Creation and separation

The word “creation” in theological and philosophical circles means (1) “creation from nothing”, that is, the transcendent and self-existing God producing other entities without starting from something pre-existing.  However, that is not the only meaning of “creation” in the Bible or common usage.  The other meaning is (2) making something from something, particularly, making something more differentiated from something less differentiated.  Think of a sculptor creating a statue from a marble block.

This ambiguity over the word “creation” leads to a lot of criticism of creationists for not being satisfied with the first definition.  We don’t need to coin a new word but we do need to emphasize that we are talking creation in both senses of the word as described in Genesis 1.

One could define evolutionists (particularly the “evolutionary creationists”) as those who accept the first definition but reject the second definition since they think God never directly changes the created world.  So our task is to convince people that God does directly separate creation — and will do so again in the last judgment.

This entails that the original creation from nothing was somewhat undifferentiated and that full creation is a two-step process of creation from nothing followed by direct creation/separation by God.

November 2014