http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=457
Jesus and the Doctrine of Creation
INTRODUCTION
To the faithful Christian, there is little of more importance than the
proclamation and defense of the Old Jerusalem Gospel that is able to
save men’s souls. Christianity did not come into the world with a
whimper, but a bang. It was not in the first century, nor is it intended
to be in the twentieth, something “done in a corner.” While it may be
true to say regarding some religions that they flourish best in secrecy,
such is not the case with Christianity. It is intended both to be
presented, and to flourish, in the marketplace of ideas. In addition, it
may be stated safely that while some religions eschew both open
investigation and critical evaluation, Christianity welcomes both. It is
a historical religion—the only one of all the major religions based
upon an Individual rather than a mere ideology—which claims, and can
document, an empty tomb for its Founder.
Christians, unlike adherents to many other religions, do not have an
option regarding the distribution and/or dissemination of their faith.
The efficacy of God’s saving grace as made possible through His Son,
Jesus Christ, is a message that all accountable men and women need to
hear, and one that Christians are commanded to pronounce (John 3:16;
Matthew 28:18-20; cf. Ezekiel 33:7-9).
From time to time, however, Christians may be afflicted with either an
attitude of indifference, or spiritual myopia (shortsightedness). Both
critically impair effectiveness in spreading the Gospel. A Christian’s
attitude of indifference may result from any number of factors,
including such things as a person’s own spiritual weakness, a
downtrodden spirit, a lack of serious Bible study, etc. Spiritual
myopia, on the other hand, is often the end product of either not having
an adequate understanding of the Gospel message itself, or not wishing
to engage in the controversy that sometimes is necessary to propagate
that message.
One such example of spiritual myopia afflicting some members of the
church today centers on the biblical teaching regarding creation.
Because no one is particularly fond of either controversy or playing the
part of the controversialist, it is not uncommon nowadays to hear
someone say, “Why get involved in controversial ‘peripheral’ issues like
creation and evolution? Just teach the Gospel.” Or, one might hear it
said that “since the Bible is not a textbook of science, and since it is
the Rock of Ages which is important, and not the age of rocks, we
should just ‘preach Christ.’ ”
Such statements are clear and compelling evidence of spiritual
shortsightedness, and belie a basic misunderstanding of the seriousness
of the Bible’s teachings on one of its most important topics. First,
those who suggest that we not concern ourselves with “peripheral” topics
such as creation and evolution, and that we instead “just preach the
Gospel,” fail to realize that the Gospel
includes creation and
excludes evolution.
Second, those who advise us to simply “emphasize saving faith, not
faith in creation,” have apparently forgotten that the most magnificent
chapter in all the Bible on the topic of faith (Hebrews 11) begins by
stressing the importance of faith in the
ex nihilo creation of
all things by God (verse 3) as preliminary to any kind of meaningful
faith in His promises. Third, in order to avoid the offense that may
come from preaching the complete Gospel, some simply would regard
creation as unimportant. God, however, considered it so important that
it was the topic of His first revelation. The first chapter of Genesis
is the very foundation of the rest of the biblical record. If the
foundation is undermined, it will not be long until the superstructure
built upon it collapses as well. Fourth, many Christians in our day and
age have overlooked the impact on their own faith of
not teaching
what God has said about creation. G. Richard Culp put it well when he
remarked: “One who doubts the Genesis account will not be the same man
he once was, for his attitude toward Holy Scripture has been eroded by
false teaching. Genesis is repeatedly referred to in the New Testament,
and it cannot be separated from the total Christian message” (1975, pp.
160-161).
Lastly, however, some Christians, afflicted with spiritual myopia, have
advised us to “just preach Christ,” all the while ignoring, or being
uninformed of, the fact that Christ was the Creator before He became the
Savior, and that His finished work of salvation is meaningful only in
light of His finished work of creation (Hebrews 4:3-10). Furthermore,
Christ and His inspired writers had a great deal to say on the topic of
creation, and its relevance to a number of important issues. These
teachings merit our serious attention, as the evidence below will
document.
JESUS—AS THE CREATOR
As in all areas having to do with our faith, if we accept what Christ
has to say regarding creation, we shall not err. His testimony is our
guide, and one from which we should not stray. But what is the nature of
that testimony?
Modernists and liberals would have us believe that while the creation
account itself is not to be accepted as true, that should not
significantly affect our dependence on the Christ who spoke of it as
being
true. For example, professor Van A. Harvey of Stanford University has
commented that the “Christian faith is not belief in a miracle, it is
the confidence that Jesus’ witness is a true one” (1966, p. 274). What
does he mean by such a statement? Listen as he explains further:
If we understand properly what is meant by faith, then this faith has
no clear relation to any particular set of historical beliefs at all....
The conclusion one is driven to is that the content of faith can as well be mediated through a historically false story of a certain kind as through a true one, through a myth as well as through history (1966, pp. 280-281, emp. added).
In other words, genuine faith can as easily be grounded in falsehood as in truth! So, it is not whether Jesus actually
told the truth, but whether we
believe
He told the truth that matters. It is our “confidence that Jesus’
witness is a true one” that is important, not the truthfulness of what
Jesus said.
What strikes one immediately about such a concept is the low estimate
of the Savior it entails. If Jesus could use falsehoods to teach on
so-called “peripheral” matters like creation, why could He then not also
use falsehoods to teach on “essential” matters like salvation? And who
among us becomes the final arbiter as to what is true and what is false?
Surely the Lord’s words of rebuke, as given to the two on the road to
Emmaus, apply here: “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). We serve a God Who cannot lie (Titus
1:2). What Christ believed and taught, we, as His disciples, should
believe and teach—with the full assurance that we shall be both accurate
and safe in so doing. The question is, what did the Lord and His
inspired writers teach regarding creation?
In several New Testament passages, we find evidence that Christ
was
the Creator! John 1:1-3 records, “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the
beginning with God.
All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made” (emp. added). Christ was not just present during the events, but was the
active agent, in creation. Paul affirmed that very thing in Colossians 1:16 when he observed that “
in him were all things created,
in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers:
all things have been created through him and unto him” (emp. added).
The Hebrew writer observed that “God, having of old time spoken unto
the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things,
through whom also he made the worlds”
(Hebrews 1:1-2, emp. added). Paul told the early Christians, “Yet to us
there is one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we unto him;
and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6, emp. added).
In commenting on these various passages, John C. Whitcomb observed:
It is highly instructive, therefore, for the Christian to turn to
Genesis 1, which he accepts as a record of the creative acts of Jesus
Christ in the light of John 1:3, Colossians 1:16, and Hebrews 1:2, and
to recognize that the manner by which living things were brought into
existence in the beginning finds its analogy in the miraculous works of
Jesus Christ the Creator, who visited this planet less than 2,000 years
ago to show men that He indeed was fully capable of doing the things
that Moses described by the Holy Spirit concerning the week of creation” (1973, pp. 23-24, emp. added).
Dr. Whitcomb’s point is well made. Christ’s entire earthly ministry
provided verification of the fact that He did exactly what the
Scriptures attribute to Him in His work of creation. The importance of
this must not be overlooked. If anyone had a right to speak on the
events of that first week, He certainly did. He was there “in the
beginning,” and
He was the Creator! That being the case, the question then becomes, “What did Jesus say about the creation?”
Jesus—On the Time Element of Creation
During His earthly sojourn, Christ spoke explicitly regarding the
creation. In Mark 10:6, for example, He declared: “But from the
beginning of the creation, Male and female made he them.” Note these
three paramount truths: (1) The first couple was “made”; they were not
biological accidents. Interestingly, the verb “made” in the Greek is in
the aorist tense, implying point action, rather than progressive
development (which would be characteristic of evolutionary activity).
W.E. Vine made this very observation with reference to the composition
of the human body in his comments on 1 Corinthians 12:18 (1951, p. 173).
(2) The original pair was fashioned “male and female”; they were not
initially an asexual “blob” that eventually experienced sexual
diversion. (3) Adam and Eve existed “from the beginning of the
creation.” The Greek word for “beginning” is
arché, and is used of “
absolute, denoting
the beginning of the world and of its history, the beginning of creation.” The Greek word for “creation” is
ktiseos,
and denotes the “sum-total of what God has created” (Cremer, 1962, pp.
113,114,381, emp. in orig.). Christ certainly did not subscribe to the
notion that the Earth was vastly older than humanity.
Unquestionably, then, Jesus placed the first humans at the very dawn of
creation. To reject this clear truth, one must either contend that: (a)
Christ knew the Universe was in existence billions of years before man,
but, accommodating Himself to the ignorances of that age, deliberately
misrepresented the situation; or (b) The Lord Himself, living in
pre-scientific times, was uninformed about the matter. Either of these
allegations, of course, is blasphemous.
In Luke 11:45-52, the Lord rebuked the rebellious Jews of His day and
foretold the horrible destruction that would come upon them. He charged
them with following in the footsteps of their ancestors and hence
announced that upon them would come “the blood of all the prophets,
which was shed from the foundation of the world.” Then, with parallelism
characteristic of Hebrew expression, Christ rephrased the thought by
saying, “from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah....”
The point not to be missed is that Jesus placed the murder of Abel back
near “the foundation of the world.” Abel’s death occurred some years
after the creation, but was close enough to that creation for Jesus to
state that it was associated with “the beginning of the world.” If the
world came into existence several billion years before the creation of
mankind, how could the shedding of human blood be declared to have
occurred at the “foundation of the world”?
In John 8:44, Christ referred to the devil, who “was a murderer from
the beginning.” Once again, human existence is placed near “the
beginning.” Isaiah asked this penetrating question of the people in His
day: “Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not
understood from the foundations of the earth?” (Isaiah 40:21). Notice
how Isaiah corroborates Christ’s statements. Isaiah, too, places “the
beginning” and “the foundations of the earth” in the same context. Paul,
speaking in Romans 1:20-21, did likewise. He affirmed: “For the
invisible things of him
since the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his
everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse” (emp.
added). Notice that the term “perceived” is from the Greek
noeo, a word used for rational intelligence, while the phrase “clearly seen” (
kathoratai) is an intensified form of
horao,
a term which “gives prominence to the discerning mind” (Thayer, 1958,
p. 452). Paul’s point could not be clearer. The power and divinity of
God, as revealed through the things that were created, have been
observable to
human intelligence since
the creation of the world.
Man has thus existed from the beginning; he is not some
“johnny-come-lately” as evolutionary theories postulate. Nor was the
Earth in existence billions of years prior to his existence, as some
would have us believe. Again, the Lord’s testimony is not suspect; He
was there!
Jesus—On the Foundational Importance of Creation
During the late 1940s, Woolsey Teller, second president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Atheism, debated Dr. James D. Bales
of Harding College (as it was then known). During that debate, Mr.
Teller made this piercing statement: “If evolution is accepted, Adam and
Eve go out! That story, the Bible fable, is interesting mythology but
it doesn’t present the true picture of the origin of man” (1976, p. 54).
He was correct, of course, in stating that if evolution is true, the
Bible cannot be.
Christ, however, placed His divine stamp of approval on the creation account in a number of ways. Consider the following.
-
In Matthew 19, the account is given of the Pharisees attempting to set
the Lord against the law of Moses by inquiring about His position on
marriage, divorce, and remarriage. In answering them, He asserted the
permanence of the marriage bond by quoting Genesis 2:24—“For this cause
shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:
and the two shall become one flesh” (verse 5). In appealing to the
creation of man and woman, as detailed in Genesis 2, the Lord made it
clear that He accepted that account as both factual and historical and
in so doing used it as the basis for the New Testament doctrine of
marriage, divorce, and remarriage.
-
It is not uncommon to hear those who are anxious to compromise the
biblical record of creation claim that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are two
different, and contradictory, accounts. However, Jesus did not accept
them as such. In Matthew 19:4-5 He tied the two together and used them
to teach the people of His day: “Have you not read that he who made them
from the beginning made them male and female [quoting Genesis 1:27—BT],
and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and
shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh [quoting
Genesis 2:24—BT]....” If these were indeed different, and contradictory, accounts, Jesus apparently did not know it.
-
Jesus believed in the fixity of created kinds. He asked: “Do
men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?... A good tree cannot
bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good
fruit” (Matthew 7:16,18).
-
Jesus called Satan “the father of lies” (John 8:44), in what is a
clear reference to the falsehood he told Eve in Genesis 3:4-5. Thus,
Jesus also placed His imprimatur on the account of the fall of man.
-
Jesus accepted the Sabbath as a day of rest in commemoration of God’s
completed creation. In Mark 2:28 He told the people that “the sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” Yet the Sabbath as a
Jewish holy day was instituted as a direct result of God’s work during
the six-day creation week of Genesis 1 and 2 (cf. Exodus 20:8-11). The
Lord spoke approvingly of those events, and counted them as real,
literal, and historical in nature.
-
Jesus stated to the disbelieving Jews of His day: “For if ye believed
Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not
his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” (John 5:46-47). Where,
exactly, did Moses write of Christ? Genesis 3:15 is the first Messianic
prophecy on record. Christ accepted that passage as correct. Whitcomb
has noted: “It is the privilege of these men to dispense with an
historical Adam if they so desire. But they do not at the same time have
the privilege of claiming that Jesus Christ spoke the truth. Adam and
Christ stand or fall together” (1972, p. 111).
-
Jesus spoke of the Noahic flood as an actual occurrence in history
(Matthew 24:37ff.). He even used that Flood in making a comparison to
the destruction that would befall the Earth at His second coming. He
referred to Abel as an actual historical character (Matthew 23:35). And,
He advocated the view that the Universe actually had a beginning (as
opposed to the popular view of His time that matter was eternal) when He
remarked that “such was not since the beginning of the world [Greek, kosmos]” (Matthew 24:21, emp. added).
CONCLUSION
Why is creation so important? Simply put, the answer is this: “If there
is no creation, there is nothing else. If there is no Creator, then
there is no Saviour either” (Segraves, 1973, p. 24). Our understanding
of creation depends upon our understanding of Christ, and vice versa. In
Romans 5:14, Paul spoke of Adam “who is a
figure of him who was to come” (emp. added). The word “figure” is the translation of the Greek word,
tupos
(type). Adam was a “type” of Christ; the two are thus inextricably
linked. Paul extended that comparison to Adam in the great “resurrection
chapter” when he said: “The first man Adam became a living soul. The
last Adam became a life-giving spirit. The first man is of the earth,
earthy; the second man is of heaven...and as we have borne the image of
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Corinthians
15:45-48).
In 1 Corinthians 11:8,12, Paul contended that woman was “of man.” The Greek for the word “of” is
ek,
meaning “out of.” In 1 Timothy 2:13, Paul called Eve by name, denoting
her as a literal, historical character. He noted that “the serpent
deceived Eve by his craftiness” (2 Corinthians 11:3). Peter used the
Flood to discuss an analogy of our salvation (1 Peter 3:21), and
referred to the emerging Earth as something that actually had taken
place (2 Peter 3:5b).
There are numerous other examples such as these that could be given if
space allowed. The point, however, is well made. The first eleven
chapters of Genesis, which we often refer to as the “creation chapters,”
are an integral part of the biblical record. They are not warts or
growths that may be shaved off, leaving the remainder intact. Jesus
accepted them as correct and reliable, and used them as a basis for many
of His teachings. If Adam turns out to be a myth, as many today would
have us believe, Jesus is likewise reduced in stature. The two do indeed
“stand or fall together.” Jesus’ teachings on creation stressed its
importance. If it was important to Him, it should be equally as
important to us as well.
REFERENCES
Cremer, H. (1962),
Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek (London: T & T Clark).
Culp, G. Richard (1975),
Remember Thy Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
Harvey, Van A. (1966),
The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan).
Segraves, K.L. (1973),
Jesus Christ Creator (San Diego, CA: Creation-Science Research Center).
Teller, Woolsey and James D. Bales (1976),
The Existence of God—A Debate (Shreveport, LA: Lambert).
Thayer, J.H. (1958),
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark).
Vine, W.E. (1951),
First Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).
Whitcomb, John C. (1972),
The Early Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
Whitcomb, John C. (1973), “Methods of the Creator,”
And God Created, Vol. III, ed. K.L. Segraves (San Diego, CA: Creation-Science Research Center).
