Creation & Re-Creation: A Triune Act of God
The Eternality of the Triune Creator
In the beginning, God…
Genesis 1:1a
Few words could pack more profound truth that these in the beginning of Scripture. This word for beginning is the Hebrew word b'reshit (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית). This word means something happened first or a starting point. Notice that we are using time and temporal language. But, this raises some interesting questions about who God is.
The Eternity of God
Why is this verse so profound? We know that “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90:2). He has declared, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). Psalm 102:25-27 says, “Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.”
What makes this profound is that Scripture declares that God is Eternal. He has no beginning and no end. He does not experience successive moments in time like we do. He is not contained, hindered, or bound by time. Everything is always before Him all at once while He never is ignorant of what time we are in.
James Dolezal says that time “is the measure of a thing’s movement from state of being A to a different state of being B.”1 Since God does not change (Mal. 3:6) and since He is infinite and self-sufficient then He is outside of time. He does not move from state of being A to state of being B.
Puritan Theologian Stephen Charnock prays, “You have always been God, and no time can be assigned as the beginning of your being…If we would look back, we can reach no further than the beginning of the creation and account the years from the first foundation of the world, but after that we must lose ourselves in the abyss of eternity…He was before the world, yet He neither began nor ends; He is not temporary but an eternal God.”2
Time is the measurement of created things. It is the measurement of something that has been brought into existence. Therefore, God, who is not a created being but Creator of all, is not bound by time.
God didn’t decide “at a certain time” that He would begin His work of Creation. He didn’t mark it on His calendar. He is not bound by time but rather time itself has come into existence. Creation at one point came into existence which is when time began. Creation is not co-eternal with God. Only God is eternal and outside of time. Only God has always been.
In another great work of his, Dolezal says, “God himself cannot be numbered as one of those things appearing within being in general. Being in general…is a fundamentally caused being and God is the sufficient ontological reason for its actuality.”3 God is not a being like us. God is Being while we are being. Our being began. His Being has always been. God is not a creature because He has created all things and is Himself not created. He has always been and will always be. He is the “I Am who I Am” (Ex. 3:14).
God is so infinite in perfection, simple in Being, and self-sufficient in existence that he “has a fullness of life and actuality that does not need to be enhanced and cannot be attenuated over time.”4 He does not improve for the better nor decrease for the worse.
What we have here is a God who is “before” the beginning.
The Triune God & Creator
Proverbs 8:22 will use this Hebrew word for “beginning” when it says, “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His work.” What was the beginning of Yahweh’s work? Creation. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is being personified as Someone who was in the beginning, even “pre-dating” God’s work of Creation. Wisdom is seen as Someone who is co-eternal and co-equal with God.
When could an infinitely good and wise God ever have been without His Wisdom? That’s unreasonable! Of course He has always been with His Wisdom and even “by wisdom [He] founded the earth” (Pr. 3:19).
This sounds exactly like Colossians 1:16 which says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Who is the “Him” here? It is none other than the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and the one who made peace by the blood of His Cross—Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ—God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God—is Begotten and not made. He is the eternally begotten Son of the Father who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father in all things and distinct only in their relations as Persons of the Trinity.
Creation is a Triune act of God. This one God (Deut. 6:4) is the one who is the Father Wording all things into existence and who hovers and broods over it all by His Spirit.
This act “in the beginning” is full of the Godness of God. And it is the same God who re-creates us. Chad Bird says, “Jesus the Beginning restarts the world in love. ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). We receive a regenesis from this divine [beginning—Heb. reshit]. Dead but now alive. Darkened but now enlightened by Christ, the ‘light of the world’ (John 8:12).”5
As there was nothing in us for God to work with—no preexistent spiritual “matter” or faith for Him to use—so He does His re-creative work all of Himself. It is monergistic. It is sovereign. It is without any contribution from us of any kind. By grace He gives us the faith to believe with (Eph. 2:1-10). The Father effectually calls us through the Son who purchased our salvation and applies it to us by the Holy Spirit of adoption who unites us to Christ making us sons of the Father who are justified once-for-all through His effectual Word and by His Spirit continues to grow us into the image of Christ from one degree of glory into another.
Isn’t the Bible amazing?
James Dolezal, All That Is In God (Grand Rapid, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), p. 83-84.
Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 1.414-415.
Dolezal, God Without Parts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), p. 113.
Steven Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), p. 30.
Chad Bird, Unveiling Mercy (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2020), p. 2.