Creation Theology

[other one]

 

 

So . . .

 

Doesn't anyone else have any insights into what you learned about God and His relation to man out of the Creation account?

 

not that I would care to share amongst the folks posting lately...

 

This is an unproductive and unfortunate comment.

 

Oh really.....   I think I got my point across...   we'll see if it's unproductive or not.....   if it isn't productive then you are right in it being unfortunate.

[nebula]

  In Genesis 2:4, we find the first occurance of the Name YHVH.  That is God's redemptive Name.   It is the Name connected with all of His redemptive attributes (YHVH Rophe, YHVH Shammah, YHVH Shalom, etc.).   God relates to man redemptively as YHVH but to the rest of creation, He is simply Elohim.

 

I did not know that. I have always heard that the first time the name YHVH appeared was when God spoke to Moses.

[other one]

It makes sense to me in that we are to declare that he is our Lord...   and that's what my Bibles translate that word to.

[Guest shiloh357]

 

  In Genesis 2:4, we find the first occurance of the Name YHVH.  That is God's redemptive Name.   It is the Name connected with all of His redemptive attributes (YHVH Rophe, YHVH Shammah, YHVH Shalom, etc.).   God relates to man redemptively as YHVH but to the rest of creation, He is simply Elohim.

 

I did not know that. I have always heard that the first time the name YHVH appeared was when God spoke to Moses.

 

God's redemptive relationship goes back to even before the fall of man in the Garden.

[Guest shiloh357]

The Doctrine of Creation (DoC) reveals the wisdom of God, in that the kind of intelligence needed to create the universe would be incalcuable from our vantage point. As it applies to our relationship with God, it means that we should be turning to God as our ultimate source of wisdom.

 

So far, the DoC  has taught us in terms of our relationship with God that He alone is our lifegiver, He is the one that gives us value and provides purpose and meaning to our lives.  Without Him, we are little more than a cosmic accident.  In addition, up to this point, we see in the DoC that God is sovereign and this sovereignty extends to our lives as well.  God's sovereignty means that He is not a disinterested party in the affairs of our iives but is guiding and sustaining us according to a plan He has for the world at large and for us in general.   His sovereignty applies to the way God is guiding and sustaining material creation right down to the last atom which is pretty amazing given that He can control and maintain the earth and all of the countless trillions and trillions of stars while at the same time being able to listen to our prayers as if each of us were the only person on earth.

 

The DoC reveals the power of God in that it would take an all-powerful God to have made this universe.  It shows the degree of greatness He has over all that He has made.  He has the power and wisdom to create and sustain the universe.   As it applies to our relationship to God, there is no problem we have that He cannot handle and/or resolve.  His power is inexhaustible.   He provides the power we need to live not only in terms of our physical existence, but the power to live when it comes to our spiritual lives as well.    Every commandment from God, every mission He gives to us, is accompanied by the power He provides to fulfill all He has told us to do.  He empowers us to serve, to be obedient.   This should spur us on to trust in His power to save and keep us.  We should have no doubts, based on Genesis 1 that God has the power to be all taht we need Him to be in our lives.

 

The DoC  should also serve to remind us two very important thngs:  God, as Creator is Lord over creation AND by right of creation, He is worthy of our Worship   God made the universe and He rules universe as Lord.    He owns us.   All that is made belongs to Him and that includes us.   He is our King and as such He is also our eternal Judge, the one to whom we will stand before and give an account of our lives.

 

God is not our buddy.  Too often we try to be too familiar with HIm, thinking that God is down on our level, and He is not.  We deny his Lordship over our lives when we try to define the relationship on our terms, by what makes us comfortable.   God is not warm and fuzzy teddy bear we can snuggle up to.   He is our most dread sovereign and it behooves us to remember this when we approach Him.   God defines the terms of the relationship, not us.  We must not be like Nadab and Abihu who decided to come to God on their own terms and brought a strange fire into the sanctuary.

 

God is the one who is worthy as our Creator of all of our worship.  Worship has been cheapened in our modern culture.  Worship is not an event.  Worship means, literally from ancient Hebraic culture, to live in full dependence on God.   Obedience is utlimately the worship God demands.  Worship cannot be relegated to a compartment of our existence, but should be the color of the Christian life.

[Enoch2021]

The Doctrine of Creation (DoC) reveals the wisdom of God, in that the kind of intelligence needed to create the universe would be incalcuable from our vantage point. As it applies to our relationship with God, it means that we should be turning to God as our ultimate source of wisdom.

 

So far, the DoC  has taught us in terms of our relationship with God that He alone is our lifegiver, He is the one that gives us value and provides purpose and meaning to our lives.  Without Him, we are little more than a cosmic accident.  In addition, up to this point, we see in the DoC that God is sovereign and this sovereignty extends to our lives as well.  God's sovereignty means that He is not a disinterested party in the affairs of our iives but is guiding and sustaining us according to a plan He has for the world at large and for us in general.   His sovereignty applies to the way God is guiding and sustaining material creation right down to the last atom which is pretty amazing given that He can control and maintain the earth and all of the countless trillions and trillions of stars while at the same time being able to listen to our prayers as if each of us were the only person on earth.

 

The DoC reveals the power of God in that it would take an all-powerful God to have made this universe.  It shows the degree of greatness He has over all that He has made.  He has the power and wisdom to create and sustain the universe.   As it applies to our relationship to God, there is no problem we have that He cannot handle and/or resolve.  His power is inexhaustible.   He provides the power we need to live not only in terms of our physical existence, but the power to live when it comes to our spiritual lives as well.    Every commandment from God, every mission He gives to us, is accompanied by the power He provides to fulfill all He has told us to do.  He empowers us to serve, to be obedient.   This should spur us on to trust in His power to save and keep us.  We should have no doubts, based on Genesis 1 that God has the power to be all taht we need Him to be in our lives.

 

The DoC  should also serve to remind us two very important thngs:  God, as Creator is Lord over creation AND by right of creation, He is worthy of our Worship   God made the universe and He rules universe as Lord.    He owns us.   All that is made belongs to Him and that includes us.   He is our King and as such He is also our eternal Judge, the one to whom we will stand before and give an account of our lives.

 

God is not our buddy.  Too often we try to be too familiar with HIm, thinking that God is down on our level, and He is not.  We deny his Lordship over our lives when we try to define the relationship on our terms, by what makes us comfortable.   God is not warm and fuzzy teddy bear we can snuggle up to.   He is our most dread sovereign and it behooves us to remember this when we approach Him.   God defines the terms of the relationship, not us.  We must not be like Nadab and Abihu who decided to come to God on their own terms and brought a strange fire into the sanctuary.

 

God is the one who is worthy as our Creator of all of our worship.  Worship has been cheapened in our modern culture.  Worship is not an event.  Worship means, literally from ancient Hebraic culture, to live in full dependence on God.   Obedience is utlimately the worship God demands.  Worship cannot be relegated to a compartment of our existence, but should be the color of the Christian life.

 

AMEN!! AMEN!!  Preach it Brother!!   More, More...

[Guest]

So . . .

 

Doesn't anyone else have any insights into what you learned about God and His relation to man out of the Creation account?

 

 

not that I would care to share amongst the folks posting lately...

 

This is an unproductive and unfortunate comment.

 

 

He Is Worthy

 

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4:11

 

I Am Not

 

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Romans 5:12

 

He Is Worthy

 

And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; Hebrews 1:10-11

 

And  I Am So Blessed

 

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

[Sheniy]

When God opened the Torah with the Creation account, what was His purpose? Was He concerned with making His people acquainted with the heavens and the earth, or was He concerned with acquainting His people with Himself?

 

I believe His heart is for the people to know Him. Thus, I believe that explained the workings of Creation in such a way as for the people to understand Him.

 

So what if we stepped aside for a moment away from time frames and whether or not the Pinwheel Galaxy was created on the fourth Day and looked at what is God conveying to us that He wants us to know about Him?

My belief is that God is telling His people, "This is how I turned the darkness into a new dawning!" more so than "Look at what I can do in 24 hours!"

Here is why.

While the last interpretation may give you a sense of the bigness of God, it also makes Him seem, well, "out there", unapproachable. The first gives a sense of the nearness of God, like the gentle hands caressing an injured bird an healing its wings. Instead of God's magnificence being the "big power", His magnificence is being the healer, the deliverer, the restorer - like we see Jesus when He walked this earth.

When darkness is surrounding me and my life is in chaos, I don't need the Great Cosmic Being who created a septillion stars and innumerably more planets in 24 hours, I need the God who is attached to my chaos, darkness, and void, and will bring me into His light, make order of the chaos, and bring new life out of the void.

Knowing God for His power did not make the people fall in love with Him. In fact, they kept disrespecting His power time and time again (grumbling, complaining, disobeying).

So what would be the most likely scenario of what was in His heart - another description of His power, or a description of His love, healing, and deliverance, traits that would more likely draw His people to love Him?

I soooo agree with this.

We can debate exegesis, hebrew translations and scientific theories until we are blue, but I believe the beginning of Genesis was intended to introduce us to the One who spoke the universe into existence, not necessarily to specify the details of how exactly He did this.  Why does that matter?   I'm sure this has been said before, but Genesis isn't a science text book and shouldn't be used as one.  Does it need to be absolutely literal? I don't think that was the intent of the author.  Can you take it that way?  Sure, if you like.

 

Now the question is, why are they reported in that particular way, and that is the question I wonder about.

My personal opinion (other than stated above) on this based on study and speculation, and a little help from google for specifics I can't remember:

 

Genesis was written by Moses.  I am pretty sure he wasn't around during creation, so I think the written account of the beginning of the world was passed down from Adam through the generations (thousands of years, give or take).  I imagine Adam with his great-great-great-great grandchildren on his knee, recalling  the times he walked with God in the Garden.  Moses recorded the stories in Genesis, but they were probably passed down orally through the millenia.  I still trust that scripture is inspired, so Moses either recorded what he'd heard and/or was divinely shown these things.  Since no man was around during creation, it would have to be divinely inspired, either directly to Moses, or to someone else (Adam? Enoch? Abraham?) and passed on.  We trust the account of Moses (though he wasn't an eyewitness to the events of Genesis) just as we trust the men who decided which books are a part of the scripture we currently hold.

 

 There is something else in the  seven day account of Creation: God's standard for the Jewish daily, and weekly schedule (and more).  This was further established by (guess who?) Moses in later books when he gives the Israelites the Law. 

 

Arguments for the literal interpretation of the word "day" often point to the following: "it was evening and it was morning, the nth day" as evidence of a literal day. Why would that be included if it wasn't meant to be literal?  I am pretty sure the traditional Jewish day begins at sundown and ends the next day. They seem to be imitating God.  Maybe this was the intent of the phrase?  I can't remember if this is a specific law or just tradition. ( If this is how God's days go, then we're doing it wrong. lol)

 

Why did God specify seven days?  The number seven is huge in the bible (represents spiritual completeness, I believe).  Seven days, seven lampstands, seven trumpets, seven years, seven letters to the seven churches, seventy seven times seven, the seven spirits of God, et cetera.  The Jewish work week also imitated God during creation (work 6 days, rest the 7th).  They even had a Feast of Weeks (Shavuot means weeks; also called pentacost which means fiftieth day) which took place at the end of a "week of weeks".  Their entire culture was centered on this idea of a period of seven.  It was used in treatment of slaves/servants and the land they lived off of, among other things that I can't remember off-hand.

   Was this period of seven important because it was part of the creation account, or was the creation account revealed in a period of seven to reinforce the importance of a period of seven in the Jewish culture? 

 

(I can provide scripture references for much of this, but I don't have time to look right now.  Just throwing it out there for discussion.)

 

    Does my faith suffer if I don't take the Genesis account as literal 24 hour days?  No.

  Does this call into question the inerrancy of the bible? No.

Do I believe it's possible that God could create the universe in less than a week?  Yes. Of course.

Do I believe that he did?      Maybe, maybe not.  I don't know.  I wasn't there.

 

 

 

 

[nebula]

This is cool, I thought:

 

 

The Torah records that God’s first words were “Let there be light” (i.e., yehi or: יְהִי אוֹר) and then goes on to say that “God separated (וַיַּבְדֵּל) the light from the darkness (Gen. 1:3-4). It is this “separation,” or distinction, that is foundational to the concept of kedushah (קְדֻשָּׁה), or “holiness,” which first appears in the Scriptures regarding the distinction between ordinary and sacred time: “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy” (יְקַדֵּשׁ) because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:3). Indeed the central theme of the Book of Leviticus is kedushah, and the Hebrew root (קדשׁ) occurs over 150 times in the book. Since God is kadosh (קדשׁ), we must be kadosh in our lives as well, and this means first of all being conscious of the distinction between the sacred and the profane, the “clean” and the unclean, and so on. “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean” (Lev. 10:10). Note that the word translated “distinguish” (וּלֲהַבְדִּיל) comes from the same verb used to describe how God separated the light from the darkness. We are to separate between (בֵּין) the holy and the profane, which means we need understanding (i.e., binah: בִּינָה), or the ability to discern between realms of reality... There is no other way to approach God apart from the consciousness of His infinite glory and unsurpassable worth. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills” (Psalm 121:1). As the Holy One (i.e., ha-kadosh: הַקָּדוֹשׁ), the LORD (יהוה) is utterly unique, distinct, sacred, and set apart as the only One of its kind. He alone is worthy of true worship and adoration, since He alone is utterly peerless, without rival, and stands in relation to the world as Creator, Redeemer, and Lord. To affirm that the LORD is holy is to be conscious that He is utterly sacred. אָבִינוּ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם יִתְקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֶךָ - "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name."

 

Hebrew for Christians

[Enoch2021]

When God opened the Torah with the Creation account, what was His purpose? Was He concerned with making His people acquainted with the heavens and the earth, or was He concerned with acquainting His people with Himself?

 

I believe His heart is for the people to know Him. Thus, I believe that explained the workings of Creation in such a way as for the people to understand Him.

 

So what if we stepped aside for a moment away from time frames and whether or not the Pinwheel Galaxy was created on the fourth Day and looked at what is God conveying to us that He wants us to know about Him?

 

 

=====================================================================================================

 

So what if we stepped aside for a moment away from time frames and whether or not the Pinwheel Galaxy was created on the fourth Day and looked at what is God conveying to us that He wants us to know about Him?

 

Whether or not??  Looks pretty clear to me.  (See: Below)

 

And, Why should we put it aside?  HE WROTE IT....

 

(Genesis 1:14-19) "¶And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:  {15} And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  {16} And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.  {17} And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,  {18} And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.  {19} And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

 

Are you saying this is not important?

 

Do you have "your own" Order of Precedence?