In the early Christian centuries, the doctrine of creation stood as both a theological cornerstone and a spiritual safeguard. Against the dualisms and abstractions of Gnostic speculation, the Church affirmed a transcendent yet personal God who brought all things into being by his sovereign will. This doctrine, foundational to both worship and redemption, united the cosmology of Genesis with the incarnate reality of Christ, rooting metaphysical truth in the living revelation of divine love. The varied voices of early theologians—particularly Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen—expressed a common conviction: that creation is not merely an idea, but a divine act in which God discloses his power, goodness, and nearness to the world.
Christian Doctrine in Its Embryonic Form
Christianity did not enter the world as a refined philosophical system or a rigorous theological construct. It arrived as an event—divine yet deeply human—a revelation incarnate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The New Testament, far from being a systematic manual, is a vibrant narrative of salvation and discipleship, imbued with theological truth not in abstract formulas but in the living contours of redemptive history.
This organic character of early Christianity explains why even the most esteemed Church Fathers of the pre-Nicene period often held to inchoate or evolving views of major doctrines. Their knowledge of God was not primarily speculative but experiential, a truth they lived and proclaimed with passionate fidelity. Christianity’s center was, and remains, the person and work of Christ—a living core from which all doctrines radiate, transforming the spiritual architecture of previous religious thought.
The Creedal Affirmation of the Creator
Nearly all ancient creeds, particularly the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, begin with a solemn confession: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” This declaration sets the theological axis around which all other beliefs revolve. Against the Gnostic depreciation of matter and the multiplication of divine powers, the early Church affirmed one omnipotent God who created all things, visible and invisible, from nothing.
Irenaeus of Lyons positioned this truth at the forefront of his Adversus Haereses. For him, any deviation from belief in the Creator was tantamount to rejecting Christ himself. His theology was rooted not in speculative reasoning but in divine revelation and ecclesial tradition. He refused all abstract, a priori definitions of God, insisting instead on a relational knowledge of the divine that arises through God’s acts in history—especially creation and redemption.
The Universal Sense of the Divine
Tertullian, writing from North Africa, emphasized the innate human longing for God. He argued that the human soul bears a primal awareness of its Creator—a sensus divinitatis not confined to one nation or tongue but universally shared. “God will never be hidden,” he declared, “God will never fail mankind; he will always be recognized, always perceived and seen, when man wishes.” Every element of human life, he claimed, testifies to God’s existence and goodness. This original knowledge of God is the common heritage of all souls—from Egypt to Pontus, from Jew to Gentile.
Nature itself, Tertullian asserted, is a divine witness. The world is not a prison of matter, as the Gnostics believed, but a good and purposeful creation. Contrary to their dualistic cosmology, early Christians viewed matter not as evil but as part of the divine handiwork. God’s revelation through creation ensures that no one is entirely cut off from his self-disclosure.
Early Arguments for God’s Existence
The period also witnessed the nascent development of philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Though not yet rigorously formulated, elements of both the cosmological and physico-theological proofs began to surface. Tertullian leaned toward concrete representations of God, even asserting a kind of divine corporeality—though likely as a metaphor for real substance rather than physical form. His assertion that “nothing incorporeal exists except that which is not” (De Carne Christi, c. 11) reflected his concern to protect God’s reality and personal presence against the disembodied abstractions of Greek metaphysics.
By contrast, the Alexandrian theologians—Clement and Origen above all—avoided anthropomorphism, emphasizing instead God’s immateriality, spirituality, and incomprehensibility. Their intellectual lineage, steeped in Platonic thought, pursued a purer concept of divine being, one that transcended human categories while preserving relational intimacy.
Creation out of Nothing: Against Gnostic Dualism
The Church’s insistence that God created the world ex nihilo—out of nothing—became a vital affirmation against the Gnostic view that matter is co-eternal with God or the result of a cosmic mishap. Irenaeus and Tertullian grounded their cosmology in the first chapters of Genesis, affirming that the world came into being by the sheer will of God, through his Word. Creation, they taught, is not a byproduct of necessity or emanation but an act of sovereign love.
This divine will—omnipotent, free, and loving—is the first cause and ultimate rationale for all existence. It excludes the notion of creation as a mechanistic force or metaphysical accident. Because all creatures issue from a good and holy Creator, they are good in their essence (cf. Gen. 1:31). Evil, then, is not ontological but parasitic: it is not a substance, but a distortion of the good. Redemption, therefore, is not the liberation from matter but the restoration of creation to its intended glory. Without a right doctrine of creation, there can be no coherent doctrine of redemption—a flaw exposed in every Gnostic system.
Origen’s Eternal Creation and the Role of the Logos
Among the Church Fathers, Origen of Alexandria offered the most philosophically complex cosmology. While he maintained that each created world has a temporal beginning and end, he envisioned creation as an eternal, dynamic process—a ceaseless unfolding of divine self-expression. For Origen, God was never inert; his essence is love and generativity, and he has always manifested his glory through creative activity.
Origen rejected the idea of a primordial “nothingness” before creation, suggesting instead a succession of world-cycles, or perhaps better, continuous transformations of one cosmic order. This concept aligns with his belief in the preexistence of souls and the eternal begetting of the Son. God eternally generates the Logos—“always begetting” and never without the Son, just as the Son is never without the Father.
The Logos mediates the transition from the invisible to the visible, the eternal to the temporal. First, the spiritual world is formed; then, through the Logos, the material world follows. Though his views differ from those of Irenaeus or Tertullian, Origen’s cosmology reflects the same deep conviction: that God, in his goodness, wisdom, and love, reveals himself through creation—not once, but always.
Vindicating Monotheism in a Polytheistic World
The early Church inherited its monotheistic vision from the faith of Israel and vigorously defended it against pagan polytheism and Gnostic dualism. For Christians, the doctrine of one God—the eternal, omnipresent, and holy Creator—was not merely an intellectual affirmation but the heartbeat of their worship and theology. The idea that matter could be evil or autonomous was an affront to divine sovereignty. To accept a Demiurge or dualist system was to deny God’s absoluteness, undermining both creation and redemption.
In this battle for the soul of Christian doctrine, the early creeds served as bulwarks of truth. By confessing God as “the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” the Church declared that all reality—material and spiritual, temporal and eternal—flows from one source and will return to that source in glory.
Creation as Revelation
Creation, for the early Church, was not simply a metaphysical premise—it was a theological act, a divine self-disclosure. Through it, God speaks: not in syllables alone, but in stars, souls, and the order of the cosmos. From Irenaeus to Origen, the Fathers agreed that the God who redeems is the God who creates. They stood against the philosophies that separated the two, affirming instead a vision of the world in which matter is meaningful, history is sacred, and the Creator walks among his creatures.
As Schaff rightly notes, without a robust doctrine of creation, the Church’s proclamation of redemption would collapse. But rooted in the belief that all things come from God and are destined for restoration through Christ, the Church could proclaim a gospel both intellectually satisfying and spiritually vital—one that embraces the whole of existence, from beginning to end, as the theater of divine love.
