THE
CREATOR-CREATURE DISTINCTION
GOD IS GOD AND WE ARE CREATURES
One of
the most important things we know about the universe as Christians is that
everything we see, feel and touch was created by almighty God. This truth is
simply a part of our knowledge gained by faith (Heb. 11:3) and it is basic to
everything in the Bible starting in Genesis 1. At the same time we know that
the God who created the universe is so far above and beyond the universe, and
so great, that He measures the heavens as it were between His hands (Isa.
40:12). While we know that this is a human language analogy because God is a
Spirit, nevertheless we learn from it that God is truly above and different
from the universe that He created, even while He permeates every atom with His
sustaining power. Throughout history various pagan religions, such as Buddhism,
have been pantheistic, that is, they have identified God with the universe,
which is, of course, idolatry. In order to avoid such idolatry, we must be
careful to maintain in all of our thinking a careful distinction between God
and the universe He has created.
This
Creator-creature distinction is very important to maintain because when we
don't, we will become "fools...who change the truth of God into a lie, and
worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
forever" (Rom. 1:22,25). Such creature-worship, of course, leads to all
kinds of other sins, and finally to hell, as the apostle Paul teaches us in the
rest of Romans chapter 1.
Now this
idea of the greatness of God over against the universe He has created is called
the "transcendence" of God. This means that God is fundamentally
different from and beyond the universe. While God is also "immanent,"
that is, is in and throughout the universe upholding it by His power, He is
still different from the universe even while upholding and governing it
"as it were by His hand" (Heidelberg #28). The point is that
"God-stuff" is NOT created. God is a transcendent Spirit, He is not
part of the universe, and He is different even from the spirits He has created
as a part of the universe because those spirits are created, are subject to
destruction (as in the case of animals) and in no way have the dignity,
majesty, or any of incommunicable attributes of God.
Many of
the churches in the United States today are excellent examples of failing to
maintain the Creator-creature distinction as they have denied the supernatural
nature of God through theological "Liberalism." This Liberalism not
only does not take the Bible literally, it denies the miracles, including
creation itself, and attempts to make the God of the Bible into a manmade
imagination that is a part of this universe. As a result such churches have
denied any real salvation from sin through Jesus Christ (for them man is
basically good anyway) as they try to teach a moral lesson of man helping
himself and others by being good. They have certainly ended up worshiping and
serving the creature more than the Creator, thus leading to a religious
unbelief. And, just as Paul warns in Romans 1, they have become champions of
all kinds of rotten immorality like homosexuality and abortion.
If the
Reformed Church in the United States is going to maintain a strong Christian
faith, we are going to have to continue to maintain and emphasize the
transcendence of God, and thus of His distinction from the world He created.
Without a true God over us, we will soon begin to act as our own gods, as did
many of the Jews of Jesus day, who had a form of religion but didn't really worship
God (Mark 7:7).
THE NATURE OF GOD'S TRANSCENDENCE
There
are three broad categories in which the Creator is to be distinguished from the
creation. These are the nature of God's existence, the nature of God's
knowledge and the nature of God's morality. In all of these God is eternal,
unchangeable and uncreated, in contrast to the universe, including human
beings, which is temporal, changeable and derived from God's creating work.
While it
is hard to come up with words that describe something that is
"incomprehensible and everywhere present (Heidelberg #48, explaining the
Godhood of Christ), the "God-stuff" is the most real stuff there is.
God is a Spirit whose presence is everywhere in this universe upholding every
atom's existence (Heb. 1:3), and yet is infinitely beyond that universe and so
different from it in the nature of its existence that no creature is aware of
God's presence in the world unless God speaks to reveal His presence to us.
(The great ecumenical creeds of Christianity use the word
"substance," when referring to the members of the Trinity being of
"one substance." The Son, we confess, is of "one substance"
with the Father.)
The
major point here is that the God-stuff is self-existent, totally independent of
any other thing, and self-contained. This nature of existence is completely
different from the existence of the universe or anything in it. We members of
the universe, are created rather than self-existent, we are completely
dependent upon God and many other things for our existence (like the dirt God
formed into Adam's body) and we are necessarily related to every other fact in
the universe by being interdependent created facts, rather than being
self-contained. This is why God so strictly enjoins the Second Commandment on
us. We are never allowed to think of God in terms of items in this universe,
for that is the blasphemy of God's own nature which transcends this universe.
THE CREATOR-CREATURE DISTINCTION IN KNOWLEDGE
It
should not be hard for Bible-believing Christians who know that God is
transcendent to accept what the Bible says about God's knowledge in comparison
to human knowledge, namely, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts"
(Isa. 55:9). If God truly is infinite and eternal, then He must be omniscient
because everything there is is created according to His plan. God knows
everything because, as Paul says, He "works all things according to the
counsel (plan) of His will" (Eph. 1:11). In contrast, human knowledge is
always derived from God's revelation either in nature or in His word. Thus
God's knowledge is original and causative of events, while man is limited to
"thinking God's thoughts after Him." As Scripture says, "in your
light we see light" (Psalm 36:9). An illustration of this can be seen with
television. Most people who watch television have no idea what is going on
inside the box, and very few have the knowledge that the television designer
does. But they do know the programs they are watching. They "know"
television in a completely different way than its maker. In an infinitely
higher way, we live in the universe and know what goes on here without knowing
it as God the Creator knows it. This means that human knowledge is always a picture
or analogy of God's knowledge; we simply cannot know as God knows because we do
not think, create or know anything that God has not thought, created or known
as originator. Further, we see only the created side of it. While some have
opposed this idea that man's knowledge is but a picture of God's knowledge, it
is the only basis upon which we can say that man's knowledge is true knowledge.
If God's knowledge is not behind our knowledge we can know nothing, but if we
think God's thoughts after Him, we know the truth and that is exactly what we
do as creatures created in God's image.
The same
distinction is true of the fact that our knowledge is temporal while God's
knowledge is eternal. Our knowledge is bound to time, we learn as we go through
time. God, as He says about Himself is, "declaring the end from the
beginning," because "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my
pleasure" (Isa. 46:10). While God is above time, seeing the end from the
beginning, all creatures are stuck in time
What
this means is that we cannot write the rules for God's knowledge as though He
were bound to time or contingent upon things happening outside of His plan.
This does not mean that God is capricious or unknowable, for He has revealed
Himself in nature and His word as a God of order and a "God of
truth." He has made human beings in His image just so that they might,
"rightly know Him, heartily love Him and live with Him in eternal
blessedness to praise and glorify Him" (Heidelberg #6).
There is
however one more complication for human knowledge, and this is that all of our
minds are defiled with sin. Some have said, "what is true for us is true
for God." Well, that is backwards. What is true for God is true, period.
It is true for us, only if we are honest enough to believe the truth, which we
are unable to do unless we are born again by the Spirit of God. Jesus said to
the unregenerate Jews, "But because I tell the truth, you do not believe
me" (John 8:45). Mankind fell into sin because Adam and Eve believed the
lie of Satan rather than the truth of God, and we have all been infected with
that mancentered lie ever since. Only when God gives a new heart will we
believe the truth that is unto our salvation, and even that faith is imperfect
and defiled with sin. This is why Solomon says, "trust in the Lord, and do
not lean on your own understanding" (Prov. 3:5).
GOD'S MORALITY AND MAN'S MORALITY
Human
beings are "moral creatures," that is, we are creatures of right and
wrong. Everything we do has a moral dimension. In this way, we (and the angels)
are unique. Rocks, trees and elephants are not moral creatures, they are
creatures with no moral nature. Rocks and trees are clearly non-animate, but
animals, though they are "living souls," also are not moral creatures.
There is no such thing as adultery, theft of murder for animals. This works two
ways; it is not murder when a chicken eats bugs, but it is also not murder when
we or a fox kill a chicken and have it for dinner.
For
human beings, however, morality is at the heart of what we are as creatures
made in God's image. For us, taking or using our neighbor's property without
permission is stealing, swapping sex partners is adultery and killing a human
being without God's permission is murder (God gives permission in war, self-defense
and the punishment of some criminals).
Now,
just as God's nature of existence and His knowledge transcend human existence
and knowledge, so God's morality transcends human morality. What is righteous
for God is that which is according to His nature. God's righteousness is
original, perfect and unable to be defiled. God is not and cannot be wrong.
Righteousness for man, on the other hand is derived. For us righteousness is
not according to our nature but according to God's nature. We ought not lie because
God cannot lie. His nature determines every one of the Ten Commandments.
Furthermore, while Adam and Eve were created perfect, they were able to lie,
their righteousness while perfect, was able to be defiled.
Just
because of this essential difference between God's morality and human morality
as derived and able to be defiled, we must never ever decide right and wrong
for ourselves. Trying to make this decision for themselves was exactly the sin
of Adam and Eve in the Fall, the result of which was utter disaster. Further,
God tells us in so many words, "You shall not at all do as we are do as we
are doing here today, every man what is right in his own eyes" (Deut.
12:8); but we are to do "what is right in the sight of the Lord" (Deut.
12:28). Again, Jesus said, "in vain do they worship me, teaching for
doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:7). Man is simply not big
enough nor righteous enough to be his own moral compass. Only God, whose nature
is perfect morality, can be a trustworthy source of righteousness for mankind.
THE INCARNATION OF JESUS CHRIST
Jesus
Christ is the God-man, He is the eternal Son of God who has taken to Himself a
complete human nature, so that He might live a perfect life for us as the
Second Adam, and die for our sins as the "Righteous Servant," of
Isaiah 53. In teaching the Godhood and the Manhood of Christ, the Bible is
careful not to teach a mixture or alloy of the two natures of Christ. Christ is
true man AND true God; He is not a neither fish nor fowl mixture of the two.
Thus Christ is just as human as you and I are, completely human in every sense,
and at the same time He can say, "I and the Father are one."
This
careful distinction between the two natures in Christ was recognized very early
in the Christian Church and was stated clearly by the Council of Chalcedon in
451 A.D. when it declared that these two natures are "unconfused,
unchanged, undivided and unseparable." Thus the Christian Church has
maintained the Creator-creature distinction from its earliest history, even and
especially when dealing with the person of our Savior Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION
Because
mankind fell into sin by believing the lie that we would "be as gods,
knowing good and evil," our race has struggled against the
Creator-creature distinction in every way. We have "worshiped and served
the creature more than the Creator," we have sought to reduce God's
knowledge to man's level of knowledge (violating the principle "my
thoughts are not your thoughts"), and we have again and again done
"what was right in our own eyes" and called it "good."
Whether we are college professors or chicken farmers, pastors or housewives, we
must repent of those sins which make man his own god by denying his creaturely
existence, his creaturely knowledge and his moral weakness and sin.
How we
pray is a direct result of whether we understand God's transcendent knowledge
and our human knowledge. Jesus tells us not to pray by making long prayers as
the heathen do, thinking we will be heard for our many words (Mat. 6:7). Why?
"Because God knows what things you need before you ask Him" (Mat.
6:8). Prayer is neither a message service to God, as though God did not from
eternity know what we have just learned about aunt Nellie's cancer, nor dare it
be an attempt to change God's mind, as is so often the case with "prayer
chains." United prayer and praying often is commanded by God, but prayer
must be our confession to God of our dependence upon Him, of our trust in His
grace, and of our humble request that hear our desire if it is His will.
Therefore, brief, humble prayer, depending on God's will, will be heard and
answered with what is good for us from the God who knows all things as Creator
and whose will is always perfect. God does hear and answer our prayers, but on
His terms, not ours.
We must
also preach to the world around us that people must "turn from these vain
things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea and all
things that are in them" (Acts 14:15). When we accept or assume the
world's ways of looking at God, knowledge and morality, we cannot challenge the
heathen nature of those ways of thinking. Such failure to challenge the ways of
the world has made the Church ineffective in evangelism, but also in standing
for true morality and knowledge in our society. Evolutionism and moral
degradation, seen in allowing abortion and homosexuality, have invaded the
Church, rather than enabling the Church be the salt of the earth on these
issues.
The
Reformed Church in the U.S. has been given a Bible-based theology that clearly
teaches the Creator-creature distinction. Selling this out for the pottage of
acceptance by the unbelieving world around us will simply repeat the
self-destructive sin of Esau.
Rev. Robert Grossmann 8/04