The Israelites understood that they were the creation of Yahweh, the one who had created all things. He had taken their ancestor Abraham out of Sumer and led him to the land of Canaan, where his descendants became a new nation, informed by his life-giving law. While this was a different kind of creation from that with which all things began, it was still supernatural.
Yahweh worship was founded on three facts: he had created the world, he had redeemed Israel from slavery, and he had given Israel a reflection of his holiness and righteousness in the Torah. The biblical authors mention the Creation as many times as they mention the Exodus, perceiving that everything owed its existence to him and he alone had power over the weather and the womb. That is what made him God. By contrast, Baal did not create the world, did not redeem Israel, and was not holy and righteous, though he was much less demanding.
The New Testament conception was the same, but with some additions: God had created all things through Jesus Christ, believers in Christ could be redeemed from sin in a more fundamental way than was possible under the Law, and Christ was the perfect reflection of God’s holiness and righteousness. In the 19th century, under pressure from the prophets of Baal in new guise, the Church began to abandon belief in God as Creator, and it became customary to talk about Providence rather than God. The Church ceased to understand who God was and forfeited much of her power as witness-bearer.
Let us not fool ourselves. If the world is the product of atoms ordering themselves through time, and if atoms themselves produce consciousness, the wise men of this world have some basis for arguing that God does not exist, for his existence then explains nothing. Some try to save the biblical testimony by arguing that evolution and creation amount to the same thing: heaven and earth were created over billions of years, and creation is therefore still going on today. However, Genesis states that the creation of the world was finished ‘in the beginning’, and scientists themselves never speak of creation when describing natural processes. Unlike most theologians, scientists know what the word means.
To follow Baal has always been the more popular and enticing path. Just as when even three years of drought were not enough to puncture Israel’s belief in his powers (I Ki 18), we profess belief in the Creator from one corner of our lips and belief in Nature from the other. Part of our brain tells us that man has a spirit, another that spirit is just a property of matter. We limp along on opinions that contradict each other.
It might be supposed that creation is affirmed only at the beginning of the Bible, after which it fades from view. The purpose of this Appendix is to correct that notion. The creation of heaven and earth and/or man is referred to in 15 of the 36 books of the Old Testament and in 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Jesus himself affirms it. Are we really prepared to say – and one day it will be to his face – that he was mistaken? The list omits references to God as father and creator of Israel, of which there are also many.
Gen 6:6f, 13 – God resolves to destroy what he has made
Gen 14:19 – Melchizedek and Abraham alike affirm that God is the getter of heaven and earth (‘get’ in the same sense Gen 4:1, Deut 32:6)
Ex 4:11 – he is our maker now, not only in the beginning
Ex 20:11, 31:17 – the significance of the seventh day of the week
Deut 4:32
I Sam 2:8 – the metaphorical pillars of the earth express the idea that the original landmass was physically supported above discrete bodies of water
II Ki 19:15, repeated at Isa 37:16
II Chr 2:12 – Hiram accepting Israel’s belief that Yahweh made heaven and earth
Neh 9:6 – Yahweh made the heaven, the heaven of heaven with all its starry host, the earth and its animals, and the seas and their animals
Job 9:8f
Job 10:8-12 – he is intimately involved in the genesis of each individual (also 31:15, Ps 139:13-15, Isa 49:5, Jer 1:5)
Job 38:4-40:15 – the works of the Creator are wonderful; it is foolish to question him on the basis that we know better
Ps 8:3 – the heavens are ‘the work of his fingers’: Yahweh was distinct from what he created, and formed it in the same sense as a potter forms a pot; a pot cannot form itself
Ps 19:1 – the firmament is God’s handiwork and declares his glory
Ps 24:2 – Yahweh founded the dry land on the (subterranean) seas and (subterranean sources of) the rivers (Ps 136:6)
Ps 33:6-9 – the heavens and everything in them were made by speaking them into existence; therefore we should fear him
Ps 74:12-17 – God has power over creation because he created it: therefore we cry to him for help
Ps 89:11f (and 47) – heaven and earth belong to God because he created them, the thought also behind e.g. Deut 10:14, I Chr 29:11.
Ps 90:2
Ps 94:9 – see on Ex 4:11 and Job 10:8-12
Ps 95:4-6 – his hands formed the depths of the earth and its heights; see on Ps 8:3
Ps 96:5
Ps 100:3 – Yahweh made us, not we ourselves
Ps 102:25
Ps 104 – an entire hymn of praise to God the Creator
Ps 115:15, 124:8, 134:3
Ps 121:2 – Yahweh can actively help us, much as he actively made the world
Ps 136:5-9
Ps 146:6
Ps 148:5 – Yahweh created by his word of power (Ps 33, Jer 10:12)
Prov 3:19
Prov 8:25-31
Prov 20:12
Prov 30:4
Isa 40:26, 28
Isa 42:5 – God is the origin of spirit (also Eccl 12:7)
Isa 44:24f – Yahweh the Creator formed Israel, and makes foolish the knowledge of those who think they know better
Isa 45:12, 18 – Yahweh, not nature, created the earth, in order that man might live on it
Isa 48:13
Isa 51:13, 16
Isa 66:1f – re-affirmed in Acts 7:50
Jer 5:22
Jer 10:10-12, 16 – as opposed to the gods that did not make heaven and earth
Jer 27:5 – Yahweh made the earth with his outstretched arm, just as he had actively saved Israel in the Exodus with an outstretched arm (Ex 6:6, Deut 4:34, Jer 32:21)
Jer 32:17 – Yahweh having created the world, nothing is too hard for him
Jer 33:2
Jon 1:9 – what it means to be a Hebrew
Zech 12:1 – cf. Isa 42:5
Mal 2:10 – Creator of all mankind, Father of Israel, one God
Matt 19:4, Mark 10:6 – “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?”
Mark 13:19 – “tribulation such as has not been the like since the beginning of creation” (even in the beginning there were people capable of experiencing tribulation)
Luke 3:38
Luke 11:50 – “the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world”
John 1:3, 10
John 8:44
Acts 4:24
Acts 14:15
Acts 17:24-29 – God made the world, and human beings are his direct offspring (genos)
Rom 1:20 – his eternal power and divinity have been manifest to humanity since the creation
Rom 8:19-22
I Cor 11:9-12
I Cor 15:45-47 – referring back to Genesis 1-2
Eph 3:9
Col 1:16
Col 3:9f – the ‘new man’, Christ in us (1:27), contrasted with the ‘old man’, Adam, referring back to Gen 2 (cf. I Cor 15:45-47, Eph 4:24)
I Tim 2:13
Heb 1:10 – affirming Ps 102
Heb 3:4
Heb 4:3 – his works were finished (Gen 2:2) from the foundation of the world: thus ‘foundation of the world’ means the six days of creation
Heb 9:26 – sin, and therefore man, was in existence from the foundation of the world
II Pet 3:5
Rev 4:11
Rev 10:6
Rev 14:7
