Our first and foremost identity lies within who we are is because God is our Creator!
This very question was asked Tuesday night that was held on February 4, 2014, in a live debate between Ken Ham the founder and CEO of, “Answer to Genesis” and Bill Nye (“the Science Guy“) at the Creation Museum of Petersburg, KY.
On the live-blog page for the debate, Richard Arthur came away with the top-rated comment (out of more than 2,000 responses):
“As a Christian, I will say this: My faith does not require me to believe in the age of the earth as outlined in the Bible. Christ commanded me to love and that is where all Christians need to focus. Discussing how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin is a distraction.”
This was a troubling comment to me. So, whether we view the earth as Young earth or a theory of evolution doesn’t matter as it’s all about Christ? I believe as Christians unconsciously, we are shooting ourselves in the leg and crippling ourselves.
Why does this matter? For it is impossible to overestimate, the importance of this doctrine of creation.
Normally we think of Salvation as that which is most significant. Truth of the matter is, the Bible’s view of salvation makes no sense, in fact, it is built on previous grounding ultimately on the doctrine of creation. Without creation, the planet of God with salvation doesn’t make sense at all.
Creation is most fundamental as that is where the Bible begins. The Bible begins here and ultimately will go through the all of human history and then focuses on Christ. The story of Bible begins with creation and establishes number of crucial relations in scripture.
Here are three reasons why having the right view of Creation matters to us.
1. Who God is?
This seems almost a, “cliché” but it is one of the most fundamental fact, that the Lord is Creator and we are not! The Creator by inherent authority as Sovereign Lord spoke creation into a functional, well-ordered existence. This reveals that irrevocable power of God (Creation out of nothing) for creation by His own words was grounded in the authority of God Himself.
This is foundational to Christian theology. There is a Creator-Creature-Distinction. We begin to look at all worldview as tide into Judea Christian understanding.
Most philosophy teachings deny the fundamental truth here of Creator-Creature-Distinction.
2. Who we are?
In Genesis, the Creator bestowed special value on humanity. Theological anthropology; we cannot understand who we are unless we understand who God is! This is the problem with our society, we think we can understand who we are apart from God. The only significance we can find value and hope is God himself.
John Calvin in his book Institutes of the Christian Religion published in Latin in 1536 begins with, “Knowledge of God & Knowledge of Self.” These two are intertwined. In order to understand ourselves right, we need to understand the One who made us. The proper interpretation of human beings begins in Creation.
Goodness of the world that has happened in time-space-history, all worldview denies the historicity of the fall.
All worldview makes ultimately what we see around is a normal thing. The Bible contradicts this, there was a creation that was good and in space-time-history, something went wrong. This is not a normal world, it is an abnormal world. That is the reason why Christ came on earth to provide redemption
3. Creation is the Beginning of History.
Biblical understanding of Eschatology is based in Creation. Various part and many part, when one undercuts creation, they undercut the entire Bible story.
When we have debates over Creation and origin of the universe, these are not minor debates, it goes to the very heart of Christian worldview.
We cannot overestimate Creation.
When we speak to people, we always take them back to the origin. What is the meaning and purpose of life? How can we explain what is here?
Philosophy says one of the most fundamental question to be asked is, “Why is there something here rather than nothing?” That is not a very childish question, that is a profound question. The Bible says, the eternal God created it!
Theologian William Carrol describes what the doctrine of creation is really about;
“No explanation of cosmological processes, nor biological change for the matter… challenges the metaphysical account of creation, that is, of the dependence of the existence of all things upon God as cause.” – William Carrol
The doctrine of creation is not about evolutionary change – it’s about why anything exists at all. Biological change – evolutionary theory – doesn’t put the creator God out of work.
The scripture speaks of this God as a triune God who is a personal God. We understand this universe is a personal universe as the God of the universe is a personal God.
Francis Schaeffer an American Evangelical Christian theologian, Philosopher and pastor in his book Genesis In Time and Space said it well once,
“An impersonal beginning…raises two overwhelming problems which neither the East nor modern man has come anywhere near solving. First, there is no real explanation for the fact that the external world not only exists, but has a specific form. Despite its frequent attempt to reduce the concept of the personal to the area of chemical or psychological conditioning, scientific study demonstrates that the universe has an express form. One can go from particulars to a greater unity, from the lesser laws to more and more general laws or super-laws. In other words, as I look at the Being which is the external universe, it is obviously not just a handful of pebbles thrown out there. What is there has form. If we assert the existence of the impersonal as the beginning of the universe, we simply have no explanation for this kind of situation.
Therefore, other worldviews in general are an impersonal universe view. The good news for us as believers is that our God is a personal God and send us a personal Savior Jesus Christ to save us from our sins and we can wholly and boldly trust and proclaim that good news!
Someone recently personally messaged me about this;
I completely agree with you about the Lord being the Creator; therefore, there is no room or place in the Christian faith and tradition for pantheism and monism. However, I would not generalize in this fashion:
“Most philosophy teachings deny the fundamental truth here of Creator-Creature-Distinction” and “other worldviews in general are an impersonal universe view,”
because I am not sure about what you mean by “most philosophy” and “other worldviews in general.” Do you mean non-Christian? and if so, which ones?
Here’s the response to the comment above;
There are two great issues in origin.
1. Personal Triune Beginning
2. Impersonal
What I mean by, “Impersonal” is naturalism, that is obviously impersonal natural processes. As we move to Eastern Religion, when we go to Pantheism and Hinduism, they become impersonal. Buddhism becomes impersonal as well.
There are few exception such as, “Monotheism” but all those exception are build off a Judea-Christian understanding. So what we really are faced with is, impersonal vs. personal matter.
This drives it home, this is the very reason, our entire view of humans, value, dignity, plan, freedom, liberty is different from a non-Christian view. We say then there is a personal Triune God who was before the beginning who created this universe, made us in His Image, that gives an entire different meaning from our society. If we think our society is not confused, then certainly we haven’t read the newspaper lately.
Why are people committing suicide? Why are people shooting one another? That is ultimately the Fall of human sin, but also a massive despair in society. They don’t know who they are, why they are here. They feel like they are nothing but garbage as human life is dispensable.
From a Christian view, these are all wrong because not only God is there, but human life have dignity and meaning because we are made in the image of God of a personal Triune God and everything follows from that.
So when we are speaking of Evangelism, when we speaking sharing the gospel we take them back to the origin of the fundamental starting point. Everything we say we always go back to the Christian theology of who God is! That is where we determine what we say in relationship to Him, for He is the most fundamental fact that He is the Creator of the universe.
This is simply an introductory thing so we can build it up more in terms of apologetics & evangelism. This is not our weakness, we don’t have to hide our heads in the sand when it comes so called science issue, “No, we stand and say God is the Creator and this is the only explanation of this world and we cannot understand apart from Him.”