As mentioned,
there are no temporal or other changes in the life of the Trinitarian God
(James 1:17, Psalms 101:28).
The innermost life of the
divine Person/Hypostasis - the Divine Essence - knows no Past or Future; only an eternal
Present.
For this reason,
when we refer to the opus of God within Time, we are not implying that
Creation is a direct opus of God's essence. In short, Creation on
the part of the Trinitarian God, within Time, is not the result of the
Divine Essence. It is the fruit of God's uncreated energies.
Characteristically, the Prophet Jeremiah mentions that "...it is
the Lord, Who created the earth by His strength; Who set upright the world
by
His wisdom, and by His prudence stretched out the sky." (Jeremiah 10:12, 28:15;
Hebr.51:15).
2. The Trinitarian figure of Creation
According to the
Orthodox Faith, the creation of the entire world was the work of the
Father. However, the other two Persons also participate in this praxis
of creation: the Son and the Holy Spirit.
"All that
the Lord wanted He did, in the sky and on the earth, in the seas and
in all the abysses" says the Psalmist (Psalms,134:6)
"...Who is the
image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation, for by Him
was everything created: in the heavens and upon the earth, the visible
and the invisible... All things were created through Him and for Him...
and He is, even before all things, and all things consist in Him." (Colos.1:15-17).
Everything, therefore, "was created through Him" - that
is, through the Son and Logos of God, and "without Him, nothing
would be created of those things that were made" (John 1:3, cmp. 1 Cor. 8:6)
The Holy Bible
furthermore says that during Creation, the Holy Spirit was borne "above
the waters" (Genesis 1:2). That same Divine Spirit continues to
"fulfil" the Trinitarian God's entire Creation (Wisdom of Solomon 1:7) and
is found "in everything" (Wisdom of Solomon 12:1).
"You have
fashioned me and have placed me under Your hand" says the
Psalmist very characteristically.
"Where could I
go, away from Your Spirit? And
from Your countenance where could I flee? Even if I ascend to the
sky, You are
there; and even if I descend to Hades, You are also there." (Psalms
138:7-8, Jerem.23,24).
If we wished to
use a form that reflects the Orthodox teaching of the Holy Trinity,
then, along with the Fathers of our Churcn, we could say that the entire
world was created "by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy
Spirit"; or, as the hymn of our Church says: "by the
Father, through the Son, in collaboration with the Holy Spirit".
The One
-therefore- and Trinitarian God is the Creator of all things: of the
spiritual world, the material world, the flora and the fauna, of
mankind, of the universe.
3. Creation from nil
For the
Trinitarian God to create the universe, He had no need of any "raw material".
He created everything from nil. This is clearly taught by the Holy
Bible:
"I
implore
you" says the mother of the Maccabees to her youngest son, prior
to his martyred death, "to look upon the heaven and the earth, and
see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not create them
out of things that existed. And in the same way did the human race
come into being." (2 Macab.7:28, also Rom.4:17, Hebr. 11:3)
This basic faith
of our Church is also proclaimed in the first Book of the Old Testament.
Naturally, in there have been used various phrases and expressions from
the life of the people of that era, who had to comprehend the immense
truth that was hiding behind that narration. The reason for this,
as we know, was and is the purpose of the Old Testament: to teach the
truth to the people of this earth; to speak to them with words that they
can understand. (Genes.1:1-31)
4. The Holy Angels
Prior to the
material world, the Trinitarian God had created the Holy Angels. "When
the stars were born, all My angels glorified Me with a loud voice",
as mentioned in the Book of Job (Job 38:7, cmp. Psalms 148:2-5)