Christ and Creation – Early Christian theologians on Christ’s ownership of creation

Authors

  • Abram Van de Beek

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5952/55-1-2-531

Keywords:

creation, independent Creator

Abstract

Confessing a good creation was not an independent issue for early Christian theologians. They stressed creation because according to their opinion only an independent Creator can be truly God (Athenagoras). The eternal God can deal with temporal things because He is acting by his Word and Spirit (Irenaeus). The core of the doctrine of creation, however, is its Christological focus: if Christ would not be the Creator He would not have come to his own and thus would be taking someone else’s property. That would not be salvation but a crime (Irenaeus). Only after the conflicts on creation had been settled could Christian theology deal with the topic in a more relaxed sphere. That is the case in the catechetical lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem who teaches his pupils to enjoy the beauty of creation in the freedom of Christ. The early Christian approach might be an eye opener for Christians’ dealing with creation nowadays.

Downloads

Published

2014-09-26

Issue

Vol. 55 No. 1&2 (2014)

Section

Articles | Artikels

License

Copyright of all NGTT material belongs to the Pieter de Waal Neethling Trust (PDWN Trust). The PDWN Trust is a trust fund established in 1932 with the aim of promoting quality theological research and publications.

The PDWN Trust pledges to maintain a legitimate scholarly record of the author's work and to defend the author's article against plagiarism and copyright infringement.

The PDWN Trust is committed to full Open Source publishing. This means that all articles published in NGTT will gradually be made freely available online. Authors maintain the right to:

  • Share and self-archive their work.
  • Make printed copies of their article for educational use.
  • Present their article at a meeting or conference and distribute printed copies of the article
  • Adapt and expand their published journal article to make it suitable for their thesis or dissertation.
  • Republish the article (ensuring that the original article is cited as published in NGTT).

For any questions or queries in this regard, please contact the Editor.