The Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q9. What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is God’s
making all
things of nothing, by the word
of His power,
in the space of six days, and all very good.[1]
[1] Genesis 1:1–31; Hebrews 11:3; Psalm 33:6, 9.
Subsequent to God’s decrees, God began to create the world in which we live in. From this question, we learn several facts about this work of creation. Firstly, God created out of nothing (ex nihilo), by the word of His power (by divine fiat). When man attempts to create anything, he will always begin with existing materials, for out of nothing, nothing comes (ex nihilo nihil fit), but not so for God. He is the alone First Cause; He alone is able to bring something into existence when nothing existed. Secondly, we learn that God created all things in six days (Gen 1; Ex 20:11). This immediately refutes the theory of evolution that the world has been in existence for billions of years and that higher life forms evolved from lower life forms over millions of years. The Scripture teaches us that the life forms were created fully developed and according to their kind (Gen 1:11; 21). This allows for variations within each kind (e.g., different kinds of dogs), but does not allow for one kind to become another kind, as taught in evolutionism. Thirdly, when the world was first created, it was very good. This again contradicts the evolutionalistic notion that the world was never perfect, but always evolving. The Scripture teaches us that before the fall of man, the world was perfect for God had created it thus. Since the fall of man, as a consequence of sin, the world has been deteriorating rather than improving. This can be seen in the number of animals getting extinct, in the shortness of human life span (comparing with the average life-span before and immediately after the flood), as well as the environmental deterioration that the world has been experiencing such as global warming.