Apostles’ Creed (Part 5): Maker Of Heaven And Earth

by on March 4, 2025 | Comment

An old joke pokes at the irony of rejecting God by describing an atheistic scientist talking to God about why we supposedly no longer need him. He says to God, “You know, it used to be that we needed you to help with the weather, and for provision of food, and things like that. Now we’ve got all that taken care of without you. We even know how to create life without you.” God replies, “Well, that’s very interesting. Fine, if you can create life like I did, then I will go away and leave you alone.” The atheist scientist proclaims, “Challenge accepted!” He stoops down and picks up a handful of dirt from the earth, but God immediately interjects, “No, no, no. You have to bring your own dirt. That’s mine.”

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God brought everything of the created universe into existence by the word of his power. God made everything in the created universe, which also means he owns it all. He did not mold the world into a nice form by working with raw materials that were already there. Although we do not have the mental categories to explain it, nothing of the universe existed before God made everything.

That includes time and space. There were no moments ticking by—since God is eternal, meaning no succession of moments occurs in God—before Genesis 1:1 happened. There was also no space for creatures to exist until God made space at Genesis 1:1. We do not know how to comprehend or even talk about the lack of time and space. But God is so transcendent that he needed neither and made both.

Even as we do not comprehend that truth, we do understand that it highlights God as Creator. God made all things that are not God. God alone is self-existing. In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that God the Father Almighty is the Maker of heaven and earth. Our main point is that God as Creator gives us cause for wonder and trust.

Grammar

Before we get to the exact topic before us, we have to reckon with a complication that becomes obvious if we pause to consider with more awareness and care how the Creed puts the first two lines. The first two lines say, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The implication is that the Father is Almighty and the Father created heaven and earth. If we pause for a moment, we ought to ask: “What about the Son and Spirit?” Are the Son and Spirit not almighty and involved in creation? After all, Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) 6 says, “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power [including almightiness] and glory [including as Creator]” (emphasis added). Is the catechism at odds with the Creed? No, but let us think about why.

When we talk about complicated doctrines that are way above our ability to understand fully, as with the Trinity, we often do some simplifying to make talking about the ideas manageable. When we link a work specifically to Father, Son, or Spirit when really all three are involved, it is called the doctrine of appropriations. When we “appropriate” something, we take it from another place and make it our own. You might have a really effective way of frying eggs, and if I see it, I might appropriate it by taking it into my set of habits.

Sometimes, for simplicity, we appropriate some particular work that God does to one of the persons. We talk about how the Spirit conceived the Son in the virgin’s womb. Certainly, the Father was still involved though, since the Father sent the Son. The same sort of thing happens with our understanding of creation. Hence, the Creed describes God’s works as we most closely associate them with each person. The Father, Son, and Spirit do not do any works alone, but we most closely associate these works with one person. We speak this way for simplicity.

How do we know that the Father did not create alone? In Colossians 1:15–19, we learn about the Son’s involvement in creation:

He [the Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

The closing line is interesting because it shows that we know the Son was involved in the work of creation because the fullness of God dwells in even the risen Christ. If the fullness of God is in the risen Christ, we know that the Son was involved with the Father in creation. We know the Spirit was involved too because even in Genesis 1:2, Scripture says that the Spirit of God was there at creation, active in what was happening.

How do we bring together that Father, Son, and Spirit worked commonly in creating heaven and earth? We can consider Hebrews 1:1–3:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Then in verse 10, the Father says to the Son, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” The Father calls the Son, “Lord,” meaning God’s name, and he says creation is his work.

Thus, we understand that the Father created heaven and earth through the Son (Heb 1:2) and by the Spirit’s power. In all Trinitarian works, the pattern holds that Father, Son, and Spirit all execute the same work, as the Father works through the Son by the Spirit. All this is just to help us understand how to talk about the Trinity, how to understand the Creed precisely, and how to marvel at God because he is far above our comprehension. To do this, we must learn the grammar for how to talk about the Trinity.

Goodness

We now turn properly to the topic of God as Creator. My suspicion is that when we read Genesis 1, we quickly start thinking, asking, and talking about creation. Most of our questions about Genesis 1 and the creation narrative have to do with how long these days were, how old the earth is, how we should think about science, and things that are really about the study of the created universe. When we read the creation narrative, our attention immediately goes to creation.

How does Genesis start though? “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We get fixated on the stuff to do with us. Yet, the Bible tells you who the main character is in the first sentence: God. Scripture, as the Creed reminds us, is all about God, the triune God.

We have a bad tendency to find ourselves more interesting than God. We are more interested in creation than the Creator. We try to make Scripture our story where God is involved. When in fact, Scripture is the story about God and we are the supporting characters at best. The point then is not what got made at creation, but who made the world.1

All this underscores that God is different than us. We call it the Creator-creature distinction—that God transcends us in every imaginable way. God is the Maker and we are the made. He knows all things as the one who brought every fact into existence from his own triune counsel. We know as those learning; he knows as the Creator. He is present everywhere and is eternal. We are limited in space and have short lives in which we know the passing of each moment. God is distinct from his creatures.

That is also why we talk about creation out of nothing, ex nihilo. God alone brought everything into existence. Romans 4:17 says God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” He is the ground for why we all exist, bringing creation into being out of nothing. We are distinct from God because he existed all of himself and caused us to come into being. We are entirely dependent upon him.

We should take careful note that, because creation came forth directly from God, it is good. God put everything in the universe in place. He was not like a goldminer, who happened to stumble across a nugget and polished it into something nicer. No, he brought the exact gem he wanted into existence. Because God put forth creation according to his own design, it is good. Sin has tarnished it, yes. But creation as such is an expression of God’s goodness as he built it according to his goodness.2

Gifts

As we reckon with what the Creed means for our understanding of how the trinitarian God works and what it means about God himself to say that we believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, we do want to make sure we connect the dots to how this truth ought to affect us. God’s goodness in making a good creation also shows his goodness to us.

Creation is good news because only by being created could we know God. We did not have to exist. God alone must exist. The Lord did not have to make us. The fine point is that none of us would have the privilege of enjoying God and his blessings had he not made the universe as the place for us to live and made us as the creaturely spectators for his glory, goodness, and majesty.

God brought all things into being to be the theatre of his glory, that his majesty might be known to creatures who would be blessed by knowing that all glorious triune God. God brought you into being so that you might be part of the audience to see his goodness, greatness, and majesty. God has given you the gift of life itself, the gift of existence, giving you the gift of getting to marvel at who God is and what he does.

The trouble is of course that we have tried to burn down the theatre. Our rebellion against God in our sin is our attempt to smear our view of God’s glory as we sit in the theatre he built for us. We would rather see the theatre itself, the creation, than the production, the story of our relationship to the Creator.

So, we realize that God is the main character in the story of history both as Maker and Redeemer. We believe in God the Father who made heaven and earth. And we believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord who died on the cross to work salvation for us. As we confess that God made heaven and earth, we rejoice in the gift that at the last day Christ will take us out of the earth to give us heaven on earth.

Notes

  1. J. I. Packer, Affirming the Apostles’ Creed (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 53.
  2. Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism, Christian Essentials (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 31–33.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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