And God said… LET THERE BE LIGHT!
START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 1:1-2:4
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This week’s lectionary readings focus on Trinity Sunday in the Church year.
OBSERVE:
This passage for Trinity Sunday is the beginning of the origin story for the entire Bible. All of the ingredients for all life and existence are introduced here. But the central character that is introduced is God himself:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
As someone has said, anyone who has trouble with the premise of the first sentence of the Bible, telling us that God has created the heavens and the earth, is going to have trouble with the entire book.
For those looking for evidence of the Trinity in the Old Testament, they need look no farther than Genesis 1 for the first hint. The first word used for God is the Hebrew word Elohim. The word El is the root of the word for God; but Elohim is a plural word. In the Hebrew Bible, the most common grammatical use of Elohim for God is singular. We might say, it is a singular plural. An analogy might be when we describe a forest of trees — it is one forest made up of many trees.
So, when Elohim says in verse 26:
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….
He may not simply be speaking in the so called “royal we;” he may actually be speaking as One God in Three Persons, relating within himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This premise is reinforced by these words:
Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
This is a description of the chaos and formlessness that existed before God’s first act of creation. But God’s Spirit is present as an agent of creation from before the very beginning.
Then there is the act of creation itself. God speaks, and light comes into existence. It may be a far-fetched speculation, but we are reminded of John’s Prologue, when he says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made (John 1:1-3).
The Word (Greek Logos) is the very mind of God — and in John’s Gospel the Second Person of the Trinity. The three persons of the Trinity are all represented — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the singular plural Elohim. One God in three persons.
In his act of creation, God not only creates existence and matter, but also time itself. By creating finite beings, matter itself becomes a kind of created “clock” by which time may be measured. Each act of creation is done in a day.
In his Systematic Theology Trilogy, Thomas Oden writes of God’s providence in creation, and speaks of four classes of creaturely beings in an ascending scale (from The Living God, p. 288):
- Lifeless matter (inanimate creaturely beings)
- Living plants (living, but immobile, vegetable beings)
- Animals (living mobile beings lacking human rationality)
- Humans (living, rational, accountable, self-determining moral agents)
This ascending scale does seem to reflect the order of creation in Genesis 1:
- Light, sky, waters, earth all fall under the category of “lifeless matter” that provide the stage and foundation for all that follows. All of this happens from day one to day three. The sun, moon and stars also fall into this category, but they aren’t mentioned until the fourth day.
- Grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with their seeds in it, on the earth are created on the third day — they are the “living plants” that will make animal and human life possible.
- Animals of all kinds — sea creatures and birds, livestock and creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind, moving, swarming and abounding — were created on the fifth day.
- And the piece de resistance, God’s ultimate act of creation, was human beings — God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
This does seem to be a kind of “hierarchy,” or what the ancients might have called a great chain of being.
And it is clear that all of this creation, from the inert and impersonal matter from which the earth and waters and skies are made, to the most sentient and personal human beings, are all declared to be good by God. Moreover, when God completes his creative work, he announces it is very good.
Once this work is completed, God rests from his work following the sixth day. The seventh day is blessed as holy, and will become a sabbath day of rest for the people of Israel. This will become a mandate in the fourth commandment given to Moses on Sinai:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy….for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy (Exodus 20:8,11).
APPLY:
This passage is a theological statement, not a scientific treatise. It tells about the nature of God as Creator, and his goodwill toward all creation. And there are multiple layers in this theological statement.
First, all creation is very good. This is a rebuke to philosophical and religious doctrine that suggests that the material world is corrupt and evil, and that only the “spiritual” is desirable. That world-view represents a kind of dualism that rejects the material world. The Biblical world-view embraces both spirit and matter. John’s Gospel reaffirms this when the Word who is God and who has created all things, actually becomes flesh!
The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
Second, this description of the creation makes it clear that there is One God — Elohim (the proper name “Yahweh” — I Am — is introduced in Genesis 2:4). God is the creator of all things. God’s nature is in contrast to both polytheism and pantheism.
Polytheists tended to look upon certain creatures as gods and goddesses — for example, the Egyptians worshiped Ra as the sun god. Sin was the moon goddess of Mesopotamia. Genesis 1 makes clear that though the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night they are created objects that provide light — they are not deities. Elohim alone is creator and ultimate ruler over all creation.
And this passage also makes it clear that God is creator of the world — the world and all that is in it is not itself imbued with divinity. God is distinct from his creation in the way that an artist is distinct from her painting. Although her creativity and brush strokes reflect her character, there is a distinction between artist and art. God’s character is reflected in creation, but nature is not God.
Third, human beings are the apex of God’s creation. God makes that very clear:
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
There are several applications of this imago Dei:
- Genesis doesn’t carefully define what it means for us to be made in the likeness of God. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that we literally look like God! Rather, we can deduce that our character and nature — the capacity for reason, for love, for creativity, for freedom of the will — reflect God’s image.
- One role for human beings includes dominion over all the creatures. This is to be as God’s representatives, and implies stewardship of the earth’s resources, not mere exploitation. As God has dominion over us and cares for us, so we are to have dominion over and care for all living things and the planet.
- To be created in God’s image is inclusive of both men and women. God’s nature transcends gender, although we are taught in the New Testament to call upon him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, there are aspects of God’s character that we might traditionally describe as masculine or feminine. The point is both genders reflect God’s image — and God’s nature and character reflect characteristics that might be thought of as masculine and feminine.
- Just as all living things have been commanded to be fruitful and multiply, so are human beings. Human sexuality and procreation are hardwired into human nature by God.
Fourth, and finally, the rhythms of work and rest are built into creation. God worked and rested, and commands us to do the same.
RESPOND:
Genesis is among the most majestic and powerful passages in all of Judeo-Christian Scripture — and it is also among the most controversial.
Creation takes place when Elohim speaks the word let there be. In contrast, most scientists say that the whole universe began with a tiny, compacted particle of matter known as a singularity that suddenly and brilliantly began to expand in what they call the Big Bang.
Creation of the earth and its creatures takes place in six days. In contrast scientists say that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, and the earth, though younger, is 4.5 billion years old.
Light, sky, waters, earth, vegetation, sun and moon and stars, animals and human beings all are created whole, it seems, in one moment. Most scientists today argue that the development from inert material to life and on toward complex organisms and sentience evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
The sincere Christian who also wishes to respect the claims of scientific research can be very confused. We remember that Copernicus and Galileo were persecuted by the Church because they followed their scientific research, which led to different conclusions than what the Church was then teaching.
For perspective, we need to remember a few things. First, all truth is God’s truth. And God has provided our senses and our brains so that we may use reason, as well as his own special revelation in sacred history and Scripture. It seems impossible for these to contradict one another.
My own view is that the Bible is not a scientific treatise. It teaches me what I need to know for relationship with God and for salvation through revelation. Science teaches me about God’s physical world as experienced through reason, which is another of God’s gifts.
One way of putting it is to use the old questions posed by journalists, researchers and police investigators — Who, What, Why, How, Where, When. It seems to me that the Bible answers two of these questions — Who and Why — in a way that science simply can’t. Scientists don’t pretend to be theologians. Scientists deal in empirical facts. But the Scriptures reveal Who (God), and Why (because he is good and his lovingkindness endures forever). Science can answer What, How, Where, and When. But they don’t pretend to answer Who and Why.
Frankly, I can see a correlation between the so-called Big Bang and the instant of creation when God spoke:
Let there be light.
And my own “traditional” and “orthodox” faith in the Scriptures doesn’t preclude me from accepting the possibility that the stages of creation depicted in Genesis 1 correlate with some form of the theory of evolution. God created all life — how God creates is in his power.
And finally, I don’t have difficulty understanding that the days referred to in Genesis 1 aren’t necessarily solar days of 24 hours. Twenty-four hours is the length of a day on Earth, measuring the length of time it requires for Earth to rotate completely on its axis. By comparison, a day on the planet Venus is 5,832 hours!
I would argue that because God transcends time, all time is relative to him. After all, God’s relation to the universe and to time is not limited to planet Earth. This is suggested by Scripture:
But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8).
We may not be able to calculate exactly how much time the day in Genesis 1 measures — or even whether it is intended to be of the same length in each case. After all, if we wish to be literal, light was created on day one — the sun wasn’t created until day four in this narrative! Hypothetically, a day in cosmic time might have spanned millions or even billions of years!
A little levity might be needed to lighten this very serious subject. A man is talking to God, and asks: “God, how long is a million years to you?” God answers, “About a minute.” So the man pushes on: “God, how much is a million dollars to you?” God says: “About a penny.” So the man seizes the opportunity: “God, may I have one of your pennies?” And God replies with a smile: “Sure, in a minute.”
Lord, you are creator of all things. And you make all things good. Help us to be good stewards of your creation, as you bring time and history to its blessed consummation in your kingdom. Amen.
PHOTOS:
“Creation” by Jeff Simms is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.
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