Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 1:1

The God of Creation

 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.[1]

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reat philosophers are distinguished by asking great questions, whereas the merely curious ask meaningless questions.

For instance, some shallow individuals ask what they think is a profound question, *Why is there something rather than nothing*?

Superficially, this question appears to offer a choice between *something* and *nothing*.

Consider that point.

What is *nothing*?

As soon as we answer, “*nothing* is…” whatever our definition may be, *nothing* ceases to be nothing and becomes *something*.

If *nothing* really is nothing, *nothing *defies description.

So instead the question should properly be, *Why is there something*?

In this form, the question is no longer meaningless.

On the contrary, this question forms one of the great philosophical questions of the ages.

The question can be stated in different forms, any of which stimulates great thoughts.

*Where did the universe come from*?

*Who made the atom*?

*How did everything get to be as it is*?

Any of these is the same, basic question, each exploring the ultimate source of all that is.

Something exists—an immense, intricate and orderly something.

That something was there before we were, for we cannot imagine our existence without it.

But how did it get there?

And how did it get to be as we detect it?

*Genesis 1:1* answers these and every such question.

That verse tells us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Focusing on this one verse, we should be able to discover something about the origin of all that is, and something of the God who gives being to all that is.

Obviously, understanding the nature of our Creator can only be beneficial for those who seek to worship Him.

A Consideration of the Question of Origins* *— Keep in mind that the question before us is *why is there something*?

There are really only four possibilities when we consider answers to this question.

First, there is the view that the universe had no origin.

This view would say that matter is eternal or at least that in some form the universe has always existed.

This has been the predominant view of both ancient and modern science until recent times.

This view is still held by some even within the scientific community.

A second view would hold that everything had a beginning and that this beginning was the work of a good personal being.

Essentially, this is the Christian view.

Opposed to this view, one must concede the possibility of the view that all things came into being as result of the work of an evil personal being.

The fourth view is that there has always been and is now a dualism.

This view takes several forms depending on whether one thinks of a personal or impersonal, moral or immoral dualism; but all the views are related.

This was the view of ancient cosmologies such as presented in the Babylonian Epic.

It is still characteristic of eastern religions and mysticism.

When we think about these views we can quickly eliminate the third view.

That view, you will recall, proposes an origin for the universe from a personal evil entity.

That particular view says, in effect, that Satan is the creator.

This view may be readily dismissed since it fails to give an adequate explanation of the origin of good.

Evil can be a corruption of good.

Satan can rebel against the Lord God of the Christian Faith.

However it is not possible to think of good emerging from evil.

While evil may be the misuse of otherwise good traits or abilities, there is no place for good to develop if evil is the source of all things.

It is possible to restate the problem of an evil origin for the universe in a slightly different form.

For a power to be considered as truly evil, that power must possess the attributes of intelligence and will.

However, these attributes of intelligence and will are in and of themselves good, which implies that good must have existed previously and that evil cannot therefore be the origin of all things.

With the dismissal of this view, we are left with three views to account for origins.

The fourth possibility, dualism, fails to satisfy.

The reason for the failure of this view is that, although dualism has been quite popular throughout long periods of history it fails the test of careful analysis.

You see, having stated the dualism we either immediately attempt to pass behind it to some type of unity that includes the dualism or we choose one part of the dualism and make it prominent over the other.

In this latter instance, we are easing into one of the other possibilities and essentially dismissing the dualism as a viable possibility.

C. S. Lewis wrote about this problem, pointing to what he called the *catch* in the system.

According to dualism, two powers (spirits or gods)—one good and one evil—are supposed to be quite independent and eternal.

Neither is responsible for the other and each has an equal right to call itself God.

Each presumably thinks that it is good and the other bad.

Lewis asks, “What do we mean when we say, as we do in stating this dualism, that the one power is good and the other bad?”  Do we mean merely that we prefer the one to the other?

If that is all we mean, then we must give up any real talk about good or evil, and if we do that, then the moral dimension of the universe vanishes entirely and we are left with nothing more than matter operating in certain ways.

We cannot mean that and still hold to the dualism.

We have fallen back to possibility number one.

If, on the other hand, dualism means that one power really is good and the other really is bad, then we are actually introducing some third entity into the universe, *some law or standard or rule of good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to*.

This standard, rather than the others, will turn out to be the true God.

Lewis concludes, *Since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard, or the Being who made this standard, is farther back and higher up than either of them, and he will be the real God.

In fact, what we meant by calling them good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right relation to the real, ultimate God and the other in a wrong relation to him*.[2]

Therefore, neither postulating an evil power behind the origin for the universe (from which good arose) nor proposing a dualism adequately accounts for reality as we know it.

The real alternative lies between either the view which holds that matter is eternal and the view that considers all things have come into existence through the personal will of an eternal and moral God.

Before we turn to consider the Faith held by Christians we are compelled to review the chief competitor of that Faith, which is materialism.

The materialistic view has roots in antiquity, being found in the scientism of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

Epicurus taught that everything is composed of small building blocks of matter.

These minuscule building blocks were conceived to be hard, indestructible particles.

Epicurus called these building blocks “atoms,” which is incidentally the origin of our word *atom*.

Epicurus’ ideas likely were drawn from Democritus of Abdera who in turn was indebted to a little-known philosopher named Leucippus.

Leucippus may have derived his ideas from a Phoenician philosopher named Moschus, who lived before 1000 b.c.[3]

This materialistic view has become the dominant philosophy of western civilisation, although not in the precise form Epicurus gave to it.

We know, for instance, that the atom can be divided.

We have accomplished that feat.

We have been taught by Einstein that energy and mass are interchangeable—a mind-boggling piece of knowledge.

Knowing this we should shake the presuppositions of materialism, but the western world generally  continues to be philosophically materialistic.

The materialism of our day does not necessarily deny a personality in the universe, but it conceives this as having arisen out of impersonal substance.

It does not deny the complexity of the universe—even including such aspects as the intricacy of the atom—but it assumes that complexity came from that which was less complex.

Consequently, this materialism assumes that all things arose from that which was ultimately simple—that is, mere matter.

Matter, it is assumed, always existed.

There is no further explanation.

This concept lies behind most evolutionary thinking.

This description of the origin of the universe introduces problems which the philosophy itself cannot solve.

The view speaks of a form for matter and then of more complex forms.

Where does that form come from?

Some have speculated that organisation and purpose are inherent in matter, like genes in an ovum or a spermatozoon.

However this thinking not only makes nonsense of the conception as this is no longer mere matter, but the basic question still remains unanswered.

The problem is accounting for how the organisation and purpose even got there.

At some level we have to account for the form; and if this is the case, we soon find ourselves looking for the One who gave organisation and purpose.

At this point we have introduced the idea of the personal.

If we began with an impersonal universe there is no explanation for the emergence of personality.

Francis Schaeffer writes: *The assumption of an impersonal beginning can never adequately explain the personal beings we see around us, and when men try to explain man on the basis of an original impersonal, man soon disappears*.[4]

Genesis begins with the opposite answer.

It maintains that the universe exists with form and personality because it has been brought into existence by a God of order and a God who possesses personality.