056. III. Several Spheres Of Creation.

III. Several Spheres Of Creation. Our discussion of Theism unavoidably anticipated much that might properly be treated under the present heading. Hence little more is here required than to present the several questions in the light of Scripture. This limitation will avoid unnecessary repetition.

1. The Physical Cosmos.—Out of a primordial chaos came orderly worlds and systems. The transformation was the work of God in a formative creation. This is the sense of the Scriptures in many passages. They open with the account of such a creation (Genesis 1:1-8). God spreadeth out the heavens; maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south (Job 9:8-9). The heavens declare the glory of their Creator, and the firmament showeth his handiwork (Psalms 19:1). By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the word of his mouth (Psalms 33:6). Of old he laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of his hands (Psalms 102:25). He stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in; and as we lift our eyes to the heavens we behold the worlds which he created (Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah 40:26). He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion (Jeremiah 10:12). The same truth is in the New Testament. The earth and the heavens are the creation of God, and therefore the manifestation of his perfections (Romans 1:20). We have given the substance of a brief selection of texts which present the creative work of God in the orderly constitution of the earth and the heavens. “What we have given may suffice, especially as the same truth must appear in other texts of creation which include the living orders of existence. After the creation of matter, the work of God within the physical realm is simply formative in its mode. The discrete and confused elements are set in order; chaos is transformed into a cosmos. In this there is no originative creation, but only a constitution of orderly forms.

2. Living Orders of Existence.—The divine creation of these orders is the explicit word of Scripture. “And God said. Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose ‘Seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.” “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Genesis 1:11; Genesis 1:20; Genesis 1:24). “These were successive creative fiats of God; and the living orders were the product of his own divine energizing. “Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein” (Nehemiah 9:6). “Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is” (Acts 4:24). These verses, written in far later periods, are cast in the mold of the Mosaic cosmogony, and clearly express the truth of creation respecting the living orders of existence. In organic structure these forms of existence are profoundly distinct from all crystalline and chemical forms, and constitute a higher order. Life is a profound differentiation. Sentience and instinct still deepen the distinction. They constitute higher orders of existence than any mere physical forms. It is entirely consistent with these facts that their origin is in distinct and specific acts of creation. The creative work which brought the physical elements out of confusion into order was not in itself the origination of these organic and living orders. This is the sense of Scripture, as manifest in the texts previously given. Only by further and distinct energizings of the divine will did they receive their existence.

Life is a mystery. All concede this. Neither the scientist nor the philosopher has any more insight into its inner nature than the rustic. Its reality, however, is above question. Its energy is great, its activities intense. So effective an agent must be a profound reality. Science gives no account of its origin. Whatever the arrogance of assumption a few years ago, for the present there is little pretension to any merely physical or naturalistic origin. The origin of life is accounted for in the creative agency of God. In the light of reason, as in the light of Scripture, this is its only original. The case is only the stronger with the sentience and marvelous instincts of the animal orders. Hence the divine creation of the living orders of existence was more than a mediate or merely formative creation ; it was an immediate or originative creation, which gave existence to life, with its distinctive facts in the higher orders of animal existence.

3. Man.—The origin of man is in a further distinct act of creation. It is accompanied with forms of expression and action which mark its significance. After the completion of all other works, the sacred record is: “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” (Genesis 1:26-27). The separate creation of man is further expressed in the more definite statement of its manner. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Here are the two modes of creation: one mediate in the formation of the body; the other immediate in the origination of the mind. There are in the Scriptures many references to this distinct creation of man. The sense is really the same whether his origin is referred to the creative agency of God or to his Fatherhood (Numbers 27:16; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Acts 17:29; Hebrews 12:9).

Materialism, in whatever form of evolution, exposes its weakness in any and every endeavor to account for the origin of man and the faculties of mind. It is only by the unwarranted and unscientific assumption of missing links that even his physical evolution from lower orders can be alleged. The difficulties are infinitely greater in respect to mind. The powers of mind go differentiate it from all else in the realm of nature, so elevate it above the plane of all other forms of existence, that its naturalistic evolution is a manifest impossibility. Only the creative agency of God can account for the origin and existence of mind. This question, however, properly belongs to the anthropological argument for theism, where its fuller discussion may be found.

4. Angels.—Science, as such, knows nothing of angels. They have no connection with any sphere which brings them within her observation. The question of their existence and origin, as of their character and rank, is purely one of revelation. It is reasonable to think that the limits of living and rational existences are far wider than this world, which is but a speck among the magnitudes of the physical universe. Spectrum analysis discloses a physical composition of other worlds similar to our own. “With this fact of likeness, it is not to be thought that all those worlds lie forever waste—without form and void. It is reasonable to think many of them are the homes of living orders; and of the higher as of the lower. The lower forms point to the higher. As in this world man completes the orders of life, and is their rationally necessary culmination, so we must think of rational beings as completing the scale of living existences in other worlds. In a universe originating in the wisdom and power of God the existence of angels, such as appear in the light of revelation, is entirely consistent with the highest rational thought.

All that we know of the angels we learn from the Scriptures. Many interesting facts are given. For the present, however, their creation is the definite point. Their nature and offices, with their distinction as good and evil, will be treated elsewhere.^[289]

^[289] The deeply interesting facts of Scripture respecting the angels should not be omitted. Yet they neither directly concern any vital doctrine of theology nor claim any place in a logical order of doctrines. The question of the angels is therefore assigned to an appendix to the second volume. On the ground of Scripture, their origin in a divine creation is a manifest truth. Yet of this there is no definite statement. It is, however, a clear implication. As finite existences originating in time, they could have no other origin. Their creation is implied in the fact that they are angels of God, and particularly in the definite and impressive manner in which this fact is expressed in the Scriptures (Genesis 28:12; Luke 15:10; Hebrews 1:6). It is equally implied in their own adoring worship of God as the Creator of all things (Revelation 4:11). The same truth is given in those comprehensive texts which attribute to God the creation of all things in earth and heaven. There is one more direct text: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). The creation of the angels is here included in the all things in heaven, and particularly in the all invisible things, which expression discriminates them from the visible forms of existence in this world. It is still more definitely given in the specific terms, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, which clearly designate angelic orders of existence (Ephesians 1:21; 1 Peter 3:22). When the angels were created is a question on which the Scriptures are silent. If their creation has any place in the cosmogony of Moses, it must be in the first verse of Genesis. To place it there would require the sense of the verse to be so broadened as to include the whole work of creation. This is hardly permissible, because it would break the proper historic connection with the following verses. Neither the time of their creation nor its inclusion in the Mosaic record is in any sense necessary to the interpretation of Scripture. It is neither unscriptural nor unreasonable to think of the angels as created long before the formation of this world. Such a view is not without Scripture ground. It seems no forced interpretation that the morning stars and the sons of God which sang together over the founding of the world were the holy angels (Job 38:4-7).

Whenever the creation of the angels took place, it must have been a creation in the deepest sense of origination. We must not anticipate their nature and qualities beyond the requirement of this particular point; but as they appear in the light of Scripture it is manifest that they are specially spiritual beings, with very lofty intellectual and moral powers. As such, they are not a formation out of existing material, but a divine origination in the very essence of their being.