Doctrine of Creation'What do we mean by creation? How useful are creation, emanation, and/or artistic work as analogies? Is it a doctrine about the beginnings or origin of the world, or about its present or future existence, or what? Creation is often referred to as a "mystery", due to its perhaps ambiguous nature. Christian theology defines creation in different ways, which differ considerably depending on the views on the same theme. John Macquarrie attempts to clarify the mystery by using two analogies to attempt to describe what creation really is. The first of these is that of “doing”. This is best understood alongside the literal understanding of creation, found in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament (Genesis). The analogy is that of a craftsman producing an item intended to be used. This emphasizes the superiority of God; there are both differences and distances between the artisan and his product – just as there is a transcendence between God and God's creatures. It treats creation as an act of free will on the part of God, not as a process that is simply part of natural law, which is more of a view expressed by the second analogy. One problem with the “creation” analogy is that it does not adhere to the traditional view of “creation ex nihilo” (creation from nothing); If God created the cosmos as a carpenter or blacksmith would, what did He actually create it from? The second analogy is that of “emanation.” To understand this analogy, it would be best to imagine God, the creator, as the sun, with the created divine creatures, as the rays emanating from it. This view places more emphasis on the affinity between the source (God) and what comes from it, making it the opposite of '...... middle of paper ......endence) but also involved as a reader, writer or editor (immanence). This current implication that we can see is the creatio continua. A story with a beginning and a middle usually has an ending; we now come to the eschatological teachings of creation, of creatio nova, of God's future involvement. We can see that our destiny as human beings is written in the book; the completion and final destination of creation, which remains to be accomplished. The threefold view of creation is that adopted by most scholars; it is a sensible and balanced view of the doctrine as teaching about more than a simple act in time, that is, creatio originalis. Opening of beingSt. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Summa Barth, K: Church Dogmatics