REFORMED WITNESS
Volume IX, August 2001, Number 8
God is the Creator
What Is the Origin of the World?
From Chapter 1 of the book
Unfolding Covenant History, An Exposition of the Old Testament;
Volume 1: From Creation to the Flood
By Homer C. Hoeksema
Published by the Reformed Free Publishing Association
The question of the origin of the world is so important that the answer we give to it really determines our entire view of Old Testament history.
To this question there are, fundamentally, but two possible kinds of answers: the answer of faith or the answer of unbelief, the answer of revelation or the answer of human philosophy, the answer of the Creator himself or the answer of the mere creature standing in rebellion against the Creator.
We need not be surprised that unbelief invents its own theories of the beginning of the world, and that today the philosophy of evolutionism, the philosophy of a beginning without God, is more widely held and taught than ever before. True, this theory may have undergone various refinements through the years, and it may enjoy an apparently more scientific window dressing than it had formerly. But it is a philosophy, not a science. It is a false religion, not the product of laboratory investigation. As a philosophy that concerns not only the origin of things but also the destiny of things, as well as the way that lies between that origin and that destiny, evolutionism is a very current and very dangerous and wholly false philosophy, a prize lie of the devil.
Not less dangerous and milder, but more dangerous because it is more deceitful and cunning, more insidiously antichristian, is the philosophy of so-called theistic evolution in its various forms. Crass evolutionism itself can hardly be an option for a Christian. It is blatantly unbelieving and in flat contradiction to the word of God. It is a brazen attempt to get God somehow out of the beginning on the assumption that if God is removed from the beginning of the world, he is also removed from all the history that follows. But theistic evolution is somewhat different. It claims to be theism - faith in God. And it claims, at the same time, to be evolutionism, which is an unbelieving denial of God the Creator, the God of the scriptures. It claims, therefore, to reconcile the irreconcilable. It claims to be a mixture of the immiscible, a synthesis of the antithetical. It claims to harmonize faith and unbelief, the truth of God and the denial of the Creator-God, the word of the Creator and the lie of the creature. No more than fire and water can be mixed, no more than light and darkness can be reconciled, can theism (faith in God) and evolutionism (unbelief) be harmonized. But it is precisely in this pseudoChristian, antichristian form, according to which the lie of unbelief is dressed up in the garments of the truth, that evolutionism has obtained a foothold in the church, has in the minds of some become a debatable question, and has in various forms found its way into interpretations of sacred history.
We hold that one makes a fundamental mistake if he attempts to enter into a scientific debate with an evolutionist, to meet him on his own ground, and to employ human logic and ingenuity to gainsay him. The issue is undebatable; and it is below the true dignity of a Christian to enter into such debate. The reason for this is that there is no common ground between faith and unbelief. The Christian stands on the basis of the word of God; the evolutionist (of whatever brand) stands on the basis of human reason, not subject to that word of God. Because there is no common ground, there can be no proper debate.
The Christian, proceeding from faith and standing on the basis of the word of God as his sole authority, simply says, "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." His position is, "Give me God and his revelation, and I can explain the world." In the words of Genesis 1:1 the church proclaims without debate, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
With the revelation of this truth the scriptures open. The very first verse of the Bible contains the amazing statement: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). By this declaration we are at once carried far beyond all that eye can see, or ear can hear, or that can arise in the heart of man, by a truth that transcends all merely human comprehension. It is not a child of time with finite human intellect, but the eternal and infinite God who speaks here. We are carried in this first verse of scripture to the very edge of time, the beginning, and there we are called to lift up our eyes to the Eternal One and say, "In the beginning God..." Faith, emphatically faith alone, faith which is the evidence of things unseen and the substance of things hoped for, responds, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3).
This truth that God is the Creator is no isolated and insignificant item of truth, disconnected from the revelation of the gospel of our salvation and unrelated to the history of the realization of the wonder of grace. It is not a matter of indifference whether or not the church confesses that God is the Creator. It is not true that the doctrine of creation is concerned only with the origin of things as such, and that it has no bearing upon the truth of our salvation and no significance for the rest of sacred history.
On the contrary, holy scripture throughout emphasizes the truth that God is the Creator, and does so in such a way that this confession forms an integral part of the faith of the redeemed church. The church, inspired by the Spirit of Christ, the church as it is still in the midst of death and looking for full redemption, loves to sing of God the Creator. Thus in the eighth Psalm: "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens... When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" (Psalm 8:1,3 & 4). Psalm 24:1 and 2 also acknowledges the Creator: "The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." And in Psalm 33 the righteous are called upon to rejoice in the Lord and to praise him, for "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." And again: "For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:6 & 9).
Especially in times of great stress, when the cause of God's Son and of his covenant seems to suffer defeat in the world, the church appeals for deliverance to the God that made the heavens and the earth. For creation and redemption are inseparably connected. You cannot deny the one and hold to the other. The philosophy of evolutionism is a denial not only of God the Creator but also of God the Savior. It has no salvation. It is the philosophy of despair. But the church looks unto God the Creator for redemption and deliverance. Thus, in Psalm 74:16 and 17 the church appeals to him: "The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun. Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter." Further, "The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them" (Psalm 89:11). Psalm 95 declares of the Rock of our salvation that he is a great God and a great King above all gods: "In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker" (Psalm 95:1&3-6). Psalm 102:25 instructs us, "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands." The poet in Psalm 121:2 declares, "My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." And in Psalm 124:8 God's people celebrate their deliverance from their enemies, concluding with these well-known words:
"Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth." Once more, in Psalm 146:5 and 6 we read, "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever."
When Zion is called to lift up her voice and to say unto the cities of Judah, "Behold your God," the Lord himself calls the attention of Zion to the greatness of his power as the Creator by asking, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counselor hath taught him?" (Isaiah 40:12&13). Continuing in verse 26, Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." Again, in verse 28 we read, "Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding." Isaiah speaks for the Holy One of Israel, who called his servant Cyrus to liberate his people: "I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded" (Isaiah 45:12).
The Creator is the God who "quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were" (Romans 4:17). He is the God who created all things by and unto Jesus Christ, "the firstborn of every creature" and "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:15 & 18). He is the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named" (Ephesians 3:14 & 15). And when the four and twenty elders in the vision of Revelation 4 fall down and worship him that sat upon the throne, this is their adoration: "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (v. 11).
Concluding this aspect of our discussion, therefore, we may state in the first place that it is evident from scripture's emphasis upon the truth that God is the Creator, that it is paramount for the church of Christ in the midst of the world - indeed, a matter of life and death for her to maintain it. To this truth the church must bear witness. She must preach it. She must teach it to her generations. She may not tolerate that her children, her sons and her daughters, be taught anything else in schools and colleges and universities. The church herself must not exchange this testimony of revelation for the language of the wisdom of man.
In the second place, it should be evident that according to scripture there exists a close relation between creation and redemption. God the Creator is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, not only as the eternal Son, but also as the incarnated Christ, the Lord, whom he hath appointed to be the head over all things in the world to come. What is more, it is as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (and our Father for his sake) that he is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. For he, the Christ, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature and the first begotten of the dead. By him and for him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible. He is before all things, and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:14-17). The Creator is also the Redeemer; and he made all things with a view to redemption. Of God and through God and to God are all things, as expressed in Romans 11:36. To him be the glory forever!
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