The CatechismGlobal Methodist Church
Question 9 of 77 · Ecumenical Affirmations

What is the Son's role in creation?

Through Him all things were made.

Catechism for the Global Methodist Church, question 9

Commentary

The second article of the creed ends its account of who the Son is with a statement of what he did before the incarnation: "through Him all things were made." The catechism gives that clause verbatim as its answer. The line belongs with the confession of the Son as "true God from true God": creation is God's work alone, so to say that all things were made through the Son is to say again that the Son is God. Article I of the Articles of Religion names the one God "the maker and preserver of all things," and this question shows the Son within that one work.

The four scriptures the catechism cites all say the same thing from different angles. John's prologue says it in the negative as well as the positive: "All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being that has come into being" (John 1:3). Paul's confession in 1 Corinthians distinguishes the Father, "from whom are all things," from the Son, "through whom are all things," and it is the same "all things" in both halves (1 Corinthians 8:6). The Father is the source and the Son is the agent of one creation.

Colossians widens the claim to include the unseen world the first article of the creed mentioned: "in him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him" (Colossians 1:16). The Son is the goal of creation as well as its means. Then Paul adds the present tense: "in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). The Son who made the world is the one who keeps it in being now, which is the doctrine of God as Preserver applied to the second person of the Trinity. Hebrews puts the two together, calling the Son the one "whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages" (Hebrews 1:2).

For a Methodist this means the world is never neutral ground. The fields, the stars, the body a person lives in, and the powers that govern nations were made through Christ and for Christ, and he holds them together now. Wesley's love of the natural world and his insistence that grace is at work in every person rest on this: the Redeemer and the Creator are the same Lord.