The objection
God creates through Jesus. This could mean that the Father is the actual Creator and Jesus merely his first-created instrument. An intermediary need not have the same nature as the one who commissioned him.
1. The preposition alone supplies no hierarchy
“Through” describes a relationship in action. It does not of itself mean “through an inferior instrument.” Romans 11,36 says of God himself that everything is from him, through him and to him. The same preposition can thus express precisely divine causality.
Whether a mediating agent is created or uncreated must follow from further statements. Anyone already reading this into “through” places their answer before the interpretation.
2. John formulates the exclusion comprehensively
John 1,3 first says positively that everything came into being through the Logos and then negatively that without him nothing that came into being came into being. The second statement prevents “everything” from casually being understood as an indefinite quantity. The Logos is contrasted with the totality of what came into being.
If he himself had come into being, he would belong precisely to the class for which the sentence presupposes his activity. The escape route “everything except him” must first add this exception. The prologue itself already begins with his being in the beginning and calls him God.
3. Christ is also goal and sustainer
Colossians 1,16 does not merely say that everything was created through Christ. It was also created for him. Verse 17 describes all things' holding together in him. Correspondingly, Hebrews 1,3 speaks of sustaining the universe through his powerful word.[1]
A finite instrument does not explain this connection of source, goal and continuing subsistence. The Son does not merely receive a commission within an existing universe. The universe itself owes its existence to him and is directed toward him.
4. The one Creator acts as Father and Son
Isaiah 44,24 emphasizes that YHWH alone stretches out heaven and earth. The New Testament does not introduce Jesus as an alien helper in creation alongside YHWH. It includes him in describing this one creative action.
The Father creates through the Son: This distinguishes the persons without asserting two separate acts of creation or a division of labor between God and a creature. The Trinitarian explanation thereby holds both groups of texts together. The Unitarian idea of an instrument, by contrast, must restrict the comprehensive statements about what came into being and reconcile the Creator's uniqueness with an additional created co-creator.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian FaithColossians 1 and Hebrews 1: creation, preservation and goal of all things.