is (the single act of creation in the beginning), creatio continua ( continuous involvement of creation) and creatio nova, the new creation still to come.The obvious teaching in the doctrine of creation is the literal Old Testament view stated in the Bible; ‘In the beginning…’ But this creatio originalis view cannot be all there is to say about creation; if God is one who creates immanently, he must be there for us in the present- we can only know of the creation through the present after all. E. Mascall defends the creatio continua view by putting a philosophical slant on things; he puts creation not only as the act of bringing the world into existence but also as something that ‘ would still have application to finite beings even if they had always existed and therefore had no beginning at all’ . A supporter of this view was St. Thomas Aquinas, though much earlier. He likened creation to the upkeep as well as the making; returning to our earlier analogy of the craftsman, God keeps us ‘well-oiled’. St. Thomas claimed that ‘if He [God] withdrew his action from them [things God has brought into being] they would return to non-existence’ Creation is therefore involved with both bringing things into being and maintaining them; it is a continual act, hence creatio continua.Karl Barth provides us with a further inference regarding creatio continua when he says, drawing on Gods benevolence as a proof of creations continual state,‘It would be a strange love that was satisfied with the mere existence and nature of the other, then withdrawing, leaving it to its own devices’ The three fold view of creation is and has been a popular one in the doctrine of creation, however it and the eschatological teaching of creation have been somewhat neglected with the advent of Darwinism and evolutionary theories. But surely we can dismiss the problem of evolution when we think of creation as ...
