CREATION
The verb create is almost always a translation of the Hebrew verb in the OT. “bara.” The Bible begins with the simple and sublime statement that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
Throughout Genesis 1 and 2 we have the story of how God gave rise to everything that exists, throughout six days of creative activity.
All this is succinctly summarized in Ex. 20:11: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day…”
There have been many attempts by commentators, as well as some translations of the Bible, who have attempted to twist the meaning of the original phrase, which speaks of an original creation, “out of nothing”, giving the alternative translation “when God began the creation.” of the heavens and the earth, the earth was the beginning…”, thus implying that God merely acted on pre-existing matter.
Among the versions that adopt this position is the so-called “Bible up to date.” This position is grammatically unsustainable based on a rigorous analysis of the text, as Cassuto, Delitzsch, Keil, Leupold and Young among others have demonstrated (see Bibliography at the end of this article), and the correct translation is the one already given by Reina. Valera and a multitude of other versions.
This first verse of the Bible is loaded with meaning. It affirms that everything that exists received its being through the action of God. That there was a beginning in time.
That the creation of the universe includes that of time, so before creation we cannot speak of time. We have, then, that time has an absolute beginning, which is that of the material universe.
God transcends both time and space. It is not part of His creation, although it does depend on Him as the sovereign Lord.
This section of the Bible has been one of the most controversial.
How did God create? Can we come to know the way God created? There are many voices that have been raised asserting that in Genesis we have only the fact that God created, but that we do not have a historically accurate account of the origins of the universe and everything in it.
And especially since 1859, the year in which Darwin published his work “The Origin of Species”, there have been many expositors who have accepted that the method used by God for his work of creation has been that of organic evolution, which He He would have directed according to His will so that it would end in man.
However, this position faces serious difficulties, both from an exegetical point of view and from a scientific point of view.
(a) The exegetical question.
The entire biblical context demands a creation by “fiat.” That is, God commanded by his word, and it produced according to his will.
We have a parallel to this in the miracles of the Lord Jesus that are related to us in the Gospels, such as the raising of Lazarus, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and many other signs that did not involve any process in time.
Careful examination of Genesis 1 and 2 leads to no conclusion other than that of creation by “fiat,” as well as a host of other passages in both the Old and New Testaments dealing with creation (Jb. 33:4; 38:4; Ps. 8:3, 5, 6; 94:9; 95:5; 96:6; 100:3; 104:24; 136:5, 6, 7; 139:14, 15; 146: 6; 148:5; Is. 45:12; 64:8; Jer. 10:12; Am. 4:13; 5:8; Jon. 1:9; Zech. 12:1; Mt. 19:4; Jn. 1:3; Acts 17:26; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16; 1 Tim. 2:13; Heb. 1:2; 11:3; 2 P. 3:5; Rev. 10:6, and many others).
But there is another important theological consideration to make, it is the frontal contradiction between the method of evolution and the creation/fall order found in the Bible.
Evolutionism requires the operation of the death of individuals who cannot cope with the demands of their environment, and the propagation of the strongest and most suitable individuals, so that the group as such improves over time.
This process is commonly called “Natural Selection.” Against those who propose that God acted through evolution, the fact remains that, with a rigorous exegetical treatment, the Scriptures place the entry of death into the world after the curse due to the fall of man, the federal head of the creation (Gen. 2:17; 3:17-19; cp. Rom. 5:12, note the term “kosmos” in the original; Rom. 8:20-23, etc.).
It is evident that this, like a multitude of other details, makes it exegetically impossible to reconcile evolutionary philosophy, with its logical demand for the operation of death during creation, and biblical revelation, with its exegetical determination of the entry of death. in the “kosmos” after the fall.
(b) Biological and paleontological considerations.
Although it is impossible in the short space available to make an adequate treatment of all these topics, some brief indications can be given, referring the interested reader to the bibliography at the bottom of the article for in-depth information on these topics.
(A) As many modern biologists recognize, the examination of living beings “does not impose” the idea of evolution (Grassé: “The evolution of living things”).
This author bases his evolutionary position “on the documents provided by paleontology” (p. 18, op. Cit.).
(B) However, the history that fossils reveal to us is not that of transition from some basic types to others. Meléndez recognizes, like Simpson, Romer, and many other modern paleontologists, the systematic discontinuities that separate all groups of life that existed in the past from each other.
In fact, the phenomenon has now been recognized to such an extent, both in the field of the study of living and extinct beings, that modern evolutionary geneticists and paleontologists, faced with these facts, have come to postulate that “a reptile laid an egg, and a bird came out!
Current representatives of this position are Gould, a paleontologist at Harvard University, and Eldredge, of the American Museum of Natural History; Among the geneticists who have taken this position is Francisco J. Ayala, from the University of California.
That fervent evolutionists like the three just mentioned come to adopt these positions speaks very eloquently about the true state of the evidence offered to us by groups of organisms, both living and fossilized, totally defined, and without chains of transition between them, in accordance total with the biblical text, which affirms that God created all the different groups “according to their nature” (Queen; Heb.: “min”), as discrete groups and with defined natures and separated from each other, with no more common origin than the fact of being a product of the same powerful and wise mind, that of its Creator (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25).
(c) Geological and geochronological considerations.
There are great divergences regarding the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis 1. There are five basic positions on this issue:
1. That Genesis 1-2, and actually the entire Bible in everything that touches on supernatural aspects, is a myth. Within this position there are various nuances, but it constitutes an open denial of divine revelation, and is tinged with anti-supernaturalist presuppositions based on a materialist evolutionism lacking foundation.
2. Many expositors, accepting as proven the philosophical framework of historical geology, asserting a great antiquity of the earth, have attempted to bring the accepted structure of the earth’s history into line with the days of Genesis 1.
This is what is known as “day-epoch” theory. However, a rigorous examination demonstrates that there is no true agreement between the days of creation and the eras asserted by Historical Geology; There are a host of important contradictions between both systems.
Furthermore, as eminent exegetes have demonstrated, real violence is committed to the text by forcing this interpretation on it.
Berkhof, Cassuto, Custance, Darby, Delitzsch, Keil, Kelly, Leupold, Whitcomb, Young, and others, demonstrate that the intention of the text is for “yom” (Day) to be understood in its plain and natural meaning. Recognition of this fact has led several to maintain positions C and D.
3. Chalmers presented, at the beginning of the 19th century, the idea of a catastrophe between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2. With this theory he attempted to harmonize Cuvier’s theory of revolutions on the terrestrial globe, and the long epochs necessary for this, with the six-day creation structure in Genesis 1.
This interpretation was followed by numerous expositors, among whom we can mention Darby, Kelly, Mackintosh, Scofield, and, currently, Custance and Sauer.
All of these expositors, aware of the proper meaning of “yom” (day) in the context of Genesis 1, wanted to introduce all geological eras into an alleged cataclysmic discontinuity between the first two verses of the Bible.
However, this conception cannot be based exegetically on the Hebrew language, as has been evidenced by the rigorous analysis of the grammatical relationship between the first two verses.
As Cassuto, Delitzsch, Fields, Leupold, Ramm, Whitcomb, and Young have noted, verse 2 refers immediately to the condition of the originally created earth, in Fields’s words, “formless and void,” “tõhû wãbhõhû”) ; not a condition to which the earth had fallen, but a condition from which the earth emerged in the progressive shaping activity of God, culminating in Gen. 2:1: “So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host.”
4. One of the most extreme attempts to “harmonize” the eras of commonly accepted interpretation of historical geology with the Genesis text has been the “six days of revelation” theory.
This theory, held by, among others, Miller, Ramm, and Wiseman, states that in Genesis 1 we have a revelation “given” in six days, not “executed” in six days. It is stated that these days are days of revelation in pictures.
Proponents of this conception recognize that “yom” (day) cannot, in its context, be manipulated to mean eras; They also recognize the textual difficulties presented by the interval theory, and seek to avoid the difficulty posed by the long ages postulated by the commonly accepted interpretation of historical geology by rejecting what is evident to every reader of the text: that Genesis 1 speaks of creative periods; The “revelatory” interpretation has been imposed by these interpreters to simultaneously preserve the natural meaning of the language of Genesis 1 with the current conception of historical geology, which they consider to be factual.
5. Biblical creationism accepts the Genesis account as factual. It recognizes the characteristics and content of the story, and accepts it without reservations of any kind, based on a grammatical-historical exegesis of the story.
This has been the faith of the Church when ideas of paganism or, in our days, of modern anti-supernaturalism have not penetrated it. The creationist position finds the explanation for the fossiliferous sedimentary strata of the earth in the great hydraulic catastrophe of Noah’s Flood, recounted in Genesis 6-8 and later cataclysmic events of a regional nature (for a more detailed treatment of this topic, see FLOOD, and the bibliography at the bottom of DELUVIO).
There is no exegetical reason that could lead to another position; In fact, the entire current of interpretations that attempts to inject Genesis 1-2 with a meaning different from that which it plainly possesses has taken place subsequent to the development of naturalistic conceptions of the origin and geological history of the earth, and the emergence of the evolutionary theories.
The commentaries and expositions prior to 1800 are eloquent testimonies of the interpretation of Genesis 1 without mediatization of conceptions foreign to the biblical text. A good example is found in Matthew Henry’s Commentary, as well as in John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis.
Some recommended works due to their high quality in exegetical study are those of Cassuto, Keil-Delitzsch, Leupold and Young, among others (consult the Bibliography).
(d) Liberal criticism.
“Liberal” criticism has considered Genesis 1-2 as a religious myth; Adherents of this school of thought generally claim that Genesis 2 is the product of an older redaction, and that Genesis 1 is the product of priestly reflection, from the time after the Babylonian exile.
It is said, among other things, that Genesis 1 is the product of a very “evolved” religious thought, and that it could not have been written as early as that of Moses.
However, this position has received a decisive blow with the archaeological excavations at Tell-Mardikh (the ruins of the ancient city-state of Ebla).
There has been found a creation poem with a monotheistic conception and with a surprising parallelism with the creation story of Genesis 1, far removed from the crude creation myths of the Babylonians and other nations, of much later date.
One of the main participants in the archaeological investigations, Professor Pettinato, has published a translation of the text; This belongs to the hymnic genre, and goes like this:
Lord of heaven and earth:
the earth was not, you created it,
daylight was not, you created it,
You had not (yet) made the morning light exist.
Lord: effective word,
Lord: prosperity,
Lord: heroism,
Mister: …
Lord: tireless,
Lord: divinity,
Lord: who saves,
Lord: happy life.
This poem has important implications.
Due to its early date (calculated around the year 2500 BC, about 400 years before Abraham), it destroys previous evolutionary speculations about the development of “the Hebrew religious genius,” and illustrates the persistence of a residue of knowers of God in Canaan and the Middle East, of the Melchizedek type, in the midst of an apostate humanity.
Thus, the unsustainability of the hypothesis that would make Genesis 2 500 or more years older than Genesis 1, and that both chapters were compiled in a single edition by priestly editors after the Babylonian exile, is well illustrated.
With the work carried out by competent Hebraists, the literary unity of the Pentateuch had already been made clear; These latest investigations have come to highlight the biblical line of an original monotheism lost due to later apostasy (cp. Ro. 1), against the evolutionary conception of monotheism as a conquest of the human spirit throughout an evolution from animism to polytheism , and from this to monotheism, to finally lead to the “enlightenment.”
(e) Conclusion.
In the Bible, God appears to us as the majestic Creator of all things; The result of his creative acts is a universe in harmony and peace; Death is introduced into it as a result of a conscious rebellion of man, the head of creation, dragging it into slavery to corruption by the subsequent Fall and Curse.
But the creation will be released, and God will rejoice in his new Creation, headed by the Second Adam (see [NEW] CREATION).
In Creation, God manifests his omnipotence: He speaks, and his will is done. And we are called to worship Him with the joyful awareness that He is our Maker, Keeper and, indeed, Redeemer, who by His saving work brings us into the new Creation, in freedom, justice and holiness, to walk in His light, in close communion with Him, forever sharing the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, “for by Him all things were created, those in heaven and those on earth, visible and invisible; be thrones, be dominions, be principalities, be powers; “Everything was created through Him and for Him… in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 1:16; 2:3).