Lesslie Newbigin: creation as an act of divine peace

“The first chapter of Genesis was almost certainly written during the time when Israel was in exile in Babylon. And we must picture these writers as slaves under the shadow of this mighty empire with its palaces, fortresses and temples. Babylon had its own account of creation, as we know from the work of modern scholarship. It was a story of conflict, battle and bloodshed. Violence was the theme underlying the whole creation story as the Babylonians understood it.

The writers of Genesis had a quite different picture of God. They were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. They knew God as the redeemer God, the God who had saved his people from bondage. And they had a totally different picture of God’s creation—not as the result of violence but as the action of a God of love and wisdom who, out of sheer love, desired to create a world to reflect his glory and a human family to enjoy his world and give back his love.

And so we have in Genesis a picture of the creation of light to be distinguished from darkness, of the dry land to be distinguished from the chaos of the sea, of a home in which living creatures could grow and thrive, of the creation of the animals and of human beings among them, and of the special responsibility given to human beings of being in the image of God. And to this human family he has given the specific responsibility of cherishing his creation, of bringing it to that perfection for which God intended it, so that it, with the whole human race, should truly reflect his glory.”

—Lesslie Newbigin, A Walk Through the Bible (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 1999), 6-8.