Did Jesus Christ exist when God created heaven and earth as in Genesis?

 

Congratulations, you’re on the verge of recreating the many debates over the nature of Christ which the early church grappled with.

(We’ll also ignore the vast numbers of non-Christians who don’t buy the premise of the Biblical narrative of creation. To frame the question as it stands accepts Genesis as given, so it needs to be answered in that spirit.)

The short, disinterested (which is to say “without a dogma in this fight,” not “not interested in the answer”) answer here is that there have been many different interpretations of the texts brought to bear on the topic. In 325, the mainstream of the church settled on the interpretation that the Son (that is, the middle part of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) was eternal, existing outside of time along with the other two parts of the trinity. So, yes, mainstream Christianity holds that Christ did exist at the time of creation. This was specifically a response to a doctrine called Arianism (the name is unfortunate; it comes from a bishop named Arius, not at all related to Aryan racial mythology). Arianism concluded that the Son was created by the Father in historical time and was not eternal, in that he had a distinct beginning, though he would continue to exist in the future.

But that is, as I say, a position held by the mainstream church. Disagreement continued, and there are non-trinitarian denominations to this day. The vast majority of Christians would say yes to this question, but there are some who say no.