On What Day Did God Complete Creation?

uestion: On what day did God complete Creation?


Objection 1: It would seem that God completed Creation on the Sixth Day, for Scripture says, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude." And the heavens and the Earth compose all of physical creation, therefore God finished Creation on the sixth day. 

Objection 2: It would seem that God completed Creation on the Sixth Day, for this was the day on which He created Man. For upon Man God bestowed a special dignity, to be his vicar upon the Earth, to tend it and have dominion over it. Furthermore, in his creation of Man, God uniquely breathed His spirit, making Man in His own image. Throughout the whole creation story we may see an ordered progression from the inanimate objects of nature to the living creatures, increasing in apparent complexity and self-awareness, until at last at the pinnacle of Creation, man is created. Therefore the last thing that God created was Man, on the sixth day, and He finished His Creation on the sixth day.

On the contrary, Scripture also says "And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that He had done in creation." Therefore God completed His Creation on the seventh day.

I respond that Creation is not solely composed of physical matter, but also depends upon the metaphysical Laws which God has ordained to rule both mankind and nature itself. The Law of the Sabbath is the greatest of these laws. In it he rested, and also foreshadowed the death of our Lord Jesus Christ during the Sabbath day, the only full day in which his Body was perfectly at rest for the sake of the Life of the Whole World.

The Lord God has no need of rest. He is omnipotence, and by resting, God completed the Creation by showing man that continual work goes against the Created Order. The Sabbath was made for man. In doing so, God also blessed leisure, and ordered Man so that he is not a being made for continual work, but also requires play and festivity. In so doing Man expresses his likeness to the Creator and distinction from the rest of Creation. For he too is capable of consciously willing to rest, even when he has no physical need to do so on a particular Sabbath.

So man is also commanded to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, because the Sabbath was and is the true Crown and Completion of God's Creation.