In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
"When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the
earth was empty and waste. He moreover teaches by the word "created," that what before did not exist was now made;
--for he has not used the term "yatsar", which signifies to frame or forms but "bara", which signifies to create.
Therefore his meaning is, that the world was made out of nothing.
Hence the folly of those is refuted who imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity; and who gather nothing else from the narration of Moses than that the world was furnished with new ornaments, and received a form of which it was before destitute.
This indeed was formerly a common fable among heathens, who had received only an obscure report of the creation, and who, according to custom, adulterated the truth of God with strange figments; but for Christian men to labor (as Steuchus does) in maintaining this gross error is absurd and intolerable. Let this, then be maintained in the first place, that the world is not eternal but was created by God."
JohnCalvin
Genesis 1:1
"When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the
--for he has not used the term "yatsar", which signifies to frame or forms but "bara", which signifies to create.
Therefore his meaning is, that the world was made out of nothing.
Hence the folly of those is refuted who imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity; and who gather nothing else from the narration of Moses than that the world was furnished with new ornaments, and received a form of which it was before destitute.
This indeed was formerly a common fable among heathens, who had received only an obscure report of the creation, and who, according to custom, adulterated the truth of God with strange figments; but for Christian men to labor (as Steuchus does) in maintaining this gross error is absurd and intolerable. Let this, then be maintained in the first place, that the world is not eternal but was created by God."
JohnCalvin