10. § 29. The Creation.

10. § 29. The Creation.

§ 29. The Creation.

. The execution of the counsel of God begins with creation. This is the beginning and foundation of all revelation of God and therefore also the foundation of all religious and ethical life. The Old Test. creation narrative is so sublimely beautiful, that it nowhere finds its equal and by all, also by naturalists such as Cuvier and von Humboldt, has been praised in competition. Das erste Blatt der mosaischen Urkunde hat mehr Gewicht als alle Folianten der Naturforscher und Philosophen (Jean Paul). And thereafter that creation in the history of revelation again and again comes to the foreground. True religion distinguishes itself from the first moment onward thereby from all other religions, that it conceives the relation of God to world and man as that of the Creator to his creature. The thought of a being outside of and independent of God occurs nowhere in Scripture.

God is the only and absolute cause of all that is. He has created all things by his Word and Spirit, Gen. 1 vs. 2, 3, Ps. 33:6, 104:29, 148:5, Job 27:3, 33:4,

Jes. 40 vs. 13, 48:13, Zach. 12:1, Joh. 1:3, Col. 1:16, Hebr. 1:2 etc. Nothing stood over against Him; no matter that binds Him, no power that limits

Him. He speaks and it is, Gen. 1:3, Ps. 33:9, Rom. 4:17. He is the unlimited possessor of heaven and earth, Gen. 14:19, 22, Ps. 24:2, 89:12, 95:4, 5.

There is no boundary to his power; He does all that pleases Him, Jes. 14 vs.

24, 27, 46:10, 55:10, Ps. 115:3, 135:6. All things [387] are from and through and unto Him, Rom. 11:36, 1 Cor. 8:6, Hebr. 11 vs. 3. The world is the product of his will, Ps. 33:6, Op. 4 vs. 11; it is the revelation of his virtues, Spr. 8:22v., Job 28 vs. 23v., Ps. 104:1, 136:5v., Jer. 16:12 and has its goal in his honour, Jes. 43:17, Spr. 16:4, Rom. 11:36, 1 Cor. 8:6. This doctrine of creation, which in Scripture occupies such an all-governing place, is not presented as a philosophical explanation of the world-problem.

It very certainly also gives an answer to the question concerning the origin of all things; but it nevertheless has above all a religious-ethical significance. No right relation to God is conceivable except on its foundation. It places us in that relation to God in which we ought to stand.

And therefore it is of excellent practical value. It serves to bring out the greatness, the omnipotence, the majesty and at the same time the goodness, the wisdom, the love of God, Ps. 19, Job 37, Jes. 40; and it therefore strengthens faith, confirms trust in God, comforts in suffering, Ps. 33:6 v.,

65:6v., 89:12, 121:2, 134:5, Jes. 37:16, 40:28v., 42:5 etc.; it arouses to praise and thanks, Ps. 136:3v., 148:5, Op. 14 vs. 7; disposes to humility and meekness and makes man feel his smallness and nothingness over against God, Job 38 vs. 4v., Jes. 29:16, 45:9, Jer. 18:6, Rom. 9:20.

2. The doctrine of creation is known only from revelation; it is understood by faith, Hebr. 11:3. The Roman Catholics do indeed teach that it can also be traced from nature by reason, Thomas, Sent. II dist. 1 qu. 1 art. 2. S. c.

Gent. II 15. 16. Kleutgen, Philos. der Vorz. II2 795 f. Scheeben, Dogm. II 5.

6, and the Vatican even elevated this to a dogma, de fide c. 2 can. 2. But the

history of religions and of philosophy does not plead for this.

Mohammedanism does indeed teach creation out of nothing but has borrowed this from Judaism and Christianity, Zöckler, Gesch. der

Beziehungen zw. Theol. und Naturw. 1877 I 426 f. The pagan cosmogonies are all polytheistic and at the same time theogony; they all assume a primal matter, whether this is conceived as a chaos, as a personal principle, as an egg or the like; and finally they are either more emanationistic, so that the world is an efflux of God, or more evolutionistic, so that the world more and more [388] deifies itself, or more dualistic, so that the world is a product of two hostile principles, Wuttke, Die Kosmogonien der heidn.

Völker vor der Zeit Jesu und der Apostel, Haag 1850. Lenormant, Les origines de l'histoire d'après la Bible et les traditions des peuples orientaux,

Paris 1880. Zöckler in Herzog2 13, 631 f. Nor does the Chaldean Genesis, which moreover offers remarkable parallels with that of the O. Test., form an exception to this. It is at the same time theogony and has Bel form the world out of the tiamat, which chaotically conceals everything within itself,

Saussaye, Lehrb. der Rel. I 341 f. Greek philosophy seeks either materialistically the origin of things in a material element (Ionian School,

Atomists), or pantheistically in the one, eternal, unchangeable being (Elea) or in the eternal becoming (Heraclitus, Stoa). Even Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle did not get beyond a dualism of spirit and matter; God is not a creator, but at most a former of the world (δημιουργος). The scholastics did indeed assert that Plato and Aristotle taught a creation out of nothing, but this was rightly contested by others, e.g. by Bonaventura, Sent. II dist. 1 p.

1 art. 1 qu. 1. The Greeks knew a φυσις (natura) and κοσμος (mundus) but no κτισις (creatura). Christianity won the victory over this pagan theogony and cosmogony in the struggle against Gnosticism, which, in order to

explain sin, assumed alongside the highest God a lower God or an eternal ὑλη. But nevertheless the paganistic explanations of the origin of things repeatedly also resurfaced in the Christian centuries. Already in the book of Wisdom 11:17 it is said that God's almighty hand created the world out of ἀμορφος ὑλη; and the same expression also occurs in Justin Martyr, Apol. I 10. 59. But Justin has in view there the later so-called creatio secunda and elsewhere also expressly teaches the creation of matter, Dial. c. Tr. 5. Coh. ad. Gr. 23, cf. Semisch, Justin der M. II 336. Just as in the second century

Gnosticism, so after Nicaea especially Manichaeism arose, which likewise, in order to explain sin, assumed alongside the good God an originally evil being, Augustine in many writings, c. epist. Manich., c. Faustum, c.

Fortunatum etc. Flügel, Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften, Leipzig 1862. Kessler in Herzog2 9, 233 f. This dualism found wide dissemination in Christendom, even as far as [389] among the Priscillianists in Spain, and reappeared anew in the Middle Ages in many sects, such as the Bogomils and Cathars. But besides dualism, pantheism also received its spokesmen.

Under the influence of Neoplatonism Pseudo-Dionysius taught that the ideas and exemplars of all things existed from eternity in God and that his overflowing goodness moved Him to give these ideas reality and to communicate himself to his creatures, de div. nom. c. 4 § 10. God has, as it were, come forth in the creatures out of his unity, has multiplied and poured himself out in them, de div. nom. c. 2, 11, so that God is the universal being, de div. nom. c. 5, 4, the being of the things themselves, de coel. hier. c. 4, 1.

But yet he adds that God nevertheless maintains himself in his unity, de div. nom. c. 2, 11 and that God therefore is all in all, because He is the cause of all, de coel. hier. c. 5, 8. The same thoughts recur in Erigena. More than once he expressly teaches a creation out of nothing, de div. nat. III 15 V 24.

33, but the relation in which he places the four natures to one another makes his system into pantheism. The first nature, which creates and is not created, i.e. God, brings forth, thinking, out of nothing, that is out of himself, the ideas and forms of all things in the divine word, ib. III 14. 17. This is the second nature, which is created and creates. This second nature is natura creata, insofar as it has been brought forth by God; it is creatrix, insofar as it itself is the cause and potency of the actual world. For this second nature is not essentially and substantially distinct from the third nature, i.e. the world of appearances, which is created and does not create; the former is the cause, the latter the effect; it is the same world, now considered in aeternitate verbi Dei, then in temporalitate mundi, III 8. It is God himself, who first in the ideas creates himself, then descends in the creatures and becomes all in all, in order then finally in the fourth nature, which does not create and is not created, to return to himself, III 4. 20. And the cause of this process of God is the goodness of God, III 2. 4. 9, his striving to become all, appetitus quo vult omnia fieri, I 12. Outside the Christian world pantheism was taught by the philosophers Avicenna 1036 and Averroës

1198, by Sufism, which saw in the universe an emanation of God; and among the Jews by the Kabbalah, Stöckl, Philos. des M. A. II 28. 92. 181.

237. [390] And toward the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern period all these pantheistic, dualistic, emanationistic ideas crossed among the mystics, theosophists and Anabaptists, such as Floris,

Amalrik of Bena, the brethren of the free spirit, the Libertines, Eckhardt, Tauler, Servetus, Frank, Schwenkfeld, Bruno, Paracelsus, Fludd, Weigel,

Böhme, in confusion; even Socinianism taught only a creation out of an ἀμορφος ὑλη, materia informis, in Fock, Der Socin. S. 482; the finite and infinite were set too abstractly alongside and over against each other for the

former to be able to have its cause in the latter. But nevertheless pantheism as a philosophical system was first brought into honor again by Spinoza. He saw in the one substance the eternal and necessary causa efficiens and immanens of the world; the world is the explication of the divine essence, and the particular things are the modi, by which the divine attributes of thought and extension are determined in a particular way, Eth. I. This philosophy found toward the end of the previous century more and more assent and was elevated by Schelling and Hegel to the system of the nineteenth century. The biblical doctrine of creation was wholly rejected.

Fichte said: die Annahme einer Schöpfung ist der Grundirthum aller falschen Metaphysik und Religionslehre und insbesondere das Urprinzip des Judenund Heidenthums, Anweisung zum seligen Leben 1806 S. 160.

Schelling called creation out of nothing das Kreuz des Verstandes, and opposed it decisively, Werke I 2 S. 44 f. 8 S. 62 f. In his first period he taught the absolute identity of God and world; both relate to each other as essence and form; they are the same, considered under different points of view; God is not the cause of the all, but the all itself, and the all is therefore not becoming but an eternal being, ἑν και παν, Werke I 4 S. 117 f.

5 S. 24 f. 365 f. 373 f. 6 S. 174 f. But in his later period, through Baader, he came under the influence of Böhme and thus of the Kabbalah and Neoplatonism and now seeks the ground of the world in the dark nature of God. Theogony and cosmogony are most closely related. Just as God out of his indifference, through the opposition of the principia, nature (Urgrund,

Ungrund, darkness) and understanding (word, light), raises himself to Spirit, love, personality, so these three are at the same time the Potencies of the world. The dark nature in God is the blind, [391] disorderly principle, the matter and ground of the created world, insofar as it is chaos and bears a

chaotic character. But in that world the Potency of the divine understanding also works, and brings into it light, order, rule. While finally in the spirit of man God himself as Spirit reveals himself and becomes full personality,

Werke I 7 S. 359 f. II 2 S. 108 f. 3 S. 262 f., cf. above p. 305. And likewise Hegel openly professed himself to pantheism, indeed not to that which holds the finite things themselves for God but yet to that pantheism which in the finite and contingent sees the appearance of the absolute, the petrified idea, the frozen intelligence, Werke VII 23 f. From philosophy this pantheism passed over into theology. Schleiermacher rejected the separation of creation and preservation and held the question of the temporality or eternity of the world to be indifferent, provided only that the absolute dependence of all things on God remained maintained, Glaub. § 36. 41.

Bovon, Dogm. Chrét. I 289. And likewise God is only the eternal immanent cause and ground of the world in Strauss, Glaub. I 656 f. Biedermann, Chr.

Dogm. § 649 f. Schweizer, Chr. Gl. § 71. Pfleiderer, Grundriss der chr. Gl. u. Sittenlehre § 84. Scholten, Dogm. christ. initia, ed. 2 p. 111. Hoekstra,

Wijsg. Godsd. II 174v. Alongside this pantheism materialism has also arisen, which seeks the ultimate elements of all being in eternal, ungenerated and indestructible material atoms, and from their mechanical and chemical separation and combination taking place according to fixed laws attempts to explain all phenomena, the whole world. It already had its preparation in Greek philosophy, was reintroduced into the modern period by Gassendi and Descartes; it was promoted by the English and French philosophy of the previous century; and it appeared in this century not as a fruit of scientific research but as a product of philosophical reflection in Feuerbach, who can be called the father of materialism in Germany, and then especially after 1850 found acceptance among practitioners of natural

science through all kinds of incidental causes, such as Vogt, Büchner, Moleschott, Czolbe, Haeckel, Strauss etc., Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 4e Aufl. 1882.

3. Now, first of all, it deserves remark that both pantheism [392] and materialism are not results of exact investigation but philosophy, worldview, systems of belief, not of knowing in the strict sense.

Materialism does indeed like to present itself as exact natural science, but it can easily be shown that it is, both historically and logically, a fruit of human thinking, and is a matter as much of the heart as of the head of man.

The origin and the end of things, after all, lie outside the limits of observation and investigation; science presupposes being, and rests on the foundation of the created. Insofar pantheism and materialism are in the same condition as theism, which confesses a mystery in the origin of things.

The only question therefore is this, whether pantheism and materialism are able to replace this mystery with an intelligible explanation. That demand may be made of both, because they precisely reject the doctrine of creation on account of its incomprehensibility and see in it a cross of the understanding. Is it indeed so, that pantheism and materialism satisfy thinking better than theism and therefore deserve preference? But both systems have in the history of humanity so time and again arisen and again been abandoned; they have so often been subjected to serious, conclusive criticism, that they cannot be accepted by anyone solely on account of their satisfaction for thinking. Other motives are decisive in that. If the world did not arise by creation, it must nevertheless be explained in some other way.

And then, not to speak of dualism, only two paths present themselves, namely, either to explain matter from spirit or spirit from matter. Pantheism and materialism are not pure opposites; they are rather two sides of the

same thing; they repeatedly pass over into one another; they grasp the same problem only from another side; they both run up against equal objections.

Pantheism stands for the transition from thinking to being, from the idea to reality, from the substance to the modes and has delivered nothing that resembles a solution. It has indeed assumed various forms and indicated that transition under various names. It conceives the relation of God to the world as that of ἑν και παν, natura naturans and naturata, of substance and modes, of essence and appearance, of the general and the particular, of species and [393] specimens, of whole and parts, of idea and objectification, of ocean and waves etc., but with all these words it says nothing by way of explanation of that relation. From a pantheistic standpoint it is not to be understood how being has proceeded from thinking, multiplicity from unity, matter from spirit. Especially that has come out clearly in the systems of Schelling and Hegel. Here there was no lack of words. The idea assumes a form, a body, it objectifies itself, passes over into its other-being, it dirimeert and differencieert itself, it freely resolves, to sich zu entlassen, zu entäussern, to turn over into its opposite etc. Schelling, Werke I 2 62 f. 4 223 f. 257 f. Hegel, Werke VI 413 f. VII 23 f. But both nevertheless found in this so little satisfying a solution, that they more than once spoke of a falling-away from the absolute, through which the world had arisen, Schelling, ib. 6 38 f. Hegel, ib. XII 177. No wonder that therefore Schelling in his second period and likewise Schopenhauer, von Hartmann et al. assigned the primacy to the will and conceived the absolute first of all as nature, as will, as impulse, cf. above p. 203 f. The pantheistic identity of thinking and being has proved to be an error; all the more because the substance, the idea, the one, the all or however pantheism may call the absolute, is not a fullness of being, but a pure potency, a

contentless abstraction, a mere nothing. And from that the richness of the world, the multiplicity of what is, could be explained! Let him believe that who can! Very rightly therefore Kleutgen says: Darin aber besteht die

Verschiedenheit der pantheistischen Speculation von der theistischen, dass jene, von ebenso dunkeln als unerweislichen Annahmen über das göttliche

Sein beginnend, in offenen Widersprüchen endet, diese aber von sicheren Erkenntnissen der endlichen Dinge ausgehend, immer höhere Aufschlüsse gewinnt, bis sie vor dem Unbegreiflichen steht, nicht irre werdend, dass

Der, welchen sie als den ewigen und unwandelbaren Urheber aller Dinge erkennt, in seinem Sein und Wirken über unser Denken erhaben sei, Phil. der Vorz. II2 884. Cf. on pantheism, art. by Ulrici in Herzog2. Doedes,

Introd. to the Doctrine of God p. 68f. 268 with the literature cited there.

Opzoomer, Law and Philosophy 1857 cap. 1. Pierson, Reflection, authority and experience 1855 cap. 1. Rauwenhoff, Philosophy of religion 205f.

Hoekstra, Philosophical Religion II 73f. Kuyper, [394] Fading of the boundaries 1892. Is. van Dijk, Aesthetic and ethical religion 1895.

Hartmann, Collected Studies and Essays 1876 S. 549-729. R. Flint, Antitheistic theories 1885 p. 334. 536. Hettinger, Apology of Christianity I7

S. 243 f. Ebrard, Apol. I2 435 f. etc., cf. also vol. I 148-151.

For the time being the origin of things remains unexplained in materialism. While pantheism has the universe proceed from one ultimate principle, which coincides with the world, materialism assumes a multiplicity of principia. But these ultimate principia of all things are, according to materialism, nothing other than indivisible particles of matter.

If the advocates of this worldview were now to remain faithful to this their fundamental proposition, they would not be permitted to ascribe to those atoms a single metaphysical, transcendent praedicate. From the standpoint

of materialism, properly considered, it is impermissible to speak of the eternity, the uncreatedness, the indestructibility of the atoms, or also of matter and force. If one says that the world has arisen from material atoms, one must also remain faithful to that. Atoms, indeed, since they are elements of the empirical world, can bear only empirical but no metaphysical properties. The concept atom absolutely does not include that it is by nature and per se eternal and indestructible. Whoever holds the atoms to be the ultimate principia of all being, cuts off for himself the way to speculation and metaphysics and must then also explain the world only from those empirical atoms by an empirical way. The materialist can only say that experience teaches that the atoms do not arise and do not perish; but of a metaphysical nature and of metaphysical properties of the atoms he may not speak. Natural science, upon which the materialist always appeals, as such has to do with the finite, the relative, with nature and its phenomena; it always proceeds from nature, assumes it as given, and cannot penetrate to what lies behind it. As soon as it does that, it ceases to be physics and becomes metaphysics. But materialism does not remain faithful to itself and immediately ascribes to the atoms all sorts of properties that are not enclosed in the concept itself and are not learned by experience.

Therefore materialism is not an exact science, not a fruit of strict scientific investigation, but a [395] philosophy that is built upon the denial of all philosophy; it suffers from an inner contradiction; it denies all the absolute and makes the atoms absolute; it denies God's existence and deifies matter.

Indeed, one can speak still more strongly: if materialism wants to explain all things from matter, it lacks all right to speak of atoms. Atoms have never been observed; no one has ever seen them; empirical investigation has not brought them to light. They bear from the outset a metaphysical nature and

therefore ought already to be contraband for materialism. And as metaphysical substances they are in an antinomy that has as yet been solved by no one. They are material and yet they are at the same time supposed to be indivisible, unchangeable, infinite in number, eternal and indestructible.

And if, with all that, matter itself, which is assumed as the explanatory principle of the universe, were only known and comprehensible! But precisely the essence and the nature of matter is the most mysterious of all and withdraws itself entirely from our knowledge. We can still better conceive and represent to ourselves what spirit is than what matter is.

Matter is a name, a word, but we do not know what is to be understood by it. We stand here before a mystery, in its kind just as great as the existence of spirit, which, because of its incomprehensibility, is rejected by materialism. But granted that there are atoms and that they are eternal and unchangeable, then thereby nothing has yet been achieved toward an explanation of the world. How has the world arisen from those atoms? If the presently existing world, or also a preceding one, has had a beginning, there must be a cause by which the atoms have been set in motion, and indeed in such a motion that had the present world as result. But motion cannot be explained from matter, for all matter is by nature inert and comes into motion only through an impulse from without. A primum movens outside matter, however, cannot be assumed by materialism. And thus nothing else remains than, just as the atoms, so also to make motion, change, time, or with Czolbe even this existing world absolute and eternal.

Materialism entangles itself in ever greater contradictions; it confuses the physical and the metaphysical, becoming and being, change and unchangeableness, time and eternity, and speaks of infinite space, infinite time, infinite world, [396] as if it were nothing and there did not lie in it the

most absurd contradiction. Finally, it has repeatedly and from various sides been shown that materialism remains deficient in order to explain, out of the mechanical combination of purely material and thus unconscious, lifeless, unfree, purposeless atoms, that whole spiritual world of life, consciousness, purpose, religion, morality, etc., which nevertheless presses itself upon our inner awareness with no less force than the physical world upon our senses. And it seems that this critique is gradually beginning to make some impression upon the materialists themselves. Materialism in this century, having arisen out of pantheism, returns more and more to pantheism and even takes up all sorts of mystical elements into itself,

Wetensch. Bladen, Mei 1896. The long-rejected vital force now again finds defenders. The atoms are represented as living, ensouled. Haeckel again speaks of a "Geist in allen Dingen", of a "göttliche Kraft", a "bewegenden

Geist", a "Weltseele", which dwells in all things and in this pantheistic monism seeks the bond between religion and science. But thereby materialism has also itself openly confessed its impotence to explain the world; in its poverty the mechanism of the atoms called the dynamic principle to help again. Cf. Ulrici, Gott und die Natur 1866. Fabri, Briefe gegen den Mater. 1864. Hartmann, Ges. Stud. u. Aufsätze 1876 S. 421 f.

Nathusius, Natur u. Philos. Heilbronn 1883. T. Pesch, Die grossen Welträthsel I2 11 f. 143 f. 504 f. II 118-171. Hettinger, Apol. des Christ. I7

167 f. Pfaff, Schöpfungsgesch. 1881 S. 729 f. Reusch, Bibel u. Natur 1876 S. 43 f. P. Janet, Le matér, contemporain en Allemagne 1864. Pressensé,

Les origines 1883 p. 129 S. Especially also the just appeared work of Raoul Pictet, Etude crit. du materialisme et du spiritualisme par la physique expérimentale. Genève 1897.

4. Over against all these directions the Christian church unanimously held fast the confession: credo in Deum patrem, omnipotentem, creatorem coeli et terrae; and it understood by creation that act of God whereby, according to his sovereign will, He brings the whole world out of non-being into a being that is distinct from his own essence. And this is indeed the doctrine of Holy Scripture. The word ‎‏‏ברא‎ originally means: to split, divide, cut [397]

(Josh. 17:15, 18 in piel of the felling of forests), and hence to form, bring forth, create. It does not in itself yet express that something is brought forth out of nothing, for it is many times also used of the works of preservation,

Isa. 40:28, 45:7, Jer. 31:22, Am. 4:13. It is synonymous with and alternates with ‎‏‏עׂשה‎, ‎‏‏יצר‎, ‎‏‏ ֹחֶּדׁש‎, Ps. 104:30. But it nevertheless differs from these in that it is always used of the divine making and never of man's doing; that it never has with it an accusativus of the material from which something is made; and that it therefore precisely everywhere expresses the greatness and power of the divine working, Delitzsch, Neuer Comm. zur Gen. S. 48.

And the same is the case with the N. T. words κτιζειν, Mk. 13:19, ποιειν, Mt. 19:4, θεμελιουν, Hebr. 1:10, καταρτιζειν, Rom. 9:12, κατασκευαζειν,

Hebr. 3:4, πλασσειν, Rom. 9:20, which also do not of themselves express a creating out of nothing. The term creating out of nothing is therefore also not literally borrowed from Scripture but occurs for the first time in 2 Macc.

7:28, where it is said that God made heaven and earth and man ἐξ οὐκ ὀντων ἐποιησεν, Vulg. fecit ex nihilo. It has been contested that this expression might be taken in the strict sense, and a Platonic interpretation has been given to it. Yet it deserves attention that the writer speaks not of μη ὀντα, i.e. a nihilum privativum, a qualityand formless matter, but of οὐκ ὀντα i.e. a nihilum negativum. Further, it is not even yet certain that the author of the book of Wisdom in cap. 11:18 taught the eternity of a formless

matter; the passage can very well be understood of the creatio secunda, just as later this is the case with Justinus Martyr. But however this may be,

Scripture leaves no doubt in this respect. It does not use the term, but teaches the matter clearly. To be sure, it has been thought that Gen. 1:1-3 actually proceeded from an original, uncreated chaos. Because ‎‏‏ְבֵראִׁשית‎ in form is a status constr., verses 1-3 would thus have to be translated: in the beginning when God created heaven and earth—the earth now was waste and empty etc.—, then God said: let there be light. In verse 2 the waste and empty earth would then be presupposed with God's creating; thus Ewald,

Bunsen, Schrader et al., cf. Schultz, Altt. Theol.4 S. 570 f. But this translation is not acceptable. In the first place, the sense then acquires a [398] periodic length that occurs little in Hebrew, here immediately at the beginning and according to the style of Gen. 1 is not at all to be expected and also lays far too strong an emphasis on the creation of the light; secondly, the status constr. of ‎‏‏בראׁשית‎ does not require this translation, because in the same form without suffix or genitive it also occurs in Isa.

46:10, cf. Lev. 2:12, Deut. 33:21; and thirdly, it would be strange that while the protasis would say that God still had to create heaven and earth, the parenthesis already designated the chaos with the name of earth and made no mention at all of the original state of heaven. And in addition there then comes still that this translation, even if it were correct, would by no means teach the eternity of the waste earth but at most would leave this in the middle. That, however, conflicts with the whole spirit of the creation narrative. Elohim is not presented in Gen. 1 as a world-former who in human fashion makes a work of art out of material at hand, but as One who, merely speaking, by a sheer word of power, calls all things into view. And with that the whole of Scripture agrees. God is the Almighty, who stands

infinitely far above all creature, and deals with all creatures according to his sovereign good pleasure; the absolute possessor, ‎‏‏ ֹכֵנה‎ of heaven and earth,

Gen. 14:19, 22, who does all that pleases Him, to whose power nowhere a boundary is set. He speaks and it is, He commands and it stands, Gen. 1:3,

Ps. 33:9, Isa. 48:13, Rom. 4:17. Further, all things in Scripture are time and again described as made by God and absolutely dependent on Him. He has made everything, heaven, earth, sea with all that is on it and in it, Ex. 20:11,

Neh. 9:6 etc. Everything is created by Him, Col. 1:16, 17, exists only by his will, Rev. 4:11, and is from and through and unto God, Rom. 11:36. Further, never and nowhere is there even the slightest mention of an eternal unformed matter. God alone is the Eternal, the Incorruptible; He alone is exalted above becoming and change. By contrast, things have a beginning and an end, and are subject to variation. In an anthropomorphic way this is expressed. God existed before the mountains were born and his years do not cease, Ps. 90:2, Prov. 8:25, 26; He has chosen and loved προ καταβολης κοσμου, Eph. 1:4, John 17:24, cf. Mt. 13:35, 25:34, Luke 11:50, John 17:5,

Hebr. [399] 4:3, 9:26, 1 Petr. 1:20, Rev. 13:8, 17:8. And finally Rom. 4:17, even though there is not specifically mention there of creation, teaches that God calls and commands τα μη ὀντα, that which possibly is not yet, ὡς οντα, as though it were; being or non-being makes for Him no difference.

Hebr. 11:3 expresses it still more clearly, that the world has thus been made by God, that what is seen has not come to be ἐκ φαινομενων, out of what appears before the eyes. A formless matter is thereby wholly excluded; the visible world has not proceeded from the visible but rests in God, who by his word called everything into view.

5. This doctrine of Scripture finds its sharpest expression in the words out of nothing, and has thus from the beginning been understood and

reproduced by Christian theology, Hermas, Pastor I 1. Theophilus, ad Autol.

II 4. Tertull. de praescr. 13. Iren. adv. haer. II 10 etc. But among Gnostics and Manichaeans, theosophists and naturalists, pantheists and materialists, this doctrine has at all times met with contradiction. Especially the Aristotelian dictum: ex nihilo nihil fit, has been brought forward against it.

Yet this refutation is wholly without ground. In the first place, this rule of Aristotle is by no means so simple as it seems; at every moment we stand before phenomena that cannot be reduced to present factors; history is no sum; life is no product of chemical combinations; genius is still something other and something more than the child of its time, and every personality is something original. But apart from this and taken cum grano salis, this rule of Aristotle finds no contradiction. Theology has never taught that nonbeing was the father, the source, the principium of being. Moreover, it has repeatedly added that the expression ex nihilo was no indication of a previously existing matter, out of which the world was formed; but it only made known that what is once was not, and that it has been called into existence only by God's almighty power; the expression ex nihilo thus is equivalent to post nihilum; particula ex non designat sed excludit materiam; the world has its cause not in itself but only in God, Iren. adv. haer. II 14.

August. Conf. XI 5. XII 7. De Gen. ad litt. I 1. Anselmus, Monol. c. 8.

Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 45 art. 1 etc. The expression was retained so gladly in [400] Christian theology only for this reason, because it was particularly suited to cut off all kinds of error at the root. In the first place it served against the paganistic doctrine of an ἀμορφος ὑλη, above which even a Plato and Aristotle had not been able to rise. In paganism man is bound to matter, subjected to sensuality and nature-worship; he cannot grasp the thought that spirit stands free over against and above matter, and still much

less that God is absolutely sovereign, determined by nothing other than by his own being. And over against that, creation out of nothing now teaches the absolute sovereignty of God, his complete independence; if even a single particle of matter had not been created out of nothing, God would not be God. In the second place this expression excludes all emanation, all identity of being of God and world. To be sure, the scholastics spoke more than once of an emanatio or processio totius entis a causa universali, and also indeed of a participation of the creature in the being and the life of God. But by that they did not mean emanation in the proper sense, as if the divine being flowed out into the creatures and unfolded itself in them, as the genus in its species. But by that they only wished to say that God is ens per essentiam, but the creature ens per participationem; the creatures do indeed have a being of their own, but this has in the divine being its causa efficiens and exemplaris, Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 45 art. 1. Kleutgen, Philos. der

Vorz. II 828 f. 899 f. Creation out of nothing maintains that there is an essential distinction between God and world. Creation does not consist in a transition of the world from a being in God to a being outside God, nor also from a being without God to a being through God, but from non-being to being. The world is certainly no αντιθεος, it does not exist independently, it is and remains in God as its continuing causa immanens, as later in the doctrine of preservation against Manichaeism and deism must be shown.

But it is according to the doctrine of Scripture no part, no efflux of the being of God. It has a being of its own, another, a being and existence distinct from the essentia Dei. And that is expressed by the ex nihilo. Yet philosophy has also misused this term. Just as Plato understood by the μη ὀν an eternal unformed matter, so Erigena even designated God as nihilum, insofar as he is exalted above all [401] categories and determinations, above

all being and essence; dum ergo incomprehensibilis intelligitur, per excellentiam nihilum non immerito vocitatur, de div. nat. III 19. And when he brings everything forth out of nothing into appearance, then that means that he de sua videlicet superessentialitate producit essentias, de supervitalitate vitas, etc. de div. nat. III 20. Hegel dealt with this concept still more strangely in his Logik, when he understood by nothing a Nichtseyn, das zugleich Seyn, und ein Seyn, das zugleich Nicht-seyn ist; a nothing that is at the same time everything, namely in potentia and nothing determinate in concreto, Werke III 64. 73 f. Over against this philosophical confusion of concepts, Christian theology stands in direct opposition; it understands by nothing a pure nihil negativum and rejects all emanation.

Yet there also lies in emanation a true thought, which precisely by the biblical doctrine of creation, without violation of the being of God, is maintained much better than in philosophy. The doctrine of creation out of nothing namely in the end gives to Christian theology a place between Gnosticism and Arianism, i.e. between pantheism and deism. Gnosticism knows no creation but only emanation and therefore makes the world into the Son, the wisdom, the image of God in an adequate sense; Arianism knows no emanation but only creation, and therefore makes the Son into a creature; there the world is deified, here God is made worldly. But Scripture and correspondingly Christian theology knows both, emanation and creation; a twofold communication of God, one within, one outside the divine being; one to the Son, who in the beginning was with God and himself was God, and one to the creatures, which have come into being in time; one from eternity and one in time; one out of the essence and one through the will of God. The first is called generation, the second creation.

Through generation the adequate image of God is communicated eternally

to the Son; through creation only a weak, faint likeness of God is communicated to the creature. But yet both are connected. Without generation creation would not be possible. If God could not communicate himself absolutely to the Son, he could much less in a relative sense communicate himself to his creature. If God did not exist trinitarianly, creation would not be possible, Athan. c. Ar. I 12. II 56. 78. [402]

6. Correspondingly, Holy Scripture also teaches that God, Triune, is the author of creation. Scripture knows no intermediate beings. The Jews, in connection with the plural in Gen. 1:26, thought of the angels, Weber, Syst.

170. The Gnostics let a series of aeons proceed from God, which acted creatively. The Arians made of the Son an intermediate being between Creator and creature, which, though created, nevertheless itself in turn created. In the Middle Ages many were not disinclined to assume the possibility of a cooperation of the creature in creation. They came to this because in the church the forgiveness of sins and distribution of grace was inherent in the office, and a priest in the mass could change the bread into the body of Christ and thus became a creator sui creatoris (Biel). Hence

Lombard, in the doctrine of the sacraments, says that God also indeed posset per aliquem creare aliqua, non per eum tanquam auctorem sed ministrum cum quo et in quo operaretur, Sent. IV dist. 5 n. 3. By some, such as Durandus, followed by Suarez, Bellarminus, he was nevertheless contradicted by others such as Thomas, Scotus, Bonaventura, Richard,

Victor etc., Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 45 art. 5. Kleutgen, Philos. der Vorzeit II2 849 f. And with this the Reformed also agreed, who, even more than

Roman Catholics and Lutherans, resisted all mixing of Creator and creature, Voetius, Disp. I 556 sq. Synopsis, X 14. Turret. Th. El. V qu. 2. Heidegger,

Corpus Theol. VI 14. Mastricht III 5, 20. M. Vitringa II 81-82. Scripture

ascribes creation exclusively to God, Gen. 1:1, Jes. 40:12v., 44:24, 45:12, Job 9:5-10, 38:2v. Thereby He is distinguished from the idols, Ps. 96:5, Jes.

37:16, Jer. 10:11, 12. Creating is a divine work, an act of infinite power, and therefore communicable to no creature, whatever it may be, neither in nature nor in grace. But all the more unanimously Christian theology ascribed the work of creation to all three persons in the Trinity. Scripture also left no doubt about this. God has created all things through the Son, Ps.

33:6, Prov. 8:22, John 1:3, 5:17, 1 Cor. 8:6, Col. 1:15-17, Heb. 1:3, and through the Spirit, Gen. 1:2, Ps. 33:6, Job 26:13, 33:4, Ps. 104:30, Jes.

40:13, Luke 1:35. And in that connection Son and Spirit are not conceived as original forces but as self-subsisting principia, [403] as auctores, who, with the Father, bring the work of creation to completion, just as with Him they are also the one, true God. In the Christian church this doctrine of Scripture did not at once come into its own; the Logos was at first too much conceived as an intermediate being, which effected the transition between God and world; and the person and the work of the Holy Spirit still came entirely into the background, above p. 251v. But Irenaeus already said that God had no need of foreign instruments in creation and also did not use the angels therein, but that He has His own hands, the Logos and the Holy

Spirit, through whom and in whom He has created all things, adv. haer. IV 20. Clearly the doctrine of creation as the work of the whole Trinity was developed by Athanasius and the three Cappadocians in the East and by Augustine in the West. No creature, says Athanasius, can be ποιητικον αἰτιον of creation; if the Son therefore creates the world with the Father, He cannot be an extra-divine, created demiurge, as Arius thinks, but must be the proper Son of the Father, ἰδιον γεννημα της οὐσιας αὐτου, c. Ar. II 21 sq. But where the Logos is, there also is the Spirit, and thus ὁ πατηρ δια του

λογου ἐν τῳ πνευματι κτιζει τα παντα, ad Serap. III 5. And Augustine speaks still more strongly: ab hac summe et aequaliter et immutabiliter bona trinitate creata sunt omnia, Enchir. 10, so that the whole creation is a vestigium trinitatis, de trin. VI 10. de civ. XI 24. Conf. XIII 11. And thus this doctrine has become the common property of the whole of Christian theology, Joh. Damasc. de fide orthod. I 8. Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 45 art. 6.

Luther, art. Smalc. I 1. Calv. Inst. I 14, 20, and also of the various confessions, Denzinger, Enchir. Symb. n. 202. 227. 231. 232. 355. 367. 598.

Müller, Die symb. Bücher der ev. luth. K. 5e Aufl. S. 38. 299. Niemeyer, Coll. conf. eccl. Ref. p. 87. 331. 341 etc. This doctrine found contradiction only among those who also reject the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity and at most want to know only of a creation of the Father through the Son but in no case recognize in creation a common work of the three divine persons, such as the Arians, Socinians, Remonstrants, Rationalists, and in more recent times Martensen, Dogm. § 61. Oosterzee, Dogm. § 56, 5 and especially Doedes, Ned. Gel. 121v. Both dogmas also stand and fall with each other. The confession of the unity of essence of the three persons of itself entails [404] that all opera ad extra are communia and indivisa; and conversely the combating of the trinitarian work of creation is proof of deviation in the doctrine of the Trinity. What matters here is only to make, with Scripture and with the church fathers, such as Athanasius, the strictest distinction between Creator and creature, and to guard oneself against all gnostic mixing. If Son and Spirit in Scripture appear as self-subsisting principia, as auctores of creation, then they also partake of the divine essence; and if they are true God, they also have part in the work of creation. In contrast, the Arian doctrine involves insoluble difficulties. It cannot be denied that Scripture teaches creation as a work of the Father

through the Son. If the Son is now regarded as a person outside the divine essence, there is justification for the question: to the creating of the Father through the Son no sense can be attached; Scripture says it, but what can it mean? the Father has commissioned the Son with creating? then the Son would be the actual Creator. Father and Son have together created all things? but then it is not creating through the Son, Doedes t. a. p. 128. The doctrine of the Trinity here causes the true light to dawn. Just as God is one in essence and distinct in persons, so also the work of creation is one and undivided and yet in that unity rich in diversity. It is one God who creates all things, and therefore the world is a unity, just as conversely the unity of the world proves the unity of God. But in that one divine essence there are three persons, each of whom in the one work of creation fulfills a proper task. Not in the sense that creation belongs principaliter to the Father and minus principaliter to the Son and the Spirit, or that the three persons work independently alongside one another, supplement each other's labor, and are three separate causae efficientes of creation; the expression of tres causae sociae among some theologians therefore met with objection among many,

Zöckler, Gesch. der Bezieh. I 621 f. 679 f. There is indeed cooperation, but no division of labor. All things are at the same time from the Father through the Son in the Spirit. The Father is the first cause; from Him the initiative proceeds; creation is therefore in the economic sense specifically ascribed to Him. The Son is not the instrument but the personal wisdom, the Logos, through whom all things are created; all things [405] rest and have system in Him, Col. 1:17 and are created unto Him, Col. 1:16, not as final end but as Head and Lord of all creatures, Eph. 1:10. And the Holy Spirit is the personal immanent cause, through whom all things live, move, and are in God, receive their form and shape, and are led onward to their destination.

Cf. above 417v. Frank, Syst. d. chr. Wahrh. I 328 f. Kuyper, Het werk van den H. Geest I 20v.

7. Yet, although creation is a work of the whole Trinity, it cannot be denied that in Scripture it still stands in a peculiar relation to the Son, which deserves separate discussion. The O. Test. says many times that God has created all things through the word, Gen. 1:3, Ps. 33:6, Ps. 148:5, Isa.

48:13, has founded the earth by wisdom and has prepared the heavens by understanding, Ps. 104:24, Prov. 3:19, Jer. 10:12, 51:15. But that wisdom is also presented personally as counsellor and mistress-craftswoman of creation. God acquired and possessed it, arranged it, searched it out, in order that He through it, as firstling of his way, as beginning of his works, would create and order the world. And thus it was already with Him before creation, and during creation it worked along and rejoiced in the works of God's hands, above all in the children of men, Prov. 8:22-31, Job 28:23-27.

In the N. Test. this doctrine is further developed. We read there not only that God has created all things through the Son, John 1:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Col. 1:1517, Heb. 1:3, but Christ is there also called πρωτοτοκος πασης κτισεως,

Col. 1:15, ἀρχη της κτισεως του θεου, Rev. 3:14, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all things, Rev. 1:17, 21:6, 22:6, to whom all things are created, Col. 1:17, in order to be gathered together again under Him as the Head, Eph. 1:10. Christ in all these passages has not only a soteriological but also a cosmological significance. He is mediator of the recreation not only but also of creation. The Apologists did not yet know what to do with these thoughts of Scripture. Standing under Platonic influence, they often saw in the Logos not much more than the κοσμος νοητος; they brought Him into the closest connection with the world, held his generation motivated by the creation and made as yet no sufficient distinction between

the birth of the Son and the creation [406] of the world; they still struggle with the gnostic thought that the Father is actually the hidden, invisible

Godhead and is first made manifest through the Logos, cf. above p. 251v.

Although this gnostic element has now been banished from theology by the church fathers, especially Athanasius and Augustine; it has nevertheless returned in it time and again. The root from which this thought springs is always a certain dualism, a more or less sharp antithesis between spirit and matter, between God and world. God is invisible, inaccessible, hidden; the world is, if not anti-, then yet ungodly, God-less, athée. To reconcile this principial antithesis a being-in-between is needed, and that is the Logos. He is in relation to God the world-idea, the world-image, the κοσμος νοητος, and in relation to the world He is the actual Creator, the principle of the possibility that there comes to be a world. Among the Herrnhutters this even led to the fact that the Father wholly recedes, and Christ is the actual

Creator; the re-creation devours the creation, grace destroys nature. Various Vermittelungstheologen teach that the Logos is the world according to its idea, and that it thus gehört zum Wesen des Sohnes, sein Leben nicht mehr im Vater sondern auch in der Welt zu haben; als das Herz des Vaters ist er zugleich das ewige Weltherz, der ewige Weltlogos, Martensen, Dogm. §

125. Meyer on Col. 1:16. This representation then naturally leads to the doctrine of the incarnation apart from sin. The world is in itself profane, creation actually no essentially Divine work. If God will be able to create, if the world, if humanity will be able to be pleasing to Him, then He must see it in Christ. This is He in whom and for whom the world alone can be willed by God; in whom as the head and the Centralindividuum humanity alone can be well-pleasing to God; the incarnation is necessary for the revelation and the communication of God, and the God-man is the highest

goal of creation, cf. Dorner, Entw. der Lehre van der Person Christi III 1227-1262, Nitzsch, Syst. der chr. Lehre S. 204, Lange, Chr. Dogm. II 215 and especially also Keerl, Der Mensch, das Ebenbild Gottes II 1 f. Finally this series of thoughts is completed in the doctrine that creation is necessary for God himself; God an sich is indeed nature, Urgrund, βυθος, σιγη, but in order himself to become personality, [407] spirit, He has need of creation.

Creation is the history of God, cosmogony is theogony, Schelling, Werke II

2 S. 109.

This Gnosticism can be overcome in principle only when all dualism between God and world is cut off at the root. Creating is no lower and less divine work than re-creating; nature does not stand beneath grace; the world is not profane in itself. And thus there was also no need of a lower divine being, in order to enable the Father to create the world. The Christian church believes in the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Creation is absolutely no more the work of the Son than of the Father. All things are from God. And the Christian church confesses of the Son, that He is no less than the Father and does not stand closer to the creatures, but that He is of one essence with the Father and with the Spirit, and that they together are the one, eternal, true God, Creator of heaven and of earth. But indeed the Son takes an own place in the work of creation. Augustine especially set this in the light. Although he did not identify the ideas of things with the Logos, as the Apologists had done, he nevertheless had to bring these into connection with the Logos. The world was indeed not eternal, but its idea was nevertheless eternal in the consciousness of God.

The Father speaks out all his thoughts, his whole being, in the one, personal Word, and therefore the world-idea is also contained in the Logos; the Logos can therefore be called forma quaedam, forma non formata sed

forma omnium formatorum, Serm. 117, cf. de lib. art. III 16 en 17. de trin.

XI 10. XV 14, cf. Anselmus, Monol. 34. Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 34 art. 3, cf. 44 art. 3. Thereby the significance of the Son for creation can be established. In the first place it is the Father, from whom the initiative of creation proceeds, who thinks the world-idea, but all that the Father is and has and thinks, He communicates to and speaks out in the Son. In Him the Father beholds the idea of the world itself, not as though this were identical with the Son, but in such a way that it, in the Son, in whom his whole fullness dwells, stands before His eyes and confronts Him. In the divine wisdom there also lies enclosed, as part, as epitome, that wisdom which will be realized in the creatures [408]. He is the Logos, through whom the Father creates all things; the whole world is a realized thought of God; a book with great and small letters, from which his wisdom is to be known.

But not only causa exemplaris is He, also ἀρχη δημιουργικη. The word that God speaks is no sound without content; it is powerful and living. The word, the world-idea, which the Father speaks out in the Son, is a ratio seminalis, forma principalis, of the world itself; therefore the Son is called the ἀρχη, πρωτοτοκος, ἀρχη της κτισεως, the firstborn, who bears creation, in whom it rests, from whom it arises as its cause and example; and therefore that word, which the Father speaks at creation and by which He calls the things out of nothing into being, is also powerful, for it is spoken in and through the Son. And finally the Son is also in a certain sense the causa finalis of the world. Because it has in Him its foundation and example, it is also created unto Him, indeed not as final ultimate end, but yet as Head, Lord and Heir of all things, Col. 1:16. Summed up in the Son, gathered under Him as Head, all creatures come again to the Father, from whom all things are. And thus the world has its eternal idea, its ἀρχη and its

τελος in the triune being of God. The word, which the Father speaks out in the Son, is the full expression of the divine being and thus also of all that which will also exist outside the divine being as creature through that word.

And the spiration, by which Father and Son are principium of the Spirit, also contains in itself the willing of that world, whose idea is comprised in the divine Wisdom, Kleutgen, Philos. II 870. Therefore creation proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, in order that it in the Spirit through the Son may return again to the Father.

8. In this way some light also falls on the difficult problem of creation and time. Scripture says simply and humanly, that things have had a beginning.

It speaks of a time before the birth of the mountains, before the foundation of the world, before the times of the ages, Gen. 1:1, Ps. 90:2, Prov. 8:22,

John 1:1, Eph. 1:4, 2 Tim. 1:9. And we too can never rid ourselves in our thinking and speaking of that form of time. Properly speaking, from this human limitation all the objections are born, which repeatedly [409] arise again against a creation in time. Going back with our thoughts, we finally come to the first moment, in which all things take a beginning. Before that there is nothing but the deep silence of eternity. But at once the questions multiply in our heart. With what shall we fill that eternity and what activity can there be, if all work of creation and preservation is thought away? The doctrine of the Trinity and of the decrees gives us some answer here; but detached from the world, they no longer offer any content to our thinking.

What then did God do before the creation, He, who cannot be thought as a Deus otiosus, but who always ἐργαζεται, John 5:17. Has He then changed, passed over from idleness to activity, from rest to labor? How is the creation, the transition to the act of creating, to be reconciled with the immutability of God? And why did He pass over to that creation only when

already an eternity had sped by? How is there in that eternity exalted above all time a moment to be found, in which God passed over from not-creating to creating? And why did He choose precisely that moment, why did creation not begin ages before? All these questions have elicited various answers. Pantheism attempted to give a solution by teaching that in God being and working were one, that God has not become a Creator but that creation itself is an eternal one; the world has had no beginning, it is the eternal self-revelation of God; and God does not precede the world in duration but only in a logical sense, insofar as He is the cause of all things; the natura naturans is not to be thought without natura naturata, the substance not without attributa and modi, the idea not without appearance,

Erigena, de div. nat. I 73. 74. III 8. 9. 17 etc. Spinoza, Cogit. metaph. II c.

10. Hegel, Werke VII 25 f. Related to that is the solution which Origen gave; he did indeed reject the eternity of matter, and did indeed teach that everything was created out of nothing by the Logos, de princ. II 1; but God is not to be thought idle, his omnipotence is eternal as He himself, and therefore He has also begun to create from eternity. Indeed the present world is not eternal, de princ. III 5, but to this world innumerable worlds preceded, just as many will also follow, de princ. I 2. III 5. This opinion, which actually originates from the Stoa, Zeller, Philos. der Gr. IV3 [410]

153 f., was condemned by the church at the council of Nicaea, but has nevertheless repeatedly been renewed, in this century still by Rothe, Theol.

Ethik § 50 f. Ulrici, Gott u. die Natur 1866 S. 671 f. Martensen, Chr. Dogm.

§ 65, 66. Dorner, Gl. I 466 f. G. Wetzel, Die Zeit der Weltschöpfung. Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1875 S. 582-588 etc. In this connection there also deserves mention the question much treated in scholasticism, whether the world could not have been eternal. In defense of Aristotle, who taught the

eternity of the world, Zeller, III3 357 f., this question was answered affirmatively by some, e.g. by Thomas, S. Th. I. qu. 46 art. 1, 2. S. c. G. II 31-37, Durandus, Occam, Biel, Cajetanus, cf. Esser, Die Lehre des h. Th. v.

Aq. über die Möglichkeit eener anfangslosen Schöpfung, Münster 1895.

Rolfes, Philos. Jahrb. X 1897 Heft 1. By others, however, it was decisively denied, as by Bonaventura, Sent. I. dist. 44 art. 1 qu. 4. Albertus Magnus,

Henricus of Ghent, Richard, Valentia, Toletus, cf. Petavius, de Deo III c. 5.

6, and likewise by the Lutherans, Quenstedt I 421. Hollaz p. 358, and the Reformed, Zanchius, Op. III 22 sq. Voetius, Disp. I 568. Leydecker, Fax

Verit. 140. Coccejus, S. Theol. c. 15. Moor II 179 M. Vitringa II 83. Turret.

Th. El. V qu. 3; only a single one considered an eternal creation possible, Burmannus, Synopsis I 41, 24. All these answers, however, grant no satisfaction to thought. Naturally there is no difference about this, that the world at this moment, instead of thousands of years, could also already have existed for millions of ages. No one who denies this in the abstract.

But something entirely different is whether the world could have been eternal in the same sense as God is eternal. This now is impossible, for eternity and time differ essentially. Kant saw in it an insoluble antinomy, that the world on the one hand must have had a beginning, because an infinite elapsed time was unthinkable, and that yet on the other hand it could have no beginning, because an empty time is unthinkable, Kr. d. r.

Vern. ed. Kirschmann, 5e Aufl. 360 f. Only the last member of this antinomy has no right of existence; with the world time also of itself falls away; there then remains no time and thus also no empty time any longer,

Iren. adv. haer. III 8. Athan. c. Ar. I 29. 58. Tert. adv. Marc. II 3. adv.

Hermog. 4. August. de civ. XI 6. That we [411] cannot conceive that and always have need of such an auxiliary representation of a time before time,

is of no relevance here and comes only from the fact that our thinking consists in the form of time; in order to think away time, thinking would have to think away itself, which is impossible. Thus there remains only the first member of Kant's antinomy, namely that the world must have had a beginning. However endlessly prolonged, time remains time and never becomes eternity. There is between the two an essential difference, above p.

131. The world is not to be thought without time; time is a mode of existence of all that is finite and created; never can the predicate of eternity in the strict sense belong to what exists in the form of time. Likewise the question, whether God then could not have created from eternity, rests on the identification of eternity and time. There is in eternity no earlier or later.

God has eternally created the world, i.e. also in the moment when the world received existence, God was and remained the Eternal and He created as the Eternal. The world, even if it had existed an endless series of ages and even if millions of worlds had preceded this one, it remains temporal, finite, limited and thus has had a beginning. The hypothesis of Origen gives not the least solution; the issue remains completely the same; it is only shifted some millions of years. Still more unfounded is the question, what God then did before the creation. It has been answered by Augustine, Conf. XI 12.

Luther, Calvin, Inst. I 14, 1 in accordance with Prov. 26:5. It proceeds from the supposition that God exists in time and that creation and preservation is his daily strenuous labor. But God dwells in eternity, He is actus purissimus, an infinite fullness of life, blessed in himself, without the creation not idle and by it not wearied. Non itaque in ejus vacatione cogitetur ignavia, desidia, inertia, sicut nec in ejus opere labor, conatus, industria. Novit quiescens agere et agens quiescere, August. de civ. XII 17. And likewise it is with pantheism; it is not so superficial as Socinianism and materialism,

which simply changes eternity into a time endlessly prolonged forward and backward and does not know the distinction between endless and infinite; it does not say that God is all things and all things are God; it makes distinction between being and becoming, natura naturans and naturata, substance and [412] modi, the all and all things, the idea and the appearance, i.e. between eternity and time. But to the question: wherein then does that distinction consist? what connection is there between the two? how does eternity pass over into time? pantheism remains owing the answer. It gives words and images enough, but nothing can be thought with them. Theism, however, holds eternity and time to be two incommensurable magnitudes. They can and may neither of them be neglected by us; they both press themselves upon our consciousness and thinking. But we are not able to see through their connection; living and thinking in time, we stand in admiration before the mystery of the eternal, uncreated being. On the one hand it is certain, that God is the Eternal; in Him there is no past or future, no becoming or change; and whatever He is, is eternal, his thought, his will, his decree. Eternal in Him is also the world-idea, which He thinks and utters in the Son; eternal in Him is the decree to create the world; eternal in Him is the will, which has created the world in time; eternal is also the act of creating, as act of God, as actio interna et immanens, August. de civ. XII 17.

Lombardus, Sent. II dist. 1 n. 2. Bonav. Sent. II dist. 1 art. 1 qu. 2. Thomas, c. Gent. I 82. Petavius, de Deo V 9, 9 and 13, 5. Voetius, Disp. I 565. Turret.

Th. El. V qu. 3, 16, for He has not become a Creator, so that He would first for a time not and thereafter would have created; He is the eternal Creator, as Creator He was the Eternal and as the Eternal He has created. Creation therefore brought no change in Him; it has not emanated from Him; it is no part of his being; He is unchangeably the same eternal God. And on the

other hand it is certain, also for thinking, that the world has had a beginning and has been created in time. Augustine has rightly said: mundus non est factus in tempore sed cum tempore, Conf. XI 10-13, de civ. VII 30. XI 4-6.

XII 15-17, just as Plato and Philo and Tertullian, adv. Marc. II 3 had already said this before him and all theologians have later repeated it. An empty time is unthinkable. A time before the world has not existed. Time is a necessary mode of existence of the finite. It has not been created separately but is given of itself with the world, co-created just as space. In a certain sense the world has thus always been, i.e. as long as there was time. All change therefore does not fall in God but in it. It is subject to time i.e. to change. It is the continual becoming over against God as the eternal and unchangeable being. And these two now, God and world, eternity and time, stand in this relation; that the world in all its parts is borne by God's omnipresent power and time in all its moments is permeated by the eternal being of our God. Eternity and time are not two lines, of which the shorter for a time runs parallel with the endlessly prolonged; but eternity is the unchangeable center, which sends forth its rays to the whole circumference of time. For the limited eye of the creature it successively unfolds its infinite content in the breadth of space and the length of time, in order that it might understand something of the unsearchable greatness of God. But therefore eternity and time nevertheless remain distinct. This alone we confess, that the eternal willing of God, without ceasing to be eternal, can bring forth and does bring forth operations in time, just as his eternal thinking also can have temporal things as content. Thomas with Kleutgen,

Philos. der Vorz. II 871. The power of God's will, which is eternally one, caused to arise what was not, without any change taking place in Him. God wills eternally what will take place only after ages or has taken place before

ages. And at the time, when it happens, there is change in the things but not in his being. Una eademque sempiterna et immutabili voluntate res quas condidit et ut prius non essent egit, quamdiu non fuerunt et ut posterius essent, quando esse coeperunt, Aug. de civ. XII 17.

9. If now this world, which has arisen and exists in time, is essentially distinct from the eternal and immutable being of God, then with all the more force the question presses itself upon us, what moved God to call this world into existence. Scripture repeatedly traces all being and such-being of the creatures back to the will of God, Ps. 33:6, 115:3, 135:6, Isa. 46:10, Mt.

11:25, Rom. 9:15v. Eph. 1:4, Rev. 4:11 etc. That is for us the final ground, the end of all contradiction. The will of God [Dei voluntas] is the supreme law. The will of the Creator is the nature of each thing, Aug. de civ. XXI 8.

To the question why things exist and are as they are, there is no other and deeper answer than because God has willed it. Whoever then asks further: why has [414] God willed it? seeks something greater than the will of God; but nothing greater can be found, de Gen. c. Manich. I 2, cf. above 208v.

And this has been the standpoint of the whole Christian church and theology. But pantheism is not satisfied with this and seeks a deeper ground. In particular, in two ways it then attempts to explain the world from the being of God. Either it represents that being as so overflowing rich that the world flows forth from it of itself, and, the more it removes itself from Him, approaches the μη ὀν and congeals into sensible matter. This is the doctrine of emanation, which arose in the East, found dissemination especially in India and Persia, and then in the systems of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism also penetrated to the West. Or it attempts to explain the world not from the πλουτος but from the πενια του θεου. God is so poor, so wretched, that He needs the world for his own development; He is in

himself mere potentia, which is nothing but can become everything; He must objectify himself, and through the opposition with the world become spirit, become personality in man. In itself God is not yet the absolute; He becomes this only through the world-process; first Deus implicitus, He gradually becomes Deus explicitus. The world is thus necessary for God; it is a necessary moment of development in his being; Ohne Welt ist Gott kein

Gott. Over against this pantheism, which destroys the personality of God and deifies the world, theism maintains the doctrine that creation is an act of God's will. But yet no arbitrariness is meant by that. Thus the will of God is indeed conceived in Mohammedan theology and also among the Nominalists, the Socinians, the Cartesians. The world is a product of mere arbitrariness; it exists, but could just as well not have existed or also have been entirely different. Christian theology, however, has mostly guarded itself against this extreme, and has taught that, although the will of God in creation was also in the highest degree free and all compulsion and necessity are excluded, nevertheless that will had its motives and God with his works outward had his high and holy intentions, above pp. 208-216.

And thus it has then been asked what moved God to create this world, i.e. what end He set before himself with creation. The answers to that have been different. Many have seen in the goodness and the love of God a sufficient motive for [415] explanation of the world. Scripture also spoke of it many times, that God is good, that his goodness appears in all his works, and that He loves all his creatures and wills their blessedness. God also could not be thought of as needing something; He could not have created the world in order to receive something, but only in order to give himself and to communicate. His goodness was therefore the reason for creation. Already

Plato, Timaeus p. 29 D, Philo in Herzog2 11, 643 and Seneca, Epist. 95

spoke in that spirit; and Christian theologians also said many times that God created the world not out of need but out of goodness, not for himself but for men. God made the world not for himself but for man, Tert. adv. Marc. I 43. adv. Prax. 5. If He could not do good, there would be no power; but if He could and did not do it, there would be great envy, Aug. de Gen. ad litt.

IV 16. Ὁ των ὁλων θεος ἀγαθος και ὑπερκαλος την φυσιν ἐστι, διο και φιλανθρωπος ἐστιν. Ἀγαθω γαρ περι οὐδενος ἀν γενοιτο φθονος, ὁθεν οὐδε το εἰναι τινι φθονει ἀλλα παντας εἰναι βουλεται, ἱνα και φιλανθρωπευεσθαι δυνηται, Athan., Or. c. gentes 41, cf. also Damascenus, de fide orth. II 2.

Thomas, S. Th. I qu. 19 art. 2. Voetius, Disp. I 558 etc. These statements, however, alternated repeatedly with others, in which God himself and his honor was called the cause and the end of creation. But humanism placed man in the foreground; Socinianism sought his essence not in communion with God but in dominion over the earth; the doctrine of natural law, of natural morality and of natural religion made man autonomous and independent of God; Leibniz taught that God by his goodness, wisdom and power was morally bound to choose from many possible worlds the best and to bring this into existence; Kant, through practical Vernunft, called

God to help only in order to grant man in the hereafter the blessedness to which he, according to his virtue, had a claim. And thus in the rationalism of the previous century man became the most interesting creature; everything existed for him and was serviceable to his perfection; man was

Selbstzweck and everything else, God himself included, was means, Bretschneider, Syst. Entw. 442 f. Id. Dogm. I 669. Wegscheider, Dogm. §

95. And even now many still teach that God must give reality to the worldidea, which He necessarily thinks, because otherwise [416] He would be selfish and not the highest love. Because He is good, He wills not only to be

blessed, but He establishes a kingdom of love and seeks the blessedness of his creatures; this is for Him the final end, Rothe, Theol. Ethik. § 40. 41.

Dorner, Chr. Gl. I 448-459. Martensen, Dogm. § 59. Hofmann, Schriftbew.

I2 205 f. Kahnis, Dogm. I 428. Müller, Chr. Lehre v. d. Sünde II5 187 f.

Schoeberlein, Prinzip u. Syst. der Dogm. 628. Thomasius, Christi Person u.

Werk I3 144. James Orr, Christ. view of God 155. Ritschl, Rechtf. u. Vers.

III2 259 f., and also Hermes and Günther in Kleutgen, Theol. I2 642 f. This doctrine of man as Selbstzweck, however, is unacceptable from a Christian standpoint. Naturally, in creation God's goodness also becomes manifest;

Scripture repeatedly expresses this. But yet it is not correct to say that his goodness demands creation, because otherwise He would be selfish. For God is the All-good, the perfect love, the complete blessedness in himself and thus also does not need the world in order to bring his goodness or love to development, any more than He needs it in order to come to selfconsciousness and personality. Next, it lies in the nature of the case that God is not there for man but man can be there only for God. For although man in a certain sense may be called Selbstzweck, insofar as he as a rational, moral being never can or may be reduced to a will-less instrument; yet he is dependent on God in the deepest sense and has nothing that he has not received. God alone is Creator, man is creature; and for that reason alone he cannot be the end of creation. Because he has his origin only in God, he can also have his end only in Him. And finally the doctrine that creation has its motive in God's goodness and its final end in man's blessedness is also in conflict with reality. The universe truly does not exhaust itself in the service of man and must yet have another end than to be useful to him. The flat utilitarianism and the selfish teleology of the previous century have been sufficiently refuted. The suffering and the pain

which is poured out over humanity cannot be explained from the goodness of God alone. And the outcome of world history, which speaks not only of the blessedness of the elect but also of an eternal triumph over the godless, brings to manifestation still wholly [417] other virtues of God than his goodness and love alone.

10. Scripture therefore also adopts a different standpoint and assigns a higher goal. It says that the whole of nature is a revelation of God's virtues and a proclaimer of his praise, Ps. 19:1, Rom. 1:19. God created man after his image and to his honor, Gen. 1:26, Jes. 43:7. He glorifies himself in Pharaoh, Ex. 14:17 and in the man born blind, Joh. 9:3. He creates the ungodly for the day of evil, Spr. 16:4, Rom. 9:22. Christ has come to glorify

Him, Joh. 17:4. All benefits of grace he bestows for his name's sake, redemption, forgiveness, sanctification etc., Ps. 105:8, 78:9, Jes. 43:25,

48:11, 60:21, 61:3, Rom. 9:23, Ef. 1:6 v. He gives his honor to no other, Jes.

42:8. The final goal is that all kingdoms be subjected to Him and every creature bow before Him, Dan. 7:27, Jes. 2:3-13, Mal. 1:11, 1 Cor. 15 vs. 24 v. Already here honor is brought to Him by all his people, Ps. 115:1, Mt.

6:13. Once God alone will be great, Jes. 2 vs. 3-13, and receive glory from all his creatures, Op. 4:11, 19:6. He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, Jes. 44:6, 48:12, Op. 1:8, 22:13. From and through and to Him are all things, Rom. 11:36. Resting on this, Christian theology taught almost unanimously that the gloria Dei was the final goal of all God's works.

Although in the earliest period the goodness of God is chiefly mentioned as the motive of creation, yet the honor of God as the final goal of all things is not lacking. Thus Athenagoras says that God propter se ipsum et elucentem in omnibus ipsius operibus bonitatem et sapientiam adductum fuisse, ut hominem faceret, de resurr. mort. 12. Tertullian says that God created the

whole world in ornamentum majestatis suae, Apolog. 17. Especially in medieval theology this gloria Dei came more into its own, with Anselm, who makes the honor of God the principle of his doctrine of incarnation and satisfaction, Cur Deus homo c. 11, but then further also with Lombardus,

Sent. II dist. 1. Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 44 art. 4. qu. 66 art. 2. qu. 103 art. 2.

S. c. Gent. III 17. 18. Sent. II dist. 1 qu. 2 art. 2. Bonaventura II dist. 1 p. 2 etc. And this same doctrine we find with the later Roman Catholics,

Scheeben, [418] Dogm. II 31 f. Simar, Dogm. S. 234 f. Kleutgen, Theol. der Vorz. I2 640-692. Schwetz, Theol. dogm. I 396 sq. Jansen, Pract. dogm. II 319 sq.; then with the Lutherans, Gerhard, Loci theol. loc. V c. 5.

Quenstedt, Theol. I 418. Hollaz, Examen p. 360 etc.; and finally and in particular also with the Reformed, cf. especially Edwards, The end in creation, Works II 193-257. The difference between them and the Lutherans and Roman Catholics does not consist in this, that they set the honor of God and these latter man as the final goal, but lies herein, that they have made this honor of God the principle of all doctrine and life, of dogmatics and morals, of family, society and state, of science and art. Nowhere has this gloria Dei been applied so universalistically as among the confessors of the Reformed religion. Now, however, against this final goal of all creatures a twofold objection has been raised. First, that God thereby becomes selfish, seeks himself and degrades the creatures, specifically men, to means.

Already earlier, p. 178, this was brought up and it was shown that God as the perfectly good may rest in nothing but himself and may be satisfied with nothing less than himself. He cannot do otherwise than seek his own honor.

Just as a father in his family and a prince in his realm must demand and seek the honor that as such belongs to them, so it is also with the Lord our

God. Now man can ask for this honor due to him only in the name of God

and for the office entrusted to him by God; but God asks and seeks that honor in his own name and for his own being. Because he is the highest and the only good, perfection itself, therefore it is the highest righteousness that he seeks his own honor in all creatures. And so little does this seeking of one's own honor have anything in common with our selfishness, that God rather demands that honor, where it is wrongfully withheld from him, in the way of right and righteousness. Willingly or unwillingly every creature will one day bow the knee before him. Obedience in love or forced submission is the final destiny of all creatures. The other objection runs, that God then nevertheless, thus seeking his honor, has need of the creature. The world serves for his glorification; something is therefore lacking in his perfection and blessedness; creation provides for a need of God and contributes to his perfection, [419] Strauss, Gl. I 633. This objection seems irrefutable; and yet in various kinds of human labor an analogy is also to be noticed, which can clarify God's creating for us. On a lower level man labors because he must; need or compulsion drives him onward. But the nobler the labor becomes, the less room there is for need or compulsion. An artist does not create his work of art out of need or compulsion, but according to the free impulse of his genius. I pour out my bosom like 't vinkjen in the abeelen; I sing and know no other goal (Bilderdijk). The pious person serves God not out of compulsion nor through hope of reward, but out of free love. So there is also in God a good pleasure, which is infinitely exalted above both need and compulsion, above πενια and πλουτος, which embodies God's artistthoughts in creation and finds delight therein. Yes, what in men is only a weak analogy is present in God in absolute originality. The creature has no independence outside of and over against God, like the creation of an artist.

God therefore never seeks the creature as though it could give him

something that he lacks, or take away something that he possesses. He does not seek the creature, but through the creature he seeks himself. He is and remains always his own goal, cf. above p. 207. His willing is always, also in and through the creatures, absolute self-enjoyment, complete blessedness.

Therefore the world has not proceeded from a need of God, from his poverty and unblessedness, for in the creature it is not a matter for him of that creature but of himself. And just as little is its origin to be ascribed to an ungovernable pleroma in God, for he uses every creature for his own glorification and makes it serviceable to the proclamation of his virtues.

12. From this there also flows a wholly particular worldview. The word creation can mean both, the act and the product of creating. According as the former is conceived, the view of the latter also changes. Pantheism attempts to explain the world dynamically, materialism mechanically. But both strive to derive everything from one all-governing principle. There the world may be a ζωον, of which God is the soul, here a mechanism, which comes into being through the combination and separation of atoms; in [420] both the unconscious, blind fate is exalted to the throne: both fail to recognize the richness and diversity of the world, erase the boundaries between heaven and earth, matter and spirit, soul and body, man and animal, understanding and will, eternity and time, Creator and creature, being and non-being, and dissolve everything into a dead uniformity; both deny an end and can point to neither a cause nor a destination for the existence of the world and for its history. Entirely different, however, is the view of Scripture. Heaven and earth are distinguished from the beginning.

Everything is created with its own nature and rests on its own ordinances set for it by God. Sun and moon and stars have their own task; and plant and animal and man have a distinct nature. There is the richest diversity.

But in that diversity there is also the highest unity. For both the ground lies in God. He is the one who created all things according to his unsearchable wisdom, who continually preserves them in their distinct nature, who leads and governs them according to the powers and laws implanted in them, and who, as the highest good and as the final end of all things, is sought and desired by all things in their measure and in their way. Here is a unity that does not destroy but maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not detract from unity, but unfolds it in its richness. By virtue of that unity the world can, in a figurative sense, be called an organism, in which all members are connected with one another and act upon one another reciprocally. Heaven and earth, man and animal, soul and body, truth and life, art and science, religion and morality, state and church, family and society, etc., they are indeed distinct but they are not separated. There exist between them all kinds of relations; an organic, or if one will, an ethical bond holds them all together. Scripture expresses this clearly, when it not only comprehends the universe under the name of heaven and earth, but also designates it as ‎‏‏עולם‎, i.e. the hidden, the invisible, the unsurveyable, time in past or future, the age, eternity, the world, Pred. 1:4, 3:11; and in the N. T. as κοσμος, Joh. 1:10, τα παντα, 1 Cor. 8:6, 15:25 v., κτισις, Mk. 10:16, αἰωνες, Hebr. 1:2, duration, lifespan, Zeitalter, world, cf. seculum a. v. sexus, human lifespan, world, and our [421] world from waeralti, werolt, men's or human lifespan. The names ‎‏‏עולם‎ and αἰωνες proceed from the thought that the world has a duration, a lifespan, and that a history takes place which runs out toward a definite goal. The Greek κοσμος and the Latin mundus, however, place the beauty and harmony of the world in the foreground. And the world is indeed both. Just as Paul at the same time compares the church to a body and a building and speaks of a growing

temple, Ef. 2:21, and Peter calls the believers living stones, 1 Petr. 2:5; so the world is a history and a work of art together. It is a body that grows and a building that is erected. It spreads out in the breadth of space and continues in the length of time. Neither the mechanical principle of materialism nor the dynamic principle of pantheism is sufficient for its explanation; but whatever truth is in both is acknowledged in the doctrine of the world according to the Scriptures. It is at the same time to be viewed horizontally and vertically; it strives from the lowest creatures upward, toward above, toward the light and the life of God, and it also moves forward toward a God-glorifying end. Thus it displays God's virtues and perfections, in principle already at its beginning, in its continuing development in ever higher measure, and once completely at the end of times. Augustine has been the church father who also understood these thoughts most deeply and worked them out most broadly. In his work de civitate Dei he delivers a Christian philosophy of history; he shows how the Christian worldview finds its truth and its proof in history; he sketches the civitas coelestis in its origin and essence, in its development and relation to the civitas terrena, in its end and goal, Biegler, Die Civitas Dei des h. Aug.

Paderborn 1894. But at the same time he includes in it the description of the universe as a wonderfully beautiful harmony. The world is with Augustine a unity, universum ab unitate nomen accepit, de Gen. c. Manich. I 21. Yet that unity is not uniformity but endlessly rich diversity, de civ. XI 10. God namely is summum esse, summum verum, summum bonum, summum pulchrum. And therefore He created many creatures, which in different measure partake of his being, of his truth, goodness, and beauty. Aliis dedit esse amplius et [422] aliis minus, atque ita naturas essentiarum gradibus ordinavit, de civ. XII 2. With appeal to the word from the book of Wisdom

11:21: παντα μετρω και ἀριθμω και σταθμω διεταξας, Augustine says that all things are distinguished by modus, species, numerus, gradus, ordo. And thereby they precisely bring about that world, that universitas, in which God according to his good pleasure distributes his bona and which thus is a revelation of his virtues, de div. qu. 83 qu. 41. de ord. I 19. de Gen. ad litt. I 9 II 13. Conf. XII 9. de civ. XI 33. For all that diversity is to be ascribed only to God, not to the merit of the creature. Non est ulla natura etiam in extremis infimisque bestiolis, quam non ille constituit, sine quibus nihil rerum inveniri vel cogitari potest, de civ. XI 15, cf. Scipio, des Aur. Aug.

Metaphysik, Leipzig 1886 S. 31-80. And this worldview has been that of the whole of Christian theology. The world is one body with many members, Athan. c. Ar. II 28. 48. The unity, order, and harmony in the world was with the church fathers a powerful proof for the existence and unity of God, Athan. Or. c. gentes c. 39. God is the center and all creatures group themselves around Him in concentric circles and in a hierarchical order, Pseudodion. de coel. en de eccl. hierarchia. Thomas compares the world to a purely tuned stringed performance, whose harmonies interpret to us the glory and blessedness of the Divine life, S. Th. I qu. 25 art. 6. Hare deelen inveniuntur ad invicem ordinatae esse quasi partes animalis in toto, quae sibi invicem deserviunt, Thomas, Sent. II dist. I qu. I art. 1. Nulla est mundi particula, says Calvin, in qua non scintillae saltem aliquae gloriae ejus emicare cernantur, Inst. I 5, 1. Nihil in toto mundo praestantius, nobilius, pulchrius, utilius, divinius ista rerum multarum diversitate, distinctione, ordine, quo una altera nobilior est, et una pendet ab altera, una subest alteri, una obsequium accipit ab altera. Hinc enim totius mundi est ornatus, pulchritudo, praestantia; hinc multiplex usus, utilitas, fructus nobis exoritur. Hinc ipsa Dei bonitas, gloria, sapientia, potentia clarius elucet,

illustratur, Zanchius, Op. III 45. And with all of them the world is a theatrum, a speculum lucidissimum gloriae divinae. Through this worldview Christianity has overcome both contempt for nature and deification of nature. In paganism man does not stand in the right [423] relation to God and therefore also not to the world. And likewise in pantheism and materialism the relation of man to nature is in principle falsified. Alternately he deems himself infinitely exalted above nature and thinks that it has no secrets left for him; and then again he feels that nature as an incomprehended, dark, mysterious power, whose riddles he cannot solve, from whose power he cannot uproot himself. Intellectualism and mysticism alternate; unbelief makes room for superstition; and materialism turns into occultism. But the Christian looks upward and confesses God as the Creator of heaven and earth. He sees in nature and history the unsearchableness of God's ways and the inscrutableness of his judgments, but he does not despair, for all things stand under the governance of an almighty God and a gracious Father, and will therefore work together for good to those who love God. Here there is thus room for love and admiration of nature, but all deification is also excluded. Here man is placed in the right relation to the world, for he is placed in the right relation to God. Therefore creation is also the fundamental dogma; it stands in the foreground throughout the whole of Scripture; it is the cornerstone on which Old and New Covenant rest. And this doctrine therefore finally also excludes an egoistic theology and a false optimism. Certainly, there is truth in it that all things are there for man, or rather for humanity, for the church of Christ, 1 Cor. 3:21-23, Rom. 8:28. But that humanity finds its final end with all creatures in the glorification of God. To that everything is subordinate. To that everything works, also sin and suffering. And with a

view to that the world is arranged purposively. In scholasticism the question was also treated, an Deus possit aliquid facere melius quam fecit. Abaelard said no, because God's goodness must always will the best and otherwise would be selfish, Introd. ad theol. III c. 5, and Leibniz later reasoned entirely in the same spirit. But in God no uncertainty, no choice is to be thought. He has not chosen the best out of many possible worlds. His will is eternally determined. A creature can in itself always be thought better, greater, more beautiful than it actually is, because a creature is contingent and susceptible to development and perfection [424] . And even the universe as contingent can also be thought otherwise and better for us humans. Indeed Thomas said: universum non potest esse melius propter decentissimum ordinem his rebus attributum a Deo, in quo bonum universi consistit; quorum si unum aliquod esset melius, corrumperetur proportio ordinis, sicut si una chorda plus debito intenderet, corrumperetur citharae melodia. But he added: Posset tamen Deus alias res facere vel alias addere istis rebus factis, et esset aliud universum melius, S. Theol. I qu. 25 art. 6 ad

3, cf. Lombardus, Sent. I dist. 44. Bonaventura, Sent. I qu. 44 art. 1 qu. 1-3.

Hugo Vict. de Sacr. II c. 22. Voetius, Disp. I 553 sq. Mastricht III 6, 11.

Heidegger, Corpus Theol. VI 21. The nature of the creature entails that it can be thought, both in its being and in its being-so, only as contingent. But for God this question does not exist. This world is good, because it answers to the goal determined by Him. It is neither the best nor the worst, but it is good, because God has called it so. It is good, because it is serviceable, not to the individual man but to the revelation of God's virtues. And for whoever thus regards it, it is also good, because it makes him know God, whom to know is eternal life. Therefore Lactantius said truthfully: idcirco mundus factus est ut nascamur; ideo nascimur ut agnoscamus factorem

mundi ac nostri, Deum; ideo agnoscimus ut colamus; ideo colimus, ut immortalitatem pro laborum mercede capiamus, quoniam maximis laboribus cultus Dei constat; ideo praemio immortalitatis afficimur, ut similes Angelis effecti, summo Patri ac Domino in perpetuum serviamus et simus aeternum Dei regnum. Haec summa rerum est; hoc arcanum Dei; hoc mysterium mundi, Inst. div. VII 6.

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