Creation

The Genesis account is also rather controversial; mainly between “young earth people” and “old earth people.” Personally I think that the earth is very old, but I think that this is not an essential part of the Creation narrative. What is important is the picture (literal or not) that emerges from the description of the garden and the activities there. Interestingly, many Christians before Darwin thought that the creation account was figurative. Augustine and Aquinas could certainly be placed in this category. Before exploring man and the garden, I would like to state my view of the creation of the universe.

Aquinas’ views are particularly intriguing. He thought that hidden in Genesis 1 was a description of the creation and development of the angels. He interprets the statement, “there was evening, and there was morning,” as referring to the knowledge that God imparted to the angels during creation: evening knowledge referring to an imperfect natural knowledge and morning knowledge referring to enlightenment through the Word of God. It was his opinion that Moses had refrained from writing about spiritual reality because of the overwhelming tendency to polytheism during his day.

The traditional view of the six days of Creation is that they are primarily a description of the structure of the world, even though they may or may not be the literal order in which things took place, or the literal amount of time. This interpretation sees the first three days as the form of the earth, and days four through six as the fullness of the earth. Thus day one describes the creation of light: day four describes the creation of the lights. Day two describes the creation of heaven and the sea, and these are “filled” on day five with the creation of the birds of heaven and the fish of the sea. Similarly, day three describes the creation of the dry ground and the plants, and on the sixth day this background is filled with man and the animals.

Now, our current “scientific” knowledge of the origins of the universe is pretty spotty at best. I have heart that Stephen Hawking (who invented the big bang theory), has changed his mind several times in his professional lifetime. The evidence of the fossil record does suggest that the earth is very old, however, and the state of the moon and many stars suggests that the rest of the universe is old as well. We should also keep in mind that the obsessive concern with the origins of the universe as a whole, and the universe’s age, are only very recent. These were not questions that were thought interesting (or even considered) in the ancient times in which the Bible was written. The narrative was written for other purposes which are easy to lose sight of today.

But it is entirely possible that God created light first, then the heavens and waters, then the earth, and then the solar system and rest of the universe. This is at least plausible for several reasons. First, we are talking about what God did; and He could have done it any way he wanted to. If he wanted to do it in the orderly way described in the first chapter of Genesis, it is not very strange because God is a very intelligent person, and intelligent persons usually like to do things in an orderly, seemly, even beautiful, way. Thus the beauty and logical order of Genesis 1 very well could have been His preference. Secondly, the Creation narrative (and Bible as a whole) places the earth right in the center of God’s plan for the universe. It does not seem strange then that He would give it special attention in its creation.

The six days could be literal or figurative; and even if we choose to hold the opinion that God did it over a long period of time we must remember that He certainly could have done it in six days, and that however He did it He was certainly involved in every stage of it. To believe this of course one has to believe in a God like that described in the Old Testament.

But we have to get away from the notion that the earth is some random planet in a vast impersonal universe. The simple fact that God become incarnate in the form of a man, on the earth, within human history, strongly indicates that humanity, the earth, and human history are very close to the center of God’s plan for the universe, and perhaps His plan for all of eternity. It was after He created man, after all, that God found the universe to be “very good.”