The German philosopher Martin Heidegger said that the basic question
addressed in metaphysics is "Why is there anything at all, and not
rather nothing?" By that definition, he said, the idea of a Christian
metaphysics is a "wooden iron," a contradiction in terms. Why? Because
the Christian already knows the answer to the question. We know that
there is something rather than nothing because God made the world.
Whatever we may think of Heidegger's definition of metaphysics, we
can agree that he was right about one thing. Fundamental to all
Christian thinking is the belief that God created the world, that
reality is in some fundamental sense creation.
This is an ecumenical Christian confession. But there is probably no
Christian tradition in which the teaching concerning creation plays such
a pivotal role as in the line that runs from Scripture through
Ireneaus, Augustine, Calvin and Kuyper to Comment. In this strand
of the Christian tradition, creation is conceived of in a particularly
comprehensive way, and even salvation is in large measure understood as
the retrieval of creation as God originally intended it. Creation is
foundational to everything. Moreover, creation is good in a deep and
primordial sense—so deep, in fact, that the goodness of creation
continues to manifest itself even in the midst of terrible perversion.
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