Creation
by Dr. William Ames
1. The efficiency of God may be
understood as either creation or providence.
2. Creation is the efficiency of God
whereby in the beginning out of nothing he made the world to be
altogether good.
3. Active creation is conceived as a
transitive action in which there is always presupposed an object about
which the agent is concerned; it is virtually but not formally
transitive because it makes, not presupposes, an object.
4. Passive creation can be understood in
the manner of mutation, although it is improperly called mutation.
5. Creation refers to the whole world,
i.e., whatever exists outside of God.
6. Hence all things which exist outside
of God are created - fully created, that is, in matter as well as in
form. Rev. 4:11, Because thou hast made all things; Col.
1: 16, For by him were made all things which are in heaven and
in earth visible and invisible.
7. Creation produces in the originative
sense because it produces not only being as being, but absolutely every
part.
9. Creation then produces
out of nothing, that is, out of matter that has had no preexistence but
which comes into existence with the thing created. Nothing exists from
eternity but God, and God is not the matter or a part of any creature,
but only the maker.
10. Some things are said
to be created whose matter preexisted. But this creation refers not only
to the immediate action whereby such things are brought into existence,
but also to the mediate action whereby the matter of which they are
formed was brought into existence. So it was in the creation of the
plants and the animals, Gen. 1:20.
11. That state of nothing
or nonbeing of things preceded their being, not only in the order of
nature, for in that case they might coexist with God from eternity, but
also in the order of duration, as we conceive things.
12. Hence that beginning
in which God is said to have created the world, was the end of the
duration of nothing and the beginning of the world's duration.
13. In creation God
wanted to show both his perfection in his not needing any creature or
outward thing (for otherwise he would have created the world as soon as
he could) and his freedom in producing all things without natural
necessity (for had be created out of necessity, he would have done so
from eternity, Rev. 4:11; Ps. 115:3).
14. The world has not
been in existence from eternity nor could it have been according to the
present dispensation and ordering of things.
15. The day of creation
would not have come to be if infinite days had bad to go before. The
days going before would never have ended, so that that day could have
arrived.
16. Hence it follows that no
creature was or could have been a cause, instrumental or principal, in
the act of creation.
17. Everything created was very good,
because it was made neither rashly nor in vain but for the end which the
maker bad before him. Gen. 1: 3 1, Whatever he made was very
good; I Tim 4:4, Whatever God made was good.
18. The goodness of a
thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it
serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.
19. The particular is the proper use
which anything serves in its own nature.
