God created the world the way he wanted it to be, and he is omnipotent. Christians believe that it is above and beyond the universe and human understanding. Like Jews, Christians base their understanding of creation on the Genesis account. A fundamental belief is that God created the universe out of nothing, which is reflected in the classic doctrine of creation ex nihilus.
Christianity teaches that the universe was created through love by an intelligent power, namely, the God of the Bible. Creation had a purpose, it was not arbitrary, and therefore the universe is not morally neutral, but fundamentally good. In this determined creation, everything and everyone is inherently valuable. God's design or purpose for creation reflects God's intention that all creatures enjoy perfect love and justice.
God works in human history to fulfill that purpose. God created human beings in the divine image, which allowed them to have a certain understanding of God and of God's vast and complex design. The purpose of life is to love and serve God to help carry out God's glorious plan for creation. In this post, I am going to discuss three Christian views on creation (young-earth creationism, old earth creationism, and theistic evolution) in order to identify points of agreement and points of tension between them and with the vision of science discussed in my previous publications.
Islam is unequivocal in that all creation originates from the will, intention and action of Allah, the Almighty. While the three viewpoints of creation discussed in this publication differ in their interpretation of the moment and mechanism of creation events, all agree that God is the creator and that man is the pinnacle of his creation. Augustine, one of the most influential theologians in Christian history, suggested that the six-day structure of creation in Genesis presents a logical framework rather than the exact passage of time. He argued that interpreting the creation story is difficult and that Christians should be willing to change their minds if new information emerges.
On the contrary, science is not competent to draw conclusions about the supernatural and, therefore, has nothing to say about the role of God as creator or about the Christian view that man is the pinnacle of creation and, therefore, is neutral with respect to the question of God. The term progressive creation comes from Ramm's belief that “the fundamental pattern of creation was progressive. This is consistent with the scientific view of the fossil record pattern, but the view of progressive creation considers that the origin of life forms in the fossil record is due to millions of acts of special creation and not to the process of evolution by natural selection. When it comes to their science departments, most Christian universities and colleges completely ignore the subject of creation and Genesis, or promote theistic evolution or some other harmonization of Genesis.
