Creation
Christians, claiming the OT, accept God as Creator. Genesis is not the oldest part of the OT; Jews accepted God as their loving liberator from Egypt prior to the doctrine of creation.
Christians took up the Jewish position but were faced by: Polytheistic capriciousness which led to Gnosticism’s imperative for the soul to escape from the body's corruption; and Roman anthropomorphism which made Emperors into Gods.
The doctrine of creation from the OT emerged in Christian worship. The god of redemption and salvation was connected with the God of creation. For Christians, everything, including the physical, had to be in the power of God.
Neoplatonism presented two challenges: it agreed that the world was a rational place but some said that everything is divine (Monism), but this did not chime with Judeo-Christian ideas of worship - You cannot worship mountains! - but others adopted the classical dualist position that God created the divine but the physical world was an error.
Christians, positioned between monotheism and monism, emphasised creation as of God's will: it is not an extension of the divine; it is ex nihilo, not out of chaos.
Polytheism and dualism could easily explain the phenomenon of evil but the Christian theory of creation found this difficult: how could the God of love create evil? Augustine (354-430) said that: evil is the absence of good; free will creates evil. Against Scripture, Augustine introduced the hierarchy of being which is very near to dualism whereas Muslims looked at the world and, through the 'rediscovery' of Aristotle (384-322 BC), enabled Aquinas (1215-1274) to correct the position. During the 'Enlightenment' there was a descent into deism. Reimarus (1694-1768) said the only miracle he believed was the miracle of creation; the theory of the sacred watch-maker. This separated creation and redemption, making Darwinism the great threat because it attacked detached creation.
Synthesis: Creation is not about beginning but about meaning. It must be seen in the light of the love of God.