Book Review: The Doctrine of Creation, A Constructive Kuyperian Approach
My research and particularly my research as I interacted with Scripture, led me to the realization that God the Creator and the doctrine of creation is significant for meaningful gospel conversations. Over the past decade or so I have made it a practice to read and reread the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—the true story of the whole world. Most notable in my reading was the ways in which I encountered the Creator across the storyline, not just in the past tense—"in the beginning,” but in astounding ways across the storyline of Scripture. The significance of the Creator’s cosmic authority, particularly in an era that is void of authority and fixated on the immanent frame cannot be underestimated. Everything is created by God and is in subjection to God, fully realized in Jesus Christ—his resurrection and ascension (Col. 1:15–22).
In my studies I have often wondered, why is the doctrine of creation muffled in our understanding of the gospel? So, when Bruce Ashford and Craig Bartholomew’s recent publication, The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach arrived in the mail, I was eager to begin reading, to perhaps fill some gaps. I have thoroughly enjoyed this weighty volume for several reasons.
First, I appreciate the depth and breadth of this work born out of experienced scholarship and a confessional, faith-filled approach to this important doctrine. Second, because Ashford and Bartholomew interact generously with a host of other scholars who hold both similar and opposing views—including Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, Herman Bavinck, Albert M. Wolters—we now have access to a variety of scholars. Finally, the authors locate the doctrine in a contemporary context and encourage further interaction, which is quite helpful in a secularized era. In the section that follows, I attempt to provide a chapter by chapter summary, and some of my insights along the way.
The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach is a significant and formative volume born out of Dutch neo-Calvinism, or the Kuyperian tradition named after Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). In their preface Ashford and Bartholomew describe this tradition as “wonderfully trinitarian and Christocentric” and distinctive in its comprehensive range of creation. The Doctrine of Creation purposes to explore and develop the rich resources of this tradition for contemporary systematic theology with the goal to develop a “constructive, biblical doctrine of creation” [xi].
They present a richly layered doctrine of creation that rests on the creeds and positions the work within the one, holy catholic, and apostolic church. They contend, “We need formative practices that establish us again and again in a view of the world that includes ‘all that is, seen and unseen [8].’” Their scholarship contains a prophetic, albeit gracious, edge and alerts us to the significance of confessing a thoroughly Christocentric approach to the doctrine of creation—a confession, that when rightly understood, orients or reorients every aspect of our lives.
It is the biblical doctrine of creation and its extraordinary correlate in the incarnation that links the particular with the universal, that infuses the ordinary and the concrete with the presence of the divine, that unleashes historical forces with eternal significance, that creates the context for a drama of this earthly, visceral, concrete, everyday world in which God is the chief action and in which we are invited to participate [3].
This captivating introduction is followed by twelve substantive chapters all of which include various and detailed insertions that take a more detailed or thorough look at the development of a particular argument or point of view. These insertions urge further study.
Chapter 1 affirms the doctrine of creation as an article of faith marked by the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. “The doctrine of creation is something we appropriate by faith and thus confess rather than reason toward” [8] a point stressed again and again. “In our view it is important to note in relation to God that where logic can wade, faith can and must swim—and swim deeply into the mystery of God as revealed in Scripture” [123]. The chapters that follow take a deep dive into this mystery in conversation with scholars reaching back to the patristics. Intriguingly, they note that “the danger of an eclipse of this fundamental doctrine has recurred again and again throughout history beginning with the Gnostic threat so ably repudiated by Irenaeus [27].”
The danger of an eclipse of the doctrine of creation stood out in my research, so I penciled in the book’s margin the question “Why?”
Chapters 2 and 3 provide insight and begin to answer my question. Here the authors trace The Travails and Glories of the Doctrine of Creation from the Early Church, to Post-Reformation, and finally to the Modern Period. “A gnostic thread runs throughout church history and remains still today, continuing to deny a full-orbed doctrine of creation and particularly, the potential denial of the God who created all things through Christ and his Spirit” [42]. Locating the development of the doctrine of creation across the ages provides handrails for understanding the recurring eclipse. In my estimation, the nagging presence of Gnosticism is, first, worth more study and, second, underscores the importance of rigorous scholarship to stay the eclipse in this generation.
Chapter 4 draws on the doctrine of God and God’s omnipotence and God the Father Almighty, acknowledges the important theme of power. The chapter considers the incomparableness of God and provides a “theology of Yahweh,” the ruler of all things, the God of history, the Creator. Power remains prevalent in the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament and provides an integral link to his kingship. This chapter includes a section on God’s Omnipotence and: Evil, Creatio Ex Nihilo, Monotheism, and the Trinity—all topics related to God’s power and pertinent to contemporary study.
In this context the doctrine of creation and of God’s omnipotence has a vital role to play. It reminds us that we, as creatures, have real power, but that power is not limitless and can be radically misdirected. The doctrine alerts us to the importance of limits that we need to respect if we wish to flourish [141].
Creation is the opening act in the divine drama of Scripture-the true story of the whole world, and Chapters 5–7, respectively, focus on God’s furnishing of the earth, the creation of its diverse inhabitants and places in both the earthly heavenly realm. Chapter 5 attends to God’s comprehensive order of creation that is fixed yet dynamic because of God’s call to humankind to steward the earth and creation.
Chapter 6 explores the creativity of God displayed in the beauty and diversity of creation found in specific places like land, sky, and sea and in the human relationship and partnership that began with Adam and Eve. Humankind—Imago Dei—uniquely created and specifically gendered is called to multiply and fill the earth. It is this unique relationship and family that announces Christ who, in union with the Church, will fill the world with his fullness. The heavenly realm as a created place is discussed in Chapter 7. This realm reaches beyond the realm of ordinary experience and flies in the face of modernity’s rejection of an invisible realm.
Living as we do in a context in which empirical science functions as the rational idea and towering cultural authority, our testimony to this doctrine is all the more significant. It reminds us that our lives are part of a grand and sweeping drama, a divine drama, that extends beyond the realm of ordinary experience [222].
Chapter 8 is an important chapter that focuses on the Sabbath, Fall and Misdirection. What stands out in this chapter is the author’s attention to the “inseparability of the sacred and social order.” While the Sabbath marks the goal of God’s created work and declares it good both structurally and directionally, the fall marks the expulsion of humankind from the Garden and corrupts the world, not structurally, but directionally. The bulk of the chapter, in conversation with philosophers and sociologists analyzes the ways in which sin—autonomy from God’s authority—has corrupted and misdirected God’s good purposes. In my opinion, the discussion in this chapter is rigorous and has the potential to inform contemporary discussions on racism, discrimination, and calls for social justice and also exposes misdirection inherent in ideologies like humanism, expression individualism, and consumerism.
Chapter 9 attends to the doctrine of creation and culture, highlighting the bright thread of God’s grace woven across the grand narrative of Scripture, inviting us to confidently contextualize, or recontextualize the gospel in every culture dialogically. Notably, our view of the doctrine of creation affects our approach to contextualization. Here the authors affirm a dialogical method that yields to the full weight of God’s authority and, thereby, Scripture’s authority, and in the Kuyperian tradition, develops a robust theology of culture.
Chapter 10 distinguishes between creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua and distinguishes between creation and preservation or providence. Ashford and Bartholomew situate providence under the doctrine of creation, “God’s sustaining, accompanying, and ruling his creation is rooted in and flows from his act of creation” [280]. This discussion is followed by Chapter 11’s focuses on God’s economy, his goal or telos for creation and argues for a restorative eschatology.
The final chapter provides a series of caveats and implications of the doctrine in fields of study like philosophy and science, in places like the table, and regarding the pertinent topics of self and human dignity, and leaves the door open and invites further study on this meaningful topic.
If you have made it this far, congratulations. Ashford and Bartholomew have provided a resource that will serve us for a long time to come and one that is hard to condense in a review. I also hope that this review impresses upon you, my reader, the significance of the doctrine of creation in a twenty-first century context. In my opinion, this doctrine provides avenues for public engagement in compelling ways and attends to pertinent missiological, philosophical, ethical, and sociological issues swirling in America and the world today.
