Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 37:2 (Winter 1975)
Article: The Grace Of Creation
Author: T. Robert Ingram

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WTJ 37:2 (Winter 1975) p. 206

The Grace Of Creation

T. Robert Ingram

The thesis of this article is that all of the doctrines of grace are dependent upon and derived from the historical fact of Creation, and silence about the biblical record, or modification of it to allow for aeons of time and historical error, leaves the very concept of grace without foundation and subject to grave distortion.

I am indebted to the Swedish theologian, Gustaf Wingren, for putting his finger on what may well be the fatal flaw in the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, Oscar Cullman, and others, who have attempted to erect a system of theology based solely on the biblical message of the Lordship of Christ with little reference to the biblical doctrine of God’s work as Creator and Preserver of the world.1

It would be unfair, however, to point only to neo-orthodoxy in this connection. It seems to me that even among those who seek to be most consistently orthodox in their theology, including those like ourselves who would raise once again what we call the doctrines of sovereign grace, there is a preponderance of interest in grace as manifested in redemption to the point even of silence about grace as seen in creation.

Yet when the two great works of God, Creation and Redemption, are allowed to become separated, if only by silence about the former, the way is wide open to the worst of errors—antinomianism, dualism and humanism, the last considered as a refined form of dualism.

Wingren points out that the two credal formulae which have predominated throughout the whole history of the Christian Church, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, are both quite markedly Trinitarian in form. “Despite their internal variations,” he writes, “we note that faith in God the Creator,

WTJ 37:2 (Winter 1975) p. 207

in Jesus Christ crucified and risen, and in the Spirit in His work of edifying the Church, was a regulative principle in the formulation of both these Creeds.”2

The point is that those most universally accepted minimal statements of what is required to be believed both specifically include the doctrine of Creation, as well as the doctrine of the Church. It is not enough to believe simply in the Lordship or Sovereignty of Jesus Christ. It is necessary to believe that Lordship extends to the eternal sovereignty inherent in Him by whom all things were made. The very meaning of sovereignty, or lordship as used of the Risen, Ascended and Living Lord Jesus Christ, is discovered in the historical fact of Creation as recorded in the Genesis account, and as affirmed repeatedly throughout both Old and ...

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