What is the Son's role in creation?
Through Him all things were made.
Catechism for the Global Methodist Church, question 9
3All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being that has come into being.
6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we exist through him.
16because 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 17and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together
2In these last days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages.
Before the incarnation, before anything existed at all, the Son was at work: "through Him all things were made." Those words close the creed's account of who the Son is. 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 calls the one God "the maker and preserver of all things," and the Son is within that one work.
Four scriptures teach this, each from a different angle. John's prologue: "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); nothing whatever was made without him. 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 each half (1 Corinthians 8:6). The Father is the source and the Son is the agent of one creation.
Colossians includes 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. And he did not finish and step away: "in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). The Son who made the world keeps it in being now, which is the doctrine of God as Preserver applied to the second person of the Trinity. Hebrews calls the Son the one "whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages" (Hebrews 1:2): the maker of the ages and their heir are the same person.
For a Methodist 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 teaching that grace is at work in every person rest on this: the Redeemer and the Creator are the same Lord.