“We believe in one God…maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible:” the second theological statement of faith of the Nicene Creed. For many Christians, this point of doctrine is somewhat ho-hum. It’s just such a given in Christian circles, that God created all that exists, that many glaze right over it. For other Christians, these are fighting words! Modern apologists have built a cottage industry on Creation Science (even a whole museum in Kentucky!) and duking it out with atheist philosophers and scientists.
Modern apologists of course aren’t the first Christian minds to go toe to toe with other worldviews on this point. The church fathers had to combat the cosmology of dualist pagan and heretical Christian sects. The great medieval scholastic, Thomas Aquinas, of course had his famous proofs of God, which hinged on the created order from a Christian worldview. So I don’t want to sound like someone who is discounting the apologetics angle on talking about God being the Creator of all things; however, I do think it is a shame that it is really the only way modern Christians know how to talk about creation. It’s probably why most Christians develop that distinctive glaze over their eyes at this doctrine of Nicea.
With the many different directions one could go regarding creation, I want to take the one that I believe the modern, conservative church needs most to rediscover. I want you, dear reader, to reckon with the fact that God made a very physical (visible) and a very supernatural (invisible) heaven and earth in which we are called as Christians to inhabit accordingly. And by “accordingly” I mean in a way that actually coheres with reality as God has revealed it.
To not beat around the bush, it is my concern that many modern Evangelicals actually relate to God’s very good (those are God’s words not mine) creation in a way that is closer to Gnosticism than orthodox Christianity. Now, I’m no radical environmentalist. It is clear from Scripture that when God created the earth, he did so with the intention that humans would take the raw material of it, form it, shape it, and produce human flourishing through it (Gen 1:28-30; 2:15). But we also see in Scripture God having a distinct sensitivity to a certain ecological balance.
Leviticus 25 commands Israel to let the land rest after six years of usage with a particular interest in domesticated and wild animals being fed from the land (Lev 25:1-7). That kind of Biblical ethic doesn’t exactly sound like the “drill, baby, drill,” of the most enthusiastic advocates of the fossil fuels industry. In fact, when Israel is eventually exiled from the very same land for their failure to keep this command (among many others!), the land is finally able to enjoy its long neglected rest (2 Chron 36:21). Now, before I get out my depth, let me be the first to admit that I don’t know the right balance to be struck when it comes to using the God-given resources of the creation weighed against conservation and preservation of the ecological order. But can we at least appreciate that God indicates that a right balance between mankind and the created order should exist? And even more so, that there are spiritual, supernatural consequences when this balance is out of whack?
As I stated earlier, it is my concern that too many Christians take more of a Gnostic view towards creation. This looks like an orientation towards our bodies, industrial pollution, food, mineral resources, animals, climate, etc., that is disconnected from the spiritual. It’s an orientation that really only thinks about the message of Christianity as one that delivers us out of, or away from, this physical world to some sort of disembodied spiritual existence. N.T. Wright’s Surprised By Hope is a landmark treatment on this topic. But, if we are to take an orthodox posture towards God’s creation of all things, we must appropriately weave together both the physical and the spiritual (the visible and the invisible). Physical things are dripping with spiritual value and consequence. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Ps 19:1-2, ESV). Spiritual things manifest themselves and give moral impetus in the context of the physical. Think, sacraments. Think, every commandment. Are they not all concerned with how physical beings act or don’t act? To be spiritual is to be rightly physical. The incarnation and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus of course are the prime examples of how God is not interested in delivering us away from the creation, but instead is sinking himself deeper into and redeeming his creation stained with human dysfunction.
The doctrine of God creating the things that are invisible is also ho-hum to many Christians, but something that we rarely stop to think about in our naturalistic, materialistic mindset. Embracing God means embracing that he created a cosmos of both visible and invisible things. The Bible speaks about things “visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” (Col. 1:16, ESV). The most prominent invisible things God has created are angels and demons. The Bible describes angels as “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14, ESV). Demons are fallen angels who rebelled against God along with Satan (Lucifer). There are various biblical accounts of angels interacting with God’s people in numerous situations such as Abraham (Gen. 18), Elijah (1 Kings 17), and even our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 4:11; Luke 22:43). To be spiritual also means acknowledging that there is a spiritual world and creation just as there is a material world and creation.
God also created heaven, the place where he dwells.The psalmist asks “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1; cf. 124:8.). While God dwells in heaven, King Solomon stated, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest of heavens cannot contain you” (1 Kings 8:27, ESV). Heaven is the place where all the hosts of heaven: the saints that have gone before us and all the angels cry while bowing before the throne of God, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” ( Revelation 4:8, ESV; cf. Isa. 6:3). Christ came down from heaven. He also told his disciples “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2, ESV)? God created a world that we cannot see with the naked eye in which we will go when we depart this life. Thus the cosmos not only includes the planet earth and the universe, it also includes heaven.
Some other examples of invisible things (at least to the naked eye) that God created are atoms, subatomic particles, bacteria, etc. Even if we cannot see them and even if we may not think much of them, these are things that serve as the means by which matter exists as well as the means by which matter is preserved rather than decays. St. Paul says the following in 1 Corinthians 8:6, “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” The invisible God upholds his invisible creation just as he upholds his visible creation. After St. Paul praises God for his incomprehensible wisdom in Romans 11, he says “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:36, ESV). We can say that God sustains us through invisible things both spiritual things and material things that require some type of microscope.
So here is the call of Nicea: it is the same call we hear in Psalm 95. It is a call to embrace God by embracing that you have been placed in a cosmos, a created order to which you belong. And that created order belongs to the Creator, and that means something. It demands something. It demands our praise. It demands our obedience. It demands that our Christianity is manifested here in His creation.
Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand (Psalm 95:1-7, ESV).
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