Essentials of Creation: What must we believe about the beginning? (original) (raw)

Debates about creation often come with high emotions, and to some extent this makes sense. Many of the issues surrounding creation, evolution, the early chapters of Genesis, the age of the earth, the historicity of Adam and Eve, etc., have profound implications in a number of ways, sometimes relevant to the very gospel itself. It is also true that we ought to strive to be as biblical as possible in every detail of our faith, so even the relatively “minor” parts do matter. Anything God has chosen to reveal is something a Christian should care about. Still, for the sake of both clarity and charity, it can be helpful to know what is truly essential when it comes to creation. What must a Christian believe about creation to be orthodox in their doctrine?

What do we mean by essential?

Of course, to avoid sowing more confusion rather than helping to alleviate it, we need to clearly define what we mean by essential. There are at least three different categories or degrees of necessity that one can discuss as in some sense “essential” to Christian orthodoxy:

1. Strict Gospel Essentials – By this I mean what a Christian must believe about creation in order to avoid directly contradicting the gospel itself. To violate this is to, by definition, step outside of genuine Christian faith.
2. Broad Gospel Essentials – Here I refer to things on which the truth of the gospel does not directly hinge but that do carry implications such that denying them will undermine the gospel. A genuine Christian might fall into an error in this category and still be saved, but they do so only through inconsistency. They fail to follow their error through to its logical conclusion.
3. Non-Salvific Essentials – This category contains matters that are not essential to salvation but are nevertheless essential to core tenets of historic, biblical Christian doctrine. One might deny these and still be saved, but they are heterodox, on the fringe, and not representative of the basic Christian faith.

For the purpose of this article, we are going to primarily focus on the first two: strict and broad gospel essentials. As stated in the introduction, there are plenty of topics related to creation that are very important and worthy of vigorous debate that will not make this list. This list is not exhaustive of all that matters for Christians to discuss, but is meant to highlight what is essential so as to help Christians approach conversations on these various topics with the appropriate degree of urgency or patience and to help make wise decisions over when, how, and to what extent we ought to divide over various aspects of the creation debate.

Strict Gospel Essentials of Creation: Yahweh is Absolute Creator

One may not immediately think that creation is strictly and directly an essential gospel issue, but it is. The good news of Jesus Christ by which we must be saved is not merely that a god sent his son to die for our sins and rise on the third day, etc. Rather, it is that the God, Yahweh (Jehovah, the LORD, YHWH) the great I AM, the Triune God of the Bible, did this. One cannot put their faith in Baal, Zeus, or Krishna and receive forgiveness. If one sincerely repents and believes that the Hindu god Vishnu sent Jesus to die for our sins, this will not save them. If one pleads with Molech to forgive them and grant them eternal life on the basis of the cross of Christ, that prayer will not be answered. The gospel is a message of reconciliation with the one true and living God. To add or substitute any other deities is to believe an entirely different gospel. This, in part, is what is meant when CARM lists “Monotheism” among the “primary essentials” in essential Christian doctrine.

So, what does all of this have to do with creation? Much in every way! First of all, the Bible consistently treats creation as definitional to who the true God is. In the ten commandments, God pronounces strict judgment on the household of anyone who worships any other god or idol:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments,” (Exodus 20:2-6).

In this very same context, just a few verses later, the next commandment is anchored in the fact that:

“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day…” (Exodus 20:11a)

Which God must we worship in exclusion of all others? The one who not only brought Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus, but who also created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them (i.e., literally everything). Creation is essential to who God is. When the prophet Jonah was questioned by the pagan sailors about where he was from and what God he worshiped, Jonah explained who his God was and distinguished his from theirs by saying:

“He said to them, ‘I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.'” (Jonah 1:9).

And the Bible is filled with praises to God like:

“You alone are the LORD. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before You.” (Nehemiah 9:6).

Passages like John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15-17, Hebrews 1:2-3, etc. establish the deity of Christ, in part, on the basis that Jesus is the creator of all things, something unique and definitional to the one true God alone! And such language about God and creation is consistently strict, exhaustive, and universal. If one believes in a god who is not literally, absolutely, and uniquely the creator of all things, they have put their faith in a false god (even if they claim that their god is the God of the Bible). The fact of creation is not a minor detail but is definitional to who the one true God is.

If your god simply bestowed his own meaning and purpose on a naturalistic process and universe that he did not directly create and over which he is not actively in control, your god is a false god. If your god merely sparked the beginning of the universe as a whole and let it play out on its own but did not himself create the specific things that fill and inhabit that universe (i.e., if he cannot meaningfully be said to have personally and purposefully created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them) your god is a false god.

The God of the Bible created the universe out of nothing and distinct from Himself, all by the power of His word. He continues to actively uphold that universe and all that is in it. This applies not only to raw materials, fundamental forces, and physical laws but to all the specific, fully-formed objects that God purposefully created for His own glory and for the benefit of His creatures (creatures He Himself willfully made!). The gospel is about faith in and reconciliation with this God. No substitutions. The fact of a real, purposeful, divine creation by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is truly, directly essential to the gospel. Deny that, and you have a different god and thus a different gospel.

Broad Gospel Essentials of Creation

Having laid out the most directly necessary core, there are other details about creation that are also essential, if not in an absolute and direct sense, then at least in light of their implications. Some important examples:

• Creation was originally good – God is good, and all that He does is good. He is not tempted by evil nor does he lead others to evil (James 1:13, 17). God does not lie (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2), and He declared His creation very good (Genesis 1:31). To suggest that God created a world that was already evil and broken is to make God both a liar and the direct source of evil in the world. Followed through logically, this undermines the gospel both by rendering God untrustworthy and by placing the blame for the evil and brokenness of the world on God rather than on the sins and rebellion of His creatures.
• Creation is presently marred by the fall – On the other hand, to deny that creation is under the curse of sin and is marred by the fall creates its own set of problems. Adam’s rebellion resulted not only in a curse on mankind and the serpent but also on the beasts of the field, the earth itself, the plants, etc. (Genesis 3:14-19). Indeed, all of creation was “subjected to futility,” is in “slavery to corruption,” and “groans and suffers” awaiting the full consummation of the gospel hope (Romans 8:20-22). If we ignore this and assume that the world as it is today is what God called “very good,” we will (if we bother to follow through in our thinking) wind up with a warped view of God’s goodness and thus of God Himself and of the content of His promises.
• God’s design is openly visible in creation – Romans 1:18-20 not only tells us that God’s power and attributes are clearly displayed in nature but also goes so far as to say that all of mankind is morally accountable for how they respond to that testimony in creation. Indeed, men are “without excuse.” This is how Paul says that the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” When people reject this and claim that God created in such a way that His hand is completely hidden at that the world looks as if it formed and is operated by purely naturalistic processes, they often also struggle with the idea that people who have never heard of the gospel or the God of the Bible are fully morally accountable to God in the way Romans 1 teaches. Indeed, they often imagine (and even argue) that God must have some other way to offer such people grace apart from actually hearing the message of Christ, thus undermining the exclusivity of the biblical gospel.
• Mankind is a special creation of God directly from dust – We read throughout the Bible that God personally formed mankind from the dust of the earth. Death and decay bring our bodies back to what they were before God formed them: dirt. It is popular today, even among genuine Christians, to deny that this is literally true and instead to believe that humans came to be through some form of evolution from prior animals. Yet, if we follow this through logically, it leads to many difficulties. Perhaps the chief of these is that the New Testament draws a direct parallel between us being made from the dust of the earth and Christ coming from heaven (1 Corinthains 15:47). If Adam was not literally made from dust, then Christ is not literally from heaven, and that completely undermines a biblical view of Jesus! For this and numerous other reasons, it is urgent that we take seriously what the Bible repeatedly says about man as a special creation of God, distinct from the animals, made directly from the dust of the earth.
• Adam and Eve are the real, historical progenitors of all mankind – The New Testament writers tie the historicity of Adam and Eve as the real ancestors of all mankind directly to the gospel in a number of ways. Our universally shared sinful nature through the fall, and thus our need not only for personal forgiveness but also for regeneration and a “new birth” is undermined if we do not all come from Adam. What’s more, that we all came into sin and death through one man (Adam) is offered to explain how we can all be made alive and right with God through the righteousness and obedience of one man (Jesus, Romans 5:17-19). Jesus is called the “last Adam,” and both the historicity of His coming and the reality of the resurrection life He gives are tied to the historical reality of Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-48). The universal gospel call to all nations is tied to the fact that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). Denying the literal truth of Adam and Eve, if followed out logically in one’s reading the rest of the Bible, would make a huge mess of the New Testament case for the gospel and lead to no end of problems. There are, of course, Christians who either doubt the existence of Adam and Eve as real, historical figures or who deny that they are literally the ancestors of all mankind, but they can do this only by not following such claims through to their logical conclusions when they read the New Testament.
• Mankind is uniquely made in God’s image – It is wrong to shed the blood of a man and not of an animal precisely because mankind is uniquely made in the image of God (Genesis 9:6). Indeed, even to slander your fellow man is an evil utterly incompatible with praising God for this same reason (James 3:6). This is likely why Jesus said that the second greatest commandment of “love your neighbor as yourself” is like the greatest commandment of “love the Lord your God…” (Matthew 22:36-40) and is certainly what Jesus had in mind when, after noting that tax money was made in the image of Caesar, said “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Christian ethics have always hinged on the reality that man (and only man, distinct from the animals) really was made in the image of God. It almost goes without saying that to deny or explain this away leads to a whole host of problems!

As stated before, genuine Christians might reject these essential truths about creation and still be saved, but they do so only through inconsistency and a (fortunate) failure to follow such ideas through to their logical conclusions. If we find our brothers wandering from these central truths about creation, we ought to gently, lovingly, yet firmly and urgently call them back to the truth.

Motives Matter

Looking beyond these creation essentials, there is another matter to consider. Otherwise secondary (though still quite important) issues related to creation may, in fact, be far more urgent issues in disguise depending on the motive one has in doubting or thinking wrongly about them. One’s position on, say, the precise nature of the days in Genesis 1 is a good example. One can hold a variety of views on this question without directly compromising the gospel, but one’s reason for holding the position they do may reveal a more fundamental problem. Let’s say, for example, that someone thinks that the most natural reading of Genesis 1 is that the days of creation are literal, normal cycles of light and darkness just like our 24-hour solar days of today, but because of their understanding of secular science or perhaps their desire not to be embarrassed or look foolish by holding a position that people around them think is ridiculous, they seek out an alternative way of reading the text which allows them to hold a view they consider less humiliating, more “scientific,” or otherwise advantageous to themselves. This impulse to allow current prevailing opinions or social standing to determine one’s beliefs and so to bend the text to fit one’s desired conclusion is a very serious issue regardless of if the topic is primary or secondary in and of itself! How and why we arrive at our conclusions can be just as important as what those conclusions are. If you bend Scripture to fit your culture on even a relatively minor issue today, you are not far from doing the same thing on a major, perhaps even an essential issue down the road. Our impulse must be to submit our own thoughts to the word of God on every single matter to which it speaks.

Conclusion

There is plenty of room for debate among Christians about many details related to creation. However, there are absolute non-negotiables or creation essentials, the chief of which is the very fact of creation: God personally and purposely created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. If we deny this, we are denying something definitional to the biblical God.

What’s more, there are also issues regarding creation that, while not outright denials of essential Christian doctrines themselves, nevertheless will undermine such doctrines if they are followed out to their logical conclusions. A hidden creator who leaves no evidence or a legendary Adam and Eve may not explicitly deny the fundamental tenets of the gospel and leave one automatically an unbeliever, but if you follow these and other such claims out, they ultimately contradict the New Testament teachings about the person and work of Christ. What’s more, the hermeneutics required to get there won’t just stay put. You can’t wear those lenses when you read the first 3 chapters of the Bible and then just take them off. It’s going to affect your reading and your beliefs elsewhere in ways that will cause serious problems.

None of this is to deny the great importance of other matters related to creation, especially when unbiblical motives are involved (which is not always the case, and we need to be careful about accusing a bother of this just because they disagree with us!). But, by drawing the right lines between what is (strictly or broadly) essential and what is important but secondary will help keep our priorities straight and greatly improve our patience with and charity toward our brothers and sisters with whom we disagree.

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