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In the Nicene Creed, we profess belief in “one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.” Just as there is one God, so also is there one creation that includes all that is not God. Jewish monotheism led to the inescapable conclusion that we all have one Father, since one and the same God has created us all (cf. Mal 2:10). The Christian Revelation that God is Trinitarian enables us to understand that, while creation has its source in the Father, it is also and equally the work of the Son and the Holy Spirit, though in different ways. All things are created through and for Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father (cf. Col 1:16). In the first chapter of Genesis, God speaks things into existence. As the psalmist points out, “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded and it stood forth” (Ps 33:9). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews concurs, reminding us that “by faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God” (Heb 11:3). The Holy Spirit, who is “the Lord and giver of life,” is always associated with birth and breath (ruah, the Hebrew word for spirit also means breath). In Genesis, “the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gn 1:2). In the next chapter, we are told that God “formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gn 2:7). The psalmist reminds us that when God sends forth his Spirit, all things are created and the earth is renewed (Ps 104:30). The Blessed Virgin Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35), the Holy Spirit at Pentecost gives life to the Church (Acts 2:1-4), and our rebirth as Christians requires that we receive the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:5). Creation “Ex Nihilo” • God is the only uncreated being. Therefore, God created things not out of some preexisting matter but “out of nothing” (ex nihilo). “I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and to see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed” (2 Mc 7:28). “Nothing” of course is not “something” out of which God creates. To say he creates ex nihilo is to say that God’s creative act is the source of every created being and every element in every created being. He created things neither out of anything else nor out of his own substance. He called into existence that which previously had no existence whatsoever. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) taught that God “has all together, from the beginning of time, created from nothing both spiritual and bodily creatures, that is to say angels and the terrestrial world; then human beings who belong to both, composed as they are of both spirit and body.” God also created time. The Latin expression translated in the above passage as “from the beginning of time” is simul ab initio temporis, which literally means “simultaneously from the beginning of time.” To say that God creates out of nothing is to reject pantheism as well as all forms of divine emanationism. It is also to reject the belief that the world has always existed. To say that God creates out of nothing is to affirm that God is transcendent, that is, different from his creation. There is a sacred order in creation that has a sacred origin (God himself). This order is apparent in the account of the six days of creation in the first chapter of Genesis: God methodically creates in a particular sequence, culminating with the creation of man on the sixth day. As the Book of Wisdom tells us, God “has arranged all things by measure and number and weight” (Wis 11:20) and the wisdom of God “orders all things well” (Wis 8:11).
To say that things are ordered also means that they are related to one another in specific ways. They are interdependent and interrelated. Genesis speaks of the plants and trees as created to supply food for man and the animals (Gn 1:3), of the sun created to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night (Gn 1:16), and of the garden as created for man to till (Gn 2:15). Genesis also tells us that man was made to have dominion over the earth (Gn 1:28). The fact that God has ordered all things in such a way as to make them interdependent and interrelated means that creation has been invested by him with its own intrinsic integrity. The Second Vatican Council teaches that “by the very circumstances of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 36). The acorn becomes an oak tree, for example, not because God from outside it forces it to do so, but because God has implanted within the acorn its purpose by which it becomes, by its own intrinsic principles, an oak tree. God is first and final cause of all things, but he has created within the universe a network of secondary causality by which all things achieve their various purposes from within themselves and in relationship to one another and, in so doing, become participants, as it were, in creation itself. Creation, in other words, reflects in its own way the intellect of God. Creation is ordered, not anarchical or chaotic. This also means that creation, as it comes from the hands of God, is incomplete. It must participate in its own completion. Creation is therefore something that is both gift (from God) and achievement (by us). Although the Church teaches that creation is relatively autonomous, she does not subscribe to deism, the belief that God created the world but then left it to its own devices, for she also teaches that creation is radically dependent on God. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Indeed, were God to withdraw his support from the world, all things would return to the nothingness out of which he called them. Creation As Good • The Church teaches that creation is good. She therefore rejects Manichaeanism and all other forms of Gnosticism which suppose that God is opposed by another god who is evil or by some element of the cosmos, such as its materiality or temporality. We know creation is good because God tells us that it is. In Genesis, God six times calls creation good (cf. Gn 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 31). Indeed, the sixth time comes at the end of the sixth day, after his creation of man, at which point we are told that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gn 1:31). We also know that creation is good because its sole source is God, who is absolute goodness. Everything God has created, whether spiritual or material, is good. Nothing God has created is, by its nature, evil. As the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century taught, “The Church asserts that there is no such thing as a nature of evil, because every nature insofar as it is a nature is good.” Creation is also good because it has been invested with meaning and purpose. One purpose is to manifest the perfection, the holiness, of God. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Ps 19:1). Creation has a second purpose as well, for God has a “plan” or purpose for the universe, that it share in his life, goodness, and love. God is the Creator; he is not the destroyer. “I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it” (Eccl 3:14). God’s plan from before creation is “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10). Creation is, in the final analysis, good because it is centered on Jesus Christ, the God-man, in whom it is ordered toward its final end as “the new heavens and a new earth” (Is 65:17; cf. 2 Pt 3:13, Rv 21:1). The most important thing to understand about creation is that it is an act of divine love. Every aspect of creation – its Trinitarian source, its intelligibility and order, its relative autonomy, its goodness – is a reflection of the fact that it is loved by God and brought into existence to share in his life and love. But to say that creation is an act of divine love is to say three things beyond this. First, creation is a free act of God. This means not only that God was not forced by anyone else to create (there being no one else “before” creation except God) but also that God was not forced by any inner compulsion or need to create. As the First Vatican Council taught, he created the universe neither “to increase his blessedness nor to acquire his perfection”; rather, creation manifests his perfection and blessedness. God creates out of love, in order to share his love with all that he creates. Second, God loves what he has created. “For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it” (Wis 11:24). So much does God love the world that he took upon himself, in the Person of the Son, its salvation from sin and death. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Redemption, however, is not just for human beings. All of creation, as St. Paul reminds us, awaits redemption (Rom 8:18-23). All of creation both comes into existence through and is redeemed by Jesus Christ. As one Catholic theologian has recently pointed out, the implications of the Catholic faith are “that the entirety of the universe of some fifteen or twenty billion light-years’ radius is created in Christ and that the whole of it is fallen in the first Adam and redeemed by the second” (Donald J. Keefe, Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History, Vol. I, p. 27). Third, creation itself participates in the freedom of God. Creation is not only ordered, it also is free. That is to say, creation is governed neither by fate nor by necessity. It is not locked into the “wheel of eternal recurrence” by which all things necessarily and fatalistically repeat themselves in some great cosmic recycling process. Acorns may necessarily give rise to oak trees, but every oak tree is unique and unrepeatable. God proclaims in Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing” (Is 43:19), but in point of fact everything that comes into existence is a “new thing” never before seen. The novelty of creation is a consequence of the freedom with which God invests it, a freedom that manifests the fact that all things are destined to union with God, not to annihilation or to meaningless repetition. The freedom of creation is manifested fully of course only in human beings, to whom free will is given. This free will is given for the sake of love. Love cannot be coerced; it can only be given freely. In creating human beings with free will, God gives them the potential to love. He does so because he desires that they share in his love by their own free act of love. This is why, after creating man, God can speak of creation as “very good,” for in man, the image of the God who is love, is made visible the potential for that kind of love which constitutes the inner life of the Trinity itself. See: Angels; Animals; Fatherhood of God; Freedom, Human; Gnosticism; Hierarchy; Human Race, Creation and Destiny of; Imago Dei; Manichaeism; Providence.
Suggested Readings: CC 279-354. R. Butterworth, The Theology of Creation. S. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe. P. Schoonenberg, S.J., Covenant and Creation. Joyce A. Little
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