Irenaeus, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, and John Behr on the Gift and Goal of Creation

Thesis: The world exists because the blessed God, who lacks nothing, freely gives being and life through his Word and Spirit, ordering creation toward communion with himself and bringing its purpose to light in Jesus Christ.

The Question 

Before there were stars to burn, minds to wonder, or clocks to measure passing time, God was. Genesis begins: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). The verse does not introduce God as one being among many. God is already there, while everything else begins because he speaks. Psalm 90 presses the contrast further: before the mountains were brought forth, “from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps 90:2). The universe has an origin. God has life in himself. Science investigates the relations, structures, and processes found within the universe. It can ask how stars form, how organisms develop, and how physical events follow from prior physical conditions. Yet the complete description of one created event by another created event still leaves the existence of the whole order unexplained. 

Why is there a universe in which any of these processes occur? Why are there laws, matter, energy, time, and minds capable of understanding them? Christian theology answers first by distinguishing the Creator from creation. God is not the earliest member of the universe or the first link in a chain of dependent causes. He is the uncreated source from whom every creature receives existence. Paul told the Athenians that the God who made the world is not served by human hands “as though he needed anything,” because he gives to all “life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25). God receives no life from the world. The world receives all life from God.

A second question then arises. If God needs nothing, why did he create anything? The first question concerns the ground of creation: what accounts for its existence? The second concerns creation’s purpose: what good did God will in giving creatures existence? Irenaeus, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, and John Behr answer these questions with different accents. Taken together, they present creation as a free gift from divine fullness, ordered toward the creature’s life in God and finally unveiled in Christ.

Irenaeus: The Uncreated God Gives Life to Creatures

Irenaeus begins with the irreducible distinction between the uncreated God and created things. God alone has life without receiving it. Creatures come into existence by his will, continue in existence by his power, and advance toward perfection by his goodness. In Against Heresies 4.38.3, Irenaeus joins these divine works together: God’s power appears in calling into being what previously did not exist; his wisdom appears in ordering created things into a harmonious whole; his goodness appears in granting them growth and enduring life.

This account rules out every suggestion that creation supplies something missing in God. Irenaeus describes God as “rich, perfect, and in need of nothing.” Worship benefits the worshiper because communion with God gives life, incorruption, and glory. It adds no perfection to God. “As much as God is in want of nothing,” Irenaeus writes, “so much does man stand in need of fellowship with God” (Against Heresies 4.14.1). God’s aseity and God’s generosity belong together. Because God does not create to obtain life, he can create wholly to give it.

Irenaeus also gives the question a developmental answer. A creature cannot be uncreated, and therefore cannot possess the Creator’s perfection as an original property. Created existence begins in infancy. Humanity must be nourished, exercised, and accustomed to receive God. The Word gives himself as milk suited to human weakness so that humanity may eventually receive the bread of immortality, the Spirit of the Father (Against Heresies 4.38.1–2). Creation is thus more than the production of finished objects. It is the beginning of an economy in which creatures grow into communion with the uncreated God.

This is why Irenaeus can say that “the glory of God is a living human being, and the life of the human being is the vision of God” (Against Heresies 4.20.7). The sentence does not celebrate autonomous human flourishing. Human life consists in beholding and receiving God through the Word. God’s glory appears as his goodness gives life to what is not God.

Irenaeus’s answer: There is something rather than nothing because the good God freely calls creatures into being and patiently brings them toward life, incorruption, and communion with himself.

Augustine: Created Being as the Gift of Divine Goodness

Augustine reminds us that God creates from nothing and no matter, darkness, possibility, or rival principle stands beside him. Even time belongs to creation. When someone asks what God was doing before he made the world, Augustine replies that the question imagines a temporal “before” where no time yet existed. God does not pass from an earlier inactivity to a later decision. The eternal Creator gives existence to time and to every creature that changes within it (Confessions 11.10–13).

This means that the creature possesses no prior claim upon God. Nothing that does not exist can merit the gift of existence. Augustine therefore treats creation as a primordial act of grace. In Confessions 13.2, he says that the creature subsists “out of the plenitude of your goodness.” God wills that a good which is neither God nor equal to God should nevertheless exist. The creature is good because it comes from the supreme Good, while its goodness remains received, finite, and dependent.

Augustine then asks directly what could have been lacking in God if the world had never existed. His answer is nothing. God made creatures from the fullness of goodness and did not perfect his joy by perfecting them (Confessions 13.4). God is his own blessedness. In him, being, living, wisdom, and blessed life are inseparable. Creatures differ. They can exist without living, live without wisdom, and possess rational life without enjoying God. Their perfection therefore requires conversion toward the One from whom their being comes.

Augustine’s account joins origin and end. The creature comes from God as sheer gift and finds rest only by cleaving to God. Created being is good, but it is not self-sufficient. Sin attempts to enjoy created goods apart from the Good who gives them. Redemption turns the creature back toward its source, so that the life received from God may become a life lived in God.

Augustine’s answer: There is something rather than nothing because the supreme Good freely wills finite goods to exist, giving them being from nothing and calling them to rest in his blessed life.

Jonathan Edwards: Divine Fullness Communicated and Enjoyed

Jonathan Edwards approaches the question by asking what end God had in view when he created the world. His answer begins with God’s internal glory. God eternally possesses infinite knowledge, holiness, and joy. Creation cannot increase this fullness. No creature supplies a happiness that God lacked or awakens a perfection that had lain dormant. God’s life is infinitely complete before every work outside himself.

Yet Edwards insists that fullness is communicative. He reaches for the images of radiance, streams, and an overflowing fountain. Divine glory ad extra is the expression and communication of divine glory ad intra. This does not mean that God spills into creation by an involuntary process. God wills the world. The images describe the abundance from which the will acts. “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain,” Edwards writes, “that it is inclined to overflow” (The End for Which God Created the World, 1.4).

Edwards gives this communication a striking threefold form. God communicates the fullness of his understanding by giving creatures the knowledge of his glory. He communicates holiness by giving them love for his excellence. He communicates happiness by enabling them to rejoice in him. The world’s final purpose is therefore doxological and participatory. God is known, loved, enjoyed, and praised in creatures who receive their good from him (The End for Which God Created the World, part 2, section 7).

This also explains why God’s glory and the creature’s happiness are not rival ends. God seeks his glory by communicating himself as the creature’s good. The creature reaches happiness by receiving, reflecting, and returning that communicated goodness in praise. God remains the fountain; the creature becomes a living stream whose water is wholly received. God’s delight in creaturely holiness is delight in the beauty he gives and in the image of his own excellence.

Edwards’s language must still be governed by the freedom of creation. The fullness of God makes creation fitting and generous; it does not make this particular world necessary to God’s being or blessedness. Divine fullness is already actual in the triune life. Creation is its freely willed expression and communication.

Edwards’s answer: There is something rather than nothing because the infinitely blessed God freely communicates his fullness, enabling creatures to know his glory, love his goodness, and rejoice in his joy.

John Behr: Creation’s Purpose Unveiled at the Cross

John Behr changes the angle of approach. The question cannot be answered adequately by beginning with an abstract deity and adding Christ after the cosmological work is complete. Christian theology begins with the apostolic proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen in accordance with the Scriptures. The cross opens the Scriptures and discloses both who God is and what God has been doing from the beginning.

Behr therefore reads Genesis retrospectively through John’s Gospel. Genesis 1 repeatedly says, “Let there be,” and creatures come forth by divine command. In Genesis 1:26 the form changes: “Let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness.” Behr treats this as the particular project toward which the preceding creation is ordered. The work reaches its revelatory completion in John’s passion narrative. Pilate declares, “Behold the human being” (John 19:5), and the crucified Christ says, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The end reveals the beginning.

Christ is therefore, in Behr’s description of Irenaeus, “the beginning who appears at the end.” The crucified and risen Christ shows us the true image of God and the true human being. Humanity reaches maturity as flesh is vivified by the Spirit and conformed to Christ’s self-giving life. Creation’s purpose cannot be reduced to the existence of a stable cosmos or even to the existence of rational animals. It is ordered toward living human beings who bear the form of Christ (John Behr, “The Apocalypse of the Cross,” 339–42).

Behr’s contribution is chiefly christological and hermeneutical. Irenaeus, Augustine, and Edwards explain why divine fullness can give rise to a dependent creation without implying divine need. Behr asks how creation’s goal becomes known. The answer appears at Golgotha. There we see the human being God intended and the divine life humanity is called to share.

Behr’s answer: There is something rather than nothing because God’s work is ordered toward the formation of humanity in Christ, a humanity brought to life by the Spirit and conformed to the crucified Lord.

From Divine Blessedness to the Gift of Creation

I think perhaps these four accounts converge upon divine blessedness. Creation comes from the fullness of God and is ordered toward participation in God. Irenaeus teaches that the God who needs nothing gives life so that creatures may mature into communion with him. Augustine teaches that finite being is itself a gift from the plenitude of divine goodness. Edwards explains creation as the free communication of the knowledge, holiness, and joy eternally full in God. Behr shows that the purpose of creation is unveiled in the crucified and risen Christ.

This synthesis clarifies the relation between divine aseity and divine goodness. Aseity means more than independence from the world. It names the infinite sufficiency and plenitude of God’s own life. God does not create to become living, loving, glorious, or blessed. He creates because he is the living, loving, glorious, and blessed God. Creation neither repairs a lack in God nor awakens a silent potential within him. It is the free gift of a life already infinitely full.

Divine blessedness therefore supplies a fruitful grammar for creation. God eternally knows, loves, and delights in his own goodness as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From this fullness, without necessity or loss, he gives creatures being and draws them toward communion with himself. His glory ad extra publishes the goodness he enjoys ad intra. The universe is neither a divine fragment nor a necessary extension of God. It is a freely willed creation that remains continually dependent upon its Creator.

The synthesis also clarifies the human vocation. We were not made merely to occupy space, prolong biological life, or master the mechanisms of the world. We were made to receive life from God, to grow into the likeness of Christ, and to return God’s gifts in knowledge, love, joy, and praise. The question of existence therefore becomes personal. If my life is received, then gratitude is more truthful than self-possession. If God is my good, then communion is more fundamental than autonomy. If Christ reveals the goal of creation, then true humanity takes the form of self-giving love.

Conclusion

Why is there something rather than nothing? Because God is. The universe does not contain the cause of its own existence. It lives at every moment from the One who possesses life in himself. Yet Christian theology says more. The God who gives being is rich, perfect, blessed, and good. He creates from no poverty and for no gain. Through the Word and Spirit, he calls creatures into being, gives them form and life, and orders them toward communion with himself.

The final answer is visible in Christ. The One through whom all things were made enters the creation, gathers humanity into himself, and reveals on the cross what divine life and human perfection look like. Creation begins in gift and reaches its end in communion. There is something rather than nothing because the blessed God freely gives life, and the life he gives is restless until it rests in him.

Selected Primary Sources

Augustine. Confessions. Books 11 and 13, especially 11.10–13 and 13.1–4.

Behr, John. “The Apocalypse of the Cross: The Gospel of John and the Beginning of Christian Theology.” In Studies in Orthodox Hermeneutics: A Festschrift in Honor of Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, edited by Eugen Pentiuc, John Fotopoulos, and Bruce Beck, 313–47. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2016.

Edwards, Jonathan. A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. Especially part 1, section 4, and part 2, section 7.

Irenaeus. Against Heresies. Especially 4.14.1; 4.20.5–7; and 4.38.1–3.