In his book, The Beginning and End of All Things, Dr. Klink attempted to point Christians to the other important questions that are being asked and answered in the first few chapters of Genesis and how they connect to the rest of Holy Scripture. “But I would like to argue that the biblical text is not even primarily answering that question [how]. Rather than just answering the how question, it’s also answering the who, the what, and the why. And when you think of the who, the what, and the why, it’s orienting the reader to who God is and, even significantly, like in Genesis 1:26 to 31, who is male and female, made image bearers, made in God’s image?”

It’s not uncommon for Christians to devote study time to the first two chapters of Genesis. Typically, this takes the form of questions either about origins or how God created the world and the first humans or about genre or to what extent (if at all) the creation account that opens the Bible should be taken literally. These questions emerged as most important in the last 150 years or so in reaction to the rise and eventual dominance of the Darwinian account of origins in the Western world. 

Neglected in this discussion, understandably so, is often a study of creation as a concept rather than as an event. In other words, there are vast implications for life in the world due to creation being the opening chapter of the ongoing work of God in His world, particularly in terms of its purpose, function, story, and goal.

This focus on what is called creation theology is the subject of a rich and succinct new book called The Beginning and End of All Things: The Biblical Theology of Creation and New Creation by Dr. Edward Klink. In an episode of the Colson Center’s Upstream podcast Dr. Klink shared with host Shane Morris why he wrote a book on this topic of creation:

When you look at the Bible, creation is a theme that goes from Genesis to Revelation. It really is the story that God is doing.

Klink then suggested why so much of the focus has been on more scientific questions of creation vs. evolution, as significant and consequential as these questions are. At least part of the answer is our cultural history:

The Scopes trial limited the scope of Scripture’s story in our minds. We hear creation, we think origins.

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