Creation, as an opus ad extraJ is the work of the Triune God. Hence it is ascribed to the Father (1 Cor. 8, 6), to the Son (Heb. 1, 10; John 1, 3; Col.1, 16), and to the Holy Ghost (Gen.1, 2; Ps. 33, 6). Yet, though the Three Persons of the Trinity concurred in this work, the creative power, or omnipotence, to which the universe owes its existence, is numerically one (una numero potentia), so that we must not speak of three creators, but only of one, John 5, 17. "Creation is an action of the one God. . . . It is likewise an action of God alone, which neither ought to be, nor can be, ascribed to any creature." (Chemnitz.) Nor must we speak of a distribution of the one divine power among the Three Persons, as if the Father performed a third, the Son a third, and the Holy Ghost a third of the creative work. Holy Scripture never distributes the divine creative act among the Three Persons, though at times it appropriates it to a distinct divine person (cf. passages above).
Again, when Scripture occasionally declares that all things were made by the Father through the Son or the Holy Ghost, Ps. 33, 6, this "must not be construed into any inequality of persons, as the Ariana blasphemously asserted that the Son was God's instrument in creation, just as the workman uses an ax" (Chemnitz); but this mode of speaking rather indicates the mystery of the Holy Trinity, according to which the Son ha.s His divine essence and divine power eternally from the Father and the Holy Ghost has His divine essence and divine power eternally from the Father and Son.
Chemnitz rightly remarks respecting this point (Loci Theol.J 1, 115): "The prepositions (ἀπό, διά, ἐν) do not divide the nature, but express the properties of a nature that is on~ and unconfounded." Likewise Hollaz says: "The three Persons of the Godhead are not three associated causes, not three Authors of creation, but one Cause, one Author of creation, one Creator!' Flacius: "Vox autem PER non significat hic INSTRUMENTUM, SED PRIMARIAM CAUSAM." Luther: "It is the way of Scripture to say: The world was made through Christ by the Father and in the Holy Ghost. . . . It employs this manner of speaking to indicate that the Father has His divine essence not from the Son, but, vice versa, that the Son has it from the Father, He being the first and original Person in the Godhead. Hence it does not say that Christ has made the world through the Father, but that the Father made it through the Son, so that the Father remains the First Person, and from Him, yet through the Son, all things appear. So John says (John 1, 3): 'All things were made by Him'; and in Col. 1, 16 we read: 'All things were created by Him and for Him'; and Rom. 11, 36: 'For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things.'" St. L., XII, 157 ff. Chemnitz adds this warning (Loci Theol., I, 115): "We must not dispute too curiously concerning the distinction of Persons in the work of creation, but let us be content with the revelation that all things were created by the eternal Father, through the Son, while the Holy Ghost hovered over them. (Rom. 11, 36.)" Doctr. Theol., p. 162 ff.