I believe in God … Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen —The Nicene Creed for Noncreedal Christians Post #9.
I continue my journey through the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, having reflected on the opening line, which declared belief in “God the Father Almighty.” Now we move on to God the creator.
The Nicene
confession concerning God concludes with the affirmation that God is the
creator of all things. The universe that the Nicene bishops envisioned was much
smaller than the universe we know today. As understood by fourth-century
science, it was a geocentric universe, such that the sun, planets, and stars
revolved around the Earth. Theologically, we begin with the opening chapters of
Genesis, where we find two different creation stories, both of which affirm the
premise found here in the creed, for in the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. Whether God created ex nihilo or fashioned existing
matter is a conversation larger than what I wish to do here. For my purposes, I
find the ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, more compelling. Others find
it problematic, especially on the grounds of theodicy.
As
declared in the creed, everything starts with God. How God created the heavens
and the earth, and all that is seen and unseen, is not resolved by the creed. I
happen to find the scientific theory of evolution compelling. For my thoughts
on all of this, see my book Worshiping with Charles Darwin: Sermons
and Essays Touching on Matters of Faith and Science (Energion Publications,
2013). Too often, Christians have undermined their witness by seeking to pit
science and the Bible against each other. Currently, we are seeing this play
out in the anti-science movements that have taken hold in evangelicalism and our
government, especially around climate science [on this see, Janet Kellogg Ray’s
The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World, (Eerdmans,
2023)]. None other than St. Augustine warned his readers against making any
particular view of science essential. In his Literal Meaning of Genesis (I.19,39),
Augustine writes with great wisdom that non-Christians will have something
valuable to say about science. Therefore:
Now it is quite disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one’s guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. And what is so vexing is not that misguided people should be laughed at, as that our authors should be assumed by outsiders to have held such views and, to the great detriment of those about whose salvation we are so concerned, should be written off and consigned to the waste paper basket as so many ignoramuses. [Saint Augustine, On Genesis, NCP, p. 195].
Science will have its say about the making of the universe.
Theologically, following the Nicene Creed, we confess that God is the creator.
Therefore, what God has created is good (Genesis 1). That includes God’s human
creation. The method of creation is something science comments on.
Theologically, we confess that God is the creator of all things, both seen and
unseen. By the latter, the authors of the creed envision the spiritual
dimension, something that science cannot truly penetrate. In making that
confession, the creed notes that there is more to reality than what meets the
eye.
In
making this confession, we also acknowledge that God is our creator, and therefore,
there is a distinction between God and us. As such, we as humans receive our
commission from God upon our creation to serve as stewards of what God has
created. Although the word from Genesis 1 speaks of dominion, this dominion
does not mean doing with creation as we please. Rather, having been created in
God’s image, we are God’s representatives. If what God has created is good,
then surely, we must take good care of it (Gen. 1:28). So, as Karl Barth writes
of this clause in the creed:
No doubt it is scriptural to say that the world was created for man’s sake. But yet only because man was in a pre-eminent sense created for the service of God, created to be the “image of God,” not only as theatre, but as active and passive bearer of that glory. It is the concrete content of faith in God the Creator that the world is “good” for man in and for this service of God. How should man have to decide and decree what is “good”? He has just got to believe that God has created the world and him himself really good. [Barth, Karl. Credo (Kindle p. 36).]
If God is our creator, and I make that confession, we have a
responsibility, as bearers of God’s image, to affirm God’s position,
recognizing that there is great beauty to be found in God’s creation. We all
have our places of beauty that resonate. It might be the ocean or the
mountains. Having grown up within sight of Mount Shasta, a 14,000-plus
mountain in the Cascade Range, and having been to Yosemite, Crater Lake, the
Alps, and many other majestic places, I affirm the premise that God is our
creator and that what God has created is very good.
So we sing:
For the beauty of the earth, for
the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to thee we raise this
our hymn of grateful praise.
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