One of my wife’s favorite expressions that I have adopted is “Same circus, different clowns.” The idea behind this saying is that there might be different people, but the same issues and problems. At times, the Belgic Confession will name groups or beliefs that the doctrines laid out in the particular article will reject, groups that are foreign to us as they no longer exist today, but one can find these same ideas in our world — it is the same circus but with different clowns, if you will. In article 12, which deals with the topic of creation, one finds an example of groups named whose beliefs the confession refutes and rejects. Here, it is the beliefs of the Sadducees (an ancient Jewish group with whom Jesus disputed, which rejected the idea that there were spirits and angels) and the Manicheans (a group in the Middle East during the time of the early church that believed that there was a good spirit world and an evil natural, material world in conflict with each other). Neither of these groups exist by name in 21st century America — I have never driven by a Sadducean church or a Manichean building, but the ideas that both groups believed are ones that we encounter. One finds people who say that there are no spirits and spiritual world (naturalism), and one will find people who have what is called a dualistic view of the world in which this world is bad (and was made bad) but the spiritual world is good. As article 12 of the Belgic Confession notes, neither of these beliefs are biblical, as there is indeed a spiritual world and the physical world that God created is naturally good.
This article of the confession begins by moving from God to creation and draws upon the Trinitarian discussion of the preceding articles, noting that “We believe that the Father, when it seemed good to him, created heaven and earth and all other creatures from nothing by the Word – that is to say, by the Son.” The Father created through the Son, as it says in John 1:3. This creation was out of nothing — God did not have to create through things but when there was nothing, He made something. It is said that God made it when it seemed good to him; something cool about the Belgic Confession is that it does not focus on the question of when creation was in terms of date as much as the purpose of it, that the creation was made by and for God.
In noting that God created all things, the article alludes to the fact that it is not just the visible things (like humans) but also other creatures, as it refers to the angels; in making the heavens and the earth, the idea is that God made the invisible (heavens) and the visible (earth). In fact, one of the following articles will deal with the creation and fall of humans (article 14), while article 12 seems to focus on the creation of angels and the fact that some have fallen. It notes that “God created the angels good, that they might be messengers of God and serve the elect. Some of them have fallen from the excellence in which God created them into eternal perdition; and the others have persisted and remained in their original state, by the grace of God. The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good. They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves, with all their power, to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions. So then, by their own wickedness, they are condemned to everlasting damnation, daily awaiting their torments.” This tells the story of the fall of some of the angels, the evil spirits that now seek to destroy God’s work; we find this in places like 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6. The Latin version of the confession actually calls them “excrement-covered demons” where we have “evil spirits,” highlighting the disgust we should have for them. These beings were originally good but have fallen, which means that they are not inherently evil; it is not that there is good and evil but that there is good and evil is the absence, the opposite of evil.
Not only does this article tell us that God created it all, but it also tells us that we should serve God in light of this: “God has given all creatures their being, form, and appearance and their various functions for serving their Creator. Even now, God also sustains and governs them all, according to his eternal providence and by his infinite power, that they may serve humanity in order that humanity may serve God.” While the article is more focused on the angels that have remained by God’s grace (which is an interesting note — we only are kept from falling by God’s grace) and those that have fallen, it reminds us that these beings serve God and that we serve God — in fact, they serve us so that we may serve God! This statement is also helpful because there is often much speculation about angels. We need to remember that these angels have a twofold purpose: to point to God and to help humans worship God. They do not seek to draw attention to themselves. Fallen beings seek to take this glory away from God, but we must remember that they will be destroyed. We must not deny their presence (like the Sadducees) or think that the evil forces are equal with the good (like the Manicheans) but to see all coming from and pointing back to a good God, who has made all things and, as hinted at in article 12 and the explored more fully in the next article about providence, also takes care of things even now.
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