Chapter 8

3. Creation from eternity.This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen, Martineau, John Caird, Knight, and Pfleiderer. The necessity of supposing such creation from eternity has been argued from God's omnipotence, God's timelessness, God's immutability, and God's love. We consider each of these arguments in their order.Origen held that God was from eternity the creator of the world of spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the maxims:“Without the world God is not God.... God created the world to satisfy a want in himself.... He cannot but constitute himself the Father of spirits.”Schiller, Die Freundschaft, last stanza, gives the following popular expression to this view:“Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister; Fühlte Mangel, darum schuf er Geister, Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Geisterreiches Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.”The poet's thought was perhaps suggested by Goethe's Sorrows of Werther:“The flight of a bird above my head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the infinite.”Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 31—“But I need now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men. And since, not even when the whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, To slake thy thirst.”But this regards the Creator as dependent upon, and in bondage to, his own world.Pythagoras held that nature's substances and laws are eternal. Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:144; 2:250, seems to make the creation of the world an eternal process,[pg 387]conceiving of it as a self-sundering of the Deity, in whom in some way the world was always contained (Schurman, Belief in God, 140). Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 94, quotes from Byron's Cain, I:1—“Let him Sit on his vast and solitary throne, Creating worlds, to make eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence And unparticipated solitude.... He, so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create and recreate.”Byron puts these words into the mouth of Lucifer. Yet Knight, in his Essays in Philosophy, 143, 247, regards the universe as the everlasting effect of an eternal Cause. Dualism, he thinks, is involved in the very notion of a search for God.W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“God is the source of the universe. Whether by immediate production at some point of time, so that after he had existed alone there came by his act to be a universe, or by perpetual production from his own spiritual being, so that his eternal existence was always accompanied by a universe in some stage of being, God has brought the universe into existence.... Any method in which the independent God could produce a universe which without him could have had no existence, is accordant with the teachings of Scripture. Many find it easier philosophically to hold that God has eternally brought forth creation from himself, so that there has never been a time when there was not a universe in some stage of existence, than to think of an instantaneous creation of all existing things when there had been nothing but God before. Between these two views theology is not compelled to decide, provided we believe that God is a free Spirit greater than the universe.”We dissent from this conclusion of Dr. Clarke, and hold that Scripture requires us to trace the universe back to a beginning, while reason itself is better satisfied with this view than it can be with the theory of creation from eternity.(a) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's omnipotence. Omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only power to create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing begun. Creation from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which is self-contradictory is not an object of power.The argument rests upon a misconception of eternity, regarding it as a prolongation of time into the endless past. We have seen in our discussion of eternity as an attribute of God, that eternity is not endless time, or time without beginning, but rather superiority to the law of time. Since eternity is no more past than it is present, the idea of creation from eternity is an irrational one. We must distinguishcreation in eternity past(= God and the world coëternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he is the begetter of the Son) fromcontinuous creation(which is an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the doctrine of Preservation, pages 415, 416). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 81, 82—“Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity cannot be actually traversed any more than we can reach the bound of an eternity to come. There was notimebefore creation, because there was nosuccession.”Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can be known of God or the origin of things.”Veitch, Knowing and Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is; the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”(b) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's timelessness. Because God is free from the law of time it does not follow that creation is free from that law. Rather is it true that no eternal creation is conceivable, since this involves an infinite number. Time must have had a beginning, and since the universe and time are coëxistent, creation could not have been from eternity.[pg 388]Jude 25—“Before all time”—implies that time had a beginning, andEph. 1:4—“before the foundation of the world”—implies that creation itself had a beginning. Is creation infinite? No, says Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:459, because to a perfect creation unity is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and there can be no organism without a definite number of parts. For a similar reason Dorner, System Doctrine, 2:28, denies that the universe can be eternal. Granting on the one hand that the world though eternal might be dependent upon God and as soon as the plan was evolved there might be no reason why the execution should be delayed, yet on the other hand the absolutely limitless is the imperfect and no universe with an infinite number of parts is conceivable or possible. So Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:220-225—“What has a goal or end must have a beginning; history, as teleological, implies creation.”Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his nature.... The word‘creation’ought not to be used to designate a deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his will.”So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for themselves.”On this view that God is the Ground but not the Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion, 23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action”in which both Lotze and Schurman believe.“To deny that divine power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.”No one can prove that“it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe originating in time.(c) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's immutability. His immutability requires, not an eternal creation, but only an eternal plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation, these too would need to be eternal.We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution. Much of God's plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its execution. But the beginning of the execution of God's plan is creation. Active will is an element in creation. God's will is not always active. He waits for“the fulness of the time”(Gal. 4:4) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ's earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity usually interpretGen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,”andJohn 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word,”as both and alike meaning“in eternity.”But neither of these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was its author and that the Word already was.(d) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's love. Creation is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason, and Power of God, God can“reconcile all things to himself”in Christ (Col. 1:20). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of God asrevealinghimself in Christ, the idea of creation as an eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ which antedate the world (Eph. 1:4). The doctrine of the Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and resting in God, which would equalize God's being with the changeable course of human life. Nor[pg 389]could it be conceived what should have hindered God from creating the world up to the beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena, that the divine creating is equally eternal with God's being.”(e) Creation from eternity, moreover, is inconsistent with the divine independence and personality. Since God's power and love are infinite, a creation that satisfied them must be infinite in extent as well as eternal in past duration—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.Gore, Incarnation, 136, 137—“Christian theology is the harmony of pantheism and deism.... It enjoys all the riches of pantheism without its inherent weakness on the moral side, without making God dependent on the world, as the world is dependent on God. On the other hand, Christianity converts an unintelligible deism into a rational theism. It can explain how God became a creator in time, because it knows how creation has its eternal analogue in the uncreated nature; it was God's nature eternally to produce, to communicate itself, to live.”In other words, it can explain how God can be eternally alive, independent, self-sufficient, since he is Trinity. Creation from eternity is a natural and logical outgrowth of Unitarian tendencies in theology. It is of a piece with the Stoic monism of which we read in Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 177—“Stoic monism conceived of the world as a self-evolution of God. Into such a conception the idea of a beginning does not necessarily enter. It is consistent with the idea of an eternal process of differentiation. That which is always has been under changed and changing forms. The theory is cosmological rather than cosmogonical. It rather explains the world as it is, than gives an account of its origin.”4. Spontaneous generation.This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that(a) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present teach us, the law of nature is“omne vivum e vivo,”or“ex ovo.”Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3:814-818—on Monogeny or Thaumatogeny; quoted in Argyle, Reign of Law, 281—“We discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or coming-to-be of new plants and animals.”So Bastian, Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms, Beginnings of Life, and articles on Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in Nature, 2:170, 193, 219, 410, 431. See Huxley's Address before the British Association, and Reply to Bastian, in Nature, 2:400, 473; also Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay Sermons, 142. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm or Life, Matter, and Mind, 73-75.In favor of Redi's maxim,“omne vivum e vivo,”see Huxley, in Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place or has taken place within the period during which the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man, 1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.”On the Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 39-57.[pg 390](b) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an impossibility of accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.Sully:“Every doctrine of evolution must assume some definite initial arrangement which is supposed to contain the possibilities of the order which we find to be evolved and no other possibility.”Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 258—“If no creative fiat can be believed to create something out of nothing, still less is evolution able to perform such a contradiction.”As we can get morality only out of a moral germ, so we can get vitality only out of a vital germ. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 14—“By brooding long enough on an egg that is next to nothing, you can in this way hatch any universe actual or possible. Is it not evident that this is a mere trick of imagination, concealing its thefts of causation by committing them little by little, and taking the heap from the divine storehouse grain by grain?”Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all life-cells, whether animal or vegetable.“Omnis cellula e cellula, sed primaria cellula ex organismo.”God created first the tree, and its seed was in it when created (Gen. 1:12). Protoplasm is notproton, butdeuteron; the elements are antecedent to it. It is not true that man was never made at all but only“growed”like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is: Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”(c) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to any valuable end without guidance of the same intelligence which initiated it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as supplementing the divine fiat which first called the elements into being.There is such a thing as free will, and free will does not, like the deterministic will, run in a groove. If there be free will in man, then much more is there free will in God, and God's will does not run in a groove. God is not bound by law or to law. Wisdom does not imply monotony or uniformity. God can do a thing once that is never done again. Circumstances are never twice alike. Here is the basis not only of creation but of new creation, including miracle, incarnation, resurrection, regeneration, redemption. Though will both in God and in man is for the most part automatic and acts according to law, yet the power of new beginnings, of creative action, resides in will, wherever it is free, and this free will chiefly makes God to be God and man to be man. Without it life would be hardly worth the living, for it would be only the life of the brute. All schemes of evolution which ignore this freedom of God are pantheistic in their tendencies, for they practically deny both God's transcendence and his personality.Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent. Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God. If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only God's way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its[pg 391]teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal life a plastic power.”Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism.... With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a psychical something endowed with feelings and will,i. e., Life and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition. 149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it. 274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not Godandmechanism, but Godonlyand no mechanism. 283—Naturalism and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of Spiritualistic Monism.”Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”

This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen, Martineau, John Caird, Knight, and Pfleiderer. The necessity of supposing such creation from eternity has been argued from God's omnipotence, God's timelessness, God's immutability, and God's love. We consider each of these arguments in their order.

Origen held that God was from eternity the creator of the world of spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the maxims:“Without the world God is not God.... God created the world to satisfy a want in himself.... He cannot but constitute himself the Father of spirits.”Schiller, Die Freundschaft, last stanza, gives the following popular expression to this view:“Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister; Fühlte Mangel, darum schuf er Geister, Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Geisterreiches Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.”The poet's thought was perhaps suggested by Goethe's Sorrows of Werther:“The flight of a bird above my head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the infinite.”Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 31—“But I need now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men. And since, not even when the whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, To slake thy thirst.”But this regards the Creator as dependent upon, and in bondage to, his own world.Pythagoras held that nature's substances and laws are eternal. Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:144; 2:250, seems to make the creation of the world an eternal process,[pg 387]conceiving of it as a self-sundering of the Deity, in whom in some way the world was always contained (Schurman, Belief in God, 140). Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 94, quotes from Byron's Cain, I:1—“Let him Sit on his vast and solitary throne, Creating worlds, to make eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence And unparticipated solitude.... He, so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create and recreate.”Byron puts these words into the mouth of Lucifer. Yet Knight, in his Essays in Philosophy, 143, 247, regards the universe as the everlasting effect of an eternal Cause. Dualism, he thinks, is involved in the very notion of a search for God.W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“God is the source of the universe. Whether by immediate production at some point of time, so that after he had existed alone there came by his act to be a universe, or by perpetual production from his own spiritual being, so that his eternal existence was always accompanied by a universe in some stage of being, God has brought the universe into existence.... Any method in which the independent God could produce a universe which without him could have had no existence, is accordant with the teachings of Scripture. Many find it easier philosophically to hold that God has eternally brought forth creation from himself, so that there has never been a time when there was not a universe in some stage of existence, than to think of an instantaneous creation of all existing things when there had been nothing but God before. Between these two views theology is not compelled to decide, provided we believe that God is a free Spirit greater than the universe.”We dissent from this conclusion of Dr. Clarke, and hold that Scripture requires us to trace the universe back to a beginning, while reason itself is better satisfied with this view than it can be with the theory of creation from eternity.

Pythagoras held that nature's substances and laws are eternal. Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:144; 2:250, seems to make the creation of the world an eternal process,[pg 387]conceiving of it as a self-sundering of the Deity, in whom in some way the world was always contained (Schurman, Belief in God, 140). Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 94, quotes from Byron's Cain, I:1—“Let him Sit on his vast and solitary throne, Creating worlds, to make eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence And unparticipated solitude.... He, so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create and recreate.”Byron puts these words into the mouth of Lucifer. Yet Knight, in his Essays in Philosophy, 143, 247, regards the universe as the everlasting effect of an eternal Cause. Dualism, he thinks, is involved in the very notion of a search for God.

W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“God is the source of the universe. Whether by immediate production at some point of time, so that after he had existed alone there came by his act to be a universe, or by perpetual production from his own spiritual being, so that his eternal existence was always accompanied by a universe in some stage of being, God has brought the universe into existence.... Any method in which the independent God could produce a universe which without him could have had no existence, is accordant with the teachings of Scripture. Many find it easier philosophically to hold that God has eternally brought forth creation from himself, so that there has never been a time when there was not a universe in some stage of existence, than to think of an instantaneous creation of all existing things when there had been nothing but God before. Between these two views theology is not compelled to decide, provided we believe that God is a free Spirit greater than the universe.”We dissent from this conclusion of Dr. Clarke, and hold that Scripture requires us to trace the universe back to a beginning, while reason itself is better satisfied with this view than it can be with the theory of creation from eternity.

(a) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's omnipotence. Omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only power to create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing begun. Creation from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which is self-contradictory is not an object of power.

The argument rests upon a misconception of eternity, regarding it as a prolongation of time into the endless past. We have seen in our discussion of eternity as an attribute of God, that eternity is not endless time, or time without beginning, but rather superiority to the law of time. Since eternity is no more past than it is present, the idea of creation from eternity is an irrational one. We must distinguishcreation in eternity past(= God and the world coëternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he is the begetter of the Son) fromcontinuous creation(which is an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the doctrine of Preservation, pages 415, 416). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 81, 82—“Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity cannot be actually traversed any more than we can reach the bound of an eternity to come. There was notimebefore creation, because there was nosuccession.”Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can be known of God or the origin of things.”Veitch, Knowing and Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is; the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”

Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can be known of God or the origin of things.”Veitch, Knowing and Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is; the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”

(b) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's timelessness. Because God is free from the law of time it does not follow that creation is free from that law. Rather is it true that no eternal creation is conceivable, since this involves an infinite number. Time must have had a beginning, and since the universe and time are coëxistent, creation could not have been from eternity.

Jude 25—“Before all time”—implies that time had a beginning, andEph. 1:4—“before the foundation of the world”—implies that creation itself had a beginning. Is creation infinite? No, says Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:459, because to a perfect creation unity is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and there can be no organism without a definite number of parts. For a similar reason Dorner, System Doctrine, 2:28, denies that the universe can be eternal. Granting on the one hand that the world though eternal might be dependent upon God and as soon as the plan was evolved there might be no reason why the execution should be delayed, yet on the other hand the absolutely limitless is the imperfect and no universe with an infinite number of parts is conceivable or possible. So Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:220-225—“What has a goal or end must have a beginning; history, as teleological, implies creation.”Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his nature.... The word‘creation’ought not to be used to designate a deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his will.”So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for themselves.”On this view that God is the Ground but not the Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion, 23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action”in which both Lotze and Schurman believe.“To deny that divine power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.”No one can prove that“it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe originating in time.

Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his nature.... The word‘creation’ought not to be used to designate a deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his will.”So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for themselves.”On this view that God is the Ground but not the Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion, 23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action”in which both Lotze and Schurman believe.“To deny that divine power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.”No one can prove that“it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe originating in time.

(c) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's immutability. His immutability requires, not an eternal creation, but only an eternal plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation, these too would need to be eternal.

We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution. Much of God's plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its execution. But the beginning of the execution of God's plan is creation. Active will is an element in creation. God's will is not always active. He waits for“the fulness of the time”(Gal. 4:4) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ's earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity usually interpretGen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,”andJohn 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word,”as both and alike meaning“in eternity.”But neither of these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was its author and that the Word already was.

(d) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's love. Creation is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.

Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason, and Power of God, God can“reconcile all things to himself”in Christ (Col. 1:20). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of God asrevealinghimself in Christ, the idea of creation as an eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ which antedate the world (Eph. 1:4). The doctrine of the Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and resting in God, which would equalize God's being with the changeable course of human life. Nor[pg 389]could it be conceived what should have hindered God from creating the world up to the beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena, that the divine creating is equally eternal with God's being.”

(e) Creation from eternity, moreover, is inconsistent with the divine independence and personality. Since God's power and love are infinite, a creation that satisfied them must be infinite in extent as well as eternal in past duration—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.

Gore, Incarnation, 136, 137—“Christian theology is the harmony of pantheism and deism.... It enjoys all the riches of pantheism without its inherent weakness on the moral side, without making God dependent on the world, as the world is dependent on God. On the other hand, Christianity converts an unintelligible deism into a rational theism. It can explain how God became a creator in time, because it knows how creation has its eternal analogue in the uncreated nature; it was God's nature eternally to produce, to communicate itself, to live.”In other words, it can explain how God can be eternally alive, independent, self-sufficient, since he is Trinity. Creation from eternity is a natural and logical outgrowth of Unitarian tendencies in theology. It is of a piece with the Stoic monism of which we read in Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 177—“Stoic monism conceived of the world as a self-evolution of God. Into such a conception the idea of a beginning does not necessarily enter. It is consistent with the idea of an eternal process of differentiation. That which is always has been under changed and changing forms. The theory is cosmological rather than cosmogonical. It rather explains the world as it is, than gives an account of its origin.”

4. Spontaneous generation.This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that(a) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present teach us, the law of nature is“omne vivum e vivo,”or“ex ovo.”Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3:814-818—on Monogeny or Thaumatogeny; quoted in Argyle, Reign of Law, 281—“We discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or coming-to-be of new plants and animals.”So Bastian, Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms, Beginnings of Life, and articles on Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in Nature, 2:170, 193, 219, 410, 431. See Huxley's Address before the British Association, and Reply to Bastian, in Nature, 2:400, 473; also Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay Sermons, 142. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm or Life, Matter, and Mind, 73-75.In favor of Redi's maxim,“omne vivum e vivo,”see Huxley, in Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place or has taken place within the period during which the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man, 1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.”On the Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 39-57.[pg 390](b) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an impossibility of accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.Sully:“Every doctrine of evolution must assume some definite initial arrangement which is supposed to contain the possibilities of the order which we find to be evolved and no other possibility.”Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 258—“If no creative fiat can be believed to create something out of nothing, still less is evolution able to perform such a contradiction.”As we can get morality only out of a moral germ, so we can get vitality only out of a vital germ. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 14—“By brooding long enough on an egg that is next to nothing, you can in this way hatch any universe actual or possible. Is it not evident that this is a mere trick of imagination, concealing its thefts of causation by committing them little by little, and taking the heap from the divine storehouse grain by grain?”Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all life-cells, whether animal or vegetable.“Omnis cellula e cellula, sed primaria cellula ex organismo.”God created first the tree, and its seed was in it when created (Gen. 1:12). Protoplasm is notproton, butdeuteron; the elements are antecedent to it. It is not true that man was never made at all but only“growed”like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is: Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”(c) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to any valuable end without guidance of the same intelligence which initiated it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as supplementing the divine fiat which first called the elements into being.There is such a thing as free will, and free will does not, like the deterministic will, run in a groove. If there be free will in man, then much more is there free will in God, and God's will does not run in a groove. God is not bound by law or to law. Wisdom does not imply monotony or uniformity. God can do a thing once that is never done again. Circumstances are never twice alike. Here is the basis not only of creation but of new creation, including miracle, incarnation, resurrection, regeneration, redemption. Though will both in God and in man is for the most part automatic and acts according to law, yet the power of new beginnings, of creative action, resides in will, wherever it is free, and this free will chiefly makes God to be God and man to be man. Without it life would be hardly worth the living, for it would be only the life of the brute. All schemes of evolution which ignore this freedom of God are pantheistic in their tendencies, for they practically deny both God's transcendence and his personality.Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent. Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God. If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only God's way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its[pg 391]teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal life a plastic power.”Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism.... With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a psychical something endowed with feelings and will,i. e., Life and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition. 149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it. 274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not Godandmechanism, but Godonlyand no mechanism. 283—Naturalism and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of Spiritualistic Monism.”Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”

This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that

(a) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present teach us, the law of nature is“omne vivum e vivo,”or“ex ovo.”

Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3:814-818—on Monogeny or Thaumatogeny; quoted in Argyle, Reign of Law, 281—“We discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or coming-to-be of new plants and animals.”So Bastian, Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms, Beginnings of Life, and articles on Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in Nature, 2:170, 193, 219, 410, 431. See Huxley's Address before the British Association, and Reply to Bastian, in Nature, 2:400, 473; also Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay Sermons, 142. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm or Life, Matter, and Mind, 73-75.In favor of Redi's maxim,“omne vivum e vivo,”see Huxley, in Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place or has taken place within the period during which the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man, 1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.”On the Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 39-57.

In favor of Redi's maxim,“omne vivum e vivo,”see Huxley, in Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place or has taken place within the period during which the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man, 1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.”On the Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 39-57.

(b) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an impossibility of accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.

Sully:“Every doctrine of evolution must assume some definite initial arrangement which is supposed to contain the possibilities of the order which we find to be evolved and no other possibility.”Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 258—“If no creative fiat can be believed to create something out of nothing, still less is evolution able to perform such a contradiction.”As we can get morality only out of a moral germ, so we can get vitality only out of a vital germ. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 14—“By brooding long enough on an egg that is next to nothing, you can in this way hatch any universe actual or possible. Is it not evident that this is a mere trick of imagination, concealing its thefts of causation by committing them little by little, and taking the heap from the divine storehouse grain by grain?”Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all life-cells, whether animal or vegetable.“Omnis cellula e cellula, sed primaria cellula ex organismo.”God created first the tree, and its seed was in it when created (Gen. 1:12). Protoplasm is notproton, butdeuteron; the elements are antecedent to it. It is not true that man was never made at all but only“growed”like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is: Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”

Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all life-cells, whether animal or vegetable.“Omnis cellula e cellula, sed primaria cellula ex organismo.”God created first the tree, and its seed was in it when created (Gen. 1:12). Protoplasm is notproton, butdeuteron; the elements are antecedent to it. It is not true that man was never made at all but only“growed”like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is: Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”

(c) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to any valuable end without guidance of the same intelligence which initiated it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as supplementing the divine fiat which first called the elements into being.

There is such a thing as free will, and free will does not, like the deterministic will, run in a groove. If there be free will in man, then much more is there free will in God, and God's will does not run in a groove. God is not bound by law or to law. Wisdom does not imply monotony or uniformity. God can do a thing once that is never done again. Circumstances are never twice alike. Here is the basis not only of creation but of new creation, including miracle, incarnation, resurrection, regeneration, redemption. Though will both in God and in man is for the most part automatic and acts according to law, yet the power of new beginnings, of creative action, resides in will, wherever it is free, and this free will chiefly makes God to be God and man to be man. Without it life would be hardly worth the living, for it would be only the life of the brute. All schemes of evolution which ignore this freedom of God are pantheistic in their tendencies, for they practically deny both God's transcendence and his personality.Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent. Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God. If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only God's way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its[pg 391]teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal life a plastic power.”Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism.... With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a psychical something endowed with feelings and will,i. e., Life and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition. 149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it. 274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not Godandmechanism, but Godonlyand no mechanism. 283—Naturalism and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of Spiritualistic Monism.”Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”

Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent. Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God. If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only God's way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its[pg 391]teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal life a plastic power.”

Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism.... With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a psychical something endowed with feelings and will,i. e., Life and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition. 149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it. 274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not Godandmechanism, but Godonlyand no mechanism. 283—Naturalism and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of Spiritualistic Monism.”Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”

Back to Index Next