Editorial February 1, 1930 Issue

Creative Action

Clifford P. Smith

The form as distinguished from the substance of the first document in the book of Genesis (chapter 1, verse 1, to chapter 2, verse 3 or 5) has given the impression to many devout people that God's creating has ended. Furthermore, this interpretation of the first section of the Bible has kept many people from becoming active religionists or from continuing as such. It has not appealed to, it has repelled, many intelligent persons. Summed up, therefore, this taking of form instead of substance has done a great deal of harm.

David spoke of God's causing or creating in the present tense (I Chron. 29:10–14): "All that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine. ... Thou reignest over all. ... All things come of thee." Whether he distinguished, in cause and in effect, between good and evil, is not clear; but he may have spoken with the true sense of God's goodness.

Long afterward, another author of hymns declared the nature of God and His action explicitly: "Thou art good, and doest good" (Psalm 119). The author of this psalm may have been another king of Judah (Hezekiah), whose successful prayer for health is recorded in Isaiah (38:9–19). It is attributed to him by some of the experts in Old Testament criticism and chronology. Others assign this psalm, from the indications it contains, to a later time; they assign it to about one hundred and fifty years before the birth of Jesus. Whoever may have been its author, and whatever may have been its date, the saying "Thou art good, and doest good," marked an approach to the mental era in which one could discern and declare, not only the goodness of God and the goodness of His action, but also the unity in action of God and man.

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