God the Creator

In my continuing conversation about Evolution Sunday, I post this statement by Bernard Anderson on the premise of God the Creator.

To speak of God as creator, then, is not to make an affirmation about the manufacture of nature. Were this the case, the doctrine of evolution could rationally replace the old oriental myths that portray the birth of the gods out of the previously existing stuff of chaos, and describe one of these gods making the world in a great battle with the powers of chaos. But the biblical creation faith deals primarily with the meaning of human history. The great affirmation of the Bible is that the meaning of hymn history, first disclosed in the events of Israel's history, is the meaning upon which the world is founded. The redemptive word, by which Israel was created as the people of God, is none other than the creative word, by which the heavens were made. The point bears reemphasis that in the Bible creation is not an independent doctrine but is inseparably related to the basic story of the people in which Yahweh is presented as the actor and redeemer. Salvation and creation belong together (cf. Isa. 43:14-19; 51:9-10). To proclaim God as creator is therefore, as so often in the Psalms (cf. Psalms 29, 33, 104) a call to worship. It is a summons to acknowledge now the foundation and source of the meaning of our history. (Bernard Anderson, From Creation to New Creation, Fortress Press, 1994, pp. 6-7).