The Christian believes that the Holy Trinity “in the beginning” (when time began) created the heaven and the earth out of nothing. That which is stated in Heb. 11:3 is an article of faith for every true Christian: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
Every Christian receives the first two chapters of Genesis as the Creator’s own historical account of His own work of creation, and hence the only authentic history of creation which is or ever will be available to man. He finds this divine “Natural History” poetically embellished in the divine poetry of Psalm 104, and divinely confirmed and doctrinally expounded in the inspired Prologue of St. John’s Gospel (ch. 1:1–14, especially vv. 1–3).
God’s own account of the history of creation, as He gave it to Moses, clearly reveals the identity of the Creator, the time employed in the work of creation, and the sequence in which the various types of creatures were produced by the creative Word. The first topic, the identity of the Creator, specifically, the truth that the creation is a work of the Holy Trinity as such, not to be distributed among the three Persons or attributed to one Person only, has been treated in the third paragraph of the previous chapter of this book, to which the reader is herewith referred.
The second topic, the chronology of creation, is accurately described by the Creator as a period of six days, each consisting of evening and of morning. This is so before the creation of the sun and other heavenly bodies on the fourth day, as well as after. These are not “days of God” (compare 2 Peter 3:8), who exists outside of time in an eternal present, but days of the earth, days of creation. What we are to think of the millions of years comprised in the so-called “geological ages” is clear. They are pure fiction, the fabrication of ignorance which insists on speaking of what it cannot know apart from the revelation which it refuses to accept.
The third topic, the sequence of the “six days work,” is outlined in Genesis, chapter one, with a clarity which leaves nothing to be desired. One of the most notable points in this connection is that briefly referred to above, namely, that light, as well as the variation of light and darkness (“the evening and the morning”), existed before those celestial bodies which we are accustomed to regard as the sole source of the light illuminating our earth were brought into being. All human theories, therefore, which regard the earth’s existence as a part of the “solar system” as dependent upon the sun, especially the absurd fable which represents the earth as a particle thrown off from the sun and gradually cooling through countless aeons into the terrestrial globe upon which we dwell, are discredited as having no ground in fact and entirely unacceptable to Christian faith. Those who imagine that the Scripture passages, approximately sixty in number, in which the earth is said to stand still, and the sun and all stars are said to move, may be “interpreted” in such a way as if really the reverse were the case, we may leave to pursue their fruitless endeavors alone. The Christian way is simply to accept Holy Scripture as it reads.
Another exceedingly important point in the sequence of creative activity on the third, fifth, and sixth days is found in the constantly recurring phrases: “after his kind,” “after their kind” (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). These phrases, then, are used of the various forms of vegetable and animal life upon which God has bestowed the power of reproducing their kind. According to God’s Word He created each species (to use the scientific term which corresponds to the Hebrew word translated “kind”) as a species and capable of reproducing only its own species. Every “scientific” theory of evolution, which teaches the transition or transmutation of one species into another, is irreconcilable with God’s Word, and hence with the Christian faith. That organic evolution is also irreconcilable with the ascertainable facts of nature has been scientifically proved by Christian writers with the specific learning requisite for this task; but such demonstration is beyond the scope of this book, which rests upon Scripture proof alone. Let us only add that we cannot be satisfied with the compromise of so-called “theistic evolution,” according to which some writers are willing to admit that God made the world, but assert that evolution correctly describes the “process” of His activity. God tells us in Genesis, chapter one, not only that “God created the heaven and the earth” (verse 1), but also that the “process” or “method” which He used was not organic evolution but the direct and separate creation of each species “after his kind.”
The account of the six days work in Genesis 1 and 2 omits any mention of the foremost invisible creatures of God, the angels, but Scripture is full of testimonies to their existence, nature, and activities. Since, however, they are creatures of God (“By Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible,” Col. 1:16), they cannot have been in existence before the first day of creation, when there was only the uncreated eternal God, and they must have been created before the end of the sixth day, since then “the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them,” Gen. 2:1. The Bible also does not inform us as to the exact time when a large number of the angels rebelled against God, and “kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation” (Jude 6). This must have occurred before the fall of man, since the latter was brought about through the temptation of Satan. The existence, incurably sinful nature, and hopeless abandonment of the fallen angels, or devils, under their prince, “that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan” (Rev. 20:2), is all clearly taught in Holy Scripture. These evil spirits were also created good and holy (Gen. 1:31: “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good”); but they turned themselves from God of their own accord, and became enemies of God and man.
Nowhere is the lie of organic evolution more disastrous in its effects than when it is applied (as all evolutionists do apply it) to the origin of man. The Biblical teaching concerning the origin of man is crystal clear and sufficiently comprehensive: “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” Gen. 1:26, 27. As “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), this image is not to be looked for in the physical makeup of man (though even in this respect man is incomparably superior to the beast), but rather in his intellectual and moral or spiritual nature. The fullest characterization in Holy Scripture of this spiritual likeness of man as he was created to his Creator is contained in two passages of St. Paul’s Epistles, in which the Apostle speaks of this image of God as it is partially restored, after its total loss in the fall of man, when he is regenerated or converted to faith in his Savior by the Holy Spirit. In this connection the restored image of God is spoken of as “the new man.” Col. 3:10: “Ye have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.” Eph. 4:24: “Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
As Gen. 1:27, quoted above, shows, this image of God was imparted both to man and woman in their creation. This spiritual equality, however, does not rule out a difference in the God-appointed sphere of activity of the sexes and a God-ordained subjection of the woman to the man, as taught in 1 Tim. 2:11–14 with reference to the very order of creation before the fall as well as to conditions as they obtain from that sad event on till the end of time: “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
With this “transgression” we begin the next chapter, which deals with the subject of “Sin.” Therein we shall perceive the enormous difference between man as he is born into the world today and man as he was created.