_4_The Order Observed in Creation

Genesis 1 teaches clearly that God, in creating, progressed from the simple and the inorganic to the organic, or from the imperfect to the perfect. God first created the rudiments of heaven and earth, matter in a chaotic condition (“Weltstoff’; Luther, moles coeli et terrae). Then He created, one after the other: 1) the light (vv. 3-5); 2) the visible firmament (vv. 6-8); 3) the sea and the dry land, together with the plant life on the earth (vv. 9-13); 4) the sun, the moon, and the stars in the heavens (vv. 14-19); 5) fish and fowl (vv. 20-23); 6) land animals and, finally, man (vv. 24-28).

This order observed by God cannot be interpreted as a self-development of the creature (evolution), for in the various stages of the order recorded everything depends on the divine monergism. The earth, for instance, does not produce grass and herbs (v. 11) and living creatures (v. 24) by way of self-development, but by the word of the Almighty: “Let the earth bring forth,” the earth causes plant life and animal life to spring forth. The theory of “two factors” must be rejected as evolutionism. Luthardt indeed declares: “Scripture tells us that two factors co-operated in the progressive steps of the formations: the spontaneous activity of the powers of nature and the creative influence of God” (Apologie I, 70). But he is mistaken. According to Scripture, grass and animals do not come into existence in part through God’s operation and in part through the “spontaneous activity” of the earth, but they owe their existence entirely to God’s operation. The earth is merely, as the dogmaticians say, the materia ex qua. God alone creates the plant and the animal. Luthardt proposes that the lines separating the Bible and the natural sciences be sharply defined and observed (“Grenzregulierung”). This is a good suggestion. But he does not observe the lines when he says (op. cit., p. 53): “Religion tells us that it is God who gives us our daily bread; but natural science teaches us how the grain grows in the field.” This is so crass an error that Luthardt two pages later corrects himself: “Even today the origin of life is an impenetrable mystery. How something comes into being no man can tell, and we shall never discover it.” This statement is certainly correct. The truly scientific study of nature, which is based on experience and observation, knows of no development of organic creatures from the inorganic (generatio aequivoca) and no evolution of a higher species from a lower.5 — And, as the creation of the creatures is God’s work, so, too, their continued existence, their activity, and their propagation depend solely on the continued operation of God, not on a “spontaneous activity” of the creatures, nor partly or entirely on evolution. For Col. 1:17 tells us: “By Him all things consist,” and Acts 17:28: “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.”