The Theology of the Living God

The first thing we have in Genesis 1 is God alone creating all that is not God: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'.

Thus we have not many gods, ranked in order and responsible for various parts of creation, but one God who is the maker of heaven and earth and everything in them (compare Psalm 33.6, Acts 4.24, 14.15, 17.25) including all spiritual beings (Colossians 1.16).

He is the God who says: 'I am the Lord, and there is no other' (Isaiah 45.18). All things exist by his will and for his glory (Revelation 4.11).

There are no intermediate deities in this: the one eternal God, infinite in power and unchanging in goodness, holds in being all that he called into being - every blade of grass, each leaf on a tree, the gnat and the great whale, mountains and the solar systems and the original material out of which everything came. He is the God who is 'in touch' with his creation on every level: sub-atomic and macro-cosmic and every level between. When the insect lands on our hands or the stars shine above our heads we can worship the God of wisdom, power and unchanging faithfulness, in whom we also 'live and move and have our being', for 'he is not far from each one of us' (Acts 17.27-28).

Order! Order!

The second thing we have in Genesis 1 is God ordering the earth: 'Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters' (verse 2).

Here we have a stage of creation where all seems chaos and disorder, dark and frightening. But God is there, inscrutable but all-powerful, purposeful and active: 'and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters'. The Hebrew word here for 'spirit' is ruach. It can mean spirit or wind, and commentators differ on which of these is meant here. Victor Hamilton argues for the translation 'spirit', but even if we translate the Hebrew as 'the wind of God', it will be, as Gordon Wenham agrees, 'a concrete and vivid image of the Spirit of God'.

The rare Old Testament word here for 'hover' occurs in Deuteronomy 32.11 where a mother eagle hovers protectively over her young. There it illustrates Yahweh's protection, care and guidance of Israel in the nation's earliest days. Here, too, the ideas of watchfulness and purpose are uppermost as the Spirit 'hovers' over the creative process. God does not create from a distance, but as one intimately concerned and involved. Derek Kidner comments: 'An impression of Olympian detachment, which the rest of the chapter might have conveyed, is forestalled by the simile of the mother-bird 'hovering' or fluttering over her brood.'

The Old Testament theologian, Gerhard von Rad, while agreeing that the verb bara (to create) contains the idea of creation out of nothing, points out that the theological thought of Genesis 1 'moves not so much between the poles of nothingness and creation as between the poles of chaos and cosmos.' Certainly a pattern of movement emerges in the rest of the chapter from generalisation to particularisation.' Notice the ways in which Days 1,2 and 3 parallel Days 4, 5 and 6, moving again from form to fullness, from preparation to accomplishment. So, for instance, the light and dark of Day 1 prepare for the lights of day and night in Day 4; the creation of sea and sky on Day 2 prepare for the creatures of water and air in Day 5, and the fertile earth of Day 3 prepares for the creatures of the land on Day 6. This personal involvement is specified at every point as the chapter moves through the creative process from disorder to order. In this a process of separation takes place between light and darkness, clouds and oceans, sea and land, and a process of population and classification begins among plants and trees, birds and fish, animals and human beings.

The most important thing we are told about this process is that it is God's way of proceeding. It is not automatic or self-enclosed or the result of random chance, but the result at every point of his creative and directive Word. Eight times we read 'and God said', and each time the results of his commanding will is the fulfilment of what he purposed: 'And it was so.'

The 'WOW' factor!

'And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good' (verse 31).

Seven times the refrain 'and it was good' acts as an approval formula in Genesis 1, showing the pleasure and satisfaction of God at each stage of his creation and ordering of the world (see verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. See also Proverbs 8.30-31). He sees reflected in it something of his own goodness; it fits his purpose, but it also mirrors its maker. In it both God and human beings can see something of the 'eternal power and divine nature' of God (Romans 1.20). We see from this that the proper understanding of creation has a spiritual and moral dimension as well as a scientific and intellectual one. There is a quality as well as a quantity involved. God has made everything good in its time and place (Ecclesiastes 3.11) because he is good and does good. Our own love of discovery, design and classification may be part of God's image in us, increasing the tragedy that we should lose sight of the Creator in the creation.

The Psalms and creation

In some of the psalms that celebrate the goodness of creation in the light of the goodness of the Creator we have a two-way movement, as it were, of God saying 'It is good' and creation saying 'God is good'. Walter Brueggemann makes this point when he writes of psalms that celebrate God's generosity and the world's grateful response: 'Thus the morning and the evening shout for joy (Psalm 65.8). God waters, enriches, blesses and crowns (verses 9-11), and as a result the hills are wrapped in joy (verse 12) and sing and shout for joy (verse 13). God's movement towards creation is unceasing generosity. The response of creation is extended doxology (Job 38.7; Psalm 19.1)'.

The place of human beings is to be the chief singers and conductors in the grand chorale of creation. In us it should find voice and expression in unique ways. We ourselves should never cease to marvel at ourselves and our world (Psalm 8). We should never lose the wonder, the 'Wow! factor', the admiring echo of God's first judgment: 'God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.'

Here, at the beginning of the Bible, we find the ground for a Christian ecology, a recognition of the value of creation and a response to the Creator of gratitude and responsibility. We are not only lords of creation but trusted stewards and managers of it, appointed to bring it to perfection, exploring its secrets, harnessing its powers and fulfilling its potential (Genesis 1.26-30). As we recognise the power and wisdom of the Creator, we shall be the more likely to value the creation and care for the environment. Here, doxology and ecology go together. Those who have heard God say of the earth 'It is good' should be the first to manage it well.

This article is an extract from Peter Lewis's book in the new BST series: The Theology of the Living God soon to be published by IVP and is used with permission of the author.

© Evangelicals Now - November 2000
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