Creation

The question concerning the origin of the universe has forced itself on the minds of men in all ages. That the mutable cannot be eternal, would seem to be self-evident. As everything within the sphere of human observation is constantly changing, men have been constrained to believe that the world as it now is had a beginning. But if it began to be, whence did it come? Without the light of a divine revelation, this question is unanswerable. The data for the solution of the problem do not lie within the sphere either of experience or of reason. All human theories on this subject are nothing more than conjectures more or less ingenious.

Apart from the pantheistic doctrine which makes the universe the existence form, or, as Goethe calls it, "das lebendige Kleid" (the living garment) of God, the most prevalent views on this subject are, First, those theories which exclude mind from the causative origin of the world; Secondly, those which admit of mind, but only as connected with matter; and Thirdly, the Scriptural doctrine which assumes the existence of an infinite extramundane mind to whose power and will the existence of all things out of God is to be referred.

It is a self-evident truth that existence cannot spring spontaneously from non-existence. In this sense ex nihilo nihil fit is an universally admitted axiom. Those, therefore, who deny the existence of an extramundane mind, are forced to admit that as the universe now is, it must have always been. But as it is in a state of perpetual change it has not always been as it now is. There was a primordial state out of which the present order of things has arisen. The question is, How?

The Scriptural Doctrine.

The Scriptural doctrine on this subject is expressed in the first words of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The heavens and the earth include all things out of God. Of which things the Scriptures teach that they owe their existence to the will and power of God. The Scriptural doctrine therefore is,

1. That the universe is not eternal. It began to be.
   
2. It was not formed out of any preëxistence or substance; but was created ex nihilo.
   
3. That creation was not necessary. It was free to God to create or not to create, to create the universe as it is, or any other order and system of things, according to the good pleasure of his will.
   

Hodge v 1 p. 550, 553

---

Kathee is out at a church function - was cleaning the church kitchen with some women from the church.