Doctrine Of Creation

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Doctrine Of Creation

Doctrine of creation
What do we mean by creation? How helpful are making, emanation and/or artistic work as analogies? Is it a doctrine about the worlds beginnings or origin, or about its present or future existence, or what?
Creation is often referred to as a 'mystery' and this is due to its perhaps ambiguous nature. Christian theology defines creation in many different ways, which differ greatly as viewpoints on the same theme. John Macquarrie tries to make the mystery clearer by using two analogies to try to describe what creation actually is.
The first of these is that of 'making'. This is best understood alongside the literal understanding of creation, which can be found in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament (Genesis). The analogy is that of a craftsman producing an article that is to be used. It stresses the superiority of God; there is both differences and distance between the craftsman and his product - as there is transcendence between God and God's creatures. It treats creation as an act of free will on the part of God, not as a process that is simply part of the Natural Law, which is more a view expressed by the second analogy.
One problem with the 'making' analogy is that it doesn't embrace the traditional 'creatio ex nihilo' (creation out of nothing) view; if God has made the cosmos in the way in which a carpenter or a blacksmith would, out of what has he actually created it?
The second analogy is that of 'emanation'. To understand this analogy it would be best to imagine God, the creator, as the sun, with the created, Gods creatures, as the rays emanating from it. This view stresses more affinity between the source (God) and what has sprung from it, thus making this the opposite of the 'making' analogy, with a
much stronger emphasis on immanence rather than transcendence.
As already mentioned, this theory of creation treats it more as a natural process that a spontaneous act, which is considered by some to be moving too far along the scale; a happy mean between nature and free will is the ideal view. Emanation is not a very biblical, traditionalist view of creation, and as such is often seen as opposed
to the view of making. However, Macquarrie would not wish this, and
says
'It should not be regarded as a rival idea to the biblical one...It should indeed be regarded as secondary to the biblical idea, but as such it provides certain correctives and gives expression to insights which are not clearly presented...

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