God the Creator
Welcome to the second installment of our module on systematic theology. Last week Matt introduced us to the idea of systematic theology, which we saw is about combining what we can know from scripture with what we can know from nature, to build a system of thought about God and his creation.
We explained a little bit about what that means and why it’s important, and we introduced some tools that we’ll be using for the next four weeks, as we study God in this way. This week we’re going to start by looking at God as the Creator. It’s no coincidence that this is the first topic we’re looking at together, because God’s identity as the Creator is the foundational thing we need to understand about him in systematic theology. And, as we’ll see tonight, this is true both when reading about him in scripture and when reasoning about him from nature in philosophy.
Our general structure tonight is to explore two questions through scripture and philosophy, and compare their answers. First, what does it mean that God is the creator? And second, how does this relate to his other attributes?
Scripture: the supreme and good creator
The Bible has a lot to say about God, but the fundamental way that we’re introduced to him is as the creator. So, we’re going to camp out in the early chapters of Genesis for a bit, to get a handle on what the author of Genesis wants us to understand about God as the creator.
Now, when we come to Genesis these days, the questions we bring to the text tend to be shaped by two important factors. First, when we speak about God these days we have more-or-less one thing in mind, with a little variation between the major religions we know. The only real question is whether he exists. Second, the developments of modern science have enabled us to ask questions—really for the first time in human history—about the early universe and earth. Because of these two factors, when we come to the text of Genesis, we come looking for a description of the mechanisms and processes God used to create everything. Not only that, but as one author has said, we expect it to be a description that resembles a video recording of what happened, because that’s how we think about history these days.
But I want to suggest that neither of these two influences were around in the time Genesis was being written, and so the questions that the author of Genesis was grappling with were not at all the same sorts of questions that we tend to bring to the text today. If we want to understand what the Bible has to say about God as the creator, then we put our questions to one side and learn to ask the questions that scripture is giving us answers for.
So, what were the questions ancient people were asking about God and the world? We’ve learnt a lot about this topic over the last few decades, and while there’s a fair amount of variety in ancient beliefs, there are some general themes that form an important backdrop to what the Bible has to say.
For starters, our ancient ancestors did not draw a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural. For the nations around Israel, many or all of the gods were connected with different parts of nature, or sometimes different societies. There would be a sun god, gods to govern the lunar cycles, and gods of different nations. And when a god was associated with some part of nature, there wasn’t always a sharp distinction drawn between that god and that part of nature. Using the sun god as an example, John Walton explains it like this:
Though the [sun] god is the controlling party in the functioning partnership, the god had no existence separate from, outside, or above the sun.
People believed that there were many gods, each with a different jurisdiction and role to play in the broader divine society. None of them were really in charge of the others, although sometimes there was a broad ordering between greater deities and lesser deities. These gods were very similar to humans. They married and gave birth to one another, and they had genealogies like humans do; they fought with one another; they had desires and lusts; they were fallible; they needed to be appeased; they were crafty; they felt anger, fear and shame; and they sometimes needed to eat and sleep.
Now, this may sound very strange to us today, but this was the norm in ancient times, not the exception. It was against these sorts of ideas that the Biblical authors were reacting, not debates about the age of the earth or the processes that God used to create. So, the way that we are introduced to God in the first few chapters of Genesis is designed to teach us that God is not like anything like these gods of the other nations. One commentator summarizes these differences as follows:
Not many gods but One God; not theogony, for a god has no family tree; not wars nor strife nor the clash of wills, but only One Will, which rules over everything, without the slightest let or hindrance; not a deity associated with nature and identified with it wholly or in part, but a God who stands absolutely above nature, and outside of it, and nature and all its constituent elements, even the sun and all the other entities, be they never so exalted, are only His creatures, made according to His Will.
I have found that the most succinct way to summarize what Genesis wants us to know about God is that he is the supreme and good creator over everything. Let’s briefly unpack each part of that.
Supreme indicates the scope and uniqueness of his rule: he alone is at the top, he does not rule over one part of reality while someone else rules over another part, but rather he reigns over everything all the time. His supremacy means he has unmatched power, since the scope of someone’s rule is connected to the scope of their power. In the creation week, God’s supremacy is emphasized in different ways, like the fact that he is the one who gives names to the different parts of nature (day, night, heaven, earth, sea), and the fact that no-one is there who can contradict what he says and does.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. (Ps 96:5)
Good indicates the kind of creator God is. He is not vindictive, he is not subject to human failings like lust or wickedness. When you connect gods to different parts of nature or politics, then the unpredictability and harshness of nature, and the violence produced by politics, will lead you to think that your gods are unpredictable and harsh and capricious. But Genesis wants us to understand that this supreme creator God is not the source of evil, and he does not delight in the wickedness that is in the world. Rather, he is the source of goodness who works to bless his creatures, and evil arises through creation corrupting itself. This is seen in the creation week by the repeated refrain that everything God created was good, as well as God blessing his creatures. Later in Genesis it’s shown to us in his hate for the wickedness that humans managed to spread throughout the earth.
God’s supremacy and goodness work together. If God were not supreme, then his goodness could always be thwarted by the other gods. For instance, if he were only a sun god, then he could only work for the good of nature through this limited role, and if the god of fertility was evil then there would be nothing God could do about it. But because he is supreme, God is able to ensure that his good plans will win out, even though he permits evil for the time being.
And this leads us to the next aspect of God as the Creator: God’s role as the creator did not end with the creation week, but continues in his care for creation and his guidance of history. I think we tend to miss this connection to creation because of those two factors we mentioned earlier. We do not have all these different ideas about gods connected to the day-to-day functioning of different parts of nature, and our primary concern is for the mechanics of how God brought things into existence. So, when we bring our modern questions to the Bible, then we end up thinking that the production of things is all there is to God being the creator. But this is not the case.
When God rests on the seventh day, he isn’t resting from all activity. He’s resting from the activity of bringing things into existence, so that he can begin the activity of sustaining creation and guiding history. Consider what the Apostle Paul says in the Aeropagus:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being”. (Acts 17:24–28)
Notice that Paul starts talking about God as the creator of the world, and then just slides into talking about him sustaining us in existence from moment to moment, and ordering our lives so that we might seek him out and find him. For the biblical authors this creating and sustaining are part of the same job description.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking about God as a watchmaker, who built the watch some time ago and every now and then gets involved to keep it running, but for the most part it just keeps going by itself. But passages like this one suggest that it would be better to think of God as a pianist: the musical performance continues to exist and work only so long as he plays on the piano, and when he stops actively working through it it stops existing immediately. As creator God is continually working through each part of creation to operate according to its nature—the moment he stops sustaining something is the moment it stops existing, and the moment he stops working through something is the moment it stops doing anything. The same applies to human free will—but we won’t discuss that now, since we’ll be talking about that for the whole of next week.
In summary, then, what it means for God to be the creator is for him to be supreme over everything, to be the source of everything good, and to be the sustainer and operator over everything. God organizes all of creation and history according to his will, including the operation of nature and human choices.
Now, I said earlier that being the creator is the fundamental attribute of God—in the sense that almost everything we know about him is built upon this idea. Before moving to the philosophy of creation, let’s briefly go through some attributes to see what I mean in practice.
First, God the Creator is one. You can’t be the supreme creator and share that title with someone else. The Bible has a number of ways of speaking about God’s oneness, but one you see throughout the Old Testament is the claim that the Lord is God. So, after recounting what God had done for Israel in saving them for himself out of Egypt, Moses says,
To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. (Deut 4:35).
Now, in Psalm 100, this claim of oneness is directly linked with God being the creator:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. (Ps 100:1–3)
Next, God the Creator is holy. We discussed this in the last module, but briefly, holiness has to do with thing’s being set apart in some way. And as creator, God is set apart from everything else in the most fundamental way possible. This is why he is the definition of holiness, and everything else is holy by being set apart to him in some way.
Next, God the Creator is the judge of the world. In Genesis, a few chapters after introducing us to God the creator, we are told of how God judged the world with the flood in response to widespread human wickedness. But what’s interesting is that the author describes this judgment in a way that repeatedly alludes back to the creation, so that we would understand that God being the judge of the world is tied up with his being the creator of the world. The judgment in the flood is basically God undoing creation and then re-creating to start over again with Noah.
In creation God reveals the earth by separating out the waters (1:9–10), in judgment he covers the earth in water (7:19–20), and in recreation he uncovers it again (8:6–13).
In creation animals and humans are blessed to be fruitful and multiply (1:28), in judgment they are destroyed (7:17), and in recreation they are blessed like this again (8:17, 9:1, 7).
In creation plants are given for food to the animals and humans (1:29–30), in judgment all the earth is destroyed, leaving no plants to eat (7:22), and in recreation the plants are given again (8:11).
The author of Genesis wants us to see that it’s because God is powerful and cares for the well-being of his creation that he steps in and judges the wickedness that ruins it.
Next, God the creator is the savior of the world. The first eleven chapters of Genesis show us how we introduced sin and wickedness into God’s good creation, and how we were unable to fix this problem ourselves. So, when he appears to Abraham God says that he will fix the problem of sin — that through Abraham and his family God would bless all the nations of the earth. But up until this point in the story, God’s blessing things has been tied up with him being the creator: he blessed his creatures when he created them with Adam and Eve, and he blessed humanity when he re-created everything with Noah. So when God says he will bless all the nations through Abraham, we have been trained to think of this as the action of the creator coming to save his world from the problem of sin.
Finally, God the creator is wise. Wisdom is the means by which we live well in God’s world, and God also has wisdom, which is both similar and different from human wisdom. In Proverbs, Solomon talks about how God created everything in wisdom:
The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens;
by his knowledge the deeps broke open,
and the clouds drop down the dew. (Proverbs 3:19–20)
The beautiful structure and ordering in creation is evidence that the God behind it is skillful and wise. But then in Ecclesiastes and Job we see that God’s wisdom is beyond ours. In Ecclesiastes we see that God organizes the world so that we will be limited and humbled in our perspective:
I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end… I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. (Eccl 3:10–11, 18)
The Teacher has reflected over creation, and noticed how difficult it can be for us to get our way. Since he understands that there is a supreme creator behind everything, he is able to infer that the creator’s wisdom if far beyond what human wisdom can comprehend.
Philosophy: The unactualized actualizer
When it comes to philosophy, we also find that the starting point of our understanding about God is as the creator, although we approach the whole question quite differently. In scripture God's existence is more-or-less assumed, but when reasoning about God from nature we first have to prove that he exists before we can do anything else. So we’re going to spend some time tonight looking at an argument for God’s existence that will form the basis of our thinking about him throughout this module.
Over the millennia Christians and non-Christians have developed many different arguments for God’s existence, and even today philosophers are refining old arguments or developing new arguments as we learn more about the world. But not all arguments are made equal—they differ in how complicated they are, they differ in the features of nature they start with, and they differ in how much they enable you to reason about God’s attributes. The argument we’re going to unpack tonight began with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, and was later developed by the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas. The reason we’re picking this one is that it’s very useful for systematic theology—it enables us to reason out quite a lot about God’s nature, because it helps us understand God in terms of actuality and potentiality, which we saw last week are the most fundamental categories we have for thinking about anything reality.
But in order to get there, we need to introduce some new ideas. First there is the idea of a causal series. A causal series is what we get when we start with something, and then ask what caused that, and then ask what caused that cause, and so on. Each member of the series is caused by the previous member and causes the next member. We need this because we want to start with something in nature and reason our way back to God through a causal series. We can’t see God or interact with him directly like we can with things in nature, so the only way for us to get at him is by studying nature and working our way backwards to him—sort of like studying a painting to understand the painter.
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of causal series. The first is called an accidentally ordered series—don’t read too much into the name, it’s just a result of Latin philosophical terms being translated into English. In an accidentally ordered series, every member acts by using something it is given by the previous member. Think of a series of parents and children: I exist because I was given existence by my parents, my parents exist because they were caused to exist by my grandparents, my grandparents were caused by my great grandparents, and so on. In each case a person is given existence by their parents, which they use to give existence to their children. Another example of an accidentally ordered series is when you pass on an item you received from someone else. I have a book from a friend, who had been given it from a friend, who had been given it from a friend of theirs, and so on. Each member is able to give the book to the next person because they were first given it by someone else.
Those are accidentally ordered series. The second kind of causal series are called essentially ordered series. In an essentially ordered series, every member acts only insofar as it is being acted upon by the previous member. In this case, think of a pile of books stacked one on top of the other. Each of the books in the middle can only hold up the books above it so long as the books below hold it up. This is why, when we kick away the books underneath everything comes falling down. Or think of me pushing a rock with a stick: the stick only moves the rock so long as I move the stick—as soon as I let go of the stick it falls to the ground and stops moving the rock.
In an essentially ordered series, each member propagates the causal power it is given by something else, and so it can only continue acting so long as the previous member is acting through it. Now, things won’t propagate anything unless there is something that originates it in the first place—that would be like expecting a bunch of pipes to start producing water without a water source, it just doesn’t make any sense. But whatever originates the causal power of a series will not depend on something else in order to act. And so it follows that every essentially ordered series has a first member that causes other things without being caused itself. For example, the stone moves because it is moved by the stick, the stick moves because it is moved by my arm, and my arm moves because I decided to move it with my mind. But my mind doesn’t move things by being moved itself, so it’s the first cause in this series. In the case of the books, the ground would be the first cause because it holds things above the ground without being held above the ground itself.
Now, let’s combine this with what we learnt last week about actuality and potentiality. You’ll recall that we said that something’s potentialities are the ways it could be—I have the potential to be in different places, this cup has potentialities to be different heights above the ground—while something’s actualities are the ways that it is in reality—we are all actually here rather than at home, and this cup is actually about a meter above the ground, resting on the table. It’s possible to actualize a potential, which can happen in two ways. If we actualize a thing’s potential that wasn’t previously actualized, then we cause it to change in some way: I actualized this cups potential to be a meter above the ground when I placed it on this table before we started. But now that it’s on the table, the table is causing it to stay a meter above the ground by continually actualizing this potential. It’s this causation by continual actualization that we’re interested in here.
So, assume we have some continually actualized potential—like the cup staying a meter above the ground. Now, potentials only say what could happen not what does happen, and so this potential needs some other actuality to cause it to be continually actualized—like the table’s structure holding the cup up. But if that cause is itself a continually actualized potential, then we need yet another actuality to cause it to be continually actualized — like the tensile strength of the wood of the table. And again, if that cause is a continually actualized potential, then we will need another actuality to cause it — like the atomic bonds in the wood. And so on, and so on. Do you see what’s happening here? We’re tracing an essentially ordered series of actualized potentials. Each member actualizes the next member of the series only insofar as it is actualized the previous member in the series.
Combining this with what we said earlier about essentially ordered series, it follows that there must be a first member in this series which is able to actualize other things but does not need to be actualized itself. In other words, there must be a pure actuality, something actual which has no potentialities in it whatsoever. Now, I should say, this is not something we’re familiar with at all — everything we usually interact with is a mixture of actualities and potentialities. In fact, this pure actuality is God himself, which we can show by reflecting on what follows from something being a pure actuality.
First, there is only one pure actuality. Two things are distinguished from one another by the fact that one actualizes potentials that the other does not. For instance, you and I are distinguished from one another in that we are actualizing our potentials to be at different places right now. But a pure actuality has no potentials in it, so there is no way for two pure actualities to be distinguished from one another, and therefore there can only be one pure actuality.
This in turn means is that this pure actuality is all-powerful. The causal power of something is its ability to actualize potentials, but if we apply this argument we just gave across the board, we see that every real and every possible actuality can be traced back to this one pure actuality as its cause. Therefore, this pure actuality is able to actualize any possible state of affairs. And so it is all-powerful.
And this pure actuality is unchangeable. Change involves the actualization of a potential, but since this thing has no potentials it follows that it cannot change.
It must also be immaterial, because every material thing is changeable.
And finally, its essence must be identical to its existence. We said last week that everything has an essence which determines what it is, and an existence which determines that it is. In everything else, a thing’s essence is a potentiality that is actualized by that thing’s existence. But this obviously can’t be the case in a being of pure actuality. Therefore, this being’s essence must just be its existence. That is, what thing is is to exist—this is why you will sometimes hear philosophers or theologians say that God is being itself.
We’ll stop here, because past this point things get too complicated for what time allows. But if we kept going we could argue that this pure actuality is intelligent, it has a will, it knows everything, is perfectly good, is eternal, is not made up of any parts whatsoever, sustains us in existence, and is in control of our free actions. We’ll be touching on some of these in the coming weeks.
The upshot of all of this is that just as with scripture, God being the creator is the foundational fact about him from which we think about all his other attributes. In philosophy, we use an argument for God’s existence as pure actuality, and derive his other attributes.
Reflection: Fear God
Taking a step back and reflecting on what we’ve been discussing tonight, we can ask what all of this has to do with our relationship with God? How should we respond to him now that we have a clearer picture of him as the creator? In a word: fear.
One of the most consistent things that scripture teaches us—from beginning to end—is that the proper response to God is fear. When Abraham shows his trust in God by being willing to sacrifice Isaac, he is praised for fearing God (Gen 22:12). “What does the Lord your God require of you,” said Moses to Israel, “but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him…” (Deut 10:12) Jesus tells us to fear God, the one who can destroy both soul and body (Matt 10:28). The Apostle Paul encourages us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). And toward the end of Revelation God’s people are referred to as his servants who fear him, both small and great (19:5).
So what does it mean to fear God? It’s often said that fearing God is really just about revering or respecting God. But while fear certainly does include reverence, this can't be all there is to it—in scripture, fear is sometimes coupled with words like trembling or dread, and it’s described in response to genuinely scary things, like our absolute destruction or supernatural clouds of darkness descending upon mountains. So, it seems to me that if we say that fear is only about reverence then we miss out on the whole picture that the Bible is trying to paint for us.
A better way of understanding the fear of God is as follows: it's what happens to you when you appreciate that life with God is the greatest possible thing that could happen to you, and that life against God is the worst possible thing that could happen to you. Life with God means life with the giver of life and source of all the good you have ever known, but life without God means going against the creator and sustainer of everything. And there’s no middle ground between these two extremes—you either treat God as God, or you treat him as something less than that.
Now, we typically fear things that are bad for us, or that we think are dangerous — like spiders, or poison, or reckless driving, or unstable people with weapons in their hands. And I think it’s because of this that we have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction when the Bible talks about fearing God. And I don’t think this knee-jerk reaction is entirely wrong: God is full of mercy and love, he is patient and full of forgiveness. When we read the story of the Old Testament, it took ages for God to punish Israel for their rejection of him, despite the fact that they did this basically from the beginning. And even after all of that, God still extends the hand of forgiveness to them. The book of Zechariah, for instance, starts with this offer from God:
Thus declares the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you… (Zech 1:3)
But, what happens if we don’t return to God? What happens if we choose to stay in our sin, and refuse to subject ourselves to God’s rule? Well, in that case, instead of embracing the source of everything good, we make ourselves enemies of the only being in existence with unlimited power. As the creator, God seeks the good of his creation, and if we want to get in the way of that with our sin, then he has no choice but to get us out of the way, and he is supremely qualified to do that. Remember, we are each like the musical piece that if God stops playing for one moment, then we will be gone.
So, while we should love God and cling to him, we should also fear him because of what awaits us if one day we choose to let him go. In the face of temptation to sin, the fear of God makes us realize that it's not worth it to make ourselves enemies of the supreme creator. When we’re drawn to prioritize earthly goods over God himself, then the fear of God shows us that he is greater than any good we could experience in his creation. When we come to God in prayer, the fear of God reminds us to not take that opportunity lightly, because we are talking to our maker.
The fear of God is not some extra thing that would be “nice to have”. Because it is the proper response when we understand that God is the creator, the fear of God is crucial to living well in his world.
I perceived that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. (Eccl 3:14)
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. (Prov 9:10)
Wisdom is the means by which we live well in God’s world, and scripture wants us to know that if are to have any hope in doing this, we need to acknowledge our creator as the one who orders everything according to his will. We need to understand our place in creation, not as equals of the supreme and good creator, but as creatures who don’t know what will come and who can’t change things to get our way. Instead of relying on ourselves, we would make every effort to live in step with God’s plans and purposes.
This correction of perspective will put us in our place, but it will also put everything else in its place. When we are tempted to fear other things, the fear of God shows us that in the grand scheme of things they are nothing to worry about. Nothing should get in the way of you loving others and serving God, because we are with God and nothing can overpower him or threaten us who are with him.
So, as we meditate more and more on what it means for God to be the supreme and good creator over everything, for him to be the purely actual actualized of anything and everything in existence, we will learn to fear him. And this fear will help us trust in God alone for guidance and security. I’ll close with these words from Psalm 139, reflecting on this very idea:
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night”,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Ps 139:9–14)
Appendix: Short answers to anticipated questions
What you've said doesn't entail that the author of Genesis didn't want to teach us that God created the world in seven days.
That's right, but what I've said is the first step in realizing that. Before we can ask what the author intended to convey we first need to appreciate that the questions of his time were radically different. Next is to understand the methods he would've used to give his answer. In the case of Hebrew thought, we know that they sometimes describe events in the heavenly realm metaphorically using language from the earthly realm: for example the divine court in Job 1–2 is described in terms of an earthly court. Likewise there are indications in the text that the creation week is framed in a similar way:
It is well-known that the author has divided genesis up into "generations", each of which has a heading telling who or what it's about. The generations of the heavens and the earth start in chapter two, so what were we talking about before then? Well, Genesis starts by telling us we're talking about God, so we should understand the creation week as watching over God's shoulder as he creates everything and only in chapter two so we zoom into that picture and start the story.
The seventh day doesn't end, like the first six days. This would be very strange if the days were exactly like the ones we have within creation, but totally fine if the entire week is a metaphor, since the author need only use a metaphor so long as it's useful for him.
The time-keeping mechanisms for creation days are created during the week, and so cannot be the means by which the days of the week are distinguished from one another.
When the mechanisms for God's actions are explicitly described in chapter 2, they are the normal mechanisms of nature.
The reference to “us” without further qualification suggests that we are in the divine court.
The week metaphor is the Hebrew way of speaking about a unit of time, which is why it's used in the metaphor.
If God rested on the seventh day, then how can you say he continues work?
Rest is from a specific activity so that you can enjoy another activity. Consider what Moses says to Israel before they enter the land of Canaan:
But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies, so that you live in safety, then to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you... (Deut 12:8-11)
Here, the rest involves living in the land, which is definitely an activity. It is the rest from the onslaught of their enemies that enables this restful activity.
What other connections are there between creation and judgement?
In creation God separates the waters above from the waters below (1:7), in judgment he brings these together again (7:11), and in recreation he once again establishes their separation (8:2).
In creation God reveals the earth by separating out the waters (1:9–10), in judgment he covers the earth in water (7:19–20), and in recreation he uncovers it again (8:6–13).
In creation all animals and humans are created (1:20–30), in judgment all flesh is destroyed (7:21–23), and in recreation all the animals and humans are put back on earth from the ark (8:18–19).
In creation plants are given for food to the animals and humans (1:29–30), in judgment all the earth is destroyed, leaving no plants to eat (7:22), and in recreation the plants are given again (8:11).
In creation animals and humans are blessed to be fruitful and multiply (1:28), in judgment they are destroyed (7:17), and in recreation they are blessed like this again (8:17, 9:1, 7).
Creation began with God’s Spirit (or great wind) hovering of the waters of the deep (1:2), and in recreation it begins with a mighty wind (“wind” and “spirit” are the same word in Hebrew) from God blowing over the waters (8:1).
In creation the seasons and signs are established (1:14), and in recreation they are established again (8:22).
In creation humans are described as being in God’s image (1:28), and in recreation they are affirmed in these terms again (9:1–7).