What is fiat creationism?

These marvelous facts surely call for the deep consideration of all mankind (v. 8), to cause us to fear the Lord with reverent awe and admiration. "For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast" (v. 9). All the visible creation was brought into being momentarily, just by the voice of the Lord. It was no process, but immediate creation. Scientists have recently advanced the theory of the big bang" to explain the suddenness of the appearance of matter, but they have no idea of what it was that exploded to cause the big bang. Yet we need not think there was any noise that accompanied God's word when He created all things momentarily.

The Duke of Argyll's book is useful in the main, but as in the case of miracles, so in creation, stops short of Christian ground and truth. The things which were seen were not made of the things which do appear. In the beginning God created. That there may be proofs of progress and developed design, and of laws, and of uniformity in it, may be all true: but this does not hinder that they exist, and the law too, by the fiat of the Creator.

The act of creation is of all things a question of faith. To speak of understanding the world or anything in it could be brought into being is absurd. It is just what the most eminent men of science fail in understanding, as in fact they allow. But to the believer it is perfectly simple, because he accepts it as the result of God's omnipotent word and will. "He spake and it was done."

We are not told here of the method of divine creation. How could we enter into that method by which Omnipotence expresses itself? Science tells us of unlimited periods of time in which the earth has passed through various stages of progress. Faith has endeavored to link these with the periods suggested in the seven days. Of this we will speak a little later. Just at present, it is well to remember that God's first statement of creation has no modifications. He does not speak of time or methods, but simply of that omnipotent act by which all things were brought into existence.

And first as to creation. We are reminded that through faith it is "we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which do appear" (11:3). Theories had been conceived by men to account for the origin of creation. But all were astray. We know nothing, and can know nothing, about the origin of creation save what Divine revelation discloses. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." "He spake, and it was done." So wrote the psalmist (Ps. 33:6, 9). "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). So wrote the lawgiver. With these witnesses our writer of the Hebrews agrees. God spake, and brought things into existence. By the fiat of the Almighty created things appeared, but not evolved out of things which existed. Matter is not eternal. For it is of the origin of the universe the sacred writer here treats, and not of the earth emerging subsequently out of chaos, prepared for man's abode. We are to believe what God has told us. Surely this is rational. What creature witnessed the act of creating? What could we know, what could we conceive of the origin of created things, if left to the light of mere human reason, or were dependent on philosophic deduction? The devout mind believes that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Philosophic or scientific research could tell us nothing better, and nothing certain. At best with philosophy, or science, it could be but a "may be," a "perhaps." On revelation we must therefore rest as to the distant past. There is that then which we must take wholly on the Divine record. Will it be irrational to take God's word about the future? At this point we are reminded of the faith of those of old. In them it is seen how it was in exercise all along the line.

First with regard to creation. Lost in reasonings, and not knowing God, the human mind sought out endless solutions of existence. Those who have read the cosmogonies of the ancients know how many different systems, each more absurd than the other, have been invented for that which the introduction of God, by faith, renders perfectly simple. Modern science, with a less active and more practical mind, stops at second causes; and it is but little occupied with God. Geology has taken the place of the cosmogony of the Hindoos, Egyptians, Orientals and philosophers. To the believer the thought is clear and simple; his mind is assured and intelligent by faith. God, by His word, called all things into existence. The universe is not a producing cause; it is itself a creature acting by a law imposed upon it. It is One having authority who has spoken; His word has divine efficacy. He speaks, and the thing is. We feel that this is worthy of God; for, when once God is brought in, all is simple. Shut Him out, and man is lost in the efforts of his own imagination, which can neither create nor arrive at the knowledge of a Creator, because it only works with the power of a creature. Before, therefore, the details of the present form of creation are entered upon, the word simply says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Whatever may have taken place between that and chaos forms no part of revelation. It is distinct from the special action of the deluge, which is made known to us. The beginning of Genesis does not give a history of the details of creation itself, nor the history of the universe. It gives the fact that in the beginning God created; and afterwards, the things that regard man on the earth. The angels even are not there. Of the stars it is only said, "He made the stars also"; when, we are not told. By faith then we believe that the worlds were created by the word of God.

93 The Gnostic systems evidently linked themselves up with all this — an effort of Satan to bring the old mythology spiritualized into Christianity. This I shall beg leave to call the devil's education of the world. The point of departure being an idea of one God, which man can hardly get rid of, he turned it by false human wisdom into idolatry, by deifying attributes, powers of nature, stars, and ancestors. All this was afloat in the world before Moses' account of things was written. There were traces of primeval history both of Adam, Noah, Babel, the giants, and the judgment of Babel, but all turned into idolatry. When this ripened, God gave a divine account, perfectly suited to the age, not science, which would have been unsuited to divine action, but rescuing the great facts in such a way that the divine actings — necessary for man to know morally, and as far therefore as they concerned man on the earth, with which he had to do — should be distinctly set out, and with the simplicity, dignity, and beneficence towards man, which bore the stamp of God. The whole world is witness that no man, neither the simplest nor the wisest, ever could have known, or ever did discover, such a thought as to creation as is given in Genesis. It stands not pre-eminent, but isolated and alone; short, simple, unscientific: no mental elaboration, no recognition of nature's powers (such as Jews fell into, not only in the gross way of idolatry, but in the refined Alexandrian system of Philo), no emanation or pantheism, no eternal matter, no deification of mythic ideas; no visible world counted for the Logos, as again Philo; every human thought is denied, but the fiat of God Himself brings the world into existence, and everything into order; and the relationships of God, the world, and man, are perfectly established. Had there been no cosmogonies, the value of this statement would not have been felt. The simplest mind would have known the truth, but the truth meets every error of every mind.

Let us just look, after the poor conceptions and wild imaginations of heathen cosmogonies, at the simple statement of the word of God. We shall see at once, in the former, the laborious efforts of the human mind in what it cannot reach, heaping up powers and conceptions to fill the imagination, and account for effects, because it does not know God, and is oppressed with the effect of His power; and in the other, God speaking with the simplicity of one who had made it all and knew it all. The Word that had made could tell what it had done, and creation takes its place of a mere creature, and Elohim maintains His own.

The inspired statement will reward the closest scrutiny. By faith we apprehend that the worlds have been framed by God's word, and that what is seen has not been originated out of things apparent. This leaves ample room for whatever changes can be adequately shown to have followed the original creation of the earth; while it also maintains that what is seen did not derive its being from what appears. That all was made out of nothing is what no Christian would say; but that, where nothing existed, God created all things out of His own will and word is just the truth alike simple and profound; and all other hypotheses are as unwise as they are uncalled for and untrue. Evolution may not openly deny God, but at best it robs Him of His personal action and concern in the wisdom, power, and goodness of His will in every part; and its tendency is manifest to exclude Him altogether in contradiction of His word which attests His deep and direct interest in the whole.

The heavenly bodies above us and the earth beneath our feet are realities too plain to be missed, even by the most unthinking and degraded of men. What are they? Whence came they? Have they always existed? The first verse supplies the answer. They are not eternal, but had a beginning. Both heavens and earth came into being by the creative act of the eternal God. Three times in the chapter do we read, "God created," and five times another verb is used, meaning to make. To make is to fashion out of existing matter, whereas when we read of God creating, then "through faith we understand … that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb 11:3).

"God created!" Let that formal statement be clearly apprehended. There was, and there is what Scripture calls "creation." There is "the whole creation" and its "beginning" (2 Peter 3). The fact is stated with the utmost simplicity and with a naturalness that bespeaks absolute truth. No lengthened explanation, no wordy elaboration to meet the incredulity of man is given.