It is not by chance that the Bible opens with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," or that historic Christian creeds do the same, such as the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth," or the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen," or that contemporary affirmations of faith begin the same way, such as the statement of the United Church of Canada: "We are not alone, we live in God's world. We believe in God Who has created and is creating," or that of the Korean Methodist Church: "We believe in the one God, creator and sustainer of all things. Father of all nations, the source of all goodness and beauty, all truth and love."

I say it is not by chance because there is perhaps no more fundamental affirmation about God than that of Creator. It is the bed rock, the foundation on which all other affirmations about Him are made. The opening chapters of Genesis present the main pillars upon which the Christian faith rests. However, the motif of creation, important as it is in the Bible, is nevertheless only introductory to what follows. It is introductory to the central theme of scripture -- redemption. Genesis is but a prologue to the historical drama (the Exodus in the Hebrew Bible and the redemptive sufferings and resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament) that unfolds itself in the ensuing pages of the Bible. It proclaims, loudly and unambiguously, the absolute subordination of all creation to the Supreme Creator who thus can make use of the forces of nature to fulfill His mighty deeds in history. "God's acts in history rather than His role as Creator are predominant in Biblical thought." (Sarna, 8).

Not only is creation introductory to, it is also critical to redemption. Redemption presumes creation and is unintelligible without it. The divine/human relationship rests both upon creation and redemption. The Fatherhood of God must be predicated both on His role as Creator and Redeemer. Redemption must not be viewed as a repudiation of creation, nor as an addition to creation. Rather, redemption is the renewal of creation.

Paul notes in Romans that even sub-human creation, animate and inanimate awaits redemption, awaits restoration to its Edenic perfection, yearns for a return to the divine recognition that it, all of it, was good, very good. It has been unable to fulfill the purpose of its existence, God having appointed that without human beings it should not be made perfect.

We may think of the whole magnificent theatre of the universe together with all its splendid properties and all the chorus of sub-human life, created to glorify God but unable to do so fully, so long as man the chief actor in the drama of God's praise fails to contribute his rational part.

(Cranfield, 414) 

Creation is thus also critical to eschatology. There is a decided relation between creation and consummation. The salvation expected at the end of history corresponds to the orderly world of Genesis 1. The book of Revelation concludes the canon not only in location but also in thought for it pictures the return of humanity to paradise. Even as in Genesis where God is the source of light, not the sun, so in Revelation: "they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light." (Revelation 22:5).

Not only is creation essential to theology, it is equally essential to anthropology. Being made in the image of God the question of who humans are can only be answered by determining who God is. The imago dei can only be understood in terms of creation. Psalm 8 parallels Genesis 1 and defines the image of God as a "being made a little less than God." In both Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 the intention is to say that humans are made for relationship with God, a relationship which elevates them above the natural world and enables them to have dominion over the realm of nature.

The concept of man's dominion over nature is revolutionary when measured against ancient religions which declared that the gods were natural powers and that man's life was embraced within the mysterious depth of nature, with its rhythmic cycles of fertility. The God of Israel is not a natural power: he transcends the realm of nature, for he is its Creator. And in a lesser sense man, though related to the animals, stands over against nature as the creature who is commissioned to have dominion over the works of God's creation, as one who is the representative or vicegerent of God's sovereignty (kingdom) on earth.
                                                                                                                (Anderson, 112-113) 

These affirmations about God in the opening chapters of Genesis are profound and significant. God is not identified with or contained in creation and therefore cannot be fully revealed through that creation. The universe is not self-creating or self-sustaining but is created and sustained by the faithfulness of God. Further, the world today is not as God meant it to be, but is corrupted by human sin and our attempt to escape our creaturehood.

A careful look at the early chapters of Genesis would correct the emphasis of contemporary spiritual science fiction portrayed by Steven Spielberg and other fellow prophets in such films as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "E.T.", "Cocoon", "Always", and "Field of Dreams" where God is pictured as benevolent, predictable, overly accessible, undemanding and nonjudgemental. As Leonard Sweet observes such a representation of God is in keeping with present demands for the lite-beer, menus, potato chips, bacon, hot fudge sauce, pizza. We indeed have developed a "God-lite."

But a God-lite could never have survived the Babylonian exile, Roman persecution, Constantinian Approval, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Industrialization, the Modern Era, the Holocaust, Hiroshima or ecocide.

It is only by acknowledging God's "otherness," God's transcendence, that both Christianity and Judaism have remained capable of supporting true expressions of faith and love throughout the ages.

It takes more than a God-lite faith to face a world filled with nuclear weapons, acid rain, politically orchestrated mass starvation, joblessness and despair. It takes a God who knows our deceits, our weaknesses, our sins -- and yet who loves us enough still to wrestle us back onto the paths of divine purpose and hope. No God-lite could have hung on the cross. No God-lite could experience resurrection and thereby offer salvation to all humanity.

And now two parenthetical observations. First, given what I have just said, one would assume that the concept of creation would be central in contemporary theological thought. Such is not the case. In recent decades the concept of creation has been largely ignored in theology, at best, being relegated to a secondary position. Perhaps this is due to dialectical theology which is inclined to view a person who seeks to give more weight to creation theology as promoting a "natural theology" which has been considered theologically suspect. Further contemporary concerns dominate theology such as peace, justice, feminism, and ecology. Interestingly, all of these discussions are ultimately and strategically rooted in creation, a fact which is gradually gaining recognition.

This leads to my second parenthetical observation which has to do with feminism. Those who struggle with sexist language and seek a common gender word, refer to God as Creator, avoiding such masculine terms as father and king. While I am very sympathetic and supportive of these efforts, and while I recognize that feminine images are used to describe God's activity, it needs to be noted that both in scripture and creed the Fatherhood of God is associated with His role as Creator. As the psalmist affirms: "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear Him. For He knows how we were made. He remembers that we are dust." (Psalm 103:13-14).

The importance of creation in scripture finds expression not only in theology, but also in proclamation.

In his speeches to the hurting and defiant Job, YAHWEH reveals Himself as the Creator and Sustainer of life (Job 38-41). While a facile reading of these speeches results in the questioning of their relevance (What do God's creative activities have to do with Job's sufferings?), the results are spectacular. Still on the ash heap Job avers that he has seen God and he retracts all of his charges against Him. Job is rehabilitated.

Paul at Athens identified the unknown God as "The God Who made the world and everything in it. He . . . is Lord of heaven and earth . . . . He Himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things . . . . He made all nations to inhabit the whole earth . . . in Him we live, and move, and have our being . . . for we too are His offspring (Acts 17:23-28). Apparently Paul's hearers had no trouble with his creation emphasis but would not accept His treatment of the resurrection of Jesus. Nevertheless, a number of the Athenians became believers.

Isaiah in his encouragement to the community in Babylonian exile also appeals to the creation, assuring the people of God's power and care which would effect their deliverance from Babylon. I will return to Isaiah 40 subsequently.

Clearly the role of God as Creator is not peripheral, but rather foundational to Biblical thought and proclamation.

It is significant that the Bible begins with cosmogony, not with theogony. There is no notion of the birth of God; no biography of God. In contrast to the often lurid accounts of the lives of the gods and goddesses, their family quarrels, their jealousies and power struggles, their sexual exploits and insane rage, and their cosmic battles, rape, and plunder, there is no divine story to be told. The story of this God is not a personal biography, but the story of interaction with the world of creation and with human history. "In Genesis a radical shift has taken place from the image of procreation to that of creation from a genealogy of the gods to a genesis of nature." (Heyer, 45)

Nor does God have any cosmic region assigned Him. He is not finite, limited and localized, but is both transcendental and immanent. He is everywhere. He has the whole wide world in His hands.

The concept of creation was an important concern for ancient peoples. There were a number of traditions concerning creation in the Levant. Genesis 1 entered, as it were, the playing field of these venerable traditions, engaging them on their own turf.

Our contemporary western scientific pre-occupations would not have been the concerns of ancient Israel. The Genesis text does not answer questions of "how" and "when" but rather "who" and "why." Nor are her modes of expression in the creation texts ours. It is quite doubtful that these texts would have languished in obscurity through the millennia for their hidden meaning to be revealed by modern science. Is it not likely that the intended meaning of these texts was understood by the writers and readers?

The backdrop, the playing field of the creation texts, is polytheism, divinization of nature, the eternity of matter, and astrology. In spite of the way the creation account of Genesis 1 is used today, both by friend and foe, science was not the concern of the writer. Darwin was unknown and was not the point of reference for Genesis 1.

But polytheism--sun worship--was an issue, so the Genesis 1 account carefully notes that the sun (not calling it by name but referring to it as the greater light) was created on day 4--even after the beginning of vegetation on day 3--to demonstrate its limited role and dependence upon God. I have already noted that at the other end of the Bible God no longer needs the sun in the Heavenly City. Sun is not a divinity to be worshipped, but a creation of God.

The creation theology of Genesis 1 is essentially the same as that of the second half of Isaiah as found in Chapter 40:12-31:

12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?

13 Who has directed the spirit of the LORD,
or as his counselor has instructed him?

14 Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
and who taught him the path of justice?
Who taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?

15 Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as dust on the scales;
see, he takes up the isles like find dust. 

16 Lebanon would not provide fuel enough,
nor are its animals enough for a burnt offerings.

17 All the nations are as nothing before him;
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

18 To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?

19 An idol? --A workman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold,
and casts for it silver chains.

20 As a gift one chooses mulberry wood
--wood that will not rot--
then seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an image that will not topple.

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;

23 who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power, not one is missing.

27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding
is unsearchable.

29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the
powerless.

30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;

31 but those who wait for the LORD
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint. 

These claims of Isaiah relative to creation would have triggered controversy in the Babylonian public schools had there been such, and had there been public pressure--as today--to consider an alternative to the standard curriculum--the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish:

When on high the heaven had not been named.
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
There was nought but primordial Apsu, their begetter,
And Mother Tiamat, who bore them all,
Their waters commingling in a single body;
No reed but had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no gods whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined,
Then it was that the gods were formed within them,
Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were called,
Before they were grown in age and stature,
Anshar and Kishar were formed, surpassing the others,
They prolonged the days, accumulated the years,
Anu was their heir, of his fathers the rival,
Yea, Anshar's firstborn, Anu, was his equal,
Anu begot in his image Nudimmud,

......

The lord trod on the legs of Tiamat,
With his unsparing mace he crushed her skull.
When the arteries of her blood he had severed,
He split her like a shell-fish into two parts;
Half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky,
Pulled down the bar and posted guards.
He bade them to allow not her waters to escape.
He quartered the heavens and surveyed the regions.
He squared Apsu's quarter, the abode of Nudimmud,
As the lord measured the dimensions of Apsu.
The Great Abode, its likeness, he fixed as Esharra,
The Great Abode, Esharra, which he made as the firmament,
Anu, Enlil and Ea he made occupy their places.
He constructed stations for the great gods,
Fixing their astral likenesses as constellations.
He determined the year by designating the zones:
He set up three constellations for each of the twelve months.
After defining the days of the year by means of heavenly figures,
He founded the station of Nebiru to determine their heavenly bands,
That none might transgress or fall short.

......

The Moon he caused to shine, the night to him entrusting,
He appointed him a creature of the night to signify the days. 

Against this "official" account of creation the Hebrew Bible account of creation would have appeared as subversive and ludicrous. Its claim that Israel's God had created the world would have been strongly challenged, given that Israel was now in exile, subjugated to the great Babylon whose principal deity was Marduk. It was he who had created the world.

If the God of Israel was so inept relative to His people, how could He make any claim to creative power? Just being empirical it would have been difficult not to conclude that the gods of Babylon were in control and the supreme power was Marduk, the god above all gods.

Despite the awesome splendor of Babylon and the other great empires that dominated Israel, and despite the immediate influence of the divinities in whose name they conquered, these gods and goddesses have long since faded into oblivion, except for archaeological, antiquarian, and romantic interests.

The biblical account stands amid the ruins of these polytheistic accounts. Its demythologization of creation, the emptying nature of divinity, has made possible the scientific approach to nature as a realm which humans can study, explore, and use in the service of God. It is hardly accidental that the scientific movement, which has brought about revolutionary developments in the twentieth century on earth and in space, has been nourished in the soil of the Israelite\Christian tradition.

We have now come full circle. While the biblical concern with creation is ascientific, it gave rise to the scientific studies that have followed--a fact often ignored by scientists. The church has opposed science but not the scriptures. Contrary to creationist claims, science is not the enemy of Biblical faith.

Any scientist who would propose to offer an interpretation of what the Genesis account of creation really means must do so with considerable caution. Such is ordinarily not the case, given the arrogance of modern intellectualism. Calling the Genesis text primitive is unwarranted. As the Afro-American comedian, Dick Gregory, once quipped, "You gotta say this about the white race: its self-confidence knows no bounds. Who else could go to a small island in the Pacific where there is no poverty, no crime, no unemployment, no war, and no worry, and call it a primitive society?"

In Isaiah 40 the prophet advances a series of disputations--a form of argument which proceeds by means of rhetorical questions, from ground common to both sides (in this case Israel and Babylon) to prove a disputed point.

Verse 27 seems to be the key to these disputations--a complaint voiced by Israelites that God has deliberately refused to see their exilic plight. Not so, says the prophet.

To make his point he appeals through a series of questions relative to Creation. By these questions he establishes the superiority of Israel's God, contrasting Him with the idols of Babylon and showing Him to be a craftsman. It is YAHWEH alone that has created the world.

Having established the nature of Israel's creation faith and its superiority, in which he and his audience are agreed, the prophet moves from creation to history. If the universe itself is merely a tiny product of YAHWEH's hands, this must also be true of the nations which inhabit it. The implication is that, in spite of outward appearance, YAHWEH is not unmindful of Israel's plight, nor is He indifferent. He cares and He has the power to effect their release from Babylon. He Who created the world is now stirring up Cyrus to do His work and bidding which will result in the second exodus.

This then is the context of these wonderful words:

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.

29 He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.

30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;

31 but those who wait for the LORD
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

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