When God began to create the heavens and the earth— the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters— God said, “Let there be light.” And so light appeared. – Genesis 1:1-3 (CEB)
Spiritus Creator – The Holy Spirit and Creation
In the beginning, God creates through Word and Spirit. In Genesis 1:2 the Spirit moves over the deep to bring form out of the primordial chaos, and then in Genesis 1:3 God speaks, saying “Let there be light.” Thus before God creates through words God is already at work creating through the movement of the Spirit over the world. The Holy Spirit, then, is the creative power of God moving within the world. Creation is not simply a onetime event. God may have only said “Let there be light” and created light once, but the Spirit is perpetually moving over the world and bringing forth newness and structure out of the chaos of life in this world. Theologically this is known as creatio continua, or continual creation. That is, God is at work each and every day in the world allowing existence to occur. Without God’s continual presence, the world would cease to be. Rocks, sea, plants, animals, buildings, and societies all require the presence of God to exist. Without God they would return to the formless nothingness of Genesis 1:2.
Speaking of this sense of the Holy Spirit as sustaining creation, Martin Luther explains, “Daily we can see the birth into this world of new human beings, young children who were non-existent before; we behold new trees, new animals on the earth, new fish in the water, new birds in the air. And such creation and preservation will continue until the Last Day.”1 God continually brings life to the world through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, in the explanation of the 1st Article of the Creed in the Large Catechism, Luther focuses his discussion of creation not on the beginning of creation but rather on the continuing blessings of God. He contends, “Thus we learn from this article that none of us has life – or anything else that has been mentioned here or can be mentioned – from ourselves, nor can we by ourselves preserve any of them, however small and unimportant.”2 The key point about proclaiming God as creator, for Luther, is not what happened at the beginning of time but rather is about what happens every moment of every day in creation continuing to exist.
This radical immanence of God is the universal work of the Holy Spirit. For Luther God is not simply “up there,” but rather is deeply present within the world. Thus Luther can say, for instance, “Nothing so small but God is still smaller, nothing so large but God is still larger, nothing is so short but God is still shorter, nothing so long but God is still longer, nothing so narrow but God is still narrower, etc.”3 The Holy Spirit is the ongoing immanence of God in the world as the creator, renewer, and
sustainer of all life, just as the Father is the way of speaking of the transcendence of God as the creator, renewer, and sustainer of all life. The Holy Spirit is God’s fundamental daily engagement with the world.
1 Luther’s Works volume 22 page 27.
2 Large Catechism, Creed Article 1, line 16.
3 Luther’s Works volume 37 page 228.