“In the beginning God created…” With these words, God begins His self-revelation. We first catch God in the act of creation, and in so doing are ourselves caught up into the dramatic exposition of the Divine Life. To witness the Theo-Drama of the Creator is not an entry into the directionless infinitely indefinite, but is instead an entry into the radically directionally-oriented. Creating is fundamentally forward-oriented, pushing towards the effect, the after, the next, the subsequent.
Thus in the Creator-God we find the One who is fundamentally forward-oriented, bringing with Him the previous and pushing toward the consummation of His purpose. Because it is only through the Creator’s self-initiated disclosure through the act of creation itself that we catch God at all, it is as though God creates to reveal and reveals to create. In first beholding God as Creator, we can never have first beheld Him as anything else, and thus this moment of creative encounter is pregnant with all of our subsequent encounters with Him. So though we will through God’s further revelation be able to know God as more than only Creator, we will never be able to know Him apart from being Creator. Thus it is of fundamental importance that we understand the Creator-God in His opening act.
In this study of God’s performance of revelatory creation as recorded in Genesis 1:1-2:3, we will come to know more about the identity and character of this God by examining what He created, how He created it, and for what purpose He created it.
1:1 – In the Beginning
Scripture immediately establishes the primacy of God’s Creatorship. But it isn’t only in first catching God in the act of creation that we know that God is a Creator-God. It is in God’s very name – His identity – that we are clearly shown God more fully as Creator. We can see in Hebrew that the specific name used here for God is Elohim. Typically this word would be translated as “gods”, but when used in reference to the God of the Bible, it functions as a singular noun used with singular verbs.
Thus, in the very first verse of Scripture, God’s unity and multiplicity are revealed, and so we are given a foretaste of God’s Trinitarian nature. Throughout the creation account, it is this name Elohim rather than Yahweh, El Shaddai, or the many other Biblical names for God that is used. Although all these other names accurately describe God, the author of Genesis shows that it is not in a singular, overpowering will of lordship or might that He creates, but it is in the exponentiated power of His self-communion that He creates. Creation thus should not be seen as the effect of a divine will to power, but instead because communion requires beneficence[1], or active charitable love, Creation is the natural consequence of the active mutual outpouring of love among the Persons of God. Creation is an extension of the self-giving between the persons of God, and thus the Trinitarian God is inherently a Creator-God. [2]
The self-giving self-communion of the Creator-God sets the stage for the unfolding of God’s creative performance. God exists as the self-giving communion of the Trinity because God is essentially Love, and God is Love because God exists as Trinity. After revealing to us God’s essence as Love, John tells us, “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” (1 John 4:9-10 kjv). The Son’s propitiation is the fullest manifestation of God’s love because it is the earthly expression of the Divine dynamic of the self-lowering, life-offering kenotic love between Father, Son and Spirit which sustains God’s existence. The Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit raises Christ from the dead, and thus it is Christ’s obedient self-lowering which leads to His elevation to highest honor (2 Philippians 2:6-11). In Christ’s resurrection, the propitiation becomes the firstfruits re’shiyt (Exodus 23:19, Leviticus 2:12), and it is this firstfruits offering which brings the blessing of new life to all (1 Corinthians 15:20). This movement from the kenotic self-lowering which sustains life to the glorified elevation which brings new life is exemplified and consummated in the death and resurrection of Christ, but it is initiated in the act of Creation.
Creation can be seen as the prototype of God’s kenotic self-offering because it is God’s self-offering to the lowermost, the nonexistent. God’s sends the life-offering of His Spirit through His Word into non-existence, into the responseless void. It is the Son who by the power of the Spirit responds on behalf of the nonexistent to joyously answer with affirmation to the Father’s life-offering. This response speaks to life a qualitatively new expression of God’s self-offering love: Creation. In Creation we can see God’s creative initiation not merely as a beginning, but more fully as a firstfruits offering: to God’s Self, the source and sustainer of life; and to the nonexistent/now-existent, the recipients of new life. This identification of Creation as firstfruits is justified and even suggested by the text of Genesis 1:1 as the word used for beginning is also re’shiyt or firstfruits, implying a translation akin to, “As the firstfruits God created the heavens and earth.”
After establishing the character of the Creator-God, and nature of His Creation, our next point of interest is the contents of that Creation. We are told that these contents are the heaven and the earth. The question is, “Which heaven?” It cannot be the atmospheric or Firmament-Heaven as it is made on the second day. It cannot be the celestial heavens, as the sun, moon and stars are not made until the fourth day. Instead, the heaven referred to here is the Highest Heaven[3]. So here in verse 1, the Creator-God in His firstfruit offering of Creation establishes the Highest Heaven and Earth.
1:2 – The Earth
Our attention is now turned to the earthly realm. Nothing more is said about God’s creative activity in the Highest Heaven, presumably because it is created fully-matured from the outset, and although there are brief peaks into the Highest Heaven – such as during the dialogues between God and Lucifer in Job, and during John’s witnessing of the heavenly liturgy in Revelation – the rest of the Bible just as it is here, is concerned primarily with the events that take place in the earthly realm.
Now just as there are three heavens presented in Scripture, so too are there three earths (erets): the orb (or totality) of the earth (Genesis 1:1), the dry land (or upholding part) of the earth (Genesis 1:10), and specific geographic areas (or special places of meeting) of the earth (Genesis 11:2). The earthly realm resembles the heavenly realm in its three-fold pattern. To even exist on the orb of the earth is an expression of God’s love in that He loves us enough to even cause and allow us to be. To be upheld upon dry land is an expression of God’s provision as He provides for our bodily needs. Humankind without exception lives in these two earths. All are also in one sense called to a specific place of meeting, to the third earth, by God. But it is only those who are enabled by God, the elect, who when they meet God in specificity – at a place, in a moment, or through an event – abide with God there. This three-fold earthly pattern is set in creation as we go from the orb of the earth, to the land of the earth, to a specific place of meeting on the earth (Garden of Eden). Scripture will utilize this pattern repeatedly as God constantly invites His people to abide with Him in specific places of meeting: Adam and Eve and Eden; Noah’s descendants and (anywhere but) Babel; Abraham and Canaan; Jonah and Nineveh.
In seeing the Spirit hovering over the orb of the earth, we see God’s preparing to go beyond merely providing a place to exist with God or a place to be upheld by God, but above all a place to meet with God. The hovering Spirit is there to encounter, but the earth in its initial stages cannot provide a place for us to live, much less encounter that Spirit. To mature the Creation and make these new earths, the Spirit must resolve three problems plaguing the orb of the earth: formlessness, emptiness, and darkness.[4] All of these will be addressed and resolved in the subsequent acts of Creation as the active, dynamic Spirit hovering over the deep/waters overpowers the passive, latent darkness. The Spirit is not sent after the initial act of Creation to solve these, but is from the outset present with them.[5] The sending of the Spirit is itself the act of Creation, and the act of Creation is the sending of the Spirit. Thus the formless, empty, dark earth is not somehow an imperfect first try by God that needs to be improved. Instead as an extension of God’s covenantal life, the Creation resembles its Creator as it perfectly mirrors the God who eternally matures.[6]
Andrew J. Bittner is a Certified Lay Minister in the United Methodist Church, Minnesota Annual Conference, and a student of the Trinity House Institute. This is the first part of a three-part series.
[1] Ailbe M. O’Reilly, Conjugal Chastity in Pope Wojtyla (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 148-49.
[2] Strong’s Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon. Blue Letter Bible. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2013.
[3] James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988), 41-42.
[4] James B. Jordan, Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis One (Moscow, ID: Canon, 1999), 174-75.
[5] Jordan, “Introduction to Biblical Theology,” 4.
[6] Ibid, 8-9.