Him (Revelation 4:11). This is actually to be expected since if the act were a necessary act of God (i.e. a necessity imposed on Him), then it would be an eternal act. But there are only three eternal processes and the three exit only in God. These are: generation (begetting), filiation (being begotten) and spiration (proceeding). And none of them has anything to do with creation.
The third issue to consider is that creation was not from absolute nothing – but rather from nothing created. As it is, God actually created from His Will, (Hebrews 11:3) and the will of God is NOT nothing but the source of all things in the universe. If God were to create from anything pre-existing, it means that such a thing would be eternal – and yet not be God. Such would be a contradiction in terms since whatever is eternal would qualify to be God – as Himself or His attributes.
Fourthly, we see that the act of creation resulted in a distinct, yet dependent existence, which we call the Universe (the heavens and the earth). God inhabits, and has always been in, the eternal mode of existence. In the "beginning", He created the temporal mode of existence. The temporal mode is made up of two distinct realms which are the spiritual realm and the physical realm. God created the two realms to be dependent on Him. After creation, God continues to be involved in the affairs of creation, ensuring that all things work according to His will (Ephesians 1:11).
Fifthly, God created as a single act of the triune Godhead. The whole work of creation is not subdivided into sub-tasks among the Persons of the Godhead but the whole work is ascribed fully to each Person from the different perspectives according to their “ministries” by which we know that all things are at once (not sequentially) out of the Father (1Corinthians 8:6; Acts 17:28), through the Son (Colossians 1:16, John 1:3. 1Corinthians 8:6), and in the Holy Spirit (Job 26: 13, Job 33:4, Psalms 104:30).
And finally, we see that the ultimate purpose of creation is God’s glory. (Revelation 4:11). Indeed, no other purpose is worthy.
What Did God Create?
Fundamentally, God created only three basic (or elemental) things, - Time, Space and Substance. We may therefore also say God created Interval (Time and Space) and Content (The Content is also called "Substance", which is either Spirit and Matter). Time is simply interval of duration while Space is interval of distance. The creation of these aspects of “interval” would be meaningless if there were no substance to occupy them as their “content”.
In the general human way of reasoning, space and content are obviously recognized as connected, but until the appreciation of relativity, time was thought to be a parallel factor that merely impinged on space-substance three-dimensional model of created existence. This is one of the reasons why creation is described wholly in terms of time with the adjective "temporal" to contrast it with what is uncreated – eternal. But when it pleased God to reveal the truth of the essential oneness of what He created to us (Deuteronomy 29:29), He rewarded our investigative efforts (Proverbs 25:2) with the appreciation of relativity (Albert Einstein) by which we now know that time cannot realistically be separated from space and substance since it actually forms a time-space continuum with them.
Two Realms Of Existence
It is the nature of the content that defines the "Realm" of temporal existence because time and space remain the same regardless of the content. Therefore, there are two realms of temporal/created existence, the spiritual and the physical. The spiritual realm does not have a different "space" or a different "time" from the physical realm although they make use of these intervals in fundamentally different ways so much so that we say that they belong to different realms. This point will be considered in greater detail under the teaching of "the heavens and the earth" in other posts.
God Did Not Create Life, He Imparted It
God did not create life in the sense of bringing it forth. Life is an eternal attribute of God who alone has life in Himself. (John 5:26) This is why God is I AM THAT I AM. God is by virtue of Himself, unlike us who are because He is. All life is therefore from God, and it is imparted as a gift not newly created. Thereafter, it is transmitted from generation to generation via the procreation provision of God.
One of the most pitiable errors of false science is a misunderstanding of the nature of life and consequently an attempt to search for its beginning and attempt to "recreate" it in the laboratory. Pitiable indeed! Nonetheless, there is an issue relating to life that was actually created – and that is the spirit substance. The spirit is the substantial medium via which God transmits life to all creatures that possess life. Living things are living things because they possess the spirit substance. Matter, whether as particle or as wave, cannot suddenly become "living" regardless of the complexity of its organisation. Life comes only by the impartation of God (i.e. a gift) and the vehicle that receives that gift and propagates it is the spirit. As I'm fond of saying, "regardless of the technical perfection of the anatomy, it is the spirit the makes physiology happen".
Bringing Forth The Entities
When we look at creation, we don't primarily see elemental matter or spirit. What we see are the different beings brought forth by God, which are made up of these elements. The earth, the planets, the moons, the stars, the living organisms, great and small, visible and invisible, are all the work of God. The Scripture is silent on the specifics of "how" these things came to be, but it clearly teaches us that they were brought forth at different times and via different events or processes. These divine actions are simply identified as Let, Make and Form. Though these activities are technically different, it is convenient to simply describe them as the "creative" activities of God.
Similarly, the Scripture does not tell us the precise time of creation - only that it was "in the beginning" and that it was effected over what is described as "six days". Other posts will shed more light on this.
