9. What is the Son’s role in creation?
Through him all things were made.
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The early church’s conviction that the man Jesus was also the Son of God and that, as God, the Son was also eternal, led them to inquire into the Son’s activity prior to his incarnation as the man, Jesus Christ. To discover this, they looked for hidden traces of the Son’s activity in the testimony of the Old Testament. One figure that stood out for them was the figure of “Wisdom,” whom the author of Proverbs presented not merely as an abstract idea of prudent living but personified as God’s co-worker in creation itself:
“When he established the heavens, I was there, . . . when he assigned to the sea its limit, . . . when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” (Prov. 8:27–30)
As with so much in the Old Testament, this passage was read as a shadowy revelation of what would become clear in the full revelation of the Son of God in Jesus: the Son participated in the Father’s creative action.
The author of the Fourth Gospel pondered the story of creation in Genesis, similarly looking for traces of the Son’s activity alongside that of God, “the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” It was easy to find the participation of the Spirit in creation, for “the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). He found the Son, however, in the repeated action of God: “And God said . . .” (1:3, 6, etc.). Something went forth from God to create all that is: the Word of God. And the Word that was the mediator between God and creation “in the beginning” also came as the mediator between God and his human creatures in the man, Jesus Christ.
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“All things came into being through him, and apart from him not a thing came into being.” (John 1:3 DST)
But for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things exist and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8:6 DST)
For all things in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible, were created in him, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities: all things have been created through him and for him, and he himself existed before all things and all things hold together in him. (Col. 1:16–17 DST)
See also Heb 1:2
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This is an excerpt from Christian Faith and Doctrine: An Annotated Catechism for the Global Methodist Church. Seedbed is pleased to partner with The Global Methodist Church to offer this companion resource to A Catechism of Christian Faith and Doctrine for the Global Methodist Church.
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