Concluding remarks.
That the creation as an opus Dei ad extra is a work of the triune God, was already explained in detail with the doctrine of God. To address three creators or a "distribution" of the work of creation among the three persons is contrary to Scripture and annoying. As the divine essence, una numero essentia, which exists only once, comes to each person wholly and undivided, so also all opera ad extra, including the creation of the world, come to each person wholly and undivided. They are eaedem numero actiones [“the same number of actions”]."1472) But even Philippi slipped the phrase: "We see here [in creation] the efficacy distributed to all three [persons] quite equally."1473) Lutheran theologians firmly reject all thoughts of a "creation society" (causae sociae creationis).1474) How
1472) See the sections "The Camps Against the Deniers of the One God" and "Objections to Homousia or the Unity of God," pp. 461-474.
1473) Glaubenslehre 3 II, 126. That Philippi cannot call upon the so-called particulae diacriticae εκ, διά, εν for his way of speaking has already been shown above, p. 471 f.. Likewise, Luther, referring to the diacritical particles, says of John 1:3, St. L. XII, 157 f.: "Now the Scripture retains the way that it speaks that the world was created through Christ and from the Father and in the Holy Spirit, which all has its cause, although not sufficiently explicable nor expressible. However, to indicate a little, it needs to speak in this way, so that it is indicated how not the Father from the Son, but the Son from the Father has the divine essence and the Father is the first, original person in the Godhead. Therefore it does not say that Christ made the world through the Father, but the Father through him, that the Father remains the first person and from him, but through the Son, all things come. In such a way also John speaks, ch. 1, 3: 'All things were made through Him', and Col. 1:16: 'All things consist through Him and in Him', and Rom. 11:36: 'All things are of Him, through Him and in Him.'" We summarized this p. 471 thus, "As there is an order, but not a subordination, in the three persons (ordo in modo subsistendi), so there is an order in the efficacy of the persons (ordo in modo operandi)," without subordination.
1474) Baier-Walther II, 95: Unam, inquam, causam [efficientem creationis], non tres causas socias [“I say, one cause [of efficient creation], and not three causes. For the creative power of the three persons is unique.”]. Potentia enim creandi trium personarum unica est. Quenstedt treats the question whether the three persons of the Godhead causae sociae creationis dicendae sint in great detail in a special quaestio, Systema I, 602 sqq, and answers the question negatively by referring to the una numero essentia divina and the eaedem numero actiones divinae ad extra.
587 ><w:t xml:space="preserve">The Creation of the Wett and the Man. [English ed. 480-483]
decidedly Luther refuses to speak of three creators, we already saw above (p. 511).
Creation is a free, not a necessary act of God, Ps. 115:3: כֹּ֭ל אֲשֶׁר־חָפֵ֣ץ עָשָֽׂה [HEBREW]. The assumption that the creation of the world was a necessary act consequently includes pantheism in itself and cancels the concept of God. As with the redemption through the incarnation of the Son of God,1475) so with the creation of the world God is to be held as causa libera.1476)