Finished Reading “Heretics”

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  "G. K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on  "heretics" - those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views - Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds... those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them." (Goodreads)

Who Created the Heavens and the Earth: God or Jesus?

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The short answer: “Yes.” Here is the link of reasoning behind the question:  

Genesis 1:1 says God created the heavens and the earth and Isaiah 44:24 says, “Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by Myself.’” The New Testament says that the world was made by Jesus in John 1:10 and 1 Corinthians 8:6.

The bottom line is this: Jesus and God are not divided. Colossians 1:15-17 is one place that explains, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  The explanation is quite simple:

  1. Jesus is the “image of the invisible God.” The Greek word here is “icon” and we use them every day without difficulty. When you use your computer, how do you recognize, open and run a program? You find the one representation (icon) of the program on your desktop and click on it. When this happens, everything you can’t see or begin to understand (or maybe you do!) runs as it is expected. That’s what is happening here. 
  2. Jesus is the “firstborn of all creation.” This means either Jesus is first in quantity (some would argue Jesus was created first by God then everything else was created by Jesus); or, Jesus is first in quality (He is the exalted as the Father’s agent in creation). The first option is less unlikely when we consider the background of John 1, which explains that Jesus is God. 
  3. Jesus made all things. Think of it this way: how do you know what is on my mind? You don’t unless I speak (or in this case, write). When words leave my mouth, or my fingertips, then you know what I have inside. God spoke everything into existence through His Word, Jesus!
The scripture here makes it clear that Jesus is the one who exists preeminently holds all thing together. The first tenant of the ever-changing “String Theory” is just catching up to what the Bible has already said!

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