The Mystery of Creation

Medieval Aristotelian cosmology, with its view of heaven as up, hell as down, Earth at the center of everything, and blind faith the determinant of destiny, creates a conflict between faith and science.  That feud, sustained throughout the Enlightenment, continues into our own time by perhaps well-intentioned but woefully uninformed defenders of the Bible.  The fact is: they aren’t defending the Bible at all, only their cosmology.

            A study of ancient texts shows that the Bible’s creation story probably evolved over time in response to the cultural myths of Israel’s conquerors and neighbors.  There are at least five creation stories in the Bible.  The one that appears in Genesis 1 and which most people think of first was actually written later than some of the others.  (If you believe that Moses actually scribed the words of the Torah as we now read them, I’m afraid your Bible knowledge may need some updating.  If that were so, how could Moses record his own death and events thereafter?  Ancient people understood that a tradition could date to the time of Moses without necessarily having been written by him.)   A remnant of what was perhaps Israel’s oldest creation story is preserved in Psalm 74:13-17.

You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.

                Perhaps dating to the late Bronze Age, this account of a battle with sea monsters and establishing the sun, moon and seasons is very similar to another Bronze Age creation story – the Enuma Elish from Babylon.  In this text two sea monsters meet and battle, one destroys the other and from it emerge the rest of the created order.  Elements from Genesis 2:4-25 can be found in the Canaanite (or Phoenician) creation story.  Both mention four rivers that nourish the earth and the mountains covered by the waters.   This is similar to another ancient remnant of a story preserved in Psalm 104:5ff. In the Egyptian creation story told at the temple of Memphis, the Creator Ptah speaks everything into existence, much like Genesis 1.  The ancient Persians believed in a seven-stage creation with an expanse that divided the waters.  Do you see how the Israelites borrowed freely from the cosmology of their neighbors and conquerors to create their understanding of the world’s origins? The main difference was that behind all these elements was the One God who had called Abraham and rescued Israel from Egypt.  Another difference was that Israel’s God was universal and not, like other myths, localized to a single place or tribe.

                I haven’t even scratched the surface of this complex topic.  But the point I am trying to make is that the Bible updates its own cosmology.  Unlike modern fundamentalists who insist on 24 hour days in creation even though the sun isn’t created until the fourth day, our ancient ancestors in the faith did not deny foreign cosmologies as much as they made them serve Yahweh-Elohim.  And today, we need not make an enemy of science  What does it mean to say science is wrong about the fossil record and astronomy as we sit in our air-conditioned rooms lit by artificial light reading this article on computers?  We have become totally dependent on science to provide us with the basic necessities of our lives.  Why deny its power for good to inform a rational faith?  Science and faith butt heads only if you accept the medieval notion that faith is the irrational acceptance of improbability declared true by some ecclesiastical potentate – a truly Aristotelian concept.

                There are many who have written much better than I can on the agreement of faith and authentic science in telling the story of the origins of the universe (see Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible by Gerald L. Schroeder).  Yes, there is much inauthentic science as there is inauthentic religion.  Let’s not get distracted by the polarizing arguments for and against evolution.  Some scientists make assumptions about evolution that they want to be true, but which are not yet supported by evidence. But there can be no doubt that species change and adapt to their environment.  And when we update our cosmology of Adam to actually agree with the Biblical record, the whole concept of humans being descended from apes becomes a moot point.

                The mystery of creation is not how it happened; science tells us how it happened.  The ancient Scriptures do a remarkable job of explaining to Bronze Age people not only what happened but, more importantly, Who was behind it all.  The Hebrew word “day” doesn’t simply refer to a 24 hour period as regulated by the sun, although it does mean that.  But in the creation story the Hebrew word yom (day) is used to describe an age, much like we might read, “In the day of the Lord” or “In the day of King so and so.”  It refers to a span of time. So how might we understand the mystery of creation from a perspective that glorifies Elohim and takes into account the facts as we now understand them.

The Biblical Narrative	The New Cosmology
The First Day
In a beginning, Elohim (the Triune God) created Heavens and Earth.	The Big Bang – all matter explodes from a single molecule and expands in all directions.
The earth was without form, void, and darkness was upon the face of the depths	When the Triune God began creating the Heavenlies and the cosmos, there was nothing material, only dark emptiness.
The Spirit of God is fluttering on face of waters...God says, “Let there be light.”	The Spirit of God pulsates and concentrates enormous energy so that when the Word of God says "Light!" there is an explosion of energy.
Elohim saw the light was good. He divided the light from the darkness…The first day.	The Holy Spirit rejoices and the Word worships the goodness of God as particles and waves expand through the emptiness and make something of nothing. This is the first age that continues to the present.
The Second Day
Let there be an expanse that divides waters above and waters below. Calls the expanse Heaven.	The Triune God divides the chaos of light and matter in two and sets a barrier between higher and lower dimensions. He calls the higher dimensions Heavenlies and the lower dimensions he calls space-time. This is the second age that continues to this day.
The Third Day
Dry land appears…earth brings for vegetation	The Triune God indents the fabric of space-time and causes great swirling nebula of matter and light to coagulate and cool forming stars, planets, and upon Earth God introduces life. This is the third age that continues to this day.
The Fourth Day
Sun and moon rule the sky (they become visible from Earth’s surface)	Our Sun bathes the Earth with energy.  Seas of water form as does the Pangaea land mass. Plants propagate and proliferate.  Photosynthesis creates the atmosphere. Trees reproduce and clean the air. Day and night, the Earth rotates on its axis; seasons begin as Earth attains its orbit in space-time collapsed by the mass of the sun.  This is the fourth age that continues to this day.
The Fifth Day
Waters bring forth life …fish and birds…sea monsters	In the seas animal life begins. Species adapt to opportunity and grow.  Amphibians come on land and other creatures swarm in the air. This is the fifth age that continues to this day.
The Sixth Day
Land creatures, reptiles, animals, cattle…people	Animals adapt to their environs; some creep on the bellies, others walk and run on all-fours, and hominids walk upright. They feed off the lush vegetation and proliferate. God's final creation is a being of unified diversity, like Himself, a body made in his spirit image. And this is the sixth age which continues to this day.
The Seventh Day
God rests	And then God stopped working. This is the seventh age that has not yet occurred. (see John 5:17, Romans 8:18-25, Rev. 21:1-8)

                Genesis 1 is a cosmology of existence, past, present and future.  It depicts the inception of creative processes that continue to this day.   According to Jesus who said his Father has never stopped working (John 5:17), we are still in the sixth age of creation during which God continues creating and re-creating human life on Earth.  But there is much confusion and downright ignorance about who Adam was and what our relationship to this shadowy being is in the grand scheme of creation.

            And that’s where we turn next.