God the Creator and Creation

The challenge of reconciling God’s transcendence and immanence is all too familiar to seminarians as well as to anyone who has ever participated in a group Bible study. I distinctly remember in my own early theological studies grappling with seemingly antithetical truths. Scripture seems to clearly teach God’s radical relationship to creation, such that, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we confess belief in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, “who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.” God the Son took on flesh, becoming human with all that entails. But the Bible also clearly teaches God’s radical difference from all of creation. Over and over we encounter God’s unique self-identification, such as appears in Isaiah 46:9: “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (ESV). When theologians wax most emphatically on this characteristic, the likelihood of hearing God described as “wholly other” rises significantly. 

I decided fairly early on—perhaps first on instinct and only later confirmed in more advanced study in courses on Jonathan Edwards and panentheism—that the best, if not the only orthodox, way of resolving the dilemma was to affirm both radical transcendence as well as immanence. In fact, the latter is made possible and depends entirely on the former. A kind of zero-sum dynamic between transcendence and immanence must be avoided if we are to avoid falling into heterodoxy and error.

Peter J. Leithart’s Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1 is a very curious foray into the doctrine of God. One of Leithart’s clear intentions is to avoid just this kind of error: “Because God is transcendent, unbounded by spatial and temporal limits, he is immanent, present, and active in every space and time. His immanence in every space and time implies, in turn, his transcendence of spatial and temporal limits.” So far, so good.

But Leithart is primarily concerned with presenting God as the Bible presents him, attempting to work thoroughly from scripture first without importing alien philosophical categories or presuppositions. Whether Leithart succeeds in this is ultimately up for debate, or at least for further clarification, as this volume is the first in a projected trilogy. Given Leithart’s own creational hermeneutic, it may well be that we cannot fully understand this first volume until his exploration into the doctrine of God finds fulfillment at the end of volume 3. So until then, our considerations and conclusions must be necessarily provisional. Nevertheless, some significant things can be learned about both Leithart’s approach and his (provisional) conclusions, which should lead those brave enough to follow along through two more volumes to tread cautiously. 

One of the conclusions I reached in my own ruminations about divine transcendence and immanence (and related issues concerning God’s nature and the creator/creature distinction) was that God’s identity as creator (understood as referring to a world-order outside of God) could not be primary. Otherwise, I reasoned, creation would be in some sense metaphysically necessary, and then something like pantheism or panentheism would be unavoidable. To protect God’s radical freedom and transcendence, God’s identity as creator must in some way be understood as relative, secondary, or conditional. Even as Leithart affirms both the radical transcendence and immanence of God, however, his hermeneutical approach leads him to take his point of departure in the fundamental identification of God as creator. Contra metaphysically freighted classical theistic concerns about orthodoxy, Leithart instead affirms “the Bible and the creed (‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth’) as a more suitable and stable grammar, to which all other conceptualities must be drastically subordinated.”

Leithart’s vehemence in a biblical and creedal starting point, denuded of outside intrusions, explains both his embrace of a fundamentalist identity as well as his deconstructive approach in this book. A reader might perhaps be forgiven for expecting a theological exposition of Genesis 1 to start at the very beginning of the biblical text (which, along with Maria from The Sound of Music, we are assured is a very good place to start). Alas, the first half of the book is aimed at a thoroughgoing analysis of the negative impact of Greek philosophy (Hellenization) on Christian theology. Rather than starting with Genesis 1, then, Leithart is concerned to dissect Greek creation accounts, from pre-Socratics like Heraclitus to Plato’s Timaeus. While interesting, this learned discourse does not seem to quite accomplish what Leithart desires. For one thing, the biblical account in Genesis predates these philosophical explorations, which is one reason why the early apologists championed the idea of prisca theologia as an explanatory device. The idea was that there was so much that was obviously true (albeit not entirely true and riddled with errors) in Greek philosophy that these writers must have encountered special revelation as recorded by Moses and integrated these insights into their pagan reflections. Strangely enough, Leithart’s theological interpretation of scripture does not even begin at the beginning, either textually or historically.

Rather, Leithart’s purpose in this first half of the book is polemical. From Augustine to Aquinas (and beyond to their many contemporary devotees), Greek dualisms and philosophical commitments have corrupted Christian theology. This is an old story, of course, but Leithart presents it in a learned and engaging enough way. He is not entirely dismissive of Augustine and Aquinas but instead critical of them where their theologies are deemed incomplete or not consistent enough. Aquinas, for instance, is mostly right but fails to follow the truth of his own basic insight all the way. A major problem for Aquinas is that he starts with God’s oneness and unity when he should have started with the Trinity. God’s threeness is therefore a key marker of a biblical as opposed to a Hellenized theological method. 

It might be countered that scripture itself starts with God’s oneness, and indeed, many Jews and Christians have asserted just such a claim: the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 declares, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” But this can only be rightly understood, insists Leithart, by way of Paul’s revision of “this central Jewish confession” in 1 Corinthians 8:6: “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” This, along with a Trinitarian interpretation of Elohim in Genesis 1, including some fascinating linguistic arithmetic, allows Leithart to argue not only that creation is ontologically trinitarian from the beginning, so too is the scriptural witness concerning creation. 

The picture of God that emerges is that of a triune creator: the Speaking God, the Spoken God, and the Spirit God. Leithart is keen to revise the classical depiction of the creator/creature relationship that can sometimes be construed as creating an independent and autonomous space for created things to persist. Nothing exists apart from the ongoing and active will of God, asserts Leithart, and this is radically true. “Today’s sunrise, your rising, your heartbeat and your breath and the incalculable biochemical interactions that maintain your life and the life of all things,” writes Leithart, “all of it, at every moment, is the product of the word of the creator.” Despite his attempts to validate time and history in his account of creation, however, this claim of radical ontic as well as historical contingency raises doubts about the validity of Leithart’s account of divine and created historicity. 

At various points, Leithart celebrates his approach as “childish,” and here he seems not only to be ready to parry and counterattack advocates of various kinds of divine accommodation but also to be channeling the enthusiasm of G.K. Chesterton. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton makes this remarkable observation: 

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

Leithart’s God is a “young” God in this sense, full of vital energy, dynamism, life. 

As noted earlier, Leithart seems to relish the role of provocateur fundamentalist. Indeed, he defends a view of creation in Genesis 1 as consisting of six literal 24-hour days. And why not? What does it matter what philosophers or human reason says when the Bible teaches something clearly? 

It would have been fascinating to see Leithart’s engagement with other philosophers and scholastics beyond Aquinas. There is precious little of that, which is not to say that the book is not erudite, but there are gaps in the literature and figures with which he does engage. Those who are used are deployed strategically but, in my view, idiosyncratically. 

Leithart’s commitment to a straightforward literalistic (not to say literal or literary) reading is most evident in his approach to Genesis 1 and 2. Essentially, Genesis 1 provides a kind of trinitarian theological rhythm that encompasses all of creation. Genesis 2, by contrast, is a particular account of a specific day of creation, zooming in on day six of Genesis 1. Other attempts to harmonize the first two chapters place the events of chapter 2 in the context of day three. But as Leithart claims, “The field shrubs (siach) and herbs (’eseb) that have not yet sprouted in Genesis 2:5 are not the same as the grasses and fruit trees of day three.” Therefore, since Genesis 2 relates to the creation of human beings, it must refer to day six. The persuasiveness of this claim hangs on the larger coherence of his characterization of Genesis 1 itself.

Leithart’s antipathy for philosophy is not as consistent or pure as it may seem or as he might desire. In seeking to avoid the static, transcendent, remote god of the Greek philosophers and Hellenized Christian theology, Leithart seems to have flirted a bit too closely perhaps with the immanent, interdependent god of some later philosophers. He decries pantheism and is right not only to do so but to claim that he does so. But does he avoid the more sophisticated and more tempting varieties of panentheism? Perhaps not. As he puts it in his conclusion: “Within [God’s] life there is a whence and a whither, and so he can and does enclose created time, making it his time with us. He is in creation, even as creation exists in him.” This is not necessarily definitive of panentheism, but it is at the very least suggestive.

It may well be that beginning with either God’s unity or the Trinity brings inevitable dangers. Leithart’s approach foregrounds the latter and gets as far as he can on that basis to affirm divine unity, simplicity, and other traditional attributes. “We cannot know any God but the creator because the only God who is is the God who has created,” concludes Leithart. Some readers may be convinced by the courage of this conviction. Others will sagely judge it safer to side with Augustine, Aquinas, and Herman Bavinck rather than Peter Leithart.