14: The Works of God: Creation Flashcards
What is the foundational statement about God in the OT?
That God is the Creator.
How is the universe the result of a free, non-necessary creative act on God’s part?
- There is no external compulsion
- There is not internal necessity
- God’s aseity = he is independent
What is creatio ex nihilo?
- The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo establishes the freedom, self-sufficiency, and absolute sovereignty of God over the created order.
- God created out of nothing.
What is the textual base for creatio ex nihilo?
- Romans 4:17
- κατέναντι οὗ ἐπίστευσεν θεοῦ τοῦ ζῳοποιοῦντος τοὺς νεκροὺς καὶ καλοῦντος τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα·
- Hebrews 11:3
- πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι
What is the emphasis of creatio ex nihilo?
- God’s singular kinship and authority over his creation
- God’s freedom
What is the classical formula for creation as a Trinitarian act?
- The Father creates the world, through the Son, by his Spirit
- All of God’s works begin in the Father, are put into effect through the Son and reach their completion in the Spirit
What is the contemporary version for creation as a Trinitarian act?
- The Father created the world, in Christ, through the Spirit.
How can we speak of the Father as Creator and the triune God as the Creator at the same time?
- The Son and the Spirit are also the sovereign King and covenant Lord
- The Creator is God the Holy Trinity working together
How is the fact that God is Creator against polytheism?
- Other gods held only local or tribal sovereignty
- They were not separate from the world
- YHWH is the Creator of the universe
How is the fact that God is Creator against pantheism?
- The world is not divine.
- God cannot be reduced to the level of the world; nor can the world be divinized.
- The world is de-divinized but not secularized.
Creation is good. What are the implications of the goodness of creation?
- The goodness of creation thrusts moral responsibility upon man
- Creation is to be a part of, rather than eclipsed by, Christian piety
- Human beings are responsible for how they use and treat God’s world
- There can be no consideration of humankind apart from the world in which God placed them
- All of creation is creature, and therefore good
- No autonomous nature
- Vocation
How does the goodness of creation thrusts moral responsibility upon man?
- Moral norms come from within and through the structure of creation.
- Man cannot justify immoral behaviors by blaming an evil creation
How is Creation a part of Christian piety?
- Calvin = world-affirming spirituality
- Asceticism is not a biblically legitimate method of spirituality
3.
How are human beings responsible for how they use and treat God’s world?
- Man is always dependent on the nature surrounding him
- Once the second person of the Trinity becomes incarnate, he affirms creation.
- God has given the earth into our resident possession, but we do not hold the title deed of ultimate ownership.
- God holds us accountable
How is it that there can be no consideration of humankind apart from the world in which God placed them?
- Man is never in any area, autonomous but everywhere and always dependent on the nature surrounding him.
- Man is corporeal, because his body is not a prison but belongs to his very nature and he is bound to the cosmos.
- If the Word becomes flesh, it is because the involvement of God with the world in the man Jesus is the means by which the created order is reconstituted in its relation to God.
