Who really is the God of Genesis?

Creation Archive > Volume 27 Issue 3 > Who really is the God of Genesis?

	First published: Creation 27(3):37–39 June 2005 Browse this issue

by Russell Grigg

The God of Genesis is not someone whom Christians share with Islam, modern-day non-Messianic Judaism,¹ Hinduism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, or any other belief system which rejects the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Rather, unlike those systems, Genesis portrays the God of Christianity (the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) to be the God who is not only one, but is also more than one.

The very first verse of the Bible reads: ‘In the beginning God (plural) created (singular) the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). Moses, the author of Genesis under the direction of the Holy Spirit, chose to use the Hebrew plural term elohim for God,² rather than the singular el³ or the singular poetic form eloah. But he does use the singular form of the verb ‘created’!

Besides elohim, Moses also used other plural forms with reference to God in Genesis. Genesis 1:26 reads, ‘Then God said, “Let us make [plural] man in our [plural] image.”’⁴ Here Moses uses the singular verb ‘said’, but quotes God as using a plural verb and a plural pronoun with reference to Himself. See also Genesis 11:7, where God says, ‘Let us go down and confuse their language.’

Why did Moses use these plural forms?

Some have suggested that this plurality is merely a plural of majesty, like the ‘royal we’ grandly used by kings, queens and others today. However, the kings of Israel and Judah were all addressed in the singular in the Bible accounts. Linguist Dr Charles Taylor says, ‘Nobody is in a position to show that in Moses’ day or earlier, people were in the habit of addressing kings and princes in the plural. In fact, there is no evidence at all from the Bible itself, and the Bible is one of the oldest books there is.’⁵

Others have gone further and said that elohim shows that God includes within Himself plurality of powers, attributes and personhood. With this we agree. Elohim is a plural noun with a singular meaning. The Old Testament writers used it over 2,500 times, usually with singular verbs and adjectives (as in Genesis 1:1), implying that God is one, yet more than one—what some commentators have referred to as the ‘uniplurality’ of the Godhead.⁶ So does this ‘uniplurality’ or ‘plurality of personhood’ refer to the Trinity?

Second Person: the Word of God

The doctrine of the Trinity was not, and could not be, fully formulated or understood until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, in the New Testament (see box). After Jesus came, one of His titles was revealed in John 1:1–14 to be ‘the Word’ (Greek logos), and note that ‘the Word was God’ (John 1:1, emphasis added). If we reread Genesis chapter 1 with this in mind, we find that everything that God created on each of the six days of Creation Week was by His word. The formula God used on each day was ‘And God said …’, and it was so.

God’s name The root meaning of elohim is ‘the powerful one’, and so elohim stresses God’s omnipotence. As such, it was a particularly appropriate term for Moses to have used to describe the Creator God of Creation Week. ‘His power is seen much more clearly in creating many diverse objects and beings in a short time, than it can be seen in a long, drawn-out evolutionary timetable.’1 Although generally thought of as a name for God, elohim is rather a title or a descriptive expression. The truly personal name of God is the one He revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:15), namely YHWH, often transliterated Yahweh or in English as Jehovah and written in capitals, Lord. It means ‘I am who I am’ and so means ‘the self-existent one’ or ‘the one who causes to be’. It is used of God’s personal relationship with Adam and Eve in Genesis chapters 2 and 3,2 where Moses uses the combined term Yahweh elohim, which the translators have rendered as ‘the Lord God’. References and notes Taylor, C.V., The First Hundred Words, The Good Book Co., Gosford, NSW, Australia, p. 3, 1996. As well as of God’s covenant relationship with His people.

We should note that although this activity of the Son of God is not defined at this stage in Genesis, it is clearly confirmed in the New Testament, which explicitly states that God created everything through Jesus. For example, Colossians 1:16 reads: ‘For by Him [the Son of God (v. 15)] all things were created.’⁷ Thus, the heavens and the earth and all things in them came into being, not through self-causation or evolutionary natural processes, but by the divinely powerful, intelligent will of God, operating through the Son of God. Furthermore, the same Son is ‘upholding all things by the word of His power’ (Hebrews 1:3; cf. Colossians 1:17).

Third Person: the Spirit of God

Genesis 1:2 reads, ‘… and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters’. The Hebrew word ruach used by Moses can mean ‘spirit’, ‘wind’ or ‘breath’, with the choice being determined by the context. So did Moses mean to say that a wind was fanning the waters, or that the Spirit of God⁸ was participating in the creation event, particularly with regard to making the unfinished earth habitable?

Answer: The participle ‘hovering’ does not adequately describe the blowing of a wind. And if the text merely says that at the start of all the momentous events of Creation Week a wind was blowing, we might reasonably ask, ‘So what?’ We conclude that it was Moses’ intention to tell us that ‘despite the fact the earth was not then habitable, all was under the control of God’s Spirit’.⁹

Conclusion

The Tri-unity of God The doctrine of the Trinity states that in the unity of the Godhead there are three eternal and co-equal Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the same in essence but distinct in role—three Persons (or three centres of consciousness) and one Being (see diagram). This doctrine is difficult to understand, but this is what God has revealed in the Bible about His own Being, so we should believe it. For example, at the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was seen descending and landing upon the Son, and the voice of the Father was heard from Heaven (Matthew 3:16–17). And when Jesus gave the Great Commission, He ordered His followers to baptize in the name (singular) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18–20). The different senses of oneness and threeness mean that the doctrine is not self-contradictory. This is similar in principle to saying that the navy, army and airforce are three distinct fighting entities, but are also one armed service. Note: this is not to suggest that the three persons are ‘parts’ of God. Indeed, each Person has the fullness of the Godhead (see Colossians 2:9). A better analogy is that space contains three dimensions (length, breadth, height), yet the dimensions are not ‘parts’—the concept of ‘space’ is meaningless without all three dimensions. The Trinity and the God of love The Bible reveals, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16). This is distinctive of the Christian faith, and means that love is part of God’s very nature, even before He created anything. But love requires at least two persons—self-love is not really love at all. So there must be at least two persons in the Godhead. If God were only one person, then love could not be part of His nature. Love is even greater when the love between two persons is not restricted to themselves, but is combined and directed towards another. This should happen in a family, where the husband and wife love each other, and also combine their love towards their child. So for God to exemplify love in its fullest sense, there must be three Persons, so there is both individual and collective love. Any more than three is unnecessary for collective love, because it would just increase the number of persons involved, not the nature of the love.

We should be wary of using as proof texts any verses of the Bible which the author did not originally write with that purpose in mind. So it is probably better not to say that Genesis 1 explicitly teaches the Trinity.

Having said this, we need to emphasize that we should expect that the wording of Genesis would not contradict later biblical teaching about the Son of God or about the Holy Spirit. In fact, we find that the terms Moses used by divine inspiration in writing Genesis are completely in harmony with the Bible’s later and fuller revelation in the New Testament about all three Persons of the Trinity (see box).

Genesis affirms, from the very first verse of the Bible, that the Creator God is truly one God. This is taught in the famous Shema (Hebrew for ‘hear’) from Deuteronomy 6:4: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.’ But even here, the word for ‘one’ is echad, which is often used for plurality within the oneness. E.g. in Genesis 2:24 (which Jesus cited in Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8) the husband and wife (two people) shall become one (echad) flesh.¹⁰

The rest of the Bible reveals this one God to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit—three personal distinctions within the one eternal divine nature or essence. Thus, the Trinity can indeed be found in Genesis 1. And it is clear that only the God of Christianity—unique and triune—is the God of Genesis, who is not only Creator, but also Lawgiver, Saviour and Judge.

References and notes

1. Modern-day non-Messianic Jews might believe that God created as per Genesis, but they reject God’s uniplurality.
2. The first of some 2,570 times elohim is used of God in this way in the Old Testament. Although it usually refers to the Living God, it is also used occasionally in the Bible to refer to pagan deities (in the plural), as in: ‘You shall have no other gods [elohim] before me’ (Exodus 20:3; cf. Joshua 24:16; Jeremiah 5:7).
3. Corresponding to the Greek theos, the Latin Deus, and the English God.
4. Some antitrinitarians try to claim that God is conversing with angels here. But there is no indication anywhere in Scripture of angels being involved in creation, or having such creative power. And more importantly, mankind was made in the image of God, not in the image of ‘God plus angels’—see also Hebrews 2.
5. Taylor, C.V., The First Hundred Words, The Good Book Co., Gosford, NSW, Australia, p. 3, 1996.
6. E.g. Morris, H., The Genesis Record, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 39, 1976.
7. See also John 1:3; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Hebrews 1:2.
8. Whom the Bible tells us is eternal (Hebrews 9:14), omniscient (1 Corinthians 2:10–11) and omnipresent (Psalm 139:7–10).
9. Kelly D.F., Creation and Change, Christian Focus Publications, Ross-shire, UK, p. 91, 1997, who references Young, E., Studies in Genesis One, Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co, Philadelphia, USA, p. 36, 1964.
10. Paul, thoroughly educated in Judaism and writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, understood this. In 1 Corinthians 8:6, he wrote: ‘Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.’ Here, Paul is applying the Shema, using the key phrase ‘one Lord’, and applying it to Jesus Christ, thus including Jesus in the identity of the one true God!

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