Session 16: WCF Chapter IV
Of Creation, Section 2
The Days of Creation
1. God created heaven, earth and light and separated light
from darkness to create “day” and “night.”
2. God spoke the sky into existence and placed waters above
and below it.
3. God spoke to divide the land from the seas and create
trees and plants on the land.
4. God spoke the sun, moon and stars into existence.
5. God spoke sea animals and birds into existence.
6. God spoke the land animals and, finally, man, into
existence.
7. God rested.
The Days of Creation
“Creatio Prima” vs. “Creatio Secunda”
• Creation of space, time, energy and particles “ex
nihilo”
• Combination and organization of energy and particles
into larger assemblies
Loaded Terms
The “Big Bang Theory”
“Intelligent Design”
Mixed Blessings
The Renaissance
The Scientific Revolution
The Age of Enlightenment or The Age of Reason
Genesis 1:26-28
Genesis 2:7
Ecclesiastes 12:7
Luke 23:43
Matthew 10:28
Colossians 3:10
Ephesians 4:24
Romans 2:14,15
Ecclesiastes 7:29
Genesis 3:6
Genesis 2:17
Genesis 3:8-11,23
CHAPTER IV - Of Creation
2. After God had made all other creatures, He created
man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal
souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and
true holiness, after His own image, having the law of
God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it: and
yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to
the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto
change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they
received a command, not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept,
they were happy in their communion with God, and
had dominion over the creatures.
1.
God immediately created man – no evolution
• God created man’s body out of earthly materials and his
spirit and soul out of nothing.
• “The hypothesis of development is a mere dream of
unsanctified reason, utterly unsupported by facts. Not one
single individual specimen of an organized being passing in
transition from a lower species to a higher has been found
among the myriads of existing species, nor among the
fossil remains of past species preserved in the record of
the rocks.” – A.A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession: A
Commentary
2.
God directly created one man and one woman, from
whom the entire human race has descended.
• Under the various accepted views of Creation, Adam and
the woman may have been created thousands or even
millions of years ago, but they were the first humans.
• Geneticists claiming that mankind descended from
different pairs of humans (given the genetic variety) are
wrong. Archaeological, historical, and philological
investigations all indicate a common origin to all nations.
3.
God created man in His own image.
• Man is a rational, moral, free, personal spirit, which is
necessary both to know God and be subject to moral laws.
• “Knowledge” - a capacity for the right apprehension of
spiritual things, lost in the Fall, restored upon regeneration
(Colossians 3:10)
1.
God immediately created man – no evolution
God created man’s body out of earthly materials and his spirit
and soul out of nothing.
“The hypothesis of development is a mere dream of
unsanctified reason, utterly unsupported by facts. Not one
single individual specimen of an organized being passing in
transition from a lower species to a higher has been found
among the myriads of existing species, nor among the fossil
remains of past species preserved in the record of the rocks.”
– A.A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession: A Commentary
Pelagians believe that a God-created holiness is an absurdity –
only a self-decided moral character formed by a previous
unbiased choice of the will itself can lead to a permanent
disposition or habit of the soul should have a moral character.
• However, a state of moral indifference to sin is itself sin.
• Indifference cannot lead to goodness (self-restraint and
selflessness). It only leads to selfish ends.
• God proclaimed his creation “very good,” which implies a
God-created tendency toward good in man. (Genesis 1:31)
4.
God furnished man with sufficient knowledge for his
guidance.
• It is necessarily implied in the fact that man was a holy
moral agent and God a righteous moral governor.
5.
God created man capable of falling.
• It did, in fact, happen.
Controversy
of the Week!
Will We Be Restored?
Have justified men been restored to Adam’s initial state?
Will glorified man be restored to Adam’s initial state?
Personal
Focus
Do you wish the Fall had never happened?