Simply stated, creation refers to everything that exists that has not always existed. It refers to all that God has brought into existence, which is everything apart from God himself--including angels and, eventually, Satan and his demons--since God is the one and only thing that has never been created.

There are a variety of ways to understand how creation happened--or at least how it has come to look like it does now. While these views can differ slightly or substantially, all Bible-believing Christians will agree on the following points:

1) God created it by, through, and for Christ.

• For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)

2) God created it by his word and out of nothing.

• By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:3)
• And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

3) It was corrupted through man’s sin.

• For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21)
• And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life … ” (Genesis 3:17)

4) It will be replaced with a glorious, new creation when Christ returns.

• For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. (Isaiah 65:17)
• Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Revelation 21:1)

My understanding of Scripture leads me to believe that the world was created in a literal six days, putting me squarely in the traditional 24-hour calendar day view.

This is the third installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology and Trinity.

I’ve got a thing for documentaries, and especially for nature documentaries. I loved Planet Earth and Blue Planet and Life and Nature’s Most Amazing Events—some of the recent major productions (all of which come from the BBC, as it happens). Human Planet is the same but different. It features the same stunning, high-definition footage of the planet and its inhabitants. But this time it focuses far more on people than on plants or animals. It focuses on the human element of life.

It does this by looking at the various habitats in which humans have learned to live and thrive: from deserts to the Arctic, from the grasslands to the cities (and everywhere in between). The camera work is top-notch, the stories are fascinating, the music is powerful, the overall experience is inspiring. Allow me to share a few of the lessons I learned from this series.

We Are Amazing

When God created human beings, he created something extraordinary. This series treats us as if we are simply the species that has managed to evolve the furthest but, of course, we know better. God created us to have dominion over the earth, and we have done that in amazing fashion. From the frozen Arctic to the hottest deserts we have gone into the world to subdue it and to have dominion over it. The tragedy of it is that so few know what God has called us to. So many serve foreign gods or serve no God at all.

It is amazing to watch this series and to see human ingenuity, which is really an imitation of God’s ingenuity (since we have been made in his image). Some of this ingenuity is thousands of years old; some is cutting edge. But since God put us on this earth, we have learned to adapt and to thrive in breathtaking ways. This series highlights some of the most impressive and most unexpected ways we have done that.

I’ve got a bit of a thing for nature documentaries and maybe it’s because I’m not exactly the traveling type. I don’t ever anticipate being able to visit South America or Africa, to walk through the jungles and savannahs and to see so many of the wonders of God’s creation (at least on this side of eternity). Nature films, though, provide a glimpse of some of those things I guess I won’t ever see except through the lens of a camera.

You are familiar, I’m sure, with Planet Earth, the 2007 BBC documentary that was and perhaps still is the greatest nature series ever filmed. That same team is responsible for Planet Earth’s successor, titled simply Life. The series, filmed over four years, looks at “the lengths living beings go to to stay alive.” This makes the series less epic in scope than its predecessor, but no less ambitious and certainly no less enthralling.

Life does a great job of mixing well-known animals with those that are more obscure. In one show you’ll watch cheetahs and elephants and in another you’ll encounter a bizarre pebble toad that lives in just one small corner of the earth. You’ll come almost literally face-to-face with these creatures and so many others. The producers were able to capture shots that are as close-up, as intimate as any you’ve seen. Like Planet Earth before it, the camera work is absolutely stunning. In short “making-of” featurettes after each of the episodes you’ll see the lengths they went to in order to capture these shots, sometimes working for days to film just a few seconds of footage. The series also features a musical score that takes itself lightly enough that it can add an element of fun or drama where appropriate.

We watched most of this series as a family and enjoyed doing so. Now, depending on how much you’ve talked to your children about life and depending on whether or not you live on or near a farm, you may find yourself having to answer a few questions (like “Daddy, what does fertilize mean?”) since the animals are often filmed in the very throes of passion. And when the animals are not creating life, they are often destroying it, meaning that you will see a few gruesome deaths along the way. However, such is life (and, therefore, such is Life).

Watching the series as a family also gave us opportunities to discuss the inevitable references to evolution. Narrator David Attenborough throws around millions of years like a millionaire throws around nickels. In one particularly comical moment we see flamingos on the screen while Attenborough describes the birds’ reptilian ancestors. Even a child can look at a newt and then look at a flamingo and do the math. The series is not constant in references to evolution but you will encounter it several times along the way.

Overall, Life is yet another fantastic series and one that will take you face-to-face with some of God’s most remarkable creatures. The Bible tells us that it is the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. And this means that it is only the fool who could watch Life and not catch glimpses of the Creator. Watch it and praise God for his artistry.

Do note that there are two versions of the series available to you—the original by the BBC and the Discovery Channel adaptation. Be sure you find the original since David Attenborough is in every respect a superior narrator to Oprah Winfrey. Attenborough’s eccentric inflections are part of the fun. Also, if you have access to the appropriate hardware, it’s worth upgrading to the Blu Ray version so you can watch it all in high definition.

Here, in case you’re not yet convinced, is the trailer:

As you know I’m at Ligonier Ministries’ annual conference this week. I was going to give you some thoughts on the conference today but maybe I’ll do that another time. Today Al Mohler spoke on an exceedingly difficult topic—why does the universe look so old? And I think he did an exceptional job of providing an answer that affirms a young earth, 24-hour, 6-day view of creation while also maintaining theological and intellectual credibility. I thought I’d share my notes with you (and I’ll endeavor to let you know when the talk is available online).

Mohler began by saying that there are really only two options for us to follow when we seek an answer: either the world is, indeed, old or the world looks old but is not as old as it appears. He began by reading Genesis 1 and, having done so, affirmed that a straightforward reading of the text tells us of 24-hour days, 6 real days of creation and one real day of rest. And, indeed, this was the overwhelming, untroubled consensus of the church until the 19th century. However, since then four great challenges have arisen:

There are many who consider Janet Leigh’s murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to be the most terrifying scene in the history of film. The setting, the mood, the music and the camera work combine to create a scene of absolute terror. Her screams were impressed upon the memories of many who watched her macabre death on the silver screen. Since 1960, when the film was produced there have been tens of thousands of horror films made, but in the minds of many who enjoy such films, few of them have begun to approach the brutal genius of Hitchcock’s film.

The horror genre delights in the scream. Bloodcurdling screams are common in horror films, and filmmakers are constantly looking for ways of making them seem more genuine, more heartfelt, more terrifying. I remember reading of a film in which the director had the actors sprayed with the remains of a slaughtered pig during a particular scene in order to be able to capture real disgust and surprise. He wanted to evoke in his actors a pure terror and hoped that would translate to horror in the hearts of those who later watched.

Today, the second to last day of my vacation, I offer this little reflection on Bruce Waltke’s Old Testament Theology. It is a massive book and more than a little intimidating, but still very much worth the read.

After six introductory chapters, Waltke turns to Old Testament theology proper in a chapter entitled “The Gift of the Cosmos” and here, as we might expect, he discusses God’s work as creator. He argues here that it is critically important that we read the opening chapters of Genesis properly, acknowledging the author’s intended literary genre. Though he eventually argues that this section is meant to be read as “ancient near eastern cosmogony,” which in turns leads to supporting his views on theistic evolution (a view I do not support) I found something very useful in this section. He explains how a wrong reading of the creation account leads to further and deeper problems. He shows how culture’s refusal to acknowledge the creator necessarily leads to the anti-God worldview so apparent in society around us. “Christians now live on a mission field with worldviews that besiege the message of ethical monotheism.” He says that this new paganism has six faces, each of which proceeds from the one before it.

1. The common worldview of the Western world since the time of the enlightenment has been materialism. This philosophy says that matter and its motions constitute the entire universe. Everything in the universe has to be regarded as due to material causes.

2. There is an implication to materialism. Since everything is material, ideally and theoretically, everything is subject to empiricism. Here he quotes Alan Reynolds who says, “empiricism, which insists that all knowledge is based on observation, experimentation, and verification, has led to belief in a self-sufficient universe that can be understood on its own terms, without any need of the transcendent or of God.”

3. Together materialism and empiricism entail a belief in an inherent coherence within nature between cause and effect. This, in turn, has led to belief in determinism, which understands reality as mechanical and without inherent value. Life’s origins and the nature of humanity have natural rather than divine causation.

4. Secularism is a political or social philosophy that embraces each of these “-isms”—materialism, empiricism and determinism. It embraces natural causation and and rejects religious faith and worship in the public square. Nature, society, and government become instruments dedicating only to fulfilling our material desires which masquerade as “rights.” This is fast becoming the dominant worldview among Western intellectual elites.

5. Secular humanism is a system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values and dignity are predominant. This leads to a kind of intense pragmatism that calculates everything in terms of its benefit to humanity. There is no acknowledgment of God and his rule of the created order.

6. Post-modernism or New Ageism marks what is really a return to old-fashioned paganism, though with a distinctly modern twist to it. New Ageism takes distinctives of Eastern religion and distorts them with Western concepts. Post-modernism replaces the objective reality of God as revealed in special revelation with subjective deifications of individual expressions of spirituality. Waltke says, “it rejects the notion of a revealed moral code and instead tests truth by its therapeutic value.” In this worldviews there are no better or worse cultures but merely differences between them.

When you see these six faces of the new paganism you see how important it is that we get Genesis right! The irony, I suppose, is that I am not at all convinced that Waltke is correct in his views on creation. Still, he acknowledges the Creator, of course, and acknowledging God as He reveals Himself in the Bible is a safeguard against the post-modern, secular humanistic viewpoint that pervades society. Those in our society who refuse to admit the existence of this God are soon left with materialism and from there empiricism and all that these -isms entail.

I don’t often watch the extra features included on DVDs these days, but a while back I must have been bored, because I sat and watched a couple of hours of extras for a series I enjoy. I was interested to learn that the creators of this show, before they began creating episodes, spent a long time crafting the backstories of the main characters. For each of these characters they created a whole history including such details as their family situations, the schools they had attended as children, past relationships, past jobs, and on and on. All of this information is kept in giant binders, ready for reference purposes. They created all of this backstory to ensure that, as they show goes on, they do not provide contradictory details for any of the characters. Though it would be a small thing, it would still be an annoyance if in one episode the character mentioned going to one high school and then, three years later, she mentioned going to a different one. And so the writers go through this process of creating background information for all of their characters. As the show progresses they continue to update this backstory binder, adding to it as they invent new details. Though you and I might never be privy to such information, it is still important that they do this as it creates a more complete, more realistic atmosphere within the show.

In a similar vein, over the past couple of months I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings to my children (we’ve just passed “The Taming of Smeagol” if you must know). J.R.R. Tolkien was a master of the backstory. He did not create just a story about a hobbit and a ring, but he created a whole world. And in that world were languages and mythologies and expansive histories. This is part of what makes reading The Lord of the Rings such an immersive experience. There are no loose ends in Tolkien’s world. Neither are there many elements that seem disconnected to some part of the wider world. I’m sure people laughed at Tolkien when he went on and on about the Elvish tongue, and yet without this language and others like it the book would not be what it is today. All of these elements work together to justly gain the book the complimentary adjective “epic.” The story truly is epic in every sense.

I was thinking about such things the other day when pondering God’s creation. I wonder sometimes why God needed to create a whole universe. Let’s assume that earth is the only planet that contains life forms. And let’s assume that even spiritual realities, the kind that concern spiritual creatures, are also centered around earth (safe assumptions, both, I think). Yet for some reason the universe is expansive beyond imagining. No one can conceive of an end to it and yet no one can conceive of what it means that it has no end. We cannot gaze to its furthest extents and cannot imagine what lies beyond what our eyes can see. The best of us are baffled by it. We are all in awe of it.

A little while ago I saw an incredible photograph taken by the Hubble telescope. Hubble snapped a shot of distant space and in that single photo captured thousands of galaxies. And yet the whole portion of space captured in that photograph could be blocked out by holding a grain of sand at arm’s length. Recent estimates say that the observable universe has around 100 billion galaxies. And beyond that, who knows. The mind cannot conceive of such things.

I don’t know why God saw fit to create 100 billion galaxies and then center his redemptive work on just this one. To think that God created 100 billion galaxies and then allowed himself to be born as a tiny child on a tiny planet in a tiny galaxy is beyond the imagining of this tiny mind. All I can conclude is that all of these galaxies, this vast expanse of space, is a part of God’s backstory. That somehow it is crucial to the story he is telling here and now, the story that began long before Creation and that will never, ever end.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

Last week I wrote a review of the excellent new book Who Made God? by Edgar Andrews. This book is an intelligent, insightful response to many of the claims of today’s new atheists. I recently had the opportunity to interview Mr. Andrews and wanted to share that interview with you today.

What do all of those letters after your name actually stand for?
The first three (BSc, PhD and DSc) are earned academic qualifications while the remainder (FInstP, FIMMM, CEng and CPhys) are professional qualifications. My Bachelor’s degree was in theoretical physics; the ‘doctor of philosophy’ degree was awarded for research, and the ‘doctor of science’ degree is a higher doctorate awarded for eminence in a given field, as judged by the quality of peer-reviewed publications.

Why should the Devil get all the good scientists? It sometimes seems that way, doesn’t it? We hear of scientists like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins and others who are acclaimed as being at the top of their field and almost inevitably it seems that they are atheists or otherwise committed to explaining the world in terms of Darwinian evolution. Occasionally we find a great dissenting mind, but then we discover that that person is committed to beliefs that seem opposed to the plain account of Scripture. So we have Francis Collins who writes The Language of God but who in the book says that, though God exists, life and creation can be explained in terms of natural laws and processes that do not depend on the Divine hand of God. It is both tiresome and frustrating.

It has been a couple of years since Richard Dawkins’ last major work, The God Delusion (my review). That book was a long-time fixture on the bestseller lists and served to establish Dawkins as the foremost spokesman for the New Atheists. Dawkins has long had two related emphases in his writing and speaking: the non-existence of God and the evidence in nature that evolution is responsible for all that exists. Where The God Delusion emphasized the former, his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, emphasizes the latter. It is primarily a counter-attack to advocates of Intelligent Design, and represents Dawkins’ attempt to provide natural evidence for evolution.