4. The order in the work of creation.
From Gen. 1 it is clearly recognizable that the creation progresses from the simple to the higher organized or from the imperfect to the perfect. God created first heaven and earth in their basic components ("world material"; Luther: moles coeli et terrae). Then successively
1441) Luther, St. L. I, 6: "Hilarius and Augustine, as the two greatest lights of the church, are of this opinion, that the world was created suddenly and at once (subito et simul), not successively through six days. And Augustine plays strangely with the six days, from which he makes days of secret interpretation of the knowledge in the angels (mysticos dies cognitionis in angelis), and does not leave six natural days. ... Because Moses does not want to teach us about allegorical creatures or an allegorical world, but about essential creatures and a visible world, which can be seen, felt and grasped, he calls every thing by its name (appellat, ut proverbio dicitur, scapham scapham), day and evening, as we use, without all allegories." Vilmar also confesses, "In the application which is made of these six days as early as Gen. 2:2-3, and afterwards in the law, twenty-four hour days are, however, meant, and the wording (evening and morning, the first day, the second day, etc.) seems to speak for it." Vilmar, Dogmatik I, 247; citing Baier-Walther II, 79. Vilmar then freely adds, "On the other hand, the provision Ps. 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8, according to which a thousand years find like one day and one day like a thousand years before God, is not unfavorable to the assumption of periods of creation." But it is quite impossible to parallel Ps. 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 with the creation account. In the passages mentioned, the address is that there is no time in God and before God. The creation report, however, announces itself immediately by the first word "In the beginning" as going into time, as a historical report. This is also urged by the dogmatists together with Luther. Quenstedt I, 613.
573 ><w:t xml:space="preserve">The Creation of the World and of Man. [English ed. pgs. 469-470]
created: 1. light, vv. 3-5; 2. visible firmament, vv. 6-8 (רָקִ֖יעַ [HEBREW]); 3. sea and dry land and the plant life on the dry land, vv. 9-13; 4. sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, vv. 14-19; 5. aquatic animals and birds, vv. 20-23 ; 6. land animals and finally man, vv. 24-28.
However, this order followed by God is not to be reinterpreted into a self-development (evolution), since in the reported stepwise order the divine sole effect clearly emerges; e.g. the earth does not bring forth grass and herbage and (v. 24) living animals by way of self-development, but by God's omnipotent word (v. 11). The theory of "two factors" is to be rejected as evolutionistic. Luthardt, to be sure, says:1442) "Scripture tells us that in the progress of formations two factors have worked together: the self-ascending activity of the forces of nature and the creative influence of God." But this is a mistake. According to Scripture, grass and animals are not formed half by God's action and half by the "self-ascending activity" of the earth, but entirely by God's action. The earth is rather, as the dogmatists correctly say, the materia, ex qua [“materia, ex qua”] God alone creates grass and animals. Luthardt proposes "boundary regulation" between the Bible and natural science. This is a good suggestion. But he himself errs in matters of boundary regulation when he says, for example,"1443) "Religion tells us that God gives us our daily bread; natural science teaches us how grain grows in the field." The error is so gross that two pages later Luthardt corrects himself in the words, "Even now the origin of life is an impenetrable mystery to us. How something becomes, no man is able to say, nor will we ever find out." That is certainly true. The really scientific, that is, on experience and observation founded, nature research knows no origin of organic beings from inorganic ones (generatio aequivoca) and no origin of a higher kind from a lower one.1444) And to add this
1442) The Apology I, 70.<w:t xml:space="preserve">1443) op. cit. p. 53.
1444) Cf. on the generatio aequivoca the quotations in Luthardt, Apol. I, 236 f. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theol 11, 6 ff. reports about attempts in England to make life out of dead matter (with negative results). Following Ex. 8:18, Walther used to say somewhat crudely from time to time: "The natural scientists may have lice, but they cannot make any." Huxley admits that "evolution" is the emergence of the living from the non-living.
574 ><w:t xml:space="preserve">The Creation of the World and of Man. [English ed. pgs. 470-471]
straight away: As the creation of the creatures, so also their existence, their activity and their reproduction is based on the incessant divine effect alone, not on "self-ascending activity" of the creatures or on half or whole evolution. For Col. 1:17: "All things exist in him" (God), and Acts 17:28: In him we live, move and are.