Doctrine of Creation

978 Words2 Pages

Doctrine of Creation

'What do we mean by creation? How helpful are making, emanation and/or artistic work as analogies? Is it a doctrine about the world's beginnings or origin, or about its present or future existence, or what?

Creation is often referred to as a 'mystery' and this is due to its perhaps ambiguous nature. Christian theology defines creation in many different ways, which differ greatly as viewpoints on the same theme. John Macquarrie tries to make the mystery clearer by using two analogies to try to describe what creation actually is.

The first of these is that of 'making'. This is best understood alongside the literal understanding of creation, which can be found in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament (Genesis). The analogy is that of a craftsman producing an article that is to be used. It stresses the superiority of God; there is both differences and distance between the craftsman and his product - as there is transcendence between God and God's creatures. It treats creation as an act of free will on the part of God, not as a process that is simply part of the Natural Law, which is more a view expressed by the second analogy.

One problem with the 'making' analogy is that it doesn't embrace the traditional 'creatio ex nihilo' (creation out of nothing) view; if God has made the cosmos in the way in which a carpenter or a blacksmith would, out of what has he actually created it?

The second analogy is that of 'emanation'. To understand this analogy it would be best to imagine God, the creator, as the sun, with the created, Gods creatures, as the rays emanating from it. This view stresses more affinity between the source (God) and what has sprung from it, thus making this the opposite of the '...

... middle of paper ...

...endence) but also involved as a reader, writer or editor (immanence). This present involvement we can see is creatio continua.

A story with a beginning and a middle usually has an end; we come now to the eschatological teachings of creation, creatio nova, the future involvement of God. Our destiny as human beings can be seen to be written in the book; the completion and end destination of creation, still to be fulfilled.

The three fold view of creation is one adopted by mot scholars; it is a sensible, balanced view of the doctrine as a teaching on more than just one act in time, i.e. creatio originalis.

Bibliography:

Study pack, Doctrine of creation

Barth, K: The Openness of Being

Genesis 1

Bonhoeffer: Creation and Temptation

Mascall, E : The Openness of Being

St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica

Barth, K: Church Dogmatics

Open Document