We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution. Much of God’s plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its execution. But the beginning of the execution of God’s plan is creation. Active will is an element in creation. God’s will is not always active. He waits for “_the fulness of the time_” (_Gal. 4:4_) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ’s earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity usually interpret _Gen. 1:1_—“_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,_” and _John 1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word,_” as both and alike meaning “in eternity.” But neither of these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was its author and that the Word already was. (_d_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s love. Creation is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior to any possible creation, in the person of his Son. Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason, and Power of God, God can “_reconcile all things to himself_” in Christ (_Col. 1:20_). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of God as _revealing_ himself in Christ, the idea of creation as an eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ which antedate the world (_Eph. 1:4_). The doctrine of the Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and resting in God, which would equalize God’s being with the changeable course of human life. Nor could it be conceived what should have hindered God from creating the world up to the beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena, that the divine creating is equally eternal with God’s being.”