Originally posted at The Calvinist Gadfly
Q. 15: What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is that wherein God did in the beginning, by the word of his power, make of nothing the world, and all things therein, for himself, within the space of six days, and all very good.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
—Hebrews 11:3
Nothing: it's a big word. Wrapped up in those two syllables is a concept that won't fit into my head (spare me the jokes). But I need to try to get a grip on it, because it's a very important concept, vital, in fact, to my understanding of God. If you were to ask me what it is that convinces me of the existence of God, I would reply, “Nothing.” “Yeah, me too,” says the atheist. But you know I don’t mean that. Let me explain.
In the beginning, everything we see came from somewhere, and was caused by something. Let’s say there is no God. Let’s say the universe is the result of a giant cosmic explosion creatively called the Big Bang. Answer me this: what exploded? Pick your answer, any answer, and then tell me where that came from. You might have an answer, but I’ll only repeat the question, and this could go on interminably. Eventually, we’ll have to get back to a time before that original matter existed, when there was no matter to explode. After all, we’re not stupid. We don’t believe anything could be eternally self-existent.
Billy Preston exhibits his scale model of the Big Bang
The only way to get something when there is nothing is for someone to create it. If we go back as close to the beginning as we can get, we must find an uncaused cause which would be, by definition, without beginning and self-existent. It would also have to have the ability to create from less than thin air. It would have to be a who.
The nothing I have described is impossible for the human mind to imagine, but we can and must understand that that was the state of things — that is, not things — before the first creative act took place. Having admitted that, it is simply obtuse to argue that all that is came to be independently. So there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, and everyone reading this knows it. He created it out of absolute nothing.
Atheists will, of course, deny it, but that doesn’t bother me (Psalm 53:1). What bothers me is that all this is plainly true, yet some men to whom God has entrusted his truth are too sophisticated to believe that it was done in six days, as God has plainly declared, and have the hubris to teach their improved history to Christ’s flock.
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