God not a Creator?

Originally posted on October 08, 2009 – by Andre Piet

A week ago it was front-page news that ‘Ardi’, the oldest primitive human, had been found; today the newspaper ‘Trouw’ headlines: ‘God did not create, He separated’.

All translations, commentaries, and studies say the same: the Bible begins with God’s creation. Wrong, says professor Ellen van Wolde. “God is not the Creator.”
(…) Van Wolde (1954) will deliver her inaugural lecture tomorrow afternoon; since the beginning of this year she has been working as professor of Old Testament exegesis at Radboud University Nijmegen.

What did this professor discover?

Thus she came across (…) the verb bara. According to everyone it means ‘to create’, but for Van Wolde that translation no longer sufficed. “It simply did not fit.”

However, Van Wolde fails to make clear what exactly does not fit. The only thing she makes plausible is that the word ‘bara’ also contains the idea of ‘separating’. But that was already long known (see below).

With the verb, God was the subject (God created…), followed by ‘always two or more direct objects’. Why did God not create one thing or animal, but always several?

Point one: it is not true that the verb ‘create’ is always followed by two or more direct objects. Genesis 1:27: “And God created man (singular) in His image; in the image of God He created him (singular).” Twice ‘created’ and twice followed by one direct object. The man was created in God’s image, also according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:7. Thus Van Wolde’s proposition already collapses in the very first chapter of the Bible.
Point two: why does the fact that God creates multiple things imply that the word ‘create’ no longer suffices? What is the logic of that?

How does the professor arrive at this ‘new’ insight? Through Bible study? According to Van Wolde it is mainly due to…

… new editions of Mesopotamian texts. The older ones were still stamped by the biblical views of the scholars. Now that scholarship has been emancipated, we gain better insight into those texts.” And from this it appears that in other creation stories from the Near East as well, the deity separates heaven from earth.

Mythological stories from Mesopotamia shed light on the meaning of Genesis one, according to the professor. For those who take the Bible seriously, it is known that this is a reversal of matters. For Scripture claims to interpret itself, precisely in order to shed light on everything else!

Instead of comparing the Hebrew texts with mythological stories outside the Bible, this highly learned lady would have done well to examine the Greek equivalent of ‘bara’ in the ‘New Testament’. For in the Greek writings God (as in the Hebrew Bible) is explicitly confessed as Creator no fewer than about forty times. And the Greek verb ‘ktizo’ unmistakably means ‘to create’ and not ‘to separate’.

Another interesting reason is given why prof. Van Wolde wants to abandon the word ‘create’. It concerns Isaiah 45:7.

“This has caused major problems in biblical theology, from Calvin to the present, because it would say here that God Himself created darkness and evil.” According to Van Wolde, God is not the author of darkness and evil, but the one who “forms the light and separates from the darkness, makes peace and separates from evil.”

God as Creator of evil is a theological “stumbling block”. So it comes in handy to change the word ‘create’ into ‘separate’… What Mrs. Van Wolde is meanwhile engaged in is turning GOD, the Creator of ALL (including evil!), into a miniature god. A god in her own image and likeness.

The usual idea of creation out of nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a great misunderstanding.

Correct, creatio ex nihilo is a theological invention and (therefore) a misunderstanding. The Bible says: “all things are out of Him…”. God creates out of Himself, and that is something entirely different from creating out of nothing.

God is the Creator of heaven and earth. Just as the Creator stands for the ONE, so creation is characterized by the TWO (separation): heaven and earth, light and darkness, sea and land, good and evil, etc. The GOD (aleph = 1) who brought forth this creation of dualities (beth = 2), however, as a FATHER (abba) guarantees the good outcome: everything returns to Him! Aleph-beth-aleph: 1-2-1.

“For out of Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory for the eons!” (Rom.11:36).

Delen: