In this interview, D.A Carson points out that whereas for many Christians, when thinking about the doctrine of creation, focus on the age of the cosmos, the theory of evolution, and so on, the Bible itself emphasises other things – especially the implications of creation.

Carson focuses especially on the first two chapters of Genesis.

The following is a precis.

1) God comes first. God is not dependent on us, although Scripture will show that there was a perfection of Trinitarian love in the past.  The emphasis is different in Islam, say, where God is described as unique and sovereign and separate.

‘But the Bible as a whole insists that God is love, because in the one God, miraculously, strangely, God is also other. In the oneness of God there is a complexity such that God loves the Son, the Sons loves God, even in eternity past, and he doesn’t need the universe.’

2) God speaks. He is a talking God. It is by speaking that he brings the universe into existence.  Thereafter, he speaks in words that human scan understand.

3) God made everything. Over against pantheism and panentheism, there is a clear distinction between the Creator and the creation.  Over against dualism, God and his creation are not equal and opposite, nor is there simply two sides to the moral universe – a good side and a bad side.

4) There is one God who is good, and he made everything good. Once again, there is no dualism in which good and evil have always co-existed side by side.  There is one sovereign God, and evil is an interloper.  God’s standing behind good and evil is asymmetrical:

‘That is, he stands behind good and evil in different ways. He stands behind good in such a way that the good is always creditable to him and the evil is always creditable to secondary causalities, like the serpent, even though it can’t sweep away God’s sovereignty.’

Our relationship with God is not of the nature of a quid pro quo.  We do not pay him for his favour.  He does not reward us for offering the right sacrifices.

‘A lot of religion is: You scratch my back, I scratch your back. You offer the right sacrifices to the gods, and you end up with a fat, healthy baby. That is what religion is and what a pagan world looks like. It is arranged in terms of swaps. But if God made everything and needs nothing, how on earth do you trade with him?’

5) We are accountable to God.  That is why we cannot simply back off when asked to stop talking about Jesus.  Love demands the honesty to say

‘The one thing I can’t do is back off, because God made you and therefore you owe him and you will give an account to him.’

6) There are hints in the Genesis narrative of God’s complexity.  Gen 1:26 does not teach a full-orbed doctrine of the Trinity, but it contains the seed of such a doctrine, leading to such statements as Jn 1:1, and then to the full articulation in the ecumenical creeds.

Other doctrines, not explicit in the Genesis narrative but hinted therein, are the covenant of works and the tabernacle/temple.  Concerning the latter, the garden of Eden was a meeting place between God and human beings, just as the tabernacle and temple would become.

7) Human beings are made in the image of God. They are part of the created order – they are made from dust.  But they also bear the image of God.

8) Human beings have been appointed stewards over creation.

9) Order and structure.  This is apparent in Gen 2.  Men and women are equally made in God’s image, but in a binary way.  Adam is made first, and Eve from him.  It is not a purely reciprocal – still less an interchangeable – relationship.

10) The creation of the heavens and the earth points forward to provision of a new heaven and a new earth.  Rom 8 teaches that the whole creation is subjected to death and decay, and groans in anticipation of the adoption of sons, and the glory of the new creation, as indicated in ” Pet 3 and Rev 21.

11) The beginning of Sabbath is bound up with God’s rest. The legal institution of the Sabbath in Ex 20:8-11 looks back to God’s rest from his work of creation.  And it develops into a whole theology of rest.

12) Creation testifies to God’s greatness.  This is celebrated in Psa 8, Psa 19 and elsewhere.

‘God is sovereign over creation, knows the end from the beginning, and everything is accountable to him. He is the sovereign pottery maker.’

Isaiah 40:12; 43:15; 44:2–24; 45:11–12 call us back to worship God because of his greatness displayed in creation.  Rom 1 makes the same pont: ‘God has not left himself without witness because his existence and glory are already displayed in the created order itself.’

Conclusion

The first two chapters of Genesis are the seedbed of countless themes that speak of God, of ourselves, and of the storyline that leads to the coming of Christ and then to the glory that is yet to come in the new heaven and the new earth.