A Biblical Worldview:
Creation and Sin
Living at the Crossroads
Chapters 3
Worldview: Getting it right!
•Worldview is about getting who
Jesus is right
•Jesus is Creator, Lord of history,
Redeemer of all, Judge
•Worldview is about getting the
gospel right
•Gospel of kingdom
Gospel of the kingdom
God is acting to restore his
good but fallen creation to again
live under his gracious rule.
•God creates good creation
•Sin pollutes the whole creation
•God acts to restore the creation
Creation: The World As
God Meant It To Be
Creation: The World As God’ Meant
It To Be
•The Creator God
Relation of God to world
•Created by God
•Upheld by God
•Ruled by God
•Permeated by his presence and
glory
•Theater of his glory
Danger of Deism
•World is permeated by God’s
presence
•Deism: World devoid of God’s
presence
•Builds in “natural laws” and
lives outside world
•Like watchmaker
Apostle Paul and Cardinal
Newman
“For in him we live and move and have
our being” (Acts 17:28).
God “has so implicated Himself with
[the creation], and taken it into His very
bosom, by His presence in it, His
providence over it, His impressions upon
it, and His influences through it, that we
cannot truly or fully contemplate it
without in some aspects contemplating
Him” (Cardinal Newman).
Herman Bavinck quoting John
Calvin
“There is not an atom of the
universe in which you cannot see
some brilliant sparks at least of his
glory.” God is immanent in all
creation. The pure of heart see God
everywhere. Everything is full of
God. “I confess that the expression,
‘Nature is God’ may be used in a
pious sense by a pious mind!”
John Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the
grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining
from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the
ooze of oil
Crushed.
Cardinal Newman again
He is One who is sovereign over, operative
amidst, independent of, the appointments
which He has made; One in whose hands
are all things, who has a purpose in every
event, and a standard for every deed, and
thus has relations of His own towards the
subject-matter of each particular science
which the book of knowledge unfolds; who
has with an adorable, never-ceasing energy
implicated Himself in all the history of
creation, the constitution of nature, the
course of the world, the origin of society,
the fortunes of the nations, the action of the
human mind.
Life lived Coram Deo
•Latin phrase used 50x in
Vulgate
•In the presence of God or
before the face of God
•Image of Oriental throne room
•Servants waiting, alert, aware of
king’s presence, ready and
prepared to respond to his
bidding
God is . . .
•Present within creation
•But also sovereign over and
independent of it
•Creator-creature distinction
Creation: The World As God’ Meant
It To Be
•The Creator God
•A good and ordered creation
•An ordered creation
An Ordered Creation: God’s
Originating Word
•“Let there be . . .”
•Originating word of God: God’s
word which brings shape and
order to the creation
•Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6,9;
Hebrews 11:3
An Ordered Creation: God’s
Ruling Word
•Ruling word: God’s word which
continues to give shape and
order to the creation moment
by moment
•2 Peter 3:5,7; Psalm 147:15,18;
Psalm 148:5-8
God’s Ruling Word
God has called the universe into being out of
nothing, and hence at every moment it ‘hangs’
suspended, as it were, over the abyss of nonexistence. If God were to withdraw his upholding
Word, then all being . . . would instantly tumble
back into nothing and cease to exist. The
continuation of the universe from one moment to
the next is therefore as great a miracle and as fully
the work of God as is its coming into being at the
beginning (Bruce Milne).
Creation Order
Comprehensive Scope of God’s Ordinances
All created life necessarily bears in itself a
law for its existence, instituted by God
himself. . . . Consequently there are
ordinances of God for our bodies, for the
blood that courses through our arteries
and veins, and for our lungs as the organs
of respiration. And even so are there
ordinances of God in logic, to regulate our
thoughts; ordinances of God for our
imagination, in the domain of aesthetics;
and so also, strict ordinances of God
whole of human life in the domain of
morals.
–Abraham Kuyper
Scope of God’s Law
‘Everything has been created was, in
its creation, furnished by God with
an unchangeable law of its
existence. And because God has
fully ordained such laws and
ordinances for all of life, therefore
the Calvinist demands that all life be
consecrated to His service, in strict
obedience.’
-Abraham Kuyper
Response of Creation
•Response of non-human
creation: Necessary or
instinctive response to God’s
word (laws of nature)
• Response of humankind:
Creative and responsible
response of to God’s word
(norms)
Difficulty in Knowing God’ Creational Order
Assuming that there are given
standards for economics or art,
what methodological safeguards can
we devise against epistemological
subjectivism in establishing what is
normative in these areas? . . . Do
we have no recourse but to appeal
to intuition or self-evidence?
– Al Wolters
How do we know God’s will for
_____________?
• Scripture
• Listening to others from different historical
eras, cultural contexts, confessional traditions
• Constancy across time and culture
• God’s covenant with creation:
blessing/cursing
• Conscience: “Intuitive attunement to
creational normativity” (Wolters)
Wisdom
• Wisdom is “practical knowledge
of the laws of life and of the world,
based on experience” (Von Rad)
•God wisdom: Order established in
creation
•Human wisdom: Living in
conformity with that order
Divine and human wisdom
• ‘Wisdom [is] wrought into the
constitution of the universe’ so that
human wisdom is ‘ethical
conformity to God’s creation’
(Fleming).
• Kosmos: “the world held a divine
order” and therefore wisdom was
“fitting oneself into” this divine
order (Gladigow).
Isaiah 28:23-29
Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.
When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?
When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and
scatter cummin?
Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in
its field?
His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.
Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over
cummin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a stick.
Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on
threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses
do not grind it.
All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel
and magnificent in wisdom.
Creation: The World As God’ Meant
It To Be
•The Creator God
•A good and ordered creation
•An ordered creation
•A very good creation
Very good of creation
• “And it was good . . . And God saw it
was very good.”
• Creation is very good! (1 Tim. 4.1-5)
• “God does not make junk and we
dishonour the Creator if we take a
negative view of the work of his hands
when he himself takes such a positive
view” (Wolters).
Creation is very good
•Each part of creation is good as it
conforms to God’s creational
design
•The whole is God in harmonious
diversity
•Illustration: Symphony
•Many good sound
•Very good of harmony of whole
Creation as symphony
The creation is a symphony where we find a
variety of creatures each singing the praises of
the Maker in accordance with its unique
character, different from creatures of another
“make.” The lion is to serve the Lord like a
lion, the dandelion like a dandelion. The
difference in service depends on the
difference in the Word addressed to them.
The response of the creation to the one allembracing Word—serve Me!—is thus a
symphony of voices in which each type of
creature performs its unique function in the
indispensable setting of the whole (Bernard
Zylstra).
Creation: The World As God’ Meant
It To Be
•The Creator God
•A good and ordered creation
•An ordered creation
•A very good creation
•An historical creation
Historical nature of creation
God intended from beginning
that the historical development
of creation should continue in
the human cultivation of the
rich potentials of God’s
creation through the
responsible cultural activity of
human beings.
Creation: The World As God’ Meant
It To Be
•The Creator God
•A good and ordered creation
•An ordered creation
•A very good creation
•An historical creation
•Role of human beings in God’s
creation
Humanity in Genesis 1
•Climactic moment in creation
story
•Announcement of Divine King
of intention to create image
•Image—shocking claim in
cultural setting
•Meaning of image
Meaning of Image
•Radical dependence
“Mankind’s being as image stresses the
radical nature of his dependence” (Henri
Blocher).
Meaning of Image
•Radical dependence
•Related to God: Life of ongoing
response
•Reflection of God’s character
•Represent God as steward of
creation
Religious Core of Human
Existence
•Very core of human life is
religious
•Dependent on and related to
God
•Life as constant response to
God
Communal Nature of Human
Life
• “It is not good for the man to
be alone. I will make a helper
suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18).
“From the very beginning, the
human being is . . . a being-with;
human life attains its full realization
only in community” (Blocher).
Creation Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28)
All culture, that is, all work
which man undertakes in order
to subdue the earth, whether
agriculture, stock breeding,
commerce, industry, science, or
the rest, is all the fulfilment of a
single Divine calling.
- Herman Bavinck
Creation Mandate
•Foundational command
•Biblical storyline: From garden to
city
Creation Mandate
• Creatio tertia: Forming and filling to
stamp God’s glory onto creation
• Loving rule not tyrannical dominance
• Development and care (Gen. 2:15)
“We may press the grapes into wine, but not
pollute the vineyard. We may develop
sophisticated technology, but not at the expense
of rewarding human work. We are free to eat
of every tree in the garden, but not to spray
them with destructive chemicals for short-term
gain” (J. Chaplin).
Creation Mandate
•Joy of discovery and accomplishment
•Thanksgiving for rich gifts
•Communal task
Creation mandate: Religious
direction of culture
•In communion with God
•In obedience to God
•For glory of God
Original Shalom in Creation
The webbing together of God, humans, and
all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is
what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. . . . In
the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing,
wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs
in which the natural needs are satisfied and
natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of
affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its
Creator and Savior opens doors and
welcomes the creatures in whom he delights.
Shalom, in other words, is the way things
ought to be. . . . In a shalomic state each entity
would have its own integrity or structured
wholeness, and each would also possess many
edifying relations to other entities (Plantinga).
Sin: The Corruption of
God’s Good Creation
Treason in the Garden
•Tree of knowledge of good and
evil
•Reminder of creaturely status
•Satanic temptation
•Doubt: “Did God really say?”
•Unbelief: “You will not die”
•Imagination: “Your eyes will be
opened”
•Act of disobedience
Claim to autonomy
Man has taken leave of the relation
of dependence. He has refused to
obey and has willed to make
himself independent. No longer is
obedience the guiding principle of
his life, but his autonomous
knowledge and will. Thereby he
ceases, in effect, to understand
himself as a creature (Von Rad).
Genesis 3-11
•Ominous crescendo of sin
•Impacts all of life
•Relation to God
•Relation to one another
•Relation to non-human creation
Sin as Mortal and Powerful Enemy
• Tendency to minimize power,
gravity, and scope of sin
• Reduced to individual disobedience
• Sin is “a very vicious and mortal
enemy, an irascible and persistent
power, which must certainly be
known in order to be overcome”
(Berkouwer).
Sin—First Against God
•“Against you, you only, have I
sinned and done what is evil in
your sight” (Ps. 51:4).
•Revolt against God
•Exchange of religious allegiance
Against God
•Idolatry: Serving another god
•Adultery: Adulterating an
exclusive relationship
•Refusing love to loving Father
Sin as destructive of human life
• “Am I the one they are provoking?
declares the Lord. Are they not
rather harming themselves, to their
own shame?” (Jer. 7:19).
• “Disobedience goes against the very
grain of creation itself. Sin is
rebellion against both the structure
and the Structurer of reality. Such
rebellion is inevitably self-defeating
and self-destroying” (Walsh and
Middleton).
Sin as Covenant Rebellion
See, I set before you today life and
prosperity, death and destruction. For I
command you today to love the L your
God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his
commands, decrees and laws; then you will
live and increase, and the Lord your God
will bless you in the land you are entering to
possess. But if your heart turns away and
you are not obedient, and if you are drawn
away to bow down to other gods and
worship them, I declare to you this day that
you will certainly be destroyed. . . . I have
set before you life and death, blessings and
curses. (Deut. 30:15–19)
Covenant Dynamic
Power of Sin
•Sin is a power, “seductive . . .
damning, an active, dynamic
and destructive force.”
•“Sin is a power that seeks to
rule and ruin everyone and
everything.”
•Personal power in Romans 7
Relation of Sin to Creation
• Sin as parasite: Feeds of God’s good creation
• “Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is
only spoiled goodness. And there must be
something good first before it can be
spoiled.” (C.S. Lewis)
• Sin “is nothing and can do nothing apart
from the creatures and the powers which God
has created; yet it organizes all these in open
rebellion against him. Sin does not destroy
the creation: the world of human culture
remains . . . part of God’s good creation, but
sin corrupts and pollutes.” (H. Bavinck)
• Sin corrupts, pollutes, misdirects, twists
creation
Scope of Sin
•Defiles individual life
•Disfigures cultural and social
life
Sin Twists Human Social and Cultural
Life: Three Biblical Rules
•Every person serves some god
in their life
•Every person is transformed
into the image of that god
•Together humanity creates and
forms a society in their image
Forming Society in Our Distorted Image
In the development of human
civilization, man forms, creates and
changes the structure of his society,
and in doing so he portrays in his
work the intention of his own heart.
He gives to the structure of that
society something of his own image
and likeness. In it he betrays
something of his own lifestyle, of his
own god. (Bob Goudzwaard)
Human Cultural Life Rooted in
Idolatrous Story
religious
core
STORY
Scope of Sin
• Defiles individual life
• Disfigures cultural and social life
• Touches non-human creation
“The creation was subjected to
frustration, not by its own choice, but by
the will of the one who subjected it. . . .
The whole creation has been groaning as
in the pains of childbirth right up to the
present time” (Rom. 8:20, 22)
Three Hopeful Notes
•Sin does not belong to the
fabric of the creation: It can be
removed
•Even before end God keeps sin
from running its destructive
course
•Power of gospel is greater than
power of sin