Plantinga Chapter 2- Creation

This chapter in Plantinga's book Engaging God's World was packed with a lot of information that is necessary to understand creation and what God had in mind when He set out to create everything. I especially liked the quote by Richard Mouw on page 32 when he talks about "cultural mandate". Mouw says that "Cultural Mandate" is God's charge to our first parents to "transform untamed nature into a social enviroment" by cultural formation that fits God's design. I then also like how Plantinga took that idea and ran with it. He said that this cultural mandate does not limit us to the "biophysical sphere", rather it extends into human nature. God tells us to be "fruitful and multiply" and that is one good example of a way we are satisfying God's call for cultural mandate. Another example that Plantinga pointed out was all of the cultural gifts that can be used to satisfy this cultural mandate as way. By using such gifts as marriage, family, language, and many others, we are "transforming untamed nature into a social enviroment." Think about language for a minute. Without language we would not be able to communicate very well with other people, but by creating and using languages we are able to talk to and understand other people. We take something that is untamed and we change it so we create a "social enviroment".

I also liked the section in this chapter when Plantinga talked about humans being made in the "image of God", and not only that, but we are also created so that each one of us is "a unique bearer and reflector of the glory of God." I like the fact that we are all able to reflect the glory of God, but at the same time it can be a tough task because it isn't always an easy thing to do. It can be hard to show love to someone that you never really got along with before, but God wants us to show His glory to even the people we don't like. It fits in beautifully with what Paul said in I Corinthians when Paul talks about the Christian Church and he says that we are all different, but we all need each other because we all fit together to form one body. Our differences are necessary because we can all work together to benefit the body, or the entire community.