Creation

Creation itself is a Trinitarian activity: by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Regarding creation, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed tightly summarises the Christian belief in “one God, the Father, the almighty, the maker of all things seen and unseen…one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…through whom all things in heaven and on earth came into being…the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” [1]

McGrath identifies four implications for the doctrine of creation[2] which will serve as useful guidelines to explore the fellowship of the Spirit in God, humanity and creation.
Firstly, a distinction must be drawn between God and the creation. Rahner’s discussion of the “economic trinity” and the “essential trinity” provide a useful way of distinguishing between the transcendence and the immanence of God[3]. God is both distinct from the world, and is simultaneously related to the world, “as its creator, sustainer, and ultimately its redeemer”[4]. God alone is the absolute source of all that is, but God is separate from it - creation is not regarded as divine, nor possessed of any divine qualities. God’s Spirit acts upon the world without becoming merged with it. However, the immanence of the Spirit of God in creation is a key entry point into understanding the idea of the fellowship of the Spirit experienced within creation. Moltmann argues that:

…without a pneumatological doctrine of creation there cannot be a Christian doctrine of creation at all…without a perception of the creator Spirit in the world there cannot be a peaceful community of creation in which human beings and nature share.[5]

A relational indwelling of divine perichoresis provides the model for properly understanding the relation between God and creation[6]. God is present in creation – but in what sense? We must distinguish between the Spirit’s cosmic, reconciling and redeeming indwelling. Otherwise there will be no necessary discontinuity between the creator and the creation, or clearly identifiable interface where continuity does occur, that is, supremely in the person of Christ. Creation must always be understood in light of God’s self-revelation in Christ, and the Holy Spirit understood concretely in terms of Christ as the unique bearer and embodiment of the Spirit. Hence, the immanence of God in creation is the presence of the Spirit as mediated by Christ.

Secondly, Creation implies God’s authority over the world (Rev 4:11). While the Genesis account has God ascribing “dominion” to humanity over the earth, it is possible to construe the original intent of humanity’s rule under God’s authority more as stewards rather than despots of creation (Ps8). In this role, humanity exists in right relationship with God and creation, actualising God’s authority as vice-regents. Dominion becomes exploitation when it is used at the expense of the good creation, alienating us from the earth and our fellow creatures, and exposing “the folly and wickedness of ignoring our creator and instructor”[7].

Thirdly, the doctrine of God as creator implies the goodness of creation. Although presently in a fallen state, all of creation, including the creatures brought forth by the earth and the seas, was held to be “very good” (Gen 1:31). In response, all creatures are able in some way to give glory to God their creator (Ps19:1), and God takes delight in them (Job 39 – 41). As the Spirit is the agent of the Father’s intention to bring all things in relation to himself through Christ, “we must say that whenever the created order, in any of its levels and aspects, is able to praise its maker, there is the agency of the Spirit”[8]. Moltmann argues for relationships of mutuality to describe a cosmic community of living between God the Spirit and all his created beings, “…an ecological doctrine of creation must today perceive and teach God’s immanence in the world….through his cosmic Spirit, God the creator of heaven and earth is present in each of his creatures and in the fellowship of creation which they share”[9].

Nevertheless, while nonhuman creatures and creation are presented as the inseparable companions of humanity in creation, reconciliation and redemption”[10], it is only God and humanity who are able to enter into a fellowship of persons. The creation of humanity as male and female in the image of God (Gen 1:27) establishes the foundation of this particular relationship from within the created order to the Godhead.

McGrath’s final implication for the doctrine of creation stems from human beings created in the image of God, and what this means for the relationship between God, humanity and creation. To be in the image of God is to exist in a vertical directedness to God our creator and redeemer, “to be oriented, in the time and space he has given, to a perfection of being for and in him”[11]. It is also to live in a horizontal network of relationships with other human beings and the rest of the non-personal created order. Thus, “[t]o be in the image of God is therefore to be called to represent God to the creation and the creation to God”[12].

We find our true identity in coexistence with each other and with all other creatures. Christ, as the full realisation of the image of God, re-orders and re-orients what this truly means. Gunton argues “that Jesus represents God to the creation in the way that the first human beings were called, but failed to do...and…that he enables other human beings to achieve the directedness to God of which their fallenness has deprived them”[13]. This imaging is achieved as a triune act through the power of the Spirit in a personal relationship of giving and receiving. Here, Moltmann’s description of the Trinity as “communal, social and family-like”[14] may be re-introduced to affirm the nature of God as person, “for only persons can be at one with one another”[15]. Humanity’s essentially relationality, attuned to the self-existent relationality at the heart of the triune God, leads to an interpretation of “the imago Dei as an imago Christi and an imago trinitatis.”[16]

[1] McGrath, Christian Theology, 21.
[2] McGrath, Christian Theology, 440-443.
[3] Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Burns and Oates, 1970).
[4] Steven Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 163.
[5] Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985), 99.
[6] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 125.
[7] O. R. Barclay, ‘Creation’, in Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright (eds.), New Dictionary of Theology, (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 178.
[8] Colin E. Gunton, Theology Through the Theologians: Selected Essays 1972-1995 (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1996), 120.
[9] Moltmann, God in Creation, 14.
[10] Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 97.
[11] Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation (Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1982), 102.
[12] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 102.
[13] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 100.
[14] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 256.
[15] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl. (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 150.
[16] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 141.