Chapter 6

"THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD" ⁽⁸³⁾

Section 6: JESUS "THE BEGINNING OF GOD'S CREATION" ⁽⁸⁴⁾

Jesus as Creator

In Section 4 of this chapter we have demonstrated that the passages usually advanced to support the doctrine of the personal pre-existence of Jesus can readily be interpreted as a pre-existence in the mind and purpose of God only, and that the early Christians certainly understood them in this way. But there are still a series of allusions scattered throughout the New Testament that refer to Jesus as a Creator, and these are usually taken by Trinitarians to support their contention that Jesus, as the second component of an eternal trinity, was present at the beginning and involved in the work of the physical creation.

"All things were made through him (the Word), and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3).

"The world was made through him" (John 1:10). "One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Corinthians 8:6).

"God, who created all things by Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 3:9, AV).

"He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:15-17).

"(God) has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world" (Hebrews 1:2).

"Thou, Lord, didst found the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands; they will perish, but thou remainest; they will all grow old like a garment, like a mantle thou wilt roll them up, and they will be changed" (Hebrews 1:10-12).

These are the majority, if not all, of the references which refer to Jesus as a Creator. The Ephesians passage can be excluded immediately, for the final phrase "by Jesus Christ" is omitted from later translations, as it does not appear in the best and oldest manuscripts. Is this another example of the work of an over-zealous Trinitarian scribe attempting to lend support to the doctrine?

Care must be taken not to immediately assume that in all these passages the reference is to the literal creation of the earth as described in Genesis 1-2. The Bible speaks of more than one creation. There is the physical creation of the heavens and earth and their contents, but also many references to a new, spiritual creation. This new creation will not be a replacement of the literal earth, but the creation upon the existing earth of a new perfect order. And because the terms used to describe the spiritual creation and its various processes and effects are often based upon those used of the literal creation, it is only by examining the context of the reference that it becomes clear which of the two creations is intended.

In the beginning, as described in Genesis 1, the heavens and the earth were formed, followed by the creation of Adam from the dust of the ground. Man was made in the image or likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) and in this sense was the son of God (Luke 3:38). The woman was formed from the side of Adam whilst he was asleep and presented to him as his bride. The pair were placed in a paradise, or garden, but were banished from it when they sinned, thus denying access to the Tree of Life which could have made them to live for ever.

All these aspects are picked up by the rest of Scripture and are referred to the new creation. They are regarded as pre-figuring the redemptive process by which God and man will be reconciled and united, mankind becoming a glorious and eternal component of the Yahweh Name.

Thus God says through Isaiah "Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered" (65:17). This is no reference to a new literal earth to replace the existing one, for that "abides for ever" (Ecclesiastes 1:4), but to a new order being developed in the physical world. This new creation was the hope of the early Christians, for Peter says: "According to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13).

This perfect state represented by the new creation will be reached by processes corresponding to events of the literal creation. In the literal creation a new man was created, in the figurative new creation a new man was also created, Jesus, the Second or Last Adam, the Son of God in a greater sense. His work contrasts with the achievements of the original man:

"Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:45,47).

Like the first Adam who was created in the image of God, Jesus was "the express image of his (God's) person" (Hebrews 1:3 AV). It has already been shown the way Jesus did this by being a perfect manifestation of the attributes of God. Unlike the first man, who brought death, the last man will bring life:

"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22).

The analogy is continued in the creation of Eve:

"The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man" (Genesis 2:21-23).

The New Testament parallels this with the future relationship between Christ, the bridegroom, and the redeemed, the Bride. She will owe her existence to his side wounded at Calvary. The correlation here with the literal creation is explicit in Paul's writings. Continuing the Genesis account quoted above he says:

"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5:31-32).

Revelation describes the union of Christ and the redeemed under the figure of the marriage of the Lamb:

"The marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints" (Revelation 19:7-8).

Thus the union of Father, Son and the redeemed, as prayed for by Jesus" That they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one" (John 17:22-23) will be achieved by this new creation. ⁽⁸⁵⁾

The above references clearly show that Jesus is the starting point of this new creation, just as Adam was of the old. Hence he is "the beginning of God's creation" (Revelation 3:14), and the "first-born of all creation" (Colossians 1:15), in the sense that through him God originated His plan for the new order. And just as Adam was the first of a race of mortal men and women, so through Jesus a spiritual race is being developed. God through him is fathering a new race of sons and daughters whose identity is determined by a new heart and mind. "You have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator" (Colossians 3:9-10). Thus those who are 'in Christ' as opposed to those who are 'in Adam' are components of this new creation:

"Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). This newness is shown by the way of life of the believer:

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Ephesians 2:10).

The literal creation was the result of God's word every creative act was preceded by "And God said". In the same way the spiritual creation comes about as a result of the word of God:

"You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" (1 Peter 1:23).

Finally, as a result of the work of Jesus in bringing about this new creation of a race of immortal perfect beings, the paradise of Eden will be restored in a symbolic sense. By the literal creation described at the beginning of the Bible God brought order out of chaos, illumined the world by the light of the sun, created a beautiful environment of plants, trees and rivers and placed in it the newly created human pair. But a curse followed because of man's sin. The Tree of Life, that special tree that could bring eternal life, was put beyond their grasp as they were banished from the face of God into a life of estrangement, trouble and death.

In contrast to the creation account at the beginning of the Bible, the inspired record closes with a picture of the completed new creation when the great barrier of sin will no longer prevent perfect fellowship between God and man. This symbolic Garden of Eden will restore all the representative components of the original literal creation. The river is one that brings endless life, the Tree of Life heals eternally, the earth's curse is removed, God's face will again be revealed to the adoring worship of the new race of the redeemed, and the light of the sun will be replaced by the radiance of His presence: 

"Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life ... and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 22:1-5).

In the previous chapter of Revelation is a similar symbolic representation of the completed new creation that will replace the old Adamic order:

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. And he who sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:1-5).

So it can be seen that God's purpose from the beginning was to bring about through His Son a new creation of a race of immortal beings in whom He could dwell. The prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17 will then be answered:

"That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also my be in us." (John 17:20).

With this insight into the new creation, and with the understanding that it has no reference to the original literal creation (although its imagery is firmly based on the Genesis record), the passages quoted at the commencement of this section which speak of Christ's creative role can be re-examined. When Paul spoke of "One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Corinthians 8:6) he was plainly referring to the new creation that will arise from his redemptive work rather than to the original creation. It is in this sense that Christ is "the beginning of the creation of God" (Revelation 3:14).

Similarly the two passages in Hebrews do not imply that Jesus was present at the literal creation or that he took part in it. In 1:2 where we read "through whom also he created the world" the word translated 'world' is not kosmos, the word for the literal earth, but aiönias. This is the plural of aion which simply means an 'age', and teaches that God had Jesus in mind from the beginning, and all the subsequent 'ages' through which the world has passed have been organised with God's messianic purpose in mind. No trinitarian inference can therefore be drawn from the allusion, especially in view of the context of this phrase, where it is stated that Jesus was "appointed heir of all things", which of necessity indicates authority of the Father over the Son, thus ruling out any suggestion of eternal co-equality between them.

The passage in Hebrews 1:10 that alludes to Jesus as a creator needs to be read with the purpose of this epistle clearly in mind. The prime purpose of the epistle was to demonstrate the superiority of the ministry of Christ over the Law of Moses. The first of many examples of this superiority is that Christ is greater than the angels through whom the Law was originally given (2:2). To sustain this argument the writer quotes several Messianic psalms, one of which is Psalm 102 which undoubtedly refers to the future rule of the Messiah when the "new" heavens and earth of his rule are established. The psalmist speaks of God's appointed time to favour Zion (v13), of the time when God will appear in glory and all the rulers and nations of the world will do homage to him (vv15,16,21-22), and also of the time when a "people that shall be created" shall fear the Lord (v18,AV,NIV). The psalm is looking forward to the new creation established by Jesus and which will be revealed at his second coming. It is in this context that it goes on to describe a change of heavens and earth in the words later quoted in Hebrews:

"Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They will perish, but thou dost endure; they will all wear out like a garment. Thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away; but thou art the same, and thy years have no end" (Psalm 102:25-27).

In the context of the establishment of the new creation it would be inappropriate to refer this passage to the literal creation, which elsewhere is described as lasting for ever (Ecclesiastes 1:4). It must refer to an existing order of things on earth that is to be replaced. Heavens and earth are often used in this figurative sense in Scripture. God described the success of the Babylonian army against the nations using the same imagery as Psalm 102:

"All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll" (Isaiah 34:4).

The same figure was used of the fall of Babylon itself:

"Therefore will I make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place" (Isaiah 13:13).

It is this identical figure that is being used in Psalm 102 to describe the major change in the world's organisation effected by Jesus at his return. The existing 'heavens and earth' of human rule will be removed, and the new creation instituted. The point of the Hebrews allusion can now be seen. One of the reasons why Jesus is greater that the angels is that whilst they created the literal world, Jesus is the founder of this new order. The reference therefore is not primarily to the literal creation as a superficial reading might indicate.

Moving on to the Colossians reference, where it states that "in him all things were created", we have a similar situation. Paul actually defines what created things he is talking about. They are not the literal earth and sky of the physical world, but "thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities" all of which have been "created through him and for him ... and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:15-16). The key words here are "in him". As Jesus ascended to heaven he said "All authority in heaven and on earth (i.e. the 'thrones and dominions') has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18), teaching us that from the moment of his exaltation all the human organisations on earth exist by the will of and in the purpose of Christ. He is using them to forward his development of that plan to create "a new heavens and earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). Again, to use this passage to say that Christ as "very God' was responsible for the literal creation of the earth is to grossly misread the Apostles intentions and arguments.

An alternative view of these 'creation' passages is that Christ is revealed not as the actual pre-existent creator but the embodiment of the power and wisdom of God which was the creative force. Any Trinitarians who feel that such passages (particularly Colossians 1:16-17 and Hebrews 1:10-12) support the pre-existence of Jesus as part of an eternal trinity would do well to ponder the following quotations from Dunn, himself a Trinitarian theologian, who attempts to listen to them with the ears of their original recipients, rather than with the ears of later readers who have been conditioned to assume from such passages the fully fledged doctrine of the incarnation:

"What does this mean, to say that Christ is the creative power (= wisdom) of God by means of which God made the world? Is the intention of the writer to ascribe pre- existence to Christ as such? Despite its obvious attractiveness that interpretation does not necessarily follow. This may simply be the writer's way of saying that Christ now reveals the character of the power behind the world. ... In other words that language may be used here to indicate the continuity between God's creative power and Christ without the implication being intended that Christ himself was active in creation". ⁽⁸⁶⁾

"... Probably (in Colossians 1:17) we do not have a statement of Christ as pre-existent so much as a statement about the wisdom of God now defined by Christ, now wholly equated with Christ". ⁽⁸⁷⁾

"Is then the Colossian hymn writer trying to say any more than that the creation and Christ must be understood in relation to each other: now that Christ has been raised from the dead the power and purpose in creation cannot be fully understood except in terms of Christ, and so too Christ cannot be fully understood except in terms of the wise activity of God which has made the world what it is, which gives the world its meaning, and which will bring the world to its appointed end.

"Once again then we have found that what reads at first sight as a straightforward assertion of Christ's pre-existent activity becomes on closer analysis an assertion which is rather more profound not of Christ as such present with God in the beginning, nor of Christ as identified with a pre-existent hypostasis or divine being (Wisdom) beside God, but of Christ as embodying and expressing (and defining) that power of God which is the manifestation of God in and to his creation". ⁽⁸⁸⁾

"Since the point is so important, let me attempt to put it in a slightly different way. We must grasp the fact that Paul was not seeking to win men to a belief in a pre-existent being. ... What he was saying is that Wisdom, whatever precisely that term meant for his readers, is now most fully expressed in Jesus. Jesus is the exhaustive embodiment of divine wisdom: all the divine fullness dwelt in him". ⁽⁸⁹⁾

"Christ fully embodies the creative and saving activity of God, that God in all his fullness was in him, that he represents and manifests all that God is in his outreach to men. We can express this as the divinity or even deity of Christ, so long as we understand what that means: the deity is the Wisdom of God, for the Wisdom of God is God reaching out to and active in his world. So the deity of Christ is the deity of Wisdom incarnate; that is, to recognise the deity of Christ is to recognise that in Christ God manifested himself, his power as Creator, his love as Saviour, in a full and final way. But, to make the point one last time, we should use the language of incarnation at this point only if we use it properly. For whilst we can say that divine wisdom became incarnate in Christ, that does not mean that Wisdom was a divine being, or that Christ himself was pre-existent with God, but simply that Christ was (and is) the embodiment of divine wisdom". ⁽⁹⁰⁾

Whichever of the two interpretations outlined in this section is accepted Christ as the originator of the new creation, or Dunn's view that Christ was a later bodily manifestation of the one wisdom and power of God that originally created the world does not alter the fact that there is no room at all for the conventional view that these passages attribute the literal creation to Jesus, and that therefore he is a pre-existent member of an eternal trinity. Our studies do however confirm the greatness of Jesus Christ as a manifestation of the one true God and the originator of that new creation, developed over the ages, that will at last be revealed in the earth.

In the six sections of this chapter we have closely examined the biblical teaching about Jesus and have found that, when viewed from the perspective of first century Christianity, the passages usually taken to teach the deity of Jesus in fact do nothing of the sort. Jesus existed from the beginning only in the mind and purpose of God, as the one who would reconcile Himself with fallen man, thus making a 'new creation'. Jesus Christ was, and still is, subordinate to the Father, and will continue to be so even when God's purpose with the earth and man is completed. Both before and after his glorification he was termed 'man', and his physical nature was identical to ours; his temptations as authentic, and his death as real as any man's. Yet at the same time he was the Son of God by begettal by the Holy Spirit, though never termed 'God the Son'. By his victory over sin he has been exalted to the place of highest honour at the Father's right hand, everything in heaven and earth being now subject to him except the Almighty Himself. As our redeemer he deserves our highest thanks and praise: we should 'honour the Son even as we honour the Father'. But Scripture does not permit us to go further and describe him as God the creator, or to envisage him as a member of an eternally pre-existent and co-equal trinity.

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REFERENCES

83. Matthew 16:16

84. Revelation 3.14

85. For elaboration of this theme see Ch. 7

86. Dunn, J.D.G, "Christology in the Making", second edition, p.190. In this and in all subsequent quotations on this head the italics are original.

87. Ibid. p.191

88. Ibid p.193-4

89. Ibid. p.195

90. Ibid p.212