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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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Creation, in religion, refers to a special way of relating
physical things, plants, animals, and persons to God.
All believers in God hold that whatever exists depends
upon the nature of God, and that the worship of God
is essential to supreme well-being. However, believers
who use the word “creation” wish to defend both the
supremacy of God, and the autonomy of persons.

The words in the Declaration of Independence
(1776): “... that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights,” involve the conviction that men, free before
God, are responsible ultimately to Him. Believers in
“creation” do not themselves agree about what exactly
it means, although they intend the term to express their
conviction that God is never identical with his creation,
and with persons in particular. The most explicit ex-
pression of this view takes the form of creatio ex nihilo
(“creation out of nothing,” hereafter referred to as
creatio) and this intention differentiates theists from
religious monists or pantheists. Thus theists emphasize
that God both transcends, and is immanent in, His
creation. Their view is best understood in the context
of other religious, moral, and intellectual concerns to
be considered below.