in this video we're going to talk about the doctrine of creation what is creation as millard erickson defines it creation is the work of god in bringing into being without the use of any pre-existing materials everything that is according to john frame creation is an act of god alone by which for his own glory he brings into existence everything in the universe things that had no existence prior to his creative word so when we look to the biblical story which again covers genesis to revelation beginning to end creation plays a vital part in what god is doing in act 1 god created all things by his powerful word and everything created testifies to his goodness he made the skies the sea and the land team with endless varieties of living creatures but created humanity in his own image human beings fell into sin and threw creation into disarray acts 2 through 4 in acts 2 through 4 the wonders of god and nature reveal his power and justice the works of god in creation stir the praises of his people in act 5 god will rescue and restore creation from its broken state in the new heavens and the new earth the former pains of creation brought about by human sin will be no more this is the way the apostle paul describes that fifth act in creation for the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for god's son to be revealed for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay in the glorious freedom of god's children so what does systematic theology teach about the doctrine of creation before jumping into some specifically christian answers let's look at some explicitly non-christian answers first going back a long time is platonic dualism according to this ancient view held by plato and others god and matter were two distinct eternal principles this god and the material universe have always existed together god is not so much the creator of the universe as much as he is the organizer or craftsman of the universe god takes the eternally existing materials of the universe and sort of puts them together one way that you might help remember this position is god doesn't create materials of the universe from nothing instead he goes down to the heavenly home depot and picks up what he needs he puts him in his cart he checks out and he goes back and he builds or organizes the created universe from the materials that have always been there existing side by side with them and then there's manichaean dualism and manichaeism was an ancient philosophy it really was sort of designed to explain away the problem of evil why human beings suffered the way that they do augustine was before coming to faith in christ a manichaean himself and according to this particular position there are two equally powerful spirits that control the universe one good and the other evil it's not totally unlike star wars where there is a light side of the force and a dark side of the force right manichaeanism teaches that there are forces of good and forces of evil that are always at war in the created order hence the reason for human suffering and there's always an attempt to balance these forces of good and evil when there is imbalance and then there's gnostic dualism and gnostic dualism essentially teaches that the created world is itself evil that all matter is created by a personal evil god the created world itself is evil and must be escaped by obtaining a special kind of knowledge or gnosis so if you want to understand something about gnosticism it might be helpful to describe the way that gnosticism conceive of gods or gods there's this unknown or transcendent deity who is the highest of all gods and emanating from him are these lesser gods they're called aeons and at the end of these aeons there is a god called sophia which is the greek word meaning wisdom god or goddess called sophia and sophia does something very unwise in creating this aeon it's called the demiurge or the craftsman the construction worker if you will he is the one who ended up creating the material world the physical universe and the ultimate hope that we have according to gnosticism is that we would receive gnosis in the christ figure gnosis that would ultimately set us free from the physical world so we have to learn how to deny our bodies to learn how to deny the physical universe and then there's the option of emanationism emanationism teaches that creation radiates from god like light beams from a sun it naturally flows or emanates from his being creation is a necessary part of god's being meaning creation itself is part of god and not a voluntary act by its creator god didn't choose to create the universe as much as the universe is sort of an extension of who he is pantheism by contrast is the view that all of the universe is in fact one substance and that god is the universe the universe is god this is pantheism so according to pantheism god is the universe and we are god and then there's the alternative we call deism deism was a popular approach to rational religion during the enlightenment in fact many of the founding fathers of the united states were in fact diaz because it was sort of culturally in vogue at the time deist reasoned that a rational and orderly response god is ultimately responsible for the well-run machine that is the universe but many not all deists presume that this god was standoffish and that he was uninvolved in the world and then there's the option that we call materialism or naturalism according to this view there is no god only the material eternal universe as carl sagan famously said in the beginning of his book the cosmos the cosmos is all that ever that the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be our feebless contemplations of the cosmos stir us there is a spin uh tingling in the spine a catch in the voice a faint sensation as if a distant memory or falling from a height we know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries simply put according to sagan there is no thing beyond the material universe and this is the way most atheists think about god the universe is all that there is all that there ever will be and we can expect nothing else so in short there is no god there are no gods only the material universe human beings are merely highly evolved animals with wisdom that is developed over time through natural selection all right so what are the essential elements of a christian doctrine of creation first and foremost we begin here that god created everything god did not just create some parts of reality he created all things all things were created through him and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created this description of jesus in colossians 1 describes god's creation of all things jesus's creation of all things for everything was created by him in heaven and on earth the visible and the invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things have been created through him and for him god created the spiritual world heaven angels spiritual beings etc but he also created the physical world everything in the material universe and god also created everything from nothing contradualism the judeo-christian tradition affirms creation from nothing creatio ex nihilo simply put god created the world without any use of pre-existing materials he did not go down to the heavenly home depot in fact he created everything for nothing we create things from scratch but scratch exists god created from nothing the universe is not eternal with god but created by god the bible does not explicitly say that god created everything from nothing but this is a reasonable inference from several statements in scripture the bible regularly talks about the beginning of the world implying that there was a time when the world did not exist jesus talks about the beginning of the world the beginning of creation the author of hebrews talks about the beginning when the lord established the earth the implication of the idea that god created all things is that nothing else existed before god created them all things were created through him and apart from him not one thing that has been created has been created so contra manichaeism and gnosticism everything god made including the material universe was good god saw that light was good god saw that it was good god saw that it was good that it was good that it was good that it was good and god saw everything that he made and it was very good indeed so contra gnosticism god did not create evil god did not create an evil world evil is not really a thing but the absence of a thing one way that we sometimes illustrate this is looking at an alley an alley this is a rather lovely place probably not the place that you want to go late at night i suppose but notice no architect builds or designs an alley no architect designs an alley architects design buildings an alley is the absence of buildings okay to take this illustration a little bit further this nasty toe hanging out of this sock shows that there's a hole in the front of the sock now all socks are supposed to have holes in the top right but socks are not supposed to have little holes for nasty looking toes like this hanging out all right so the hole here in the sock is not really a thing the hole does not have a substance or an essence rather the hole is a separation of the threads or materials that make up the bottom of the sock in the same way evil is not a thing it is the absence of good it is the rejection or perversion of the good things that god has created every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights who does not change like shifting shadows good gifts can be misused and perverted but that does not take away from the goodness of creation the doctrine of inseparable operations teaches that the three persons of the trinity are one god that each person of the trinity is operative in all of god's external works from creation through redemption to consummation this is what scott swain says in his incredible little book on the doctrine of the trinity all of creation is the work of one triune god and again we discussed this in our our lecture on the doctrine the trinity but god created the spirit of god was present the son was present the father the son and the holy spirit worked together in creation christian theologians also recognize that god is distinct from creation we affirm what's called the transcendence of god which means that god is not his creation unlike pantheism and paninism these other belief systems that say that god is part of creation we want to reject that outright god is completely and truly distinct from creation but let's begin talking about christian frameworks the various christian frameworks for understanding creation by looking at three broader frameworks for understanding creation now let me just say here i'm not specifically talking about how you interpret genesis 1. we're going to get to genesis 1 in a second but what i want to do right now is talk about three big picture ways that christian theologians think about the doctrine of creation the first is what's called fiat creationism and according to fiat creationism god has by a direct act brought into being virtually and instantaneously everything that exists according to fiat creationism god is directly involved in every aspect of the creation process fiat creationists highlight the brevity of time in the creation process god could have created everything in an instant or over the span of six 24-hour days but fiat creationists tend to be what we call young earth creationists meaning they believe that creation came together in a very short period of time and according to fiat creationists god made human beings in their entirety by a unique direct creative act adam did not come from any previously existing organism that is there was no evolutionary process used in the creation of human beings he did not come from a single celled amoeba he did not come from um from primates or uh any other sort of creature adam was directly created by god then there's this position which is again within the broader list of christian options called theistic evolution now theistic evolution is not naturalistic evolution it says that evolution just happened on its own theistic evolutionists typically claim that that god is the one who is providentially guiding and directing the evolutionary process and according to theistic evolutionists god began the process by bringing the first organism to life then continued by working internally toward his goal for creation again this is not atheism this is not naturalistic evolution but god's providence guiding and directing evolution according to theistic evolutionist um god did create the first human being but he utilized an existing creature he created the human soul and infused it into one of the higher primates he transformed this creature into the first human so for a theistic evolutionist it is possible to say that there is an atom that somewhere along the way god through the evolutionary process brought primates to become human beings and that adam was given a soul making him the first true human being with human consciousness and human self-awareness according to theistic evolutionists god created the spiritual nature of adam directly and while his spiritual nature is a direct creation of god his physical nature is part of and product of of evolution then the third theological framework sometimes called progressive creationism teaches that the creative work of god is a combination of direct creative acts and an ongoing progressive operation on some occasions especially the creation of human beings he did not make use of any previously existing life so progressive creationists typically distinguish between two types of evolution intra-kind evolution which is micro-evolution and inter-kind which is called macroevolution they affirm the former while they reject the latter so they might say that within a species a species grows evolves and develops over time but they deny that one species becomes another type of species over time and according to progressive creationists god god is created man directly and completely using previously existing uh creatures um or without using previously existing creatures excuse me man's physical and spiritual natures were direct de novo creations of god so let me just pause here for a second and unpack the key difference between progressive creationists and fiat creationists fiat creationists believe that god created the earth nearly instantaneously that god did everything in creation directly usually in a short period of time including creating human beings they're a young earth creationist progressive creationists by contrast tend to be what we call old earth creationists they they believe the world might be uh billions of years old whereas the fiat creationists believe the earth is merely thousands of years old and that that this creation of human beings was direct and quickly done so they do reject theistic evolution but they nevertheless say that the earth is billions of years old and that that the rest of creation is moving at a different rate than um than uh than than in the fiat model so let me just give you you know three you know sort of groups that are sometimes or four groups that are identified with these different categories fiat creationists tend to be the answers in genesis guys the ken ham guys um stressing again a young earth creation that god directly created the universe typically in six 24-hour days though a fiat creationist position doesn't necessarily mean that you have to believe that god created creation in six days it just means that god is capable of doing such or god chose to do something like that theistic evolutionists like biologos they again believe in evolution but they believe that evolution is consistent with the biblical record of creation that god directly created adam's spiritual nature but he created adam from previously existing creatures like the primates and then you have progressive creationists represented by the guys like reasons to believe and the discovery institute these are old earth creationists usually a lot of scientists who believe that men uh were directly created by god but the rest of creation may be billions of years old all right so let's get to genesis uh chapters one and two which is where a lot of this debate sort of hinges and if i'm just going to summarize genesis 1 through 2 without reading it in its entirety i would encourage you to do that during this week's unit god spoke light into existence on day one he separated light and darkness day and night on day two he makes a firmament for the separation of the upper and the lower waters and in day three he separates dry land from the waters earth's yielding of seed bearing plants and trees so day one creates light and darkness day two he makes a firmament for the separation of the upper and lower waters simply essentially separates the the sky from the seas day three he separates the dry land from the waters and he puts plants and seeds in their place on day four he makes the sun the moon and the stars for chronology and for light during the day and light during the night on day five he creates fish and fowl creates the birdies and the fishies on day six he creates cattle creeping things and wild animals and of course he creates man male and female in his image the likeness of god with dominion and then on day seven god rests so what are we to do uh with genesis 1 and 2 christians offer several different answers the first hermeneutical option which is really sort of the most straightforward way of reading this text is to say that this account describes six consecutive 24-hour days all right then day one god creates these things day two god creates these things and then at the end of six days on the seventh day god rest there's another option which is probably not as common but you could say that the creation account describes six non-consecutive 24-hour days to say non-consecutive 24-hour days there the idea that um that day one might have happened hundreds of thousands of years before day two day two might have happened hundreds of thousands of years before day three so on and so forth and then there's another option that is is one for us is that genesis 1 1-31 offers us six literal days but they are not the days of creation itself over these six days god revealed the story of creation to the author of genesis and or moses in a series of visions and if you've got to think about it most of the bible is recorded history which is a witness to what god has done in history but only in the creation account do we not have direct access to what god has done in the past so god had to reveal what happened in creation to someone because no one was around to witness it yet right so some have posited that moses is receiving these visions on day one moses receives this vision of god creating the world of god creating you know light and dark on day 2 god moses receives a vision of god separating the waters from the upper and lower waters and day three the land and the waters and i could go on and on that each of these 24-hour days are not days in which god directly created but days in which moses received this vision of god creating which is again one possible option but it's not something that's there explicitly stated in the text for us okay then there's option four 4 which i don't really know a credible bible scholar or theologian who holds this particular point of view no offense to you if you hold this point of view i have known a lot of you know scientists and and sort of lay theologians who've taken this up as an option and that's called the gap theory and it has nothing to do with um the clothing store uh associated with old navy uh the gap theory is this idea that god created a perfect world in genesis 1 1. in the beginning god's created the heavens and the earth but then in genesis 1 2 we have this description of the world formless and empty and basically advocates of the gap theory say hey there's a whole lot that happened between genesis 1 1 and genesis 1 2. it might have been billions of years between genesis 1 1 and genesis 1 2 that somewhere between these two things sin entered the world and brought confusion and chaos and gap theorists often will suggest that satan and his angels fall between genesis 1 1 and genesis 1 2 and that god ultimately has to come around and renew creation for the first time now this sort of strange theory does explain away a lot of questions that people might have particularly about the origin of the serpent and the origin of evil but while it does do those kinds of things the problem is there's not a lot of textual reasons to affirm this position it sort of seems like a big reading into the text of something that's not really directly there and then there is the day age theory and according to the day age theory each day mentioned in genesis 1 was a longer significant period of time and you know there is the passage in second peter that we mentioned in a previous video that you know every day with the lord is like a thousand years a thousand years is like a day to the lord and people will sort of transpose that onto uh the creation account and say well maybe each day of creation is not a literal 24-hour day the word yum can mean perhaps a significant period of time and these describe not days but long periods of time long ages maybe each day is representative of a hundred thousand years or a million years or a billion years just an undesignated amount of time but again the text doesn't explicitly tell us one way or the other so you know this seems like guesswork all right then there is a sixth option which a lot of hebrew scholars and old testament scholars tend to find particularly attractive in trying to kind of make sense of the way that the creation account relates to uh contemporary science today and uh according to this particular position the hebrew poet who put together genesis 1 did not intend to create a literal chronology or a literal description of god's creative acts as much as sort of structured a poem that teaches a theological lesson about god's sovereignty in creation and it works sort of like this days 1 2 and 3 constitute a triad triad of creature kingdoms days 4 5 and 6 create the second triad of creature kings and notice day 1 god creates light in day 4 god creates the sun moon and the stars so i'm not entirely sure what it means to have light on earth without the sun moon and the stars if god creates some sort of non-physical source of light or god creates the idea of light on day one but the sources of light that we know were created on day four and again what does it mean to have literal 24-hour days without the sun moon and stars to give us chronology of the sun moon and stars all right so day two god creates the sky and the water and on day five he fills the sky with birds he fills the water with fish day three creates land and vegetation and on day six he creates the animals and men who live on the land so this is sometimes called the form and fill theory that god creates the forms on days ones through three and then he fills them in days four through six and then on day seven the creator king takes his rest and then there is a seventh option that goes back a significant period of time to augustine and i won't spend a lot of time in detail talking about this but i would highly recommend the book by my friend gavin ortland called retrieving augustine's doctrine of creation and augustine essentially read genesis 1 allegorically he understood the light created on day one to refer to the angels and that the preceding six days refer to the six phases of angelic knowledge about creation so augustine also embraced fiat creationism that god created the universe instantaneously but for augustine in some ways this is like the the pictorial revelatory day theory that god creates the angels first and that the rest of the days that follow really sort of describe um the ways the wit in which the angels came to know and understand creation so where does this fit in a doctrinal taxonomy and again we've already talked about this doctrinal taxonomies are our ways of distinguishing between what's essential for christians to believe and those things that christians can can agree to disagree about and things that christians within a particular tradition need to believe and i would say that there are certainly some aspects of the doctrine of creation that you cannot reject and still be a christian and some are a key part of particular theological traditions some areas of disagreement are more minor than others so let me just say this i think it's absolutely essential that all christians everywhere believe that god created everything we can't embrace pantheism we can't embrace a sort of gnostic dualism or the idea that god didn't create everything that's just not a christian option for us god created all things but some christians will argue that god created human beings indirectly through evolutionary processes and some will argue most i think will argue that god created humanity directly i tend to think that there is some breathing room on this particular claim i i have uh you know friends who are theistic evolutionists there are several theologians whom i greatly respect who are theistic evolutionists but as a southern baptist i tend to think that most southern baptists myself included believe that god created humanity directly without any pre-existing material without any pre-existing creatures i tend to think that's where most southern baptists are regardless of how they read and understand the days of creation and then i think that that issue of whether or not god created um in six literal days or these days are like days of revelation or whether we take something like the literary framework theory or augustine's position uh i think that is sort of one of those issues that uh you know we who were evangelical christians we who are southern baptists as long as we affirm that god created everything and that god created human human beings directly there is some room for disagreement even in a local church or in the denomination creation and christian practice there's a few practical takeaways we need to observe first and foremost god created everything we need to use the gifts of creation well we are called to be stewards of creation we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to the doctrine of humanity but work is good it's a good thing for human beings to work it's a good thing for human beings to to learn how to work not to be lazy but it's also a good thing to rest because god has created us to work we see work prior to the fall but we also see that rest is good that god has created us to rest so how do we talk about the doctrine of creation in our disciple making well like everything i've said to this point hey preach some expository sermons on genesis one through two preaching expository sermon on job 38 or psalm 147 there are a lot of great biblical texts that you can talk about with regards to the doctrine of creation and several of those can be found in the systematic theology textbooks that you are reading this semester teach a bible study class on doctrinal topics plan a worship service focusing on god as creator and if you have a pleasant evening plan a worship service under the stars and worship the lord under the stars it can make for a beautiful and special night of worship and of course let's talk about creation and christian affections the works of nature do stir the praises of god's people as we've already mentioned and we should glorify and give thanks to the creator not bow and worship the creation itself as we learn the book of romans that's what some have done although they knew god they did not glorify him as god or show gratitude their hearts became worthless their their hearts were darkened um claiming to be wise they became fools they exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images resembling mortal man birds four-footed animals and reptiles so let's praise god let's show him gratitude in creation the provision of rain and crops testifies to the mercy and to the kindness of god the creatures and the ecosystems of the earth attest to the infinite wisdom of god in their design of course the book of revelation closes on this note our lord and our god you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power because you created all things and by your will they exist and they were created so that sums up the doctrine of creation or at least all that i'm going to say about it in a 40-minute video there's a lot more that we could read there's a lot more that we could discuss but tried to sum up some of the major non-christian positions some of the major christian positions and some of the practical takeaways that we have from this doctrine next we're going to turn to the doctrine of providence