Trinity: Old Testament, Genesis 1:1-2:4a                                      

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

When you have worked in the Church for decades, you encounter what I call the “wrap-around” effect. That means things you’ve heard proposed doctrinally and practically come back to the forefront of church and denominational discussions. They may be wrapped in new paper which is usually the case. But once you get past the bows and colorful designs, the stuff in the boxes is pretty much the same.

I can apply that to all manner of approaches to the Creation narrative given to us … revealed to us in the first several chapters of the Bible. The latest seems to be that somehow we must leave the door open to the idea that our God used evolution as a means to an end. That “evolution has no truck with theism” is how I heard it put just this week. “The creation narrative isn’t included to tell us the how of creation, but simply to identify God as the Source.” *Author yawns* It seems to me that when the church begins to put “academic credibility” above other values in the study of Scripture, we almost always lose to the academy. And I, for one, support an educated clergy and healthy scholarship. What I don’t support is the arrogance of thought that supposes that the ancients were gullible and even stupid. No one says that outright of course. But oh, how it creeps below the surface in academic discussions.

The testimony of the Scriptures is absolutely clear on doctrines of Creation. Our trouble comes when we try to lock the creation of the universe in as a natural event. It was not. It clearly is a supernatural one. And the God behind it is as unexplainable as the event itself apart from divine disclosure. Ours is a revealed religion. And we lose at every single juncture where we forget that truth. The testimony of God’s Word is that He, the triune God, was the Source of all things “visible and invisible” as the great creed says. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were involved. At the grasp of that truth, everything else is possible for with God nothing is otherwise.

On this Trinity Sunday we worship “the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity.” And what He declares regarding His act of Creation can stand the test of all those He has made. He’s heard it all before.