Love Your Enemy: Theology, Identity and Antagonism

In the beginning, God created the world. According to classical Christian theology, God did not need to create the world. God was not bored or lonely; God did not have anything to learn, or any undeveloped capacities that could take shape along with God’s formation of the earth. God did not need anything that God did not already possess within Godself. God was not changed by the act of creation, was not diminished, nor enhanced, nor otherwise altered. The answer that Christians have traditionally given to the question, ‘why did God create the world?’ is essentially, because God chose to do so—which is to say, for no reason at all. God created not by necessity but out of freedom, a freedom that would have been no less real had God chosen not to create.