Part II in The Theology of the Pentateuch
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What does Creation mean? In other words, what difference to your view of yourself and the world in relationship to God does the doctrine of creation make?
Late theologian, Nicholas Lash, wrote, “… for the scientist, [the concept of creation] seems primarily to refer to the establishment of the initial conditions of the world, whereas, for the Christian theologian, it simply acknowledges all things’ absolute and intimate contingency.”
Reading Genesis 1
If you read through Genesis 1 slowly and contemplatively, the most striking and important observation is that God initiates and accomplishes all the action. God narrates creation. The only thing he does every day is speak. But God not only speaks, he also divides, makes, sets, and creates. The refrain “and it was so” echoes through the cosmos as it takes shape, connecting every new element back to God’s word. The only other subject of any action verb in the whole chapter is the earth when it brings forth vegetation at God’s command. There are—for all intents and purposes—no other actors. The account is measured, steady, stately, grand, even, designed, unfolding, expanding, magnificent.
God’s initiative and design conceive the cosmos, and God’s word and action accomplish the cosmos. The created order that we live in is God’s all the way down. And God is describing himself as a master craftsman in total control of his process, shaping his material into something that is good and that brings him great pleasure.
Day by day the creative process turns the formless and void chaos into a cosmos where humanity can dwell. First light, then land, then air are fashioned, creating a bubble where man can see and walk and breathe. Then plants and animals are created to build out an environment that supports his life and work and flourishing. When God creates humanity the narrative slows way down and God delivers an unprecedented blessing (1:26–28). Everything else is made according to its kind, but humanity is made in God’s image. Did you ever notice that God names things on days 1–3, but on days 4–6 God doesn’t name anything? This is the realm over which Adam will exercise his image bearing—that’s why God leaves it to him to name the animals. We are the climax of creation.
The Enuma Elish as a Theological Mirror
We can use the ancient Babylonian creation myth known as The Enuma Elish as a theological mirror to see ourselves and God in Genesis 1 more clearly.
One way to get at this is to ask questions: who is the hero of the story, what problem is he facing, and how does he overcome it? In Enuma Elish, Marduk, the chief god of the city of Babylon, is the hero. The problem he faces is that the generations of the gods who were born out of the primordial matter of the earth are at war with one another. The elder goddess, Tiamat, is on a rampage to destroy her descendants (because they already destroyed their ancestor and her partner). A war ranges across the unformed universe and Marduk is the only god powerful enough to defeat Tiamat. Marduk graphically kills her in single combat and then he forms the universe out of her corpse. This is all before humanity. This is the basic nature of things. The plot of the Enuma Elish is reactionary: problem, response, problem, response. Marduk’s kingship is based on brutal power, clearly contingent on there being no other more powerful force arising to take him out.
Both Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 illustrate the superiority of one deity over all other forces in the world, but there is no war or struggle in Genesis 1. The universe is not made from god bodies. There is no precursor or rival to God at all. There isn’t even a problem, just pure initiative and design emanating from God. Marduk triumphs in battle, but God’s power is complete. He is like a craftsman with clay—not a warrior in Genesis 1, but an artist.
After Marduk’s victory the gods build the city of Babylon to honor him. Any victorious military campaign in the ancient world won slaves for the victors and creation is no different. Marduk caps his achievement with the brilliant idea that the gods fashion a race of slaves to maintain their temples, bring offerings, and burn candles to make it smell nice. Like everything else in Enuma Elish, humanity is made from the remains of a dead god, born of the blood of an upstart executed for the purpose. The created order is not designed for them, they are trapped within it.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Enuma Elish describes the birth of humanity as the result of a competitive and self-destructive lifestyle that finally culminates in an ill-conceived pregnancy in the back room of a nightclub while high on conquest. These divine parents are co-dependent and the children will learn to manipulate and fend for themselves.
Both Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 crown the created order with humanity, but Genesis 1 drives toward humanity as the climax. The days of creation represent the deliberate fashioning of a garden home for humanity. Man and woman are not made from the blood of a failed rebel, but in the image of God to reflect his glory by ruling under him. The role of humanity in the world is not to wait on God—as if he needed us!—but to reflect his glory and sovereignty by ruling under him. Rather than humanity blessing God, God blesses them.
Learning to Say “God Made the World”
Counter-intuitively, we can see the cosmic import of creation if we make it intensely personal. Picture a five-year-old little girl asking her mother, “Where do babies come from?” Now, her mother could give an exhaustive account of the biological process by which each of us came to be—sperm and ovum and the stuff parents have to do to put them together—followed nine months later by our emergence from amniotic fluid, that primordial sea of the womb. Although true, that narrative is decidedly not the important thing that we want our children to know. It wouldn’t make sense to the little girl because it isn’t answering the deeper question she is asking.
So the mother could respond by telling the little girl the old legend about how the stork brings the baby and lays it in the cradle. But that narrative is equally unsatisfying, and worse, it simply isn’t true at all and therefore erodes trust. The little girl—if she believes it at the time—will need to unlearn it later.
But what if the mother responded like this? When a mother and father love each other, sometimes God chooses to give them a gift. God takes that gift and places it inside the mother right below her heart. Then God and the mommy and daddy watch over that gift and it grows and grows. When it is finally ready to come out, then God takes the baby out of the mommy and lays it in her arms.
Now, not only will that story make sense to the little girl, it will answer the question that she is really asking her mother: “Where do I come from?” “What is my relationship to you?” More than that, the story is true. Genesis 1 teaches us to say “God made the world” in the same way that we teach our little children to say “God made me.” This is a way of affirming the absolute and intimate contingency of humanity within creation both individually and corporately on God (cf. Ps 139:1, 13–14, 16).
John Calvin wrote this beautiful application:
And hence we infer what was the end for which all things were created; namely, that none of the conveniences and necessaries of life might be wanting to men. In the very order of the creation the paternal solicitude of God for man is conspicuous, because he furnished the world with all things needful, and even with an immense profusion of wealth, before he formed man. Thus man was rich before he was born. … Thus we are instructed to seek from God alone whatever is necessary for us, and in the very use of his gifts, we are to exercise ourselves in meditating on his goodness and paternal care.
LORD, teach us to confess that this is your world, that you made it and you made us in it. You know us, you care for us and we live in your presence. Teach us to lean into your goodness and paternal care—to seek from you alone what we need. May we see ourselves only in light of you.
Alex Kirk is the Visiting Professor of Old Testament at William Tennent School of Theology. He has been married to Meghan for over ten years, and currently lives in Durham, England, where he is nearing the completion of his Ph.D.. Alex is most passionate about leading people deeper into the literature of the Old Testament as the living and active word of the LORD to his people.