Q. 7. How did God make all things?

• WSC 9
• Belgic Confession 12, 2
• WCF 4.1

All things. God made everything that is not God. God made all visible things, such as the earth and the human body, and all invisible things, such as angels and the human soul.

Out of nothing. God created all things ex nihilo (Latin for “out of nothing”). God did not merely form the world out of preexistent matter. Matter is not eternal. The existence of the material world is not necessary.

Through his Son and Spirit. Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of one substance and power (Q. 6), all three persons are involved in all of God’s external works. No person of the Trinity works in isolation from the others. This is commonly called inseparable operations. Since the Father always works “through” or “by” the Son and the Spirit, Irenaeus spoke metaphorically of the Son and the Spirit as the “two hands of God” (AH 4.4). “All things were created through [the Son] and for him” (Colossians 1:16). “There can be nothing which the Holy Spirit can be said not to have made” (Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit 1.5.37).

Very good. God is “good, and the overflowing source of all good” (Belgic Confession 1). God freely chose, out of his infinite love and goodness, to create a world with which to share his happiness. God is not the author of evil (see Q. 9). Evil is a corruption of God’s good world (see Q. 10). As darkness is the absence of light, and death is the absence of life, so evil is the absence of good.

Manifest his glory. “The final goal of the blessed life … rests in the knowledge of God. Lest anyone, then, be excluded from access to happiness, he not only sowed in men’s minds that seed of religion … but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe” (Calvin, Institutes 1.5.1). “The universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God” (Belgic Confession 2). God’s self-revelation through nature is commonly called general revelation, in distinction from the special revelation of Holy Scripture (see Q. 3). Creation is the “dazzling theater” of God’s glory (Calvin, Institutes 1.5.8; 2.6.1). “The world is a work of art displayed for the beholding of all people” (Basil the Great, Hexaemeron, Homily 1).