Chapter 4 Creation
1. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create—or make out of nothing—the world and everything in it, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.
For review, Chapter 1 taught on Holy Scripture, Chapter 2 looked at the nature of God and the Holy Trinity, Chapter 3 discussed God’s eternal decree.
Chapter 4 looks at God’s work of creation. It is only in light of what we learned in the first 3 chapters that we can understand God’s work of creation. The same God that reveals himself in scripture is the same God that reveals himself in nature.
Before we look at that, let’s look at what the world believes. Today, modern scientific dogma believes:
1) the universe is self existent or eternal
2) that it was not created out of nothing
3) that the present form of the world is the result of a process of selection controlled by the “principle of the survival of the fittest”
4) there is no ultimate reason for creation.
In contrast, as Christians, we believe that:
1) before the world was created, there was God that exists eternally in the unity of the Godhead as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
2) We believe that the universe was spoken into creation in the space of six days, he created all things out of nothing.
3) We believe that what God created was very good in his sight.
4) And He did this for his own glory.
As Christians, we then believe that creation reveals who God is. Creation displays God’s glory, power, wisdom and goodness. Therefore, one must be a believing Christian to study nature in the proper frame of mind and in the proper procedure. It is only in this “Christian consciousness” that one is ready and willing to regard all nature as revelational of God. A scientist can only understand nature better in light of his understanding of scripture.
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