140 Ralph Del Colle

Kasper, Walter, The God oflesus Christ, New York : Crossroad, 1989.
Kimel, Alvin F., Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge
of Feminism, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans , 1992.
LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, San 8 The doctrine of creation
Francisco : Harper, 1991.
Moltmann , Jurgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, San COLIN GUNTON

Francisco : Harper & Row, 1981.

Studer, Basil, Trinity and Incarnation : The Faith of the Early Church, Collegeville,
Minnesota: Th e Liturgical Press , 1993.
Torrance, Thomas F., The Trinitarian Faith : The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient
Catholic Church, Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark, 1994.
THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION
Trinitarian Perspectives : Toward Doctrinal Agreement , Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark ,
1988. All cultures, ancient and modern alike, seek for a way of accounting for
W elch, Claude , In This Name: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Contemporary Theology ,
the universe that will give their lives coherence and meaning. Creation the -
New York: Scribners, 1952.
ology, in the broadest sense of an enquiry into the divinity or divinities that
Zizioulas , John D., Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church,
London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985. shape or make our world, is a universal human concern, however different
the forms that it can take . But among all the theologies, myths and theories,
Christian theology is distinctive in the form and content of its teaching . It is
credal in form, and this shows that the doctrine of creation is not something
self-evident or the discovery of disinterested reason, but part of the fabric of
the Christian response to revelation . 'I believe in God the Father, maker of
Heaven and Earth.' Here the word 'maker ' is understood in a particular
sense. As it stands, it is ambiguous. It may refer to one who is like a human
maker, a potter for example, who makes an object out of a material that is
already to hand. But Christian theology has rejected that sense as inad-
equate. The unique contribution to thought made by Christian theologians
of creation lies in their development of a view that God creates 'out of noth-
ing' . This became possible by virtue of the trinitarian form of the doctrine.
When in the late second century Irenaeus taught that God the Father created
by means of his 'two hands', the Son and the Spirit, he was able to complete
one stage in a process of intellectual development during which the implica-
tions of the Christian form of creation belief were drawn out.
To understand the distinctiveness of the development, it is important to
realise that these three themes - creation as an article of the creed ; creation
out of nothing; and creation as the work of the whole Trinity, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit - are in some way bound up with each other, both his-
torically and systematically. Doctrinally, they produce the following fea-
tures . First , the teaching that creation was 'out of nothing' affirms that God,
in creating the world , had no need to rely on anything outside himself, so
that creation is an act of divine sovereignty and freedom, an act of personal

141
 142 Colin Gunton The doctrine of creation 143
willing. It further implies that the universe, unlike God who is alone eternal There is then an eschatology of creation, an understanding of a destiny
and infinite, had a beginning in time and is limited in space. Here Christian which is something more than a return to its beginnings. The created world
teaching is in contradiction of almost every cosmology that the world has is that which God enables to exist in time and through time to come to its
known. The biblical stress on the sovereignty of God, allied with the demon- completion .
stration of that sovereignty in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, led in Fourth, a focus on the way the transcendent Creator is involved in the
due time to the realisation that to attribute eternity to anything other than world through his two hands makes possible an understanding of the place
God was to make that in effect divine. of oth er concepts which are in close relation with the doctrine, especially
But, second, it does not follow that creation was an arbitrary act upon the 'conse rvation ', 'preservation ', 'provid ence' and 'redemption'. They are all to
part of God. It was, rather, purposive, and in two senses: that it derives from do wit h the way God works in and tow ards the creation, and we know about
the love of God, not simply his will; and that it exists for a purpose - to go them because they are revealed in the characteristic forms of action of the
somewhere we might say. Rather like a work of art, creation is a project, Son and the Spirit. Conservation and preservation express God's continuing
something God wills for its own sake and not because he has need of it. It is uph olding ofand care for hfa creation. God does not, like the mac hine-maker
here that we can begin to understand something of the place of the doctrine deity of some conceptions, simply leave his world to go its own way, but
of the Trinity in the development. Because that doctrine teaches that God is actively maintains it in being. Providence and redemption have a more
already, 'in advance of' creation, a communion of persons existing in loving forward-looking orientation, and refer to the forms of action by which God
relations, it follows that he does not need the world, and so is able to will the provides for the needs of the creation and enables it to achieve the end that
existence of something else simply for itself. The universe is therefore the was purposed for it from the beginning. All of them take their centre in the
outcome of God's love, but not its necessary outcome. It did not have to be, incarnation, perhaps particularly as it is understood by Athanasius in On the
but rather is contingent, meaning- among other things, as we shall see - that Incarnation. In Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh, the one through
the world is given value as a realm of being in its own right. In the words of whom the world was created comes in person to his world to remake that
Genesis it is 'very good', not only partly good or as a means to an end, but which threatened to fall into dissolution through sin and evil.
good simply as and for what it is and shall be: the created order. Fifth, the term 'redemption' reminds us that we cannot escape some
A third feature of the doctrine, also deriving from its trinitarian struc- engageme nt in this context with the question of evil. On the account being
ture, is that God remains in close relations of interaction with the creation, developed here, evil is that which prev ents the created order from fulfilling
but in such a way that he makes it free to be itself. God's transcendence as the its proper purpose . While Greek though t tended to trace the origin of evil to
maker of all things is not of such a kind that he is unable also to be immanent matter, Christian theology came to the view that, because all that God creates
in it through his 'two hands'. According to the New Testament, creation is is good, evil must be something extraneous to or parasitic upon creation as a
through and to Christ, and this means that it is, so to speak, structured by the whole. If the universe is created good, and with an end in view, evil becomes
very one who became incarnate and as such part of the created order of that which corrupts the good creation and so thwarts God's purpose for it. At
which we are speaking. It follows that it is good because God himself, the centre of the problem is the doctrine of the Fall or fallenness of the
through his Son, remains in intimate and loving relations with it. Similarly, human race, according to which human sin in some way involves the whole
we can understand something of what it means for creation to be a kind of created order in evil. The human fall is sometimes traced to the fall of angels,
project if we recall that Basil of Caesarea described the Holy Spirit as the or to some other force or agency, so that evil in some way corrupts the crea-
perfecting cause of the creation.1 It is the work of God the Spirit, by relating tion even before the Fall. However the matter is understood, the point for our
the world to God the Father through Jesus Christ, to enable the created order purpose is that evil is attributed not to a fault in God's creating activity or
to be truly itself, and so to move to that completedness which God intends in the created order as such, but to something which subverts it and must
for it. Thus although the doctrine of creation is chiefly concerned with be overcome. Its existence means that creation's purpose can be achieved
God's establishing an order of things, in our past, so to speak, it is not merely only by its redirection from within by the creator himself. Here once again,
concerned with that. It is a matter also of the kind of world that there is. we encounter the centrality of christology and pneumatology. Given the
 144 Colin Gunton The doctrine of creation 145
all-polluting power of evil and its centre in human sin, redemption can be
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION
achieved only by the action of the one through whom the world was created.
His becoming incarnate , dying aad being raised by the Creator Spirit is the The doctrine of creation , like other Christian teaching , emerged out of
way through which the creation is redeemed (bought back) from its bondage two backgrounds: the Bible and the leading philosophies of the cosmos in
to destruction, from within , without loss to its created integrity. The final the Greek culture which provided the context. Because the two worlds are
redemption of creation will be completed only at its end , but in the mean- both distinctively different from each other and themselves internally
time, anticipations of creation's final perfection are achieved whenever and diverse, their interaction is very complex. During the development of the
wherever Christ and the Spirit hold sway. earliest doctrine, the Greek world was represented by a very wide range of
Sixth, it follows from a number of features of the above that no theology influences, from some of the richest philosophies ever developed to the
of creation is complete without attention being paid to the place of weirdest of spe culation s, but they do exhibit some common features .
humankind in the project . According to Genesis 1 :27, God 'created man in We shall for the sake of clarity take the two worlds one at a time, though it
his own image ... male and female he created them ', and there has been in should be ~emembered , particularly when speaking of the Bible, that the
the tradition much discussion of what this means both for man and for his books which make it up are themselves the product of a complex cultural
relation to the remainder of the created order. The traditional tendency to history and are not hermetically sealed off from the worlds in which they
locate the image of God in reason or some other human endowment or qual- were written.
ity is now much disputed in favour of a conception of the whole of human When the biblical doctrin e of creation is discussed, particularly in the
being as existing in relation to God, other human beings and the rest of the light of modern disputes about science and religion, the opening chapters of
created order. The latter relation is in terms of 'dominion ' (Genesis 1:26) , Genesis are nearly always in the thick of things . This is scarcely surprising in
which means a calling to be and to act in such a way as to offer the whole the light of their profundity and position in the Bible, although they have
created order as a response of praise to its maker. But the distinctive place of often been misunderstood or misused, and become an unnecessary stum-
the human creation cannot be understood apart from chri stology. Genesis bling block to belief. But Genesis is by no means the only text for a theologi-
makes the human race both the crown of, and uniquely responsible for, the cal account of creation . The reasons are two. First is the fact that Genesis
shape that creation takes . By speaking of Jesus Christ as the true image of crystallises what is found in other parts of the Old Testament, although
God, the New Testament shows that this responsibility takes shape through sometimes in rather different form. The Psalms, 104 and 139 for example,
him. celebrate God's creation of everything without the framework of days or an
Seventh, and related to the previous section, there are the ethical dimen- allusion to a first human couple . The famous speech of God from the whirl-
sions . These have come into the centre in the light of recent concerns about wind in Job 38-9 celebrates what is surely the main point of Old Testament
the environment, but it must be remembered that sexual relations , abortion , witne ss, the sheer freedom and sovereignty of God over all the things that he
genetic engineering and war are also among the human activities that involve has made , a note to be found nowhere outside the Bible, for in all other
the doctrine of creation because they concern relationships between created accounts, certainly in those of the Greeks, there are always constraints on
persons and between them and the material world . If God's purpose is for the divine action.
redemption and perfection of the creation, all human action will in some Second, it must be remembered that the primary source for Christian
way or other involve the human response to God that is ethics . doctrine, through which the Old Testament is interpreted , is the New
As we now move to trace some of the central episodes in the history of Testament, where the theology of creation is more prominent than is some-
the doctrine of creation , we shall find that all of these themes will figure in times suggested. There are two formal statements: in Hebrews 11 :3 the
different ways. How each of them is treated determines the shape that any author claims that belief in creation is the object of faith ; and in Revelation
particular articulation of the doctrine takes. It is because of the different 4: 11 there is what perhaps amounts to a summary credal confession : 'thou
forms that the doctrine has taken over nearly two millennia that a historical didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created '. Perhaps
account is indispensable to understanding the doctrine . even more important are the writings which link creation with Jesus Christ
 The doctrine of creation 147
146 Colin Gunton
in general and his resurrection in particular. In 1 Corinthians, Colossians our senses. These forms comprise the world of 'being': that which is always
and Hebrews, as well as the famous opening verses of the Gospel of John, and unchanging, and so can be known by the mind. Over against them is the
Jesus Christ is celebrated as the mediator of creation, the one through whom world of 'becoming': those things which cannot truly be the objects of
God the Father created and continues to uphold the universe, and to whom it knowledge because they are here today, but may tomorrow change into
moves. The doctrine of creation is linked with the resurrection in Romans something else or disintegrate. Plato's world is dualist not in the sense that
4: 17 which speaks of Abraham's faith in the God 'who gives life to the dead it distinguishes God from the world, but in dividing the world into two
1

and calls into existence the things that do not exist'. That is scarcely surpris- orders of being, the material or sensible and the ideal or intelligible. The
ing, for in raising Jesus from the dead God shows his lordship over the created latter is more real than the former, and later philosophers, particularly the
2 Neoplatonists, were to develop this into a doctrine of degrees of being,
order, the very freedom and sovereignty celebrated in the Old Testament.
The work of the Spirit in creation is less prominent in the New accordi~g to which reality takes the form of a hierarchy, with pure matter at
Testament, except in one crucial respect. In reliance on texts such as Romans the foot and pure form at the top .
8:11, some early theologians argued that it is by his Spirit that God the Father The potential for clashes between this teaching and the teaching of
raised Jesus from the dead. Similarly, later in that chapter the Spirit appears Genesis that all things God created are very good is manifest. For the
in connection with the transformation of creation. If we take this along with Neoplatonist Plotinus, matter is not good at all, but evil, and at the very best
other passages, we can see that the theologians who later spoke of the becomes good only when informed by the higher realities. To put it simply :
'Creator Spirit' were not simply conjuring ideas out of thin air. Luke's gospel there is, if not a contradiction then certainly a tension, between saying that
speaks of the Spirit's work in forming the child Jesus in the womb of his all things are good and saying that some things are so low on the scale of
mother Mary, suggesting that the birth of Jesus is an act of divine re-creation, being that they are scarcely good at all. But the tension was hidden, if not
while behind it lie those Old Testament passages which suggest the Spirit as removed, by some of the things said by Plato in the other work that is influen-
the vehicle of God's sovereign power over the created order, particularly, tial for later developments, the Timaeus . This is an odd and speculative work,
perhaps, Ezekiel's (37=1-14) prophecy of the dry bones, which are trans- but two things in particular should be noted. The first is that, like Genesis, it
formed by the divine Spirit in an act of visionary resurrection. is affirmative of the created order. 'The world is beautiful and its maker
When we come to the Greeks, a very different atmosphere prevails. At good.' 3 The second, however, is that it remains tied to the Greek tradition of
the centre of their contribution to the discussion was a concern with reason, subjecting the Creator to some form of outside necessity. God is not the
with seeking the explanation for why things are as they are. The early Greek sovereign lord of all but one of three coeternal realities, matter, form and
poets, especially Homer and Hesiod, referred the world to two sets of forces: himself. He is the maker - the Greek word is demiourgos, workman - in the
a number of gods and goddesses, often vying with one another for influence; weaker sense of the word, for he does not create but only forms that which is
and impersonal forces like 'chance', 'necessity' and 'fate', powers to which already to hand .
even the gods were subject. Unlike the sovereign God of the Bible, these gods The Christian doctrine of creation was developed when Christian
could do only what had to be. The characteristic form of Greek philosophy thinkers entered the world of Greek thought and articulated their under-
arose out of an attempt to do something better than this, but these thinkers standing of the creed in its shadow. Crucial episodes are as follows. In the
never freed themselves from some kind of dependence upon 'necessity', as is work of Justin Martyr, we see the beginnings of a process of disentangling
shown by Plato, who is often thought to be nearest to the Christian view. theology from Platonism. Justin did not develop a doctrine of creation out of
Plato is not a static thinker, so that it is difficult to state categorically nothing, but did see clearly that the Bible conceives the relation of God and
what his 'doctrine' was. But two features of his writings have shaped the world differently from the Platonists. In his Dialogue with Trypho, sec-
Christian theology, and it is these which I shall summarise. The first is his tions 3-7, he tells of his conversion to Christianity in conversation with an
doctrine of forms, particularly as it appears in the Republic. This teaches that old man who taught him to question whether we can know God by virtue of
there is a set of eternal realities , discerned by the mind, which are more or some affinity with God or some continuity between our mind and the divine.
less successfully incorporated in the material things that we perceive with Justin's achievement is to suggest that to know God as Creator we need to be
 The doctrine of creation 149
148 Colin Gunton
taught by the Holy Spirit rather than to rely on community of being between theologians whose achievements we have noted are significant for their
God and ourselves, as the Greeks believed to be the case. Here we see emerg- resistance to the Greek dualism which in some way elevates the spiritual or
ing one of the essential articles of a doctrine of creation, that because God is intellectual above the material as a higher order of creation. It was, however,
universal Creator, everything, whether matter or spirit, is alike created, and others who set the tone for the main developments in the West until the end
of the Middle Ages.
nothing but God is eternal and divine.
By strengthening the trinitarian aspects of the doctrine of creation, The achievement of Origen and Augustine in the third and fifth cen-
lrenaeus was able, first, to develop a markedly positive view of the value of turies was the combining of credal and Greek elements in their theologies of
the created order, material and spiritual alike. Here he was helped by his creation.7 Taking his inspiration from Philo of Alexandria's allegorical inter-
need to out-think the strongly dualistic philosophy of some of his Gnostic pretation of Genesis, Origen taught that there was a two-stage creation. First
opponents . Against their teaching that spirit was good and matter evil, of all Gpd created a higher world of spiritual beings, whose fall provided the
Irenaeus affirmed, for christological and pneumatological reasons, the good- occasion for the second creation, the material world, as a place of reforma-
ness of the whole of the created order. He is particularly strong on the escha- tion where they could freely learn to return to their maker. While Origen did
tological dimensions of creation, and an affirmation that all the creation, not not deny the goodness of the material world, he saw it as good chiefly instru-
just mind or soul, is to be redeemed. Second, lrenaeus achieved the definitive mentally, as a means for the salvation of the spiritual beings. Although he
expression of creation out of nothing. The God who creates through his two did contribute to the development of a systematic understanding of the
hands is utterly free over against that which he creates, and requires no assis- work of divine creation, and particularly of its relation to redemption, this
tance from intermediate beings. This contradiction of a central tenet of concession to Platonism made at best an ambiguous affirmation of the good-
Greek philosophy demonstrates that the doctrine of creation out of nothing ness of the material world. In contrast, Augustine's blending of Platonism
is a unique intellectual achievement which emerged only as a result of the and the Christian creed avoided such simplifications, and in the process
struggle of the early theologians to affirm the goodness and createdness of made major contributions to some of the philosophical problems associated
with the teaching of creation out of nothing. On the Greek view that the
matter in the context of Greek culture. 4
Two other theologians are worth a mention at this stage for their devel- matter from which creation is formed is eternal, there is no obvious problem
opments of this tradition. The motif of the 'homogeneity' of the creation is about the relation of time and eternity. The demiurge at some time shapes
developed by Basil in the fourth century. His exposition of Genesis, though matter and form into this particular universe. But the Christian view entailed
by no means free of platonic influence, is important for his denial of the an absolute beginning, and to avoid the embarrassing suggestion that God is
divinity and eternity of the heavenly bodies, as it was taught by Aristotle, in some way limited by time, Augustine, in anticipation of views contained
5
and later by the church. The sun is, like other things, corruptible. Basil is in Einstein's relativity theory, argued that space and time were created with
insistent that everything other than God is created and contingent, and the world. That is to say, space and time are not absolute realities that in
therefore the same kind of reality . There is no hierarchy of mind and matter. some way constrain God, but are the result of there being a created universe.
The achievement of John Philoponos, two centuries later, is similar, and But Augustine's achievement was also at the price of continuing to hold
important for his influence on Galileo. Not only did his belief in God make a two-stage and hierarchical view of creation, according to which God first
possible his anticipation of later discoveries in natural science, but he also created the platonic forms and then the (lower) material world, which he
reinforced the teaching of creation out of nothing by exposing contradic- shaped in the light of the forms. This meant that despite Augustine's deter-
tions in Greek views of the infinity of the universe.
6 mined fight against the heresy of Manichaeism, which held that matter was
However, the development of the doctrine was by no means as straight- evil, he was never able to affirm as fully as lrenaeus the goodness of m aterial
forward as the foregoing account may have suggested. All the time there was things . Matter was a means to the higher realm and not fully real and good in
a pull in another direction, and it has had incalculable effects. Its chief causes itself, and in this respect he deeply affected the thought of t he cent uries to
are an embarrassment with the form of the opening chapters of Genesis and follow. Because he taught that the material universe was shaped in the light
a tendency to interpret them, and so the whole doctrine, platonically. The of the previously created forms, Augustine allowed them to displace Christ
 150 Colin Gun ton The doctrine of creation 151

as the effective framework of the created order. The mediation of creation independent being. Some commentators have noted how near this theolo-
through Christ had for Irenaeus formed the central argument for his affirma- gian can sometimes come to pantheism. 9
tion of the reality and goodness of the material world, a goodness he saw To Ockham, and to a certain extent to his predecessor Duns Scotus, goes
reaffirmed in the use of bread and wine in Christian worship. It is noteworthy the credit - if it is credit, as many would deny - of clearing away the inter-
that Augustine scarcely appeals to christology in his doctrine of creation. mediate world of forms and causes that had dominated medieval discussion
The effects this had on the future of Christian theology are very great, for and developing a strong doctrine of the contingence of the world understood
it impinged on two central areas. First of all, the relation of creation and as the outcome of God's unnecessitated free will. In Ockham we return to a
redemption is thrown out of kilter. It was due to Augustine that the doctrine strong assertion of creation out of nothing, in which the world is set free
of predestination as the choosing of a limited number of people from the from any logical relation on God, and is simply the outcome of sheer will. But
mass of the lost came to take hold, and the associated view that salvation beca~se there is here, also, no christology and pneumatology, the structuring
meant not the redemption of man in and with the whole created order, but element which had provided the framework for medieval conceptions, the
apart from it, sometimes even out of it. Redemption thus becomes a human, forms and causes, is not replaced by anything else, so that God and the world
not a universal project. Second, creation appears more like an arbitrary act of come adrift, and the way of conceiving their continuing relation comes into
will than the ordered expression of love. It would not be fair to say that this is question.
the whole story with Augustine, rather that here we have tendencies which Two alternative ways were developed of re-envisaging that relationship.
deeply affected the future. But what did happen was that christology and The first was that of Martin Luther and John Calvin, who returned to a trini-
pneumatology came to have little substantive effect in the development of tarian conception of a kind that clearly assisted the emergence of modern
the doctrine throughout the Middle Ages, so that it was often treated more as science. 10 Here threads stretching back to Basil and Philoponos are again
an article of natural theology than as part of the creed. It is surely significant brought into the tapestry. Because the world is, as a whole, the creation, with
that William of Ockham in the fourteenth century could even refer to the no necessary links to divinity, and because it is conceived as contingent,
first verses of John's Gospel without mentioning the place of Christ in crea- science as the study of the world in its actual rather than logical relations
tion. In his thought the conception of creation as an arbitrary act of will becomes possible. Neither the doctrine of creation nor modern science can
became one of the crucial episodes in the movement of much modern be understood without some awareness of their inextricable relation. 11
culture to atheism. 8 But, second, other forces were at work to undermine the link between
But there is another side to a very complicated story, and it can be theology and science, so that the outcome of the development was that the
brought out in a contrast between Ockham and his great predecessor and doctrine of creation, or a substitute for it, became in large measure the prov-
intellectual opponent, Thomas Aquinas. A major focus of Aquinas' cosmol- ince of science, and scientists replaced theologians as the authorities for
ogy is his doctrine of causes, by virtue of which he argues that the whole of knowledge of the created world. Culturally, we might say, the Enlightenment,
creation is dependent upon God, the uncaused cause of all. In his system, the which in its own way returned to dualistic ways of thought owed to the Greeks,
Aristotelian doctrine of causes replaces the platonic forms as his way of quickly supervened upon the Reformation as the main determinant of the
providing a structuring for the universe, which is understood as a system way we understand the created world. Isaac Newton's distinction between
of interlocking causal agents, hierarchically conceived, requiring explana- relative and absolute space and time, undermining Augustine's contribution,
tion by divinity. But the effect is the same, and although Aquinas affirms led to the effective divinisation of space and time and to a dualism between
the doctrine of creation out of nothing, he makes little of it, and certainly the world as we experience it and something unknown beyond it. This in its
not of its determination by christology and pneumatology. The result is that turn led to Immanuel Kant's contention that there is no way of moving by
the weight of his doctrine falls on conceiving the universe in terms of its thought or argument between this world and that of its supposed Creator.12
necessary dependence on God. That is to say, Aquinas stresses one aspect of The chief effect of Newtonianism so far as the doctrine of creation is
what it means to say that the world is contingent - that it is dependent upon concerned was that it became a philosophy that precluded any satisfactory
God - but is weaker on the other, that the world is given its own relatively conception of the continuing relation of God and the world. The easiest way
 152 Colin Gunton The doctrine of creation 153
to understand this is from the central metaphor by which the philosophy of be remembered that that is by no means an achievement peculiar to theories
the Enlightenment understood the cosmos, which was as a machine. Accord- of evolution. The real threat to human uniqueness - and so to such personaJ
ing to this picture - and it is crucial to remember that it is a picture and not realities as love and artistic endeavour , as welJ as rationality and science -
the final truth about the world - it was easier to understand God as the one came long before Darwin was born , as Coleridge and others had realised. The
who made the world and left it to run than it was to conceive of any continu- threat to the personal came from the philosophy which made everything
ing relations with it. There could be creation out of nothing, but little notion simply the outcome of impersonal mechanism. In one respect, Darwinism
of conservation, providence and redemption. Those who wished to combine represented but a modification of Newtonianism, its impersonal categories
this philosophy with Christian belief often appealed to miracles as proofs applied to the way in which life emerged from that which was not alive.
that God continued to intervene from time to time, but this is unsatisfactory There is still a dispute between the hard Darwinism which turns
because it conceives the relation of God and the world in so external a fash- Evolution, as a kind of deity, in to the sole creative force , and various attempls
ion. God and the world were pictured in such a way that any continuing to combine a theory of evolution with some conception of continuing divine
involvement became a kind of tour de force, and the well known problem of action in the world . That God creates out of nothing does not entail that he
the 'god of the gaps' - God's being driven progressively from the world - creates a world fixed from the beginning; as we have seen, the reverse is the
developed. Here is one place where the failure to maintain a trinitarian case if creation is interpreted as project. The outcome, however, is that it is
conception of the relation of God and the world through much of Christian widely believed that the doctrine of creation has been discredited by the
history exacted a high price. The processes of criticism had driven out the old Galileo and Darwin episodes in particular. It is forgotten that many of the
Platonic and Aristotelian way of conceiving the structure of the created great names of nineteent h-century science, for example Michael Faraday
world, but in their place came a conception which excluded meaningful and James Clerk Maxwell , were natural scientists because of their Christian
divine action altogether. belief, not in spite of it. 14
Another hostage had been given to fortune on the threshold of the
modern age. In response to pressures from the Reformation and elsewhere,
THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION TODAY
both Catholic and Protestant branches of the Western church had begun to
move to a rather literalist interpretation of scripture. However, the literal or In the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and much of that of the later
absolute truth of Genesis was not a feature of the treatment of the doctrine of nineteenth century, the decline of the doctrine of creation continued.
creation in the early centuries. Irenaeus, whose concern was for the integrity Schleiermacher, under the impact of Kant, returned to a kind of Platonism:
of the whole of creation in the light of the incarnation, makes little appeal to the world existed in a timeless dependence upon God, so that any particular
Genesis, while his more rationalist successors, Origen and Augustine in par- divine action within the created order became difficult to conceive. While he
ticular, made much use of an allegorical interpretation of the text. When it is had good reasons for his attempt to avoid both mechanistic deism and
remembered that the Western church had also tended to accept back into pantheism, his funnelling of all theological statements about the world
theology Aristotle's belief in the eternity of the heavenly bodies, it is scarcely through the human experience of absolute dependence inevitably brought
surprising that there was a clash between ecclesiastical authority and Galileo, him too near to the latter. He himself noted that creation is reduced to a form
though secularist propaganda has greatly exaggerated the significance of the of providence conceived to operate timelessly.
conflict. 13 The twentieth century has seen some cautious attempts by theologians
Worse was to come, for in the nineteenth century further defences of a to reopen the question, notable among them that of Karl Barth, one not else-
certain way of understanding the truth of scripture were to make the impact where characterised by caution. What Barth felt could not be done, by him at
of Darwinism far worse than it need have been. But the controversy did not any rate, was to engage with the question of science. What he did, however,
concern only scripture. Prominent in early worries about evolution was its was to attempt to reintegrate the doctrines of creation and redemption.
apparent relegation of the human species to a similar level to that of the According to him, God's relations with the world are determined by his
animals, undermining teaching of its uniqueness. Again, however, it must covenant love, which creates, out of nothing, a world in which the covenant
 154 Colin Gunton The doctrine of creation 155

can be realised . Barth returned to patristic insights by strongly asserting that is treated simply as a mechanism, within the control of human reason and
the doctrine is not the result of philosophical speculation , but one of the without direct reference to God, those dimensions of it which are not
articles of the creed . Creation is, on this account, the external basis of the mechanical, and particularly its living creatures, are treated with despite,
covenant, the covenant the internal basis of creation. This link between crea- and react in such a way that our own existence is threatened . This disorder is
tion and redemption, despite its problems, enabled the two to come into far often blamed upon the Christian teaching about human dominion over the
more positive relation than had sometimes been the case . It also enabled creation, but mistakenly. As Pannenberg and others have pointed out, the
Barth to develop fine accounts of providence, of the human person and of the crisis has developed as a result of the modern abandonment of a religious
ethics of creation. view of the world. 16 If we cease to see the world as God's creation, we shall
Barth 's pupil, T. F. Torrance , has taken major steps towards the renewal treat it not as a project in which we are invited to share but as an absolute
of the doctrine, though he has concentrated not so much on the doctrine possession to be exploited as we will.
itself as on a number of features which determine its shape . At the centre are , However, one response to the crisis has taken the form of a lurch in the
first, the relation between God and the world revealed in the fact that Jesus opposite direction, to views which in effect return to a view of the divinity of
Christ is both God and man ; and, second, the possibilities for a new openness the universe, as in the so-called 'ecofeminist' theologies_l7 These doctrines
between science and theology consequent on the overcoming of platonic tend to assimilate the doctrine of redemption to the doctrine of creation. The
and Newtonian dualism by Einsteinian science and in the work of philoso- creation saves because it is divine process. Against this, orthodox Christian
phers of science like Michael Polanyi. One very important claim is that the teaching has always held that the whole creation, and particularly the sinful
notion of contingency, implying that the universe displays rational patterns human creation, is in need of redemption by a God who is other than it
which are yet open , is both the consequence of the doctrine of creation and because, as it is, it fails to achi eve its proper end. In any case, the universe
reveals parallels between scientific and theological rationality. A substantive without human ordering would simply destroy us. There is a proper human
and rich treatment of the doctrine of creation has recently been essayed by dominion over the creation , which must not be confused with a wrongful
Wolfhart Pannenberg, whose achievement is notable for its attempt to make domination and exploitation . A garden without a gardener will produce little
christology and pneumatology definitive for his understanding. He argues of the food and other necessities for the life of the one who is, furless and
that the basis of the world's distinction from God is to be found in the Son's clawless, among the most vulnerable of the world's species . A pantheism in
self-distinction from God the Father. which we are simply a function of the world's process is a world in which our
Other approaches to the doctrine have been made by scientists whose otherness, our capacity to be ourselves, would be taken away. Rather than
attitudes to Christian belief are various . Prominent in British discussion are reacting in this way, we need to move from seeing creation as a mere given to
Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne, who represent a continuing tradi- receiving it as gift to be cherished , perfected and returned : as grace evoking
tion of seeing science as itself the source or the basis of the possibility of a gratitude.
doctrine of creation. Developments in such areas as quantum theory , biology The heart of the matter is worship , for it is there that are presented and
and chaos theory are held to signal conceptions of a new openness in the enacted both the Creator's redemptive interaction with his world and the
shape of reality which enables theology to conceive not a God of the gaps, but response of the one in whom the creation becomes articulate. Worship as
God broadly involved in the formation of the world. In this , encouragement word and sacrament enables us to not only to understand but to live the rela-
is given by the writings of some scientists, particularly cosmologists, many tion between creator and creation. That means, in summary, (1) the exis-
of whom now engage in varieties of theological speculation. 15 tence of the universe in distinction from, but continuing dependence upon
One urgent need in the present is for an ethic of creation. The domina- the Creator; (2) the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as at the centre
tion of earlier centuries by the metaphor of mechanism, allied to the view of God's providential, redemptive and perfecting action in and towards the
that the image of God is to be found in human reason , has led to a number of world; and (3) the action of the Holy Spirit who, sent by God the Father,
regrettable consequences, particularly in ecological ethics . A theologian to enables the world to be itself by restoring its directedness to perfection
have made this topic his major concern is Jurgen Moltmann . If the universe through Jesus Christ , the mediator of both creation and redemption .
 156 Colin Gunton The doctrine of creation 157

Notes Further reading

1 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit xv, 36, 38. Translations of this and most Anderson, B. W., editor, Creation in the Old Testament, Philadelphia: Fortress,
other Patristic works cited in this chapter can be found in the series The Ante- 1984.
Nicene Fathers, eds . A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, reprinted 1977, and The Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, translation edited by G.W. Bromiley and T. F.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds . P. Schaff and H. Wace, reprinted 1989 Torrance, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956-75, volume III.
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans). Gilkey, Langdon, Maker of Heaven and Earth, New York: Doubleday, 1959.
2 It is worth noting that the nearest thing before the writings of Christian May, Gerhard, Creatio ex Nihilo. The Doctrine of'Creation out of Nothing' in Early
theologians to the affirmation of creation out of nothing is to be found in 2 Christian Thought , translated by A. S. Worrall, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994.
Maccabees 7:28, which derived from the time when Jewish belief in the Moltmann, Jurgen, God in Creation. An Ecological Doctrine of Creation, translated
resurrection of the dead began to take shape. by Margaret Kohl, London: SCM Press, 1985.
3 Plato, Timaeus, 29. Nebelsick, Harold, The Renaissance, the Reformation and the Rise of Science,
4 Gerhard May, Creatio ex Nihilo . The Doctrine of'Creation out of Nothing ' in Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992.
Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark , 1994). Norris, Richard, God and the World in Early Christian Thought, London : A. & C.
5 Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron, 5.1. Black: 1965.
6 Richard Sorabji, 'John Philoponus', in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology, volume II, translated by Geoffrey
the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (London: Duckworth, 1987), pp. 1-40. W . Bromiley, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994.
7 For Origen, see On First Principles, book 2, chapter 2; for Augustine, The City Torrance, Thomas F:,Divine and Contingent Order, Oxford : Oxford University
of God, books 11-12 and Confessions, books 10-12 . Press, 19~1.
8 Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modem Age, trans. R. M. Wallace
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: MIT Press, 1983).
9 For example, Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. W. McGilchrist
(London: Williams and Norgate, 1899), vol. VI, pp . 184-5.
10 Harold Nebelsick, The Renaissance , the Reformation and the Rise of Science
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992).
11 An influential expression of this claim is Michael B. Foster, 'The Christian
Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science', Mind 4 3 ( 1934) :
446-68.
12 Thomas F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence within the Frame of
Knowledge. Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological
Enterprise (Belfast : Christian Journals, 1984).
13 F. J. Crehan, SJ, The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. S. L. Greenslade
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), vol. III, pp. 225-7.
14 For an illuminating story , see Geoffrey Cantor, Michael Faraday:
Sandemanian and Scientist. A Study of Science and Religion in the Nineteenth
Century (London : Macmillan, 1991).
15 See, for example, Paul Davies, The Mind of God (London: Penguin Books,
1993).
16 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans . Geoffrey W. Bromiley
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), vol. 11, p. 204.
17 See, for example, Sallie McFague, Models of God. Theology for an Ecological,
Nuclear Age (London: SCM Press, 1987).