Theologian Elizabeth Johnson identifies love as the origin of all creation:
The question of why there is anything at all, why there is something and not nothing, finds an answer in the basic character of the Creator: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The living God is love, faithful, challenging, and compassionate love as the scriptures often declare…. This love is the wellspring of creation. There is no pressure on infinite holy mystery to create and continuously support a world. How could there be? It is done freely, as a flaming, generous act of love, the plentitude of infinite love overflowing. With simple reasoning one biblical book figures it this way: “For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made, for you would not have formed anything if you had hated it” (Wisdom 11:24).
The living God’s way of creating is sui generis, genuinely one of a kind. When humans create, whether it be a baby, a book, a building, a business, … a protest sign, a song, it is always done with material at hand. By contrast, the often-used traditional Latin phrase ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” points to the unfathomable act of God’s originating all things and continuously keeping them in existence with no material at hand, no intermediary, no pressure, no pre-existing conditions.
Poetic images abound. God speaks and the power of that word brings the world into being: Let there be, and lo! there it is. Again, God molds a human figure out of the dust of the earth and breathes the spirit of life into its nostrils, and it becomes a living being. Both are images in the book of Genesis. Like a woman giving birth, like a potter casting clay on a wheel, like a bird brooding eggs into hatching, like an artist making a beautiful work of art, God makes a world. These and other biblical images hint bravely at how we might imagine the relationship of creation. None, of course, can be taken literally. But each one keeps front and center the connection between Maker and what is made….
The Creator gives with great affection; creatures receive. Nothing in the great world would exist but for this constant relationship. Rocks, plants, animals, human beings, ecosystems, stars, galaxies, universes—without the ongoing creative power of God at every moment, all would collapse into … an unimaginable no-thing. Owing one’s existence to the ongoing creative love of the living God is the core meaning of being created.
Reference:
Elizabeth A. Johnson, Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth (Orbis Books, 2024), 5–7.
Image credit and inspiration: Sergey Kvint, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. A single green shoot rising from the forest floor tells a quiet story of the earth’s own generative imagination.
Story from Our Community:
When I bless myself with the sign of the cross, I take my time to sit with who the Trinity is and who I am. “I bless myself in the name of the Father and receive anew the original blessing of unconditional love, divinity, and dignity, and I accept it in my faithful foolishness. I bless myself in the name of the Son, and I receive anew the original blessing of passionate love, insight, and creative freedom, and I accept it in my holy weakness. I bless myself in the name of the Holy Spirit and I receive anew the original blessing of Trinitarian love and communitarian living and I accept it in my loving lowliness. Amen.”
—Jean S.
