It's time to get back to the beginning. The Bible falls into two big parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament all unfold the shining splendor of the new covenant between God and his people through Christ, who makes all things new. But before the New Testament comes the Old Testament, a collection of equally inspired books that emerged as part of God's dealings with his creation before Jesus arrives in the flesh. Our Bible has thirty-nine Old Testament books, for a total of sixty-six altogether. Actually, most Christians on earth today use bigger Bibles with a few extra in the Old Testament. But all Christians agree that, just as the Bible starts with the Old Testament, so the Old Testament starts with the Books of Moses. These are called the Torah, the Law. Paul defended the gospel “both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets” (Acts 28:23). When Jesus walked the earth, all his neighbors agreed – even if on little else! – that this collection was the core of scripture. The psalmist calls the Law “perfect” (Psalm 19:7).
But if the New Testament is built on the Old Testament, and if the rest of the Old Testament is built on the Law, none of scripture makes sense without it. And if that's true of the Law, it's extra true of the start of the Law. Because this Book of Moses is actually five books – that's why it's also sometimes called the Pentateuch, 'five scrolls.' And the first of those scrolls of Moses is a book our Jewish neighbors call after its first word, Bere'shit, but which Christians usually called by its Greek and Latin title: Genesis, 'origin.'
Some have nicknamed Genesis as “the Old Testament of the Old Testament.” It's the cornerstone of all of Scripture. There are few (if any) themes in the Bible that don't crop up for the first time in Genesis. Genesis is the seed from which everything else grows. If you were to delete Genesis and all its stories and themes from your Bible, the other pages would, more often than not, crumble to dust, unable to stand without what Genesis began. Genesis pulses and breathes and grows throughout everything that follows. Genesis tells the story of creation – where it all came from, who it's all by, what it's all for, how it all went wrong, and what's being done to fix it all. Genesis reveals who God is, what the world is, and what and who you were, are, and could be.
And that's why Genesis is worth more time than we usually give it. So we're going to give Genesis its due, give Genesis its time – especially the beginning. Starting next week, as we wade into the waters of creation, we're praying to learn all Genesis has to teach us. So we're hitting the rewind button now. Back from the world we know. Back past apostles on the move and an empty tomb, back past Calvary and Bethlehem, back through sages and prophets, priests and kings, promised lands and desert mountains, parted seas and a brother sold, wrestling matches with angels and sons tied up for sacrifice, towers and arks and floods and fields and gardens, to where we first lifted our eyes to the skies. But we're going to keep rewinding, watching in reverse as animals and plants unsay their first hello, as stars wink back out of the sky, as the earth melts away beneath our feet, as the first light retreats into the void and space and time collapse to a point. And we won't lift our finger from the rewind button 'til we leave words behind... and peer beyond the Bible's beginning.
We can reason out some clues of what we must find when we've rewound so far through the Bible that we've been thrown off the first page. We look at ourselves in the mirror, and we know we sometimes do what's good, we sometimes do what's less than good. But these standards and obligations and values aren't free-floating in the universe. They have to come from somewhere, be rooted in something. Rightness, value, our conscience – from all these, we can reason backward and upward to a Perfect Good, a Good that's the source and summit of all goodness, which causes goodness in the universe and which has the right to command right and wrong.
We look around at the universe, and if we open our eyes and ears to it, we're overwhelmed by a sense of beauty, of splendor. And that's not just in environments we find it easy to live in. Even deserts, tundras, the sea floor, the spangled skies of night – they take our breath away, even as they take our breath away. This is a world of beauty beyond all necessity, and a world of beauty-makers, of music, art, and love. And so from all this beauty we reason our way back and up beyond the universe to a Perfect Beauty, “the most beautiful of all beauty.”1
We look around us and see a consistent universe, where things don't just behave randomly, but instead conduct themselves lawfully. You drop your pen for the hundred-and-first time, and it'll fall, same as the first hundred. You can even work out the math to describe how fast it'll go, based on the gravity of the earth, because this law of creation keeps describing it. And from this lawful consistency, we reason our way backward and upward to a Power in whose hands the whole universe lies, and who guides things consistently toward their goal. As was said long ago, “the very coherence, maintenance, and governance of creation teaches us that there is a God.”2
We look around at a universe finely tuned to allow our existence, when almost any universe with randomized parameters would exclude us. If the balance of one particle to another had been just a little off, if the universe had grown a little too fast or too slow, if the strength of this or that fundamental force of physics had been a little stronger or a little weaker, stars couldn't exist, the earth couldn't exist, we couldn't exist. It had to be just right for us to exist. For it to turn out just right by chance is so inconceivably improbable as to be absurd, so from that, we reason backward and upward to an Intelligence beyond the universe which wanted us to be here.
We look around at a universe full of things that change, things that begin, that didn't have to be. You weren't always around; you had to come from somewhere. You didn't just happen; you were conceived and born – and could have not been. The same was true of your parents. The same was true of the earth you're on. The same was true of the sun our world orbits. The same was true of the atoms it's made of. The same is true, in fact, of space and time itself. These are things that begin, and could have not been. And we understand, from all these examples, that anything that begins has a cause. From that, we can reason backward and upward to a First Cause without beginning, a cause of all things, a Necessary Existence that shares being with the universe.
All of these things are as St. Paul said: “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes – namely, his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly perceived, from the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:19-20). And what's more, instinctively we're made to know, even without reasoning our way there, that there is a God. To the extent we're functioning properly, without interference, we by nature are believers. As it was said a long time ago, “The knowledge that God exists has been naturally implanted within us.”3 In the words of Ecclesiastes, God “has made everything beautiful in its time” and “has put eternity into man's heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
The Bible begins with those familiar words I think it's safe to say we all know: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). And this tells us that the root of all things isn't impersonal, isn't mechanical; the root of all things is personal. We aren't flukes reacting by accident to a cold, unfeeling world around us. We're persons living in a world that is rooted in a personality, and it's to that personality that we're called to respond with our lives. But in the creation stories told by many of Israel's neighbors, they first had to narrate where their gods came from, because those gods were just part of the universe they saw around them. That's definitely not the case with the God we meet in the first line of Genesis. He isn't part of the world. The word used for 'God' here is plural for the sake of intensity, but all the verbs are singular. There's only one God. “God must be one,” the early Christians argued, “because that which is God is supreme, but nothing can be supreme save that which is unique.”4 There a unique supreme God who is beyond the universe, not part of it.
Unlike the many gods mentioned in pagan creation stories, this unique supreme God was actually already there in the beginning, already there 'before' the beginning. But God had no beginning. The early Christians said that “there was nothing co-eval with God: he was his own locus, he lacked nothing, he existed before the ages.”5 Matter and energy had a beginning. Space and time had a beginning. For “before the beginning of time, there was no time. God, after all, made times...”6 And in that eternal state with no space or time, God is still there. Isaiah calls him “the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15).
See, God didn't have to create. He chose to create, but he didn't have to. There didn't have to be things, didn't have to be space and time. There's an old turn of phrase: “And who is he when he's at home?” Who is that person – and who is he really, when nobody else is around? Well, who is God when he's at home in eternity? Who is God when he's home alone without a world?
For starters, God is existence itself. “There is nothing more characteristic of God than to be.”7 “God... is not only his own essence, but also his own existence.”8 God doesn't just fit in the class of things that exist. He's not merely the first thing there is. He's not even an eternal thing. He's more than a being; he is being, he's existence as such, existence that doesn't need to be qualified. He's also goodness itself. He exists by nature, he has every perfection there could be, he's the ultimate goal of anything that exists – and there's no goodness better than that. So God himself is the standard by which anything could be said to be good.9
God has been called “a good which is alone simple, and therefore alone is immutable.”10 God isn't made of parts, isn't made of matter, isn't subject to change. His existence and his life have no limits at all. That's what eternity is all about: God has the instantaneously-whole and total possession of unending life. God doesn't experience his life piece by piece, like we do; God has it all at once. And this unchangeable fullness explains why, if God makes times and places, he could never be distant from any place or any time. “God is... not within a place, for he himself is his own place, filling all things and transcending all things...”11
So in eternity, God is existence itself, goodness itself, immaterial and immutable and simple, unlimited by place or time or anything, having his whole life in one instantaneously total possession of himself. And if his existence can't be qualified or limited, then neither can his knowledge. God “has knowledge in the highest degree,” because “God knows himself through himself.”12 Because God knows himself perfectly, and because anything else that even could exist would have to come from him, God knows everything that could or would ever happen if he creates. There is nothing God doesn't eternally know. “Oh, the depth of the... knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33). And just the same, God's power can't be qualified or limited. “God's active power is infinite,” for “his power has no limits.”13 God, knowing all things, has power enough for all things. There's nothing he cannot do. “The surpassing power belongs to God” (2 Corinthians 4:7). “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8).
Learning from reason and revelation, one early Christian described God like this: “God is... an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible. … There exists no one stronger than he. … He is altogether wisdom and understanding, and in him stands fast all that exists. … He doesn't require anything from anyone, but all living creatures stand in need of him.”14 Another early Christian explained that “the form of God is ineffable and inexpressible..., for he is in glory uncontainable, in greatness incomprehensible, in loftiness inconceivable, in strength incomparable, in wisdom unteachable, in goodness inimitable, in beneficence inexpressible.”15 You'll notice a common theme there: all the words that start with 'in-' or 'im-' or 'un-.' The most startling thing about God is his beyondness. Another Christian writer once said: “Arouse your understanding and seek to comprehend the totality of God in your mind; you hold on to nothing. This totality of God always has something over and above your power of comprehension. … In speaking of him, even speech is silent.”16 Anything we say about God is at best an analogy. We may reason our way to his doorstep, may learn what he chooses to reveal, but he's infinitely more than any created mind can get around.
Another thing worth saying about God in his eternity, even if only by analogy, is that he's happy. One theologian defined happiness as “the perfection of an intelligent being conscious of its plenitude in the good it holds.”17 That is, happiness is what you have when you've got something good, it's fully good, you can't lose it, and you know it. Well, God has himself, the Perfect Good, infinitely and can never lose himself, and he knows it. So “happiness is God's above all,” for “whatever is desirable in any happiness whatever... wholly and most highly pre-exists in divine happiness.”18 God, in being God, is eternally happier than any moment of happiness any of us has ever experienced. And so even had he not created anything at all, he could not have been lonely.
He wouldn't have been lonely because God alone is never alone in himself. One of the most profound lines in the Bible seems like the simplest: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It's not just that God loves, as if love were an act he happens to do. It's not just that God is the most loving of all, either. But love is the word that characterizes most perfectly who and what God eternally is. Now, here's the thing: if God is eternally and essentially Love, then who does God love when God's at home alone? Who would God be loving if God never created?
I'll tell you. Eternally, God thinks lovingly about himself, and the thought he has about himself is himself. And that perfect thought is called the Word. And the Word is a fully divine reality, is God's eternal reflection of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” John tells us (John 1:1). God generates the Word eternally, so we call the Word also the Son. And the Word or Son is “eternally begotten of the Father before all ages, true God from true God, begotten but not made, of the same essence as the Father.”19 Equally eternally, the Father and the Son breathe forth their Spirit through their love for each other. How? It's incomprehensible, a mystery. But, as one modern teacher summed it up well, “there must exist a love in God that transcends the mere love of mutual happiness, and this can transpire only if there are three persons in God, where the first two persons share in a self-less love of the third person.”20
So as Christians, “we believe in one true God – the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit..., the one Trinity..., one indivisible and undifferentiated substance, strength, power, and majesty.”21 We say God is Love because God, alone in eternity, is not alone within himself, because he is the Trinity: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, each of whom is entirely the one God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the one Love that God is. These three distinct persons in one God are one and the same power, one and the same goodness, one and the same happiness, one and the same eternal life. And none of that depends on creation. Had God not created, God would still have eternally been this supremely happy, eternally good life of internally shared love.
But this triune God is worthy of worship and glory even if there's no one outside them to give them. Because this worthiness doesn't come from anything God freely chooses to do, including create. Jesus says he and his Father shared “glory... before the world existed” (John 17:5), glorifying each other (with the Spirit) in the timeless, spaceless eternity where there was only God. That's what they did in eternity: glorify and love each other. And if God creates, then that creation is the free overflow of God's glorious love outward from himself, calling things into existence by sharing his love and goodness with them in their measures, so that we – in knowing, loving, and glorifying Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – can reach our highest goodness and happiness in him. And that, we'll begin to explore next Sunday. But we've said this today, on Trinity Sunday, because apart from a disposition of faith in this God who is Existence, Goodness, Life, Knowledge, Power, Happiness, Love, and Glory, this God revealed as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, Genesis – or anything else in the Bible – would be totally senseless. But in glimpsing this God, we're now prepared to read it all. So for today, we stand at the dawn of Genesis and peer back in absolute awe at this eternal “God in three persons, blessed Trinity!” Amen.
1 Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinty 1.7 (mid fourth century), translated in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 25:9.
2 John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 3 (eighth century), translated in Popular Patristics Series 39:64.
3 John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 3 (eighth century), translated in Popular Patristics Series 39:62.
4 Tertullian of Carthage, Against Hermogenes 4.6 (early third century), translated in Ancient Christian Writers 24:32.
5 Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.10 (late second century), translated in Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Oxford University Press, 1970), 39.
6 Augustine of Hippo, On Genesis, Against the Manichees 1.2 §3 (late fourth century), translated in Works of St. Augustine I/13:40.
7 Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 1.5 (mid fourth century), translated in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 25:6.
8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.3, a.4 (thirteenth century).
9 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.6, a.3 (thirteenth century).
10 Augustine of Hippo, On the City of God 11.10 (early fifth century), translated in Works of St. Augustine I/7:11.
11 John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 3 (seventh century), translated in Popular Patristics Series 39:61.
12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.14, aa.1-2 (thirteenth century).
13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.25, a.2 (thirteenth century).
14 Aristides of Athens, Apology 1 (early/mid second century).
15 Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.3 (late second century), translated in Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Oxford University Press, 1970), 5.
16 Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 2.6 (mid fourth century), translated in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 25:40.
17 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.26, a.1 (thirteenth century).
18 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.26, aa. 1, 4 (thirteenth century).
19 Creed of the First Council of Constantinople (381).
20 Thomas Joseph White, The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 357, based on Richard of St. Victor.
21 Creed of the First Council of Toledo (400).
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