CONTENTS
Individual and Group Study Guides

7 Categories for Relating the Gospel to Academic Work: Category 2: The Creator-Creature Relationship

Introduction

Last time we considered the identity of Christ as the Son of God within the Trinity.  Here we will explore the implications of the fact that this same eternally beloved ‘Word’ was also the divine agent of creation. What kind of act was the act of creation? What does this mean for the nature of the reality which we inhabit and explore as scholars? What does it mean for our temptations to academic pride or to discouragement and scepticism?

Main resource: The Creator-Creature Relationship

Category 2: The Creator-Creature Relationship

Good scholarship is ‘from God‘ and ‘to God

Excerpt from The Eternal Son

We can only participate in scholarship because we have received our existence and location within God's meaningful creation. Further, as the object of our study is 'from God' the truest appreciation of its nature is to recognise how it exists in relation to God. Not only does he continually sustain its existence 'through' the word of his power, but as all things are 'from God', they are also 'to'/'for' God (Heb. 1:3, Col. 1:15-20, Rom 11:36). If God has communicated his glory in creation, then creatures are signposts to ascribe glory back to him in praise and thanksgiving (Rom 1:19-20, 21). Each of our disciplines - in its presuppositions, history, questions and results - will somehow signal its divine origin and purpose.

For a shorter version of the same core argument, see The Creator-Creation Relationship: Creation through the Word

Conversation Starter Questions

  1. Are you feeling vulnerable to academic pride or discouragement? Did anything here address this?
  2. How does a biblical view of the ‘nature of reality’ contrast with the paradigm of your faculty?

Further Reading: John Calvin on Knowing God and Knowing Ourselves

Knowing God and knowing ourselves: which comes first?

If after having read the Discussion Brief you would like to explore this week’s theme more deeply, see the classic introductory sections of Calvin’s Institutes. In those sections, Calvin makes a celebrated contribution to the discussion of the Creator-Creature relationship. It is as helpful intellectually as devotionally.

Calvin points out that when we get to know ourselves as creatures our minds are drawn back to the Creator from whom we have come and for whom we exist. Conversely, as we know him better, the more we know ourselves in relation to him. All humans have some inbuilt knowledge of God, even if it is mostly suppressed and requires Scripture to clarify it again for us. 

Calvin, John. 1581. “Chapters 1-6.” The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. 4th ed. London. See especially chapters 1-4. 

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Discipline
Theology and Philosophy
Level
Introductory
Project
Postgraduate Network

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