And God said . . .

: Education and
the Importance of Creation Order
Michael Goheen
Trinity Western University
Langley, B.C., Canada

Starting with the Gospel

Restorative: Good news! God is restoring
creation
Comprehensive: Good news! God is
restoring all of human life in the context of
all of the creation
Story: Climax of long story of restoration
Mission: Given to church to make known

Introductory remarks:
Lives not shaped by a doctrine of creation
as much as it should be
Understanding of creation essential for
education
Genesis 1 shows us Gods original intention
for world
Genesis 1 must be understood in original
context

Historical and Cultural Context

Moses writing just after exodus

from Egypt
Polemic against the myths,
religion, gods of paganism
Genesis one contains doctrine so rich in meaning that it
cannot be easily over-interpreted theologically. (Von Rad)

Moses concerns were exclusively

religious. His intent was to proclaim
knowledge of the true God as he
manifested himself in his creative works,
to proclaim a right understanding of
humankind, the world, and history that
knowledge of the true God entails--and to
proclaim the truth concerning these matters
in the face of the false religious notions
dominant throughout the world of his day.
-John Stek

Literary Structure of Genesis 1

Stage One: Gen. 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth.
The earth was dark, formless, empty.

Very Good Cosmos

Stage Two: Gen. 1.3-2.3

Darkness banished by creation of light (day 1)

Formlessness removed by creation of sky, dry land
and seas (days 2-3)
Emptiness remedied by creation of creatures to
dwell in four areas (days 4-6)
Accomplished by commands of God
Powerful word
Good word
Wise word

Gods Creating Word

Creating words of God

By the word of the LORD were the heavens
made, their starry host by the breath of his
mouth. (Ps. 33.6)
For he spoke, and it came to be; he
commanded, and it stood firm. (Ps. 33.9)
By faith we understand that the universe was
formed at Gods command, so that what is
seen was not made out of what was visible.
(Heb. 11.3)

Word of God
Originating word: Word that creates wise
and good order of creation
Continuing word: Same word continues to
bring order (2 Peter 3.7; Ps. 147, 148)

Gods Upholding Word

God has called the universe into being out of
nothing, and hence at every moment it hangs
suspended, as it were, over the abyss of nonexistence. If God were to withdraw his upholding
Word, then all being . . . would instantly tumble
back into nothing and cease to exist. The
continuation of the universe from one moment to
the next is therefore as great a miracle and as fully
the work of God as is its coming into being at the
beginning.
- Bruce Milne

Two Storeys of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Spiritual realm

GRACE

Supernatural

Soul
Church
Christian life
Faith
Revelation
Theology
__________________________________________
Material realm

NATURE

Body
Society
Empirical reason Natural law

Natural
Cultural life
Science

From dualism to secularism

. . . in connection with the history of his

influence the fact cannot be overlooked that
the Christian mediaeval synthesis presented
by Thomas is one of extreme tension, and in
the dynamic of historical development had
effects which were to prove self-destructive:
there was to be an unprecedented and allembracing movement of secularization and
emancipation at the lower level. (Kng)

Secularism in succeeding centuries

While scholastic theologians granted a
limited degree of autonomy to the realm of
our natural life (and natural reason), the
Renaissance humanists so greatly expanded
the autonomy of nature that there was no
longer any need for the realm of grace. If
God and Christianity were already basically
irrelevant to most of life, why not make
their irrelevance complete? (Walsh and
Middleton)

Two Storeys of Thomas Aquinas

Spiritual realm

GRACE

Supernatural

Soul
Church
Christian life
Faith
Revelation
Theology
__________________________________________
Material realm

NATURE

Body
Society
Empirical reason Natural law

Natural
Cultural life
Science

Historical results
Creation separated from presence of God
Natural laws built into creation
Can be discerned by autonomous reason
Controlled to harness laws for social uses
Technology and rational organisation of
society

Creation according to Scripture

Secular world devoid of Gods

presence

Deistic world devoid of Gods

presence

Christian education . . .
. . . resisting secularism that teaches about
Gods world as if his presence did not
matter.

Gods presence permeates the world

In Him we live and move and have our being.
(Paul, Acts 17.28)
God has so implicated Himself with [the
creation], and taken it into His very bosom, by His
presence in it, His providence over it, His
impressions upon it, and His influences through it,
that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it
without in some aspects contemplating Him.
(Cardinal Newman)

Gods immanence in creation

There is not an atom of the universe in
which you cannot see some brilliant sparks
at least of his glory. God is immanent in all
creation. The pure of heart see God
everywhere. Everything is full of God. I
confess that the expression, Nature is God
may be used in a pious sense by a pious
mind!
(Herman Bavinck, quoting John Calvin)

Charged with the grandeur of God

The world is charged with the grandeur of
God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil.
Crushed . . .
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Gods presence and knowledge

He is One who is sovereign over, operative amidst,
independent of, the appointments which He has
made; One in whose hands are all things, who has
a purpose in every event, and a standard for every
deed, and thus has relations of His own towards
the subject-matter of each particular science which
the book of knowledge unfolds; who has with an
adorable, never-ceasing energy implicated Himself
in all the history of creation, the constitution of
nature, the course of the world, the origin of
society, the fortunes of the nations, the action of
the human mind . . .
- Cardinal Newman

Life coram Deo

Before the face of God or in the presence
of God
Latin phrase, 50x in Vulgate
Oriental court where servants live in Kings
presence, alert, ready to respond to his
bidding

Christian education . . .
. . . resisting naturalism that teaches about
non-human creation as if Gods word and
activity does not matter.

Gods activity in upholding in the

non-human creation

Psalm 147.7-9, 15-18

Gods Ruling Word

The Bible shows us a personalistic world, not
impersonal law. What we call scientific law is
an approximate human description of just how
faithfully and consistently God acts in ruling the
world by speaking. There is not mathematical,
physical, or theoretical cosmic machinery
behind what we see and know, holding
everything in place. Rather God rules and rules
consistently
- Vern Poythress

Three uses of word law

Word God speaks to give creation order
Lawful regularity we experience in creation
Attempt at scientific, analytical formulation
of these regularities

E. D. Fackerell

Christian education . . .
. . . resisting relativism that sees human life
as free from Gods ordering word.
. . . teaching for wisdom that finds true
freedom by discerning Gods order for
human life.

What is wisdom?
. . . the practical knowledge of
the laws of life and of the world
based on experience.
- Von Rad

Divine and human wisdom

Wisdom [is] wrought into the constitution of the

universe so that human wisdom is ethical
conformity to Gods creation (Fleming).
Kosmos: the world held a divine order and
therefore wisdom was fitting oneself into this
divine order. (Gladigow).
Gods wisdom (order); human wisdom
(conformity to that order)

Gods Word as Law

. . . the Ten Commandments are a brief
summary of the Christian ethic and an
unsurpassed rule for our life. There are also
many other laws to which we are bound. God
also laid down laws for our thinking, for our
appreciation of the beautiful, for our social
life, for heaven and earth, for sun and moon
and stars, for day and night, for summer and
winter, for seed time and harvest.
- Herman Bavinck

Scope of Gods Ordinances

. . . All created life necessarily bears in itself
a law for its existence, instituted by God
himself. . . . Consequently there are
ordinances of God for our bodies, for the
blood that courses through our arteries and
veins, and for our lungs as the organs of
respiration. And even so are there ordinances
of God in logic, to regulate our thoughts;
ordinances of God for our imagination, in the
domain of aesthetics; and so also, strict
ordinances of God whole of human life in the
domain of morals.
Abraham Kuyper

Diversity and lawfulness

Religious Beliefs
P Directing power
P Christ or idol

PCredal/Faith
PEthical
PPolitical/Judicial
PAesthetic
PEconomic
PSocial
PLingual
PHistorical/Formative
PAnalytical/Rational
PSensitive/Emotional
PBiotic/Life

Diversity and law

The merit of the much-disputed Philosophy of
the Cosmonomic Idea of the philosophers
Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven (Free University)
is that, from the perspective of the idea of
creation, it puts such a strong emphasis on the
variety and plurality of the various levels of
existence, and points out the confusion that
results from the failure to discern the laws
which hold for those different levels.
Hendrikus Berkhof

Word of God and education

The University must be bound to the word of God, in every
way in which God makes known to us his word: in nature,
in history, in our own heart, and in his Scriptural revelation.
Do not forget that the University does not only have a
Theological faculty, but also investigates nature, history, the
juridicial sphere and so much more. It is therefore not
enough to say that it is bound to Scripture. Wherever and
however God speaks, the University must always give ear
and follow. Materially, therefore, there is no difference of
opinion; the University must be bound to God and to God
alone, whenever and wherever God makes manifest his
Wisdom, his Will, and his Ordinance, or renders them
knowable through investigation and research.
- Abraham Kuyper

Life as religion
Everything has been created was, in its
creation, furnished by God with an
unchangeable law of its existence. And
because God has fully ordained such laws and
ordinances for all of life, therefore the
Calvinist demands that all life be consecrated
to His service, in strict obedience.
-Abraham Kuyper

Historical unfolding and cultural

embodiment
Now the peculiarity of all revelation is, that
while it posits principles and lays down
foundations, it charges men with the application
of these principles and the building upon these
foundations. Creation was the first revelation. . .
thought and speech life and history, science and
art, have all had their commencement in
principles which are laid down by Gods creative
power.
- Herman Bavinck