§ 40. FAITH IN GOD THE CREATOR

The insight that man owes his existence and form, together with all the reality distinct from God, to God's creation, is achieved only in the reception and answer of the divine self-witness, that is, only in faith in Jesus Christ, i.e., in the knowledge of the unity of Creator and creature actualised in Him, and in the life in the present mediated by Him, under the right and in the experience of the goodness of the Creator towards His creature. (III.1, 3)

"The first article of the 'Apostles'' creed says: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. . . . These last words . . . say that He who alone is God the Father Almighty is not alone. . . . Before these words, however, as before the whole creed, there stands the word . . . I believe." (III.1, 3)

"The doctrine of the creation . . . is an article of faith." (III.1, 3)

"The proposition that God created heaven and earth and man asserts that the whole reality distinct from God truly is. Negatively, therefore, it asserts that God does not exist alone." (III.1, 5)

"The proposition that God created heaven and earth and man asserts that this whole sphere is from God, willed and established by Him as a reality which is distinct from His own. . . . God could be alone; the world cannot." (III.1, 7)

"The statement which calls God the Creator of heaven and earth may be traced back in all its explicit and implicit elements to the linguistic usage of Holy Scripture." (III.1, 11)

"God the Creator is not the supreme being of our own choice and fancy. He is the Lord of the history of Israel." (III.1, 13)

"The Bible gives us God's own witness to Himself . . . the witness to Jesus Christ. Its word in all words is this Word. And it is this Word, its witness to Jesus Christ, which makes all of its words the infallible Word of God. . . . The whole Bible speaks figuratively and prophetically of Him, of Jesus Christ, when it speaks of creation, the Creator and the creature. If, therefore, we are rightly to understand and estimate what it says about creation, we must first see that . . . this refers and testifies first and last to Him." (III.1, 23-24)

"Jesus Christ is the Word by which the knowledge of creation is mediated to us because He is the Word by which God has fulfilled creation and continually maintains and rules it. . . . Jesus Christ is the key to the secret of creation. . . . I believe in Jesus Christ, God's Son our Lord, in order to perceive and to understand that God the Almighty, the Father, is the Creator of heaven and earth." (III.1, 28-29)

"Faith in Jesus Christ is a life in the presence of the Creator." (III.1, 32)

Such a life of faith experiences and recognizes God's "power over all things and situations," (III.1, 34), God's "right over His creature," (III.1, 36), and God's "benevolence" (III.1, 38).

§ 41. CREATION AND COVENANT

Creation comes first in the series of works of the triune God, and is thus the beginning of all the things distinct from God himself. Since it contains in itself the beginning of time, its historical reality eludes all historical observation and account, and can be expressed in the biblical creation narratives only in the form of pure saga. But according to this witness the purpose and therefore the meaning of creation is to make possible the history of God's covenant with man which has its beginning, its centre and its culmination in Jesus Christ. The history of this covenant is as much the goal of creation as creation itself is the beginning of this history. (III.1, 42)

1. Creation, History and Creation History (III.1, 42)

"The aim of creation is history. This follows decisively from the fact that God the Creator is the triune God who acts and who reveals Himself in history. God will and God creates the creature for the sake of His Son or Word and therefore in harmony with Himself; and for His own supreme glory and therefore in the Holy Spirit. He wills and creates it for the sake of that which in His grace He wills to do to it and with it by His Son or Word in the Holy Spirit. The execution of this activity is history. What is meant is the history of the covenant of grace instituted by god between Himself and man; the sequence of the events in which God concludes and executes this covenant with man, carrying it to its goal, and thus validating in the sphere of the creature that which from all eternity He has determined in Himself; the sequence of the events for the sake of which God has patience with the creature and with its creation gives it time--time which acquires content through these events and which is finally to be 'fulfilled' and made ripe for its end by their conclusion. This history is from the theological standpoint the history." (III.1, 59)

2. Creation as the External Basis of the Covenant (III.1, 94)

"God loves the being which could not exist without Him, but only does by Him. God loves His own creature. This is the absolutely unique feature of the covenant in which His love is exercised and fulfilled. Its external basis, i.e., the existence and being of the creature with which He is covenanted, is the work of His own will and achievement. His creation is the external basis of this covenant. So firmly is this covenant established!" (III.1, 96)

This section consists almost entirely of a verse by verse exposition of Genesis 1.

3. The Covenant as the Internal Basis of Creation (III.1, 228)

"The main interest now is not how creation promises, proclaims and prophesies the covenant, but how it prefigures and to that extent anticipates it without being identical with it; not how creation prepares the covenant, but how in so doing it is itself already a unique sing of the covenant and a true sacrament; not Jesus Christ as the goal, but Jesus Christ as the beginning (the beginning just because He is the goal) of creation." (III.1, 232)

This section consists almost entirely of a verse by verse exposition of Genesis 2.  

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