A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity or god responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatristic traditions separate a secondary creator from a primary transcendent being, identified as a primary creator.
Monotheism[]
Atenism[]
Initiated by Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti around 1330 BCE, during the New Kingdom period in ancient Egyptian history. They built an entirely new capital city (Akhetaten) for themselves and worshippers of their sole creator god on a wilderness. His father used to worship Aten alongside other gods of their polytheistic religion. Aten, for a long time before his father's time, was revered as a god among the many gods and goddesses in Egypt. Atenism faded away after the death of the pharaoh. Despite different views, Atenism is considered by some scholars to be one of the frontiers of monotheism in human history.
Abrahamic religions[]
the Abrahamic creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis. The first account (1:1 through 2:3) employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the [xth] day," for each of the six days of creation. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one divides the darkness from light, day two the "waters above" from the "waters below", and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates the darkness and light with sun, moon, and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally, land-based creatures and mankind populate the land.
the first (the Priestly story) was concerned with the cosmic plan of creation, while the second (the Yahwist story) focuses on man as cultivator of his environment and as a moral agent. The second account, in contrast to the regimented seven-day scheme of Genesis 1, uses a simple flowing narrative style that proceeds from God's forming the first man through the Garden of Eden to the creation of the first woman and the institution of marriage. In contrast to the omnipotent God of Genesis 1 creating a god-like humanity, the God of Genesis 2 can fail as well as succeed. The humanity he creates is not god-like, but is punished for acts which would lead to their becoming god-like (Genesis 3:1-24) and the order and method of creation itself differs. "Together, this combination of parallel character and contrasting profile point to the different origin of materials in Genesis 1:1 and Gen 2:4, however elegantly they have now been combined."
An early conflation of Greek philosophy with the narratives in the Hebrew Bible came from Philo of Alexandria (d. AD 50), writing in the context of Hellenistic Judaism. Philo equated the Hebrew creator-deity Yahweh with Aristotle's Unmoved Mover (First Cause)[1][2] in an attempt to prove that the Jews had held monotheistic views even before the Greeks.
A similar theoretical proposition was demonstrated by Thomas Aquinas, who linked Aristotelian philosophy with the Christian faith, followed by the statement that God is the First Being, the First Mover, and is Pure Act.[3]
the deuterocanonical 2 Maccabees has two relevant passages. At chapter 7, it narrows about the mother of a Jewish proto-martyr telling to her son: "I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also";[4][5] at chapter 1, it refers a solemn prayer hymned by Jonathan, Nehemiah and the Priest of Israel, while making sacrifices in honour of God: "O Lord, Lord God, Creator of all things, who art fearefull, and strong, and righteous, and mercifull, and the onely, and gracious king".[6] the Prologue to Gospel of John begins with: "In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, and the Word was God. / 2 the same was in the beginning with God. / 3 All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.".[7]
Christianity affirms the creation by God since its early time in the Apostles' Creed ("I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.", 1st century AD), that is symmetrical to the Nicene Creed (4th century AD).
Nowadays, theologians debate whether the Bible itself teaches if this creation by God is a creation ex nihilo. Traditional interpreters[8] argue on grammatical and syntactical grounds that this is the meaning of Genesis 1:1, which is commonly rendered: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." However, other interpreters[9] understand creation ex nihilo as a 2nd-century theological development. According to this view, church fathers opposed notions appearing in pre-Christian creation myths and in Gnosticism—notions of creation by a demiurge out of a primordial state of matter (known in religious studies as chaos after the Greek term used by Hesiod in his theogony).[10] Jewish thinkers took up the idea,[11] which became important to Judaism.
According to Islam, God, known in Arabic as Allah, is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator, Sustainer, Ordainer, and Judge of the universe. Creation is seen as an act of divine choice and mercy, one with a grand purpose: "And We (Royal we) did not create the heaven and earth and that between them in play."[12] Rather, the purpose of humanity is to be ed: "Who has created death and life, that He may you which of you is best in deed. And He is the All-Mighty, the Oft-Forgiving;"[13] Those who pass the are rewarded with Paradise: "Verily for the Righteous there will be a fulfilment of (the heart's) desires;"[14]
According to the Islamic teachings, God exists above the heavens and the creation itself. The Quran mentions, "He it is Who created for you all that is on earth. Then He Istawa (rose over) towards the heaven and made them seven heavens and He is the All-Knower of everything."[15] At the same time, God is unlike anything in creation: "there is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing."[16] and nobody can perceive God in totality: "Vision perceives Him not, but He perceives [all] vision; and He is the Subtle, the Acquainted."[17] God in Islam is not only majestic and sovereign, but also a personal God: "And indeed We have created man, and We know what his ownself whispers to him. And We are nearer to him than his jugular vein (by Our Knowledge)."[18] Allah commands the believers to constantly remember Him ("O you who have believed, remember Allah with much remembrance"[19]) and to invoke Him alone ("And whoever invokes besides Allah another deity for which he has no proof - then his account is only with his Lord. Indeed, the disbelievers will not succeed."[20]).
Islam teaches that God as referenced in the Quran is the only god and the same God worshipped by members of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Judaism.
Sikhism[]
One of the biggest responsibilities in the faith of Sikhism is to worship God as "the Creator", termed Waheguru, who is shapeless, timeless, and sightless, i.e., Nirankar, Akal, and Alakh Niranjan. The religion only takes after the belief in "One God for All" or Ik Onkar.
Bahá'í[]
In the Bahá'í Faith God is the imperishable, uncreated being who is the source of all existence.[21] He is described as "a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty".[22][23] Although transcendent and inaccessible directly, his image is reflected in his creation. The purpose of creation is for the created to have the capacity to know and love its creator.[24]
References[]
- ↑ Yonge, Charles Duke (1854). "Appendices A Treatise Concerning the World (1): But what can be worse than this, or more calculated to display the want of true nobility existing in the soul, than the notion of causes, in general, being secondary and created causes, combined with an ignorance of the one first cause, the uncreated God, the Creator of the universe, who for these and innumerable other reasons is most excellent, reasons which because of their magnitude human intellect is unable to apprehend?" the Works of Philo Judaeus: the contemporary of Josephus. London: H. G. Bohn". Cornerstonepublications.org. Archived from the original on 28 September 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150928224539/http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/.
- ↑ Plato Laws Book X, Public Domain-Project Gutenberg. "ATHENIAN: then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods… then we must say that self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second."
- ↑ "On the simplicity of God, in " Summa theologiae", Part I, Question 3." (in la, en). Benziger Bros. edition. 1947. https://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP003.html. Retrieved Oct 6, 2018.
- ↑ "1611 King James Bible. Second book of Maccabees, chapter 7, verse 8" (in en). https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/2-Maccabees-Chapter-7_Original-1611-KJV/.
- ↑ "Greek Septuagint and Wiki English Translation. 2 Maccabees 7:58" (in en, el). http://en.katabiblon.com/us/index.php?text=LXX&book=2Mc&ch=7&interlin=on.
- ↑ "1611 King James Bible. Second book of Maccabees, chapter 1, verse 24" (in en). https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/2-Maccabees-Chapter-1_Original-1611-KJV/.
- ↑ "Greek New ament and Wiki English Translation. Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 1 to 3" (in en, el). http://en.katabiblon.com/us/index.php?text=GNT&book=Jn&ch=1.
- ↑ Collins, C. John, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 50ff.
- ↑ May, Gerhard (2004). Creatio ex nihilo. Continuum International. p. xii. ISBN 978-0-567-08356-2. https://books.google.com/?id=LoS05gQUDhEC. Retrieved 2009-11-23. "If we look into the early Christian sources, it becomes apparent that the thesis of creatio ex nihilo in its full and proper sense, as an ontological statement, only appeared when it was intended, in opposition to the idea of world-formation from unoriginate matter, to give expression to the omnipotence, freedom and uniqueness of God."
- ↑ May, Gerhard (1978) (in German). Schöpfung aus dem Nichts. Die Entstehung der Lehre von der creatio ex nihilo. AKG 48. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. p. 151f. ISBN 3-11-007204-1.
- ↑ Siegfried, Francis (1908). "Creation". New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04470a.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-30. "Probably the idea of creation never entered the human mind apart from Revelation. Though some of the pagan philosophers attained to a relatively high conception of God as the supreme ruler of the world, they seem never to have drawn the next logical inference of His being the absolute cause of all finite existence. [...] the descendants of Sem and Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, preserved the idea of creation clear and pure; and from the opening verse of Genesis to the closing book of the Old ament the doctrine of creation runs unmistakably outlined and absolutely undefiled by any extraneous element. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In this, the first, sentence of the Bible we see the fountain-head of the stream which is carried over to the new order by the declaration of the mother of the Machabees: "Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing" (2 Maccabees 7:28). One has only to compare the Mosaic account of the creative work with that recently discovered on the clay tablets unearthed from the ruins of Babylon to discern the immense difference between the unadulterated revealed tradition and the puerile story of the cosmogony corrupted by polytheistic myths. Between the Hebrew and the Chaldean account there is just sufficient similarity to warrant the supposition that both are versions of some antecedent record or tradition; but no one can avoid the conviction that the Biblical account represents the pure, even if incomplete, truth, while the Babylonian story is both legendary and fragmentary (Smith, "Chaldean Account of Genesis", New York, 1875)."
- ↑ Qur'an 21:16, Sahih International Translation
- ↑ Qur'an [67:2], Muhsin Khan Translation
- ↑ Qur'an [78:31], Yusuf Ali Translation
- ↑ Qur'an 2:29, Muhsin Khan Translation
- ↑ Qur'an 42:11, Sahih International Translation
- ↑ Qur'an 6:103, Sahih International Translation
- ↑ Qur'an [50:16], Muhsin Khan Translation
- ↑ Qur'an 33:41, Sahih International Translation
- ↑ Qur'an 23:117, Sahih International Translation
- ↑ Template:Harvnb
- ↑ Template:Harvnb
- ↑ Template:Harvnb
- ↑ Template:Harvnb