Creation and its consequences.
Job appeals to God as his Maker. He remonstrates with the Creator for apparently destroying his own work. If God had first made man, why should God turn on his creature to "swallow him up"? This is not so much an appeal to pity or justice, as one to reason and consistency.
I. GOD IS THE CREATOR OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL MAN. Theologians were once divided between two theories of the origin of human souls, called respectively "Creationist" and "Traducianist." The Crestionists held that each soul was created by God; the Traducianists that souls were derived by descent, were transmitted by birth from ancestral souls, and originally from Adam and Eve, just like the bodies they inhabit. Was it not unfair to confine the name "Creationist" to the former school? The idea of descent from parents does not exclude Divine action. The parent is not the creator. The original great Cause must be the Source of all that follows. If God only created once for all at the beginning of the world, still he created each individual, because each individual simply comes from that original creation. If it could be shown that man was not separately created, but that he derived his origin from lower creatures by evolution, he would be not the less created by God; for how could the marvellous process of evolution originate or progress, unless the Almighty and All-wise had started it? Nay, it is only reasonable to believe that God is ever creating. Not once for all, but in every stage of evolution, the Divine hand is working out the eternal plan. So also each individual life is moulded by that same Creative hand. God is working eternally, for the laws of nature are but the ways of God. He was as truly the Creator of Job as of Adam; and he makes each man now by means of birth as really as he made the first life out of inorganic matter.
II. THE FACT THAT GOD IS THE CREATOR OF EVERY MAN MUST AFFECT HIS TREATMENT OF ALL HIS CREATURES.
1. He cannot have predestined them to ruin. To affirm that he could do so is to say that the Creator is not God, but the devil, A god who was merely indifferent to his creatures would not from the first plan their destruction. If it is suggested that God might do this to display his own glory, the reply is that such an action could display no glory, but the reverse. To say that God may do as he will with his own is irrelevant. His absolute rights over his creatures do not exclude moral considerations. Further, the holy, righteous, and loving character of God makes it absolutely certain that he could not planned have their ruin.
2. He can never consent that they should be ruined. "He hateth nothing that he hath made." The very fact of creation gives God an interest in his creatures. The artist cannot be indifferent to the fate of his works. But God is more than an artist; he is a Father, and a father cannot be indifferent to the fate of his children. It may be necessary for the parent to chastise, but no true and worthy parent will ever really wish to hurt his offspring. Can we think that God is less strong in parental love than we are? It is necessary for God to be angry with the wicked—and there is a terror in God's anger which men can only despise at their peril—but behind that auger there can be no vindictive temper, much less can there be a spiteful malignity. God only desires the welfare of his children.—W.F.A.