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What Do Fire and Water Tell Us About Creation?
Theology of Creation
What is the doctrine of creation about?
At first glance, the doctrine of creation seems to be about creatures: the world and its many inhabitants (invisible and visible, organic and inorganic) as well as their origin, purposes, and so forth. That’s all true, but not quite true enough. After all, there are many ways of studying these things. We can know a great deal about the world, its environs and residents, without knowing any of it as created. That is to say, we can study these things in non-theological ways. The biologist, for example, knows a great deal about physiology and behavioral characteristics of living organisms but cannot really tell us that they are “creatures,” for that implies a “Creator.” So what makes the consideration of creatures theological?
Theology is “theological”—a discourse (logos) about God (theos)—when it keeps God as its primary subject matter and considers whatever else it considers in relation to God. Since God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of everything, who holds it all together, and for whom all things exist, then we can only understand creation theologically in this light. Therefore, the doctrine of creation looks at creatures “as they are related to God.”1
The doctrine of creation therefore gives us unique insight into life, the universe, and everything because it speaks about the Creator. Two brief illustrations help illustrate theology’s consideration of creation: What does theology say about fire and water?
Creation
Tyler R. Wittman
This volume in the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series explores the doctrine of creation, inviting readers to delight in the Creator and respond in worship.
Theology does not look at fire like a chemist does, as an exothermic reaction, but “as representing the sublimity of God.”2 One reason God created fire is to symbolize his purifying holiness, which dispels darkness and cannot be approached incautiously: “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). Without this mysterious element, our world would be dark and cold, uninhabitable. Theologically, this is interesting because of what it reminds us about God: He dwells in light unapproachable, and it is by his light that we see any light at all (1 Tim. 6:16; Pss. 36:9; 104:2). As fire brightens and warms, so the Light creates understanding and affection: “Did not our hearts burn within us?” (Luke 24:32). Of course, God also created fire to physically warm us, brighten our paths, help us to boil our water, cook our food, and many other practical uses besides. But none of these purposes exhaust fire’s ultimate significance, which resides within its depths and is invisible to the purely natural mind (1 Cor. 2:14).
Now consider water. Theology’s interests are not in water as a compound substance, a molecule made of hydrogen and oxygen, but rather as a sign of God’s life-giving goodness. Water symbolizes God’s beneficent care, causing life to spring up out of the dry earth: “He did good by giving you rains from heaven” (Acts 14:17; cf. Deut. 28:15; Ps. 104:6–17). Water also reminds us of what is beyond our control. The water is untamed like God’s goodness, and it threatens to wash away what pollutes the land, and so refresh it (Gen. 8:2; Ps. 65:7; 1 Kgs. 18:41–46). For all these reasons, it teaches us the Spirit’s grace (Isa. 55:1; John 4:14).3
Other sciences can tell us things about the creation that theology cannot, but they cannot tell about things that depend neither on sense nor reason, but on the wonder of God’s love. Too often we think these sorts of reflections are fanciful “extras” to the “real” knowledge of, say, fire or water according to their elemental properties. But that is no different from someone too busy with the nutritional facts of a meal that he neglects to ever eat it. Little surprise, then, if he goes hungry.
The Word through whom all things were created has within himself the deepest truth of all things.
Wonder at God’s Works
Let’s take things one step further and suppose that our curious man proceeds to eat and enjoy the meal for its flavors and textures. What he has perceived is good, but it is not all that is good about the food. There are depths in the food he has eaten he has not appreciated because they cannot be perceived with the senses. Part of the doctrine of creation is to help us understand why this is the case. For every creature, every morsel of bread, cluster of grapes, or spoonful of honey extends to us infinite depths of the Creator’s wisdom and love. We appreciate them for the way they sustain our bodies and delight our senses, as we should, but we have not appreciated them rightly until we see them as tokens of the Creator’s goodness.
In one sense, squirrels may enjoy acorns more than any other animal. But the squirrels “consider neither the sun that gave them life, nor the influences of the heavens by which they were nourished, nor the very root of the tree from whence they came. This being the work of Angels, who in a wide and clear light see even the sea that gave them moisture: And feed upon that acorn spiritually while they know the ends for which it was created, and feast upon all these as upon a World of Joys within it.”4 The Word through whom all things were created has within himself the deepest truth of all things. And insofar as the Word is the “food of the angels,” it is by contemplating creation in the Word of the Father that the angels consider so many spiritual depths.5 They see all created things—which we often take for granted—as miraculous rivulets of God’s wisdom and love. Moreover, angels serve as examples to us in this regard. Whether we consider a drink or not, it quenches our thirst: “but to see it flowing from His love who gave it unto man, quencheth the thirst even of the Holy Angels. To consider it, is to drink it spiritually.”6 Such spiritual “eating” and “drinking” is part of what the doctrine of creation encourages by virtue of its God-centered orientation. In short, a well-tuned doctrine of creation should foster a sense of surprise and wonder at God’s works.
This lesson is crucial, so that we aren’t distracted by secondary concerns when studying creation. Distraction happens through excessive attention to philosophical apologetics and the attempt “to understand and parrot the scientific knowledge of the world.” The doctrine of creation has implications for other sciences only to the extent that it concentrates on its unique subject matter, which is God. Acknowledging that the Creator is “uniquely absolute,” this doctrine relativizes any sense we have of the absolute importance of ourselves, our world, and our own questions and concerns.8 However, as theology focuses its attention on the Creator, it focuses on the One who knows the innermost secrets of his creatures and delights in them: “may the Lord rejoice in his works” (Pss. 104:31; 139:15–16). Just so, we are freed to imitate the Creator by studying and delighting in creatures as the works of his hands: “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord” (Ps. 104:34).
Notes:
- Aquinas, SCG II.4.1-2.
- Aquinas, SCG II.4.1.
- Both fire and water teach us about God’s judgment, but this is not different from saying that they teach us about the largesse of his goodness. For that goodness will brook no peace with evil, and God often punishes sinful creatures by depriving them of some goods in the pursuit of even greater things, such as his righteousness and peace. God thus establishes limits to the “sea” and his punishment of sin alike (Prov. 8:29; Exod. 34:7).
- Thomas Traherne, Centuries I.26. I have substituted squirrels for Traherne’s pigs.
- Bonaventure, Sermones selecti de rebus theologicis 4.12 (Opera 5:570).
- Thomas Traherne, Centuries I.27. On the association of “eating” and “drinking” with spiritual perception and learning wisdom in the OT and Talmud, see Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed I.30
- Johann Auer,Die Welt, Gottes Schöpfung. Kleine Katholische Dogmatik III (Pustet, 1975), 24.
- Auer, Die Welt, 66.
Tyler R. Wittman is the author of Creation: An Introduction.
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