Original question, posed on Facebook by a member of the group, Theology for the Thinking Believer:
It seems to me that if God is omniscient, then predestination must be woven into creation. If God knows everything (no exceptions), then he had to know what he was creating when he created, down to the most minuscule detail. And how could he create without creating what he wanted?
So, I believe we have volition; we can choose what we want for breakfast, for instance. But whatever we choose, as trivial as such decision is, is already known by God. So, if God intended Judas to betray Jesus, he would make a person that would do that not out of coercion, but out of the person’s nature. Judas would be created a man who wanted to betray Jesus by his own volition.
I know, it seems kind of contradictory, but how could you come to any other conclusion?
So, this is my question. Is God omniscient? I have always thought that was a fundamental attribute of God. I guess I still do. Do you?
That was a perceptive post and deserves a thoughtful response. The fact is, I’ve been thinking about that general subject of God’s sovereignty since I wrote Implications of God’s Omnipresence and Eternity in Space-Time two years ago, and my opinion has flipped as a result.
God’s absolute sovereignty is a given for me. I was convinced that God not only can, as He wishes, control every last molecular movement in His cosmos. Absolute sovereignty, though, only requires that He can, not that He must. To say that He must contradicts His sovereignty. Therefore, the question is, “Does He, or doesn’t He?” I’m looking at physics for a clue.
A stepwise approach to my thinking
I should warn you that what follows is speculative philosophy. I have no great thinker or book to guide me here, and I’ve never run across these ideas anywhere.
My preconceptions
That the eternal, triune God is the creator of all that exists.
That, as stated above, God is absolutely sovereign over all that exists.
That God has the option to not exert His sovereignty in any particular instance.
That the canonical Scriptures, as originally written, in their original languages, are inerrant and trustworthy, penned by human hands under divine inspiration.
That inerrancy does not preclude normal human literary devices, including symbolic language, figures of speech, numeric approximation, paraphrasing, and poetic exaggeration.
That Creation itself stands beside Scripture to declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1–4b; Romans 1:19–20).
That God endowed humanity with five senses with which to witness His majesty as revealed in both Scripture and Creation.
Creation
I’m a big-bang creationist. I’ve written several instalments of a series on the subject of creation so far and will probably add to that list.
I believe that God, for His own purposes, formulated a set of goals, determined how He would accomplish them, and then designed the physical laws that would make them happen, and happen with maximum elegance, for His glory. He set the process into motion, ex nihilo, by creating a compact embryo of unimaginably dense energy at a single point within the area now occupied by our universe. As designed, that embryo then began expanding and differentiating into an astoundingly complex array of particles, forces, and time itself that, on His schedule, eventually coalesced into what we see (and don’t see) today. If we extoll the wonder of a human embryo developing into a fully developed human adult, why not the same for our unparalleled universe?
At some time either before or after creating the cosmos, God also created the myriads of celestial beings who He tasked with its administration, just as He later tasked humanity with doing the same thing on earth.
Because God is sovereign over His creation, He transcends both space and time and is unbounded by them. He exists simultaneously in all of space and all of time, so He doesn’t have to “move” to take it all in. Consequently, what appears to us as having taken some 13.8 billion years to develop actually was instantaneous to Him.
Quantum spacetime
Physicists today can look at “large” (as well as utterly humongous) objects and, given enough knowledge about their nature, determine more or less “how they tick”, and from that make reasonably accurate predictions about their future behavior and extrapolate backwards to determine what they have done before we were watching.
Quantum Mechanics tells us, though, that the universe is, at its smallest scale, statistical in nature (because God chose to design it that way). That means that it is fundamentally impossible (again, by God’s design) to predict how a subatomic particle will move or even where it is in the future or to determine what it did in the past.
For example, we know that atoms consist, roughly, of protons and neutrons in a nucleus, with electrons “in orbit” around them. In the recent past, though we couldn’t see electrons, we pictured them as moving in orderly circular orbits. The reasoning was that once we’re able to determine where it is and how fast it is moving, predicting its motion will be simple math. See the schematic drawing of this “Bohr Model”, below.
Classic Bohr Model of an atom with electrons in regular circular orbits around the nucleus. Named for Danish physicist Neils Bohr. From HubPages.
Nope. It turns out that no matter how powerful or precise our measuring equipment becomes, it will never be possible to simultaneously measure both the position and speed of a particle. One of God’s physical laws, now called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, after German physicist Werner Heisenberg, utterly precludes that possibility! The best we can possibly do is consider a probability distribution to indicate a range of locations that it might be. The solid shapes in the schematic below represent the most likely position at which to find a given electron.
Modern quantum mechanical electron probability distributions, from Expii.
You can’t begin to imagine how spooky that is to scientists. And upsetting! It had long been believed that the universe is deterministic. That means that if you somehow know where every particle in the universe is, and every force acting on them, you can predict the future with absolute certainty. Instead of deterministic, we now know that the universe is probabilistic.
Even Albert Einstein resisted that truth for most of his life. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that “God plays dice with the universe.”
But that is precisely what God does!
Quantum Macrostructure
How does the quantum state of an electron (or any other very small particle) effect the overall universe? The quantum position and energy state of a particle determine many interactive effects.
For example, with respect to an electron, how it reacts with other particles including its own atomic nucleus, the atom’s charge distribution and how it bonds with other atoms to form ions and molecules, how molecules bond to form solids, liquids and gasses, and so on. The end result is that the net effect of the separate states of individual particles combine to define the structure of every object in the universe.
Think of it like the well-known hypothetical “butterfly effect”: A butterfly in South America flaps its wings, setting in motion barely perceptible currents in the air around it. Those currents effect the air around them, and so on, until the end result is a category 5 hurricane in the North Atlantic.
That is the way God designed the universe, and it means that He intended for it to develop spontaneously to produce in the end something that He engineered in the beginning. But with a measure of chance deliberately built in!
Predicting the future
Because the “fine grain” of the universe is statistical, it is only roughly predictable, even by God. I think that was His intention! For one thing, it better illustrates the elegance of what He made. For another, since He is the only truly transcendent being, He is the only being who knows the future. It can’t be predicted; but God doesn’t have to predict it because He can see it!
A little nudge
Implicit in this scenario is an assumption that the development of the universe can’t happen exactly the way God scripted it. Galaxies collide, stars explode or get sucked into black holes, planets get wasted by asteroids, solar winds, and so on.
God is not surprised by any of the myriads of celestial “accidents” that are constantly happening. Most don’t concern Him because they are part of the design and have purpose built into them. If He sees something coming up that He doesn’t want, or if He wants something to happen that isn’t, a mere flick of His pinky sets everything back on course. Or a detachment of angels is sent to handle it.
Our unique solar system
Astronomers used to assume, and some still do, that there are billions of solar systems just like ours in the cosmos. If that’s the case, then “surely there are millions of civilizations out there.” Well, even if science had a clue how non-life can evolve into life (call me a skeptic…), I’m afraid I have bad news.
It turns out that almost all stars have orbiting planets, and to date we have discovered and remotely “explored” over 5,000, but sad to say, not a single one is anything like good old earth, and it’s a stretch to think that any of them could possibly support any kind of life form as advanced as a virus. It looks like our own life-friendly system is far, far from typical.
My guess is that about 4.5 billion years ago, God picked out a young G-type Main Sequence star in the Milky Way Galaxy and molded its accretion disk to His own specifications, placing a rocky planet of suitable mass with a liquid iron core (to provide a protective magnetosphere) at a perfect spot in the planetary “Goldilocks Zone“. When the time was right, He seeded that planet with life, once again to His own specs.
Procreation
The Psalms, of course, are inspired Scripture, and they tell us a huge amount about God, but I don’t think they are necessarily a reliable source of doctrine, because, by nature, ancient Hebrew poetry is flowery and often exaggerated. They are, in fact, songs. Songs of worship are designed to lavishly praise, and even to flatter.
We know that God is imminently invested in each of us individually. Sparrows, too, and by implication all of earth’s fauna. When the psalmist says, “You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13), or when we acknowledge God as “our creator”, does that mean that each child is an original act of creation?
Personally, I don’t think so. God devised the plan. He created the ancestors. I’m certain that He adjusts the genetics from time to time. But procreation is a well-understood biological process. Human procreation is very similar to that in any other mammal. We understand conception, cell division, DNA and genetic inheritance.
If we say that each child is a unique creation, then we’re acknowledging that God is blessing or cursing each child at conception and early gestation, individually. If that’s what He does, then so be it, and I know He has the potter’s right and a good reason for His choices. He can’t be arbitrary or unfair. Still, this plan doesn’t ring true for me. I don’t think that a consistent hermeneutic requires that a song, even an inspired song by a godly man, be theologically meaningful in any deep sense.
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’m not suggesting that God never intervenes. In fact, I’m certain that He does. When it suits His plan.
Freewill
We’ve arrived!
Quantum theory is not only spooky, but also counterintuitive, and intellectually it seems sloppy and poorly designed. Why would God choose to do things this way?!
Well, for one thing, it assures that only God knows the future! Of course, He has the option of passing that information along to others when He so desires. Which is how prophecy works.
But the key answer, I think, is that quantum uncertainty is what makes freewill work! Not being a neuroscientist, I’m not qualified to work out the mechanism, but it seems to me that by taking deterministic biophysics off the table, God is saying, “Okay, I’m not programming you, you’re free to configure your own path through life.”
Foreknowledge and predestination
Romans 8:29 (ESV) [29] For those whom he foreknew (προγινώσκω, proginóskó) he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Teachers who hold to the view that everything is determined by God in advance often interpret proginóskó as “fore-ordained“, as in, “decided in advance.” How does that differ from “predestined“? By dictionary definition, it really doesn’t differ, but the way I’ve heard John MacArthur Jr. explain it is that after God decides something in advance (foreknowledge), He then prepares (predestination) them to actually do it. For example, if He decides to make you a Christian, He sends a soul-winner. Much like He decided to save Jonah, so He “prepared a great fish.”
That makes some logical sense. I accept the Jonah account as is. But I was always bothered by the fact that I could never find any justification for interpreting proginóskó as anything other than plain old passive foreknowledge. Searching for it briefly tonight in several common English translations, every one of them renders it as foreknowledge: in this verse and in Acts 26:5; Romans 11:2; 1 Peter 1:20; and 2 Peter 3:17.
So, I have flipped back to where I was as a much younger man. Based on something that God knew about me from His view across time and space, He drew me to Himself when I was a child of about 8, and then He set about imparting my spiritual gift(s) and guiding my education and experience towards a goal He set for me.
Before getting into this, I’ve been asked why I keep alienating my friends by harping on a version of Creationism that most of them consider to be unbiblical. I can respond to that in several ways:
First, I’m not really “harping” on it at all. This is a multipart series that I’ve planned for quite a while, to replace something I did years ago. I’ve still got two or three chapters to write before I’m finished with it. I did the same thing with my series on The Jewish Feasts.
I’ve been vitally interested in both theology and astrophysics since, literally, my pre-teen years. I write about what interests me most.
I don’t consider that one’s interpretation of Genesis 1 is a “fundamental of the faith“, but many of my friends do, and I am convinced that the currently mandatory “Genesis Flood Theory” is an unnecessary stumbling block for many lost souls.
Although many wonderful Christians would refuse to fellowship with me because I’m not a Young Earth Creationist, I don’t feel the same about them; but I suppose I’d like to convince them that I’m “righter than they are.”
As stated below, “With respect to the question of Creation, the central, foundational Truth of all Scripture is that the One, True, Eternal, Triune God, by His own power, created and sustains all else that exists in the cosmos.“
Moving on…
My views are driven by several axioms:
God is both omnipotent and sovereign, so He can do whatever He wants to do, however He wants to do it!
The Bible, as originally written, is the inerrant, irrevocable,Word of God.
The Bible we now possess (at least insofar as the accepted canonical books are concerned) is substantially the same holy Word as the originals, but subject to a very limited extent to human error in translation and interpretation.
Correct interpretation (exegesis) of Scripture requires a consistent hermeneutic, which among other factors, includes recognition that some scripture is not meant to be taken literally, as discussed in the next section in relation to The Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation.
A consistent hermeneutic also must require recognition of the cultural background of both the writer and the ancient reader.
Though Holy Scripture is as valid and vital today as it ever was, correct interpretation demands unequivocally that modern culture and tradition not be anachronistically imposed on the writers and readers of the day in which they were written.
Because God is not a liar or an author of confusion, we must recognize that the testimony of God’s Word cannot conflict with the testimony of His Created World when both are rightly understood.
Hermeneutics and the Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation
“When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.”–Dr. David L. Cooper (1886-1965), founder of The Biblical Research Society
The above quote is known by many expositors as “The Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation.” I read somewhere that this has often been shortened to “When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense, lest it result in nonsense.”
Implicit in the above is the assumption that the “plain sense of Scripture” sometimes does not seem to make sense. Certainly, when that is the case, you must first question your own common sense, but that doesn’t always solve the problem.
Few conservative Bible scholars believe that every word of Scripture is meant to be understood literally.
That is troubling to many, because the alternative opens the door to subjectivism and arbitrary conclusions. Yet almost all the great conservative Bible commentators practice a hermeneutic (a set of formal principles for Biblical interpretation) that allow for non-literal text, including parables, figures of speech, anthropomorphism, poetic exaggeration, and a host of other confusing factors. Not to mention translational difficulties.
None of that subtracts from the central truth that “all Scripture is God-breathed.” It is axiomatic to me that the Bible is inerrant in its original language and the original manuscripts. Yet some folks read my opinions, especially respecting emotional themes like creation, and make snide comments like, “So you believe it’s inerrant except when it isn’t!”
So, to clarify, I don’t think there are any substantive problems with corruption of our Scriptures over the millennia. There are, however, problems with translation, but few of those are impossible to unravel, with sufficient attention to the linguistic and cultural background of the inspired humans who penned the words, and those to whom the words were written.
There are also “mysteries.” Most Evangelicals are happy to admit that Paul revealed things hidden within Scripture that were mysteries with respect to the New Testament Church. The Church itself being one of the chief mysteries! The dual advents of Messiah are another mystery now revealed. Yet many seem unwilling to consider that some things are still mysterious.
What I consider to be the biggest factor of all that contributes to doctrinal confusion and infighting in the Church is that some misinterpretations are imbedded into a nearly impenetrable wall of tradition.
Unfortunately, the reason there are so many Christian denominations in the world, and the reason they often have so much trouble getting along, is that each has its own particular list of what constitutes “axiomatic and fundamental truths.” For example, I was brought up in a “fundamentalist” sub-denomination of Baptists that teaches there is no such thing as a universal Church of all believers; only local churches are Biblical. To them this is an axiomatic and non-negotiable Truth, based in part on the simple fact that the Greek word translated “church” is ecclesia, which literally means “assembly.” After all, how can people scattered across the world and across many ages possibly assemble together?
With respect to the question of Creation, the central, foundational Truth of all Scripture is that the One, True, Eternal, Triune God, by His own power, created and sustains all else that exists in the cosmos.
That fact is stated clearly and concisely in just one verse: Genesis 1:1.
As for what that process looked like and how we should interpret Genesis 1:2–2:3, I regard that as still a mystery.
A 6,000-year-old universe and the Genesis Flood Theory of today’s Young Earth Creationists does not meet the commonsense test, not because God can’t do whatever He wants, but because the clear evidence of centuries of careful observation and analysis by very smart and dedicated professionals, both Christians and otherwise, can’t be ignored. God is not the Author of Confusion. He doesn’t plant lies in front of our face to test our faith.
Moreover, the universe is demonstrably dynamic, changing over time even as we observe. That isn’t “evolution”, it’s simply the application of forces and interactions decreed by God. We understand the physics of supernovae (the implosion of giant stars) and we observe them happening. We understand the process of star formation, and we see examples of every stage of that process. We can’t see the movement of stars and galaxies, but we can measure their movements using Doppler shift, similar to the clocking of a speeding car.
Limitations of Science
When I was young, scientific method was viewed as a simple, 3-step process:
State a hypothesis.
Form a tentative theory.
“Prove” the theory, which then becomes a law.
But so many of the “laws” found under that paradigm have been subsequently found to be limited in scope (for example, Newton’s laws of motion are now known to be invalid for very large and very small masses), that the paradigm has changed:
Now, hypotheses still become tentative theories, but once a theory has become so well proved that it is accepted as true by most authorities on the subject, it still doesn’t get promoted to “law”. That is why it is utterly meaningless to say that “The Big Bang Theory” is just a theory!
Scientists now look for certain characteristics of a theory to judge how “well established” it is:
Obviously, the more evidence supports a theory, and the less that appears to contradict it, the stronger it becomes. This evidence may be experimental, or it may be observational. If it is statistical in nature, then the results must be well within a recognized margin of error.
To be considered a truly “scientific“, a theory must be judged to be “falsifiable.” That means that for all practical purposes, if there is no conceivable way that a theory can ever be proven false, then it must remain speculative in the minds of those who are not predisposed to take it on faith. This principle is the tool of choice for those who wish to exclude all discussion of religion, or “Intelligent Design“, as an alternative explanation.
For a theory to become intrenched as factual, it is also necessary for it to successfully produce demonstrably true predictions, by means either of observation, logical arguments, or mathematics.
The strongest theories are those that can be expressed by mathematics, because mathematics is the only truly “exact science“. Two plus two always equals four in our base 10 number system. The circumference of a circle divided by its diameter always equals pi (3.1415926…) in a Euclidean frame of reference.
Proving the Bible
Something I see online over and over again online is well-meaning Christians exclaiming over interesting archaeological finds that, “They prove that the Bible is correct.” No, they don’t! Science will never prove Scripture, and that is by God’s design, because He wants us to live by faith, not by sight. The most that science can do for us is to confirm the faith that God has already supplied to us.
At the same time, if we are worried that science will contradict our faith, then our faith is weak to begin with!
God has written of Himself in both Scripture and creation. The purpose of science is to help us understand creation. Embrace it!
Moses was a prophet!
According to Scripture, Moses was the greatest prophet of all times, other than Jesus. He didn’t personally see any of the events of Genesis, so how did he know what to write? Both the Old and New Testament contain numerous references to non-canonical source writings. Moses himself references The Book of the Wars of the Lord (no longer extant) in Numbers 21:14, which recorded some contemporary events, but I know of no sources that he could have used for events prior to the invention of writing. He could have gotten his information only from God. After-the-fact prophecy, so to speak.
How was that information communicated to him? Perhaps verbally, because we know that he and God talked to each other directly. Having nothing concrete to go by, I personally assume that from Genesis 11:10 forward, Moses’ inspiration was primarily verbal.
Verses 10–32 of chapter 11 constitute one of eleven so-called toledoth in Genesis. These primarily genealogical blocks of Scripture were included by Moses and are believed to be intended as section dividers.
Because the first 11+ chapters of Genesis consist of abbreviated, flowery accounts of earthshaking historical events, I see them as poetic discourse, a different genre from what follows. For that reason, I suspect that these chapters were conveyed, at least in part, via visions or dreams. There is a theological label for prophetic visions of past events: Preterism. A “full preterist” believes that all prophecy describes the past, in effect dismissing the possibility that prophets could foretell the future. I am far, far from that position! I am a “partial preterist” in that I refuse to dismiss the possibility that God can also reveal the unseen past to his prophets.
Typically, prophets preached and reported the content of visions and dreams, but not necessarily their interpretations.
Previous posts in this series on the topic of creation
In The Hijacking of Creationism, I laid out several of the views that Evangelical scholars have historically held in order to account for the apparent ancient age (13.8 billion years) of the universe. In particular, I focused on The Genesis Flood Theory, and its popularizer, Henry M. Morris. Today, 1/10/2024, I expanded on my bio of Dr. Morris. Yes, I am a little bit brutal with him, but his writings were frequently brutal towards those who disagreed with him.
In Does Science Trump Theology? I explore the intellectual domains covered by the two disciplines, similarities in the two, and how they should work together in Bible interpretation.
In Fountains of the Deep I draw on my own geological engineering background to present what I believe to be the most likely mechanism of the Genesis Flood. This mechanism is unlikely to have caused the distortion of the earth’s surface that followers of Morris demand. Incidentally, the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe is as firmly rooted in astrophysics and cosmology as the 4.54-billion-year age of earth is in geology. One of these days I’d like to hear a Young Earth Creationist explain how the Genesis Flood accounts for the cosmologic appearance of age.
In Geology a Flood Cannot Explain I randomly describe, from my own professional knowledge, a number of well-known geological features on earth that absolutely could not have been affected by a flood of any magnitude.
Fluid Mechanics courses for civil engineers are mostly irrelevant to understanding of the Genesis Flood, because they focus primarily on hydrostatics (forces exerted by water pressure on fixed structures like dams and canal locks), and laminar flow in engineered open channels and pipes. To the extent that they cover turbulent flow in natural channels like riverbeds, the primary interest is erosion of friable soils, sands and gravels. Before erosion can occur in solid rock, weathering must first break the rock down into smaller pieces, which is a process which usually takes years, if not centuries or longer. [I explore this fact in a post, Geology and the Saudi Sinai, part of a series on false evidence for believing that “the real Mt. Sinai” is in Saudi Arabia.]
Revisiting Genesis 1
I would like to take another look at the first few verses of Genesis 1 to present some ideas that you may not have considered before.
Prologue: Gen 1:1–5
Below, I present three very legitimate translations. The first is from an Evangelical favorite, the English Standard Version (ESV). The second is from the Jewish Publication Society (JPS). The third is from a new work, The Hebrew Bible, translated by Robert Alter over a 30-year period. Alter is a modernist, and not someone I would look to for dogma or Christian commentary, but from reading his books, I am convinced that he is, to his core, a top authority on Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Near Eastern literature. I don’t believe that his translations are colored by any sectarian presuppositions, and that makes him my top comparator while trying to separate what the Hebrew Bible says from what tradition claims that it says.
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. — Genesis 1:1-5 (ESV)
1 When God began to create heaven and earth— 2 the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— 3 God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. — Genesis 1:1-5 (JPS)
1 When God began to create heaven and earth, 2 and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, 3 God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He Called Night. And it was evening and it was morning, first day. — Genesis 1:1-5 (Alter)
Before considering the difficulties posed by creation of light on “Day 1” (verses 3–5), we first need to consider verses 1 and 2.
Verse 1: I think that the ESV Study Bible, with a couple amendments, states the interpretive problem in verse 1 fairly well:
[Verse 1] can be taken as a summary, introducing the whole passage; or it can be read as the first event, the origin of the heavens and the earth (sometime [on or] before the first day), including the creation of matter[, energy], space, and time. This second view (the origin of the heavens and the earth) is confirmed by the NT writers’ affirmation that creation was from nothing (Heb. 11:3; Rev. 4:11). … Heavens and the earth here means “everything.” This means, then, that “In the beginning” refers to the beginning of everything. The text indicates that God created everything in the universe, which thus affirms that he did in fact create it ex nihilo (Latin “out of nothing”). The effect of the opening words of the Bible is to establish that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, sovereign power, and majesty, is the Creator of all things that exist. — Dennis, Lane T. and Wayne Grudem, eds., The ESV Study Bible. Accordance electronic edition, version 2.0. Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2008 (emphasis added, my additions are in brackets).
Probably half of the sources I use assume that verse 1 is a summary for what follows, ignoring the fact that none of what follows explicitly mentions the origins of the earth as a rocky planet covered by water. This view necessarily assumes that God created the individual building blocks (sub-atomic particles, atoms and molecules, and the forces that bind them) concurrently with forming them into the finished product. This is not outrageous but leads to a crucial contradiction which I will discuss below—namely that light is produced by matter, and is a manifestation of electromagnetism, which is an essential binding force.
The other half of my sources take the “first event” approach. Most of those place verse 1 on day 1. If you take it prior to day 1, then you more or less put yourself potentially in the “Gap Theory” camp, which I have occupied, but which is anathema to Young Earth Creationists because it can imply death before The Fall. I’ll save my comments on that objection for another post in this series. Unfortunately, this view is subject to the same contradiction regarding electromagnetic binding.
The ESVSB contention that “[the] Heavens and the earth … means ‘everything’” assumes that the wording of the Scripture is a merism, a figure of speech that encompasses the first element, the last element, and everything in between. This assumption is not provable, but rather can only be taken on faith—which I do. It is a figure of speech used frequently in the Bible.
The term “the heavens” is hashamayim in Hebrew. It is a plural form and is usually rendered as such in translations. Up to seven heavens were recognized in ancient literature, but most scholars today differentiate between just three heavens:
The atmosphere around and above us.
The cosmos beyond earth’s atmosphere.
The heavenly realm inhabited by God and his host.
I would rather prefer a more general statement that the term “heavens” means everything above the surface of earth: As explained below, Moses and his readers would have envisioned several elements:
The sky of air and birds.
A solid dome (the “firmament“) from which hang the suspended sun, moon and stars.
An ocean above, connected at the edges to the ocean below, and held up by the dome, (KJV, “firmament”).
The home of God and His Divine Host.
The first event view is supported in particular by the JPS and Alter translations above (“began to create”), which place verse 1 at the beginning of what might be interpreted as a string of creation events, those described in the remainder of the chapter, and anything subsequent.
Verse 2: In verse 2, there are actually four separate interpretive issues, which I will gloss over here:
“Without form (or formless) and void” and other translations, such as Alter’s “welter and waste.” The Hebrew, tohu wabohu, is linguistically of limited use to our understanding, because its usage in literary history is insufficient to allow a definite interpretation. Guesses range from “total chaos” to “undeveloped and unpopulated.” Halter deliberately chose his alliterative nouns to emulate the poetic language of the Hebrew rather than to take a position on precise meaning. Whatever the meaning here, I have generally pictured the state of the planet as an earth totally covered by water and shrouded in mist, which works very well with a Gap Theory and a flooded earth. However, I’ll mention another (better?) view below.
“Darkness.” The Hebrew choshek can mean things like darkness (perhaps because light is absent), or obscurity because light has been masked or reflected away. Again, obscurity works best with Gap Theories, but see below.
“The Deep.” The Hebrew tehom means either the deep sea, or the deep source waters of terrestrial springs which were viewed as interconnected with each other and with the sea (see Fountains of the Deep, where I discuss this in some detail).
“The Spirit of God“, “a wind from God”, or “God’s breath.” The Hebrew ruach, can mean any of these things, and probably means all of them here. See God with the Wind for an in-depth discussion.
The overwhelming problem with Light on Day 1:
The definition of light
Just what is “light”, anyway? If you think of it as simply, “the absence of dark”, then you are way off base—it’s the other way around. As a noun, “dark” denotes a concept (the absence of light), rather than a tangible thing. “Light” is something very real and specific. I suspect that all of my readers have had enough education to realize that light is electromagnetic energy. All of you will no doubt have seen some version of a spectrum diagram:
The problem is that most folks have a tendency to think of visible light as something that is fundamentally different from the rest of the spectrum, because our vision only detects wavelengths in a narrow band between about 400 and 700 nanometers. But the wavelength of electromagnetic energy is really an expression of how energetic the wave is. X-rays and gamma rays are fundamentally the same thing as visible light, just more energetic. Radio waves, radar, and microwaves are fundamentally the same thing as visible light, just less energetic. All of these things are emitted by matter, travel at roughly 186,000 mps as waves, and are detected in the form of massless particles called photons.
So, if God literally created light on a literal Day 1, did He create just visible light, or the entire spectrum? If He just created visible light, then I have to ask, “visible to whom?” Humans all differ slightly in their light sensitivity. Bats, most amphibians, and many fish and insects see well into the infrared. Many species of insects, fish, and even mammals (including dogs and cats) can see into the ultraviolet. Using instrumentation, humans can now “see” all wavelengths of electromagnetism.
And what do we even count as visible to a normal human? Sunlight reaching Earth’s surface on a sunny day is around 52 to 55 percent infrared, 42 to 43 percent visible light, and 3 to 5 percent ultraviolet. A biologist might say that “visible” means detectable using only our eyes, but we also detect longer and shorter wavelengths with other organs.
On the long-wave side of the spectrum, infrared (“below red”) is felt as heat on our skin; microwaves can penetrate skin, and if powerful enough, could even boil the water in blood and cells near the surface; and even longer UHF and VHF radio waves have been documented to set up resonant vibrations in structures like teeth with metallic fillings.
On the short-wave side of the spectrum, ultraviolet (“above violet”), which can cause sunburn and later melanoma; x-rays penetrate completely through our bodies and can cause damage to inner organs over time or can cause or kill cancers; unshielded gamma rays can cause catastrophic damage to human bodies.
Contrary to the diagram above, cosmic rays are not primarily light or even electromagnetic energy in any sense, but rather are characterized by alpha and beta particles (helium nuclei and protons) traveling at close to the speed of light, and thus possessing some of the same quantum properties as light.
The source of light
Light that reaches us from the sun is largely in the range of visible and near-visible light, but it starts out in the sun’s reactive core as gamma rays, high energy (short wavelength) byproducts of nuclear fusion. These gamma rays begin a “random walk” out of the sun’s core and through its conduction zone, repeatedly colliding with particles in the dense surrounding soup of hydrogen and helium ions, changing directions randomly, over and over again, and gradually losing energy (thus shifting to more benign longer wavelengths). Eventually, after something like 100,000 to a million years, they reach the sun’s surface and fly off in all directions at the speed of light, 186,282 miles per second.
Structure of the sun, from theuniverse-michael-lawson.weebly.com
An even more important consideration (mentioned above) is that, in the universe God created, electromagnetic energy (let me just call it “light” here, for brevity) is always associated with matter. There are a number of ways that light can be generated, but it always begins with matter. I’ll mention a possible exception below, under the heading “sh’kinah“, but for now, I’m talking about the light that all of us experience.
It is worth mentioning that all light is invisible until it strikes a detector. If you are in an empty, dark place and someone shines a flashlight past you, you may see the glowing source, but you will not see any trace of the beam, which consists only of a jiggling electromagnetic field, unless it strikes an air or dust molecule and reflects into your eye.
Most light in the universe is generated by stars like our sun, but all matter generates light, usually much less energetic than stellar gamma rays but still light, even if it is well below our range of sight. The human retina is populated by several types of light receptor: “cones” for detecting color when the light intensity is strong enough, and “rods” for detecting black and white in low light situations. My cat, Anna, can see me very well in a darkened (but not totally dark) room, because her retinas are mostly populated by “rods”.
Matter that is not heated to a glow, still generates heat, and that heat energy is radiated as light in the infrared region. If raised to a high enough temperature, the energy of the radiated light will eventually climb into the visible region, first red, and when hot enough, all the way to the blue side of the spectrum.
[Note: This is why the red and blue markings on faucets and automobile heater controls are so confusing and counterintuitive to me. To any scientist and most engineers, it should be red for cold and blue for hot, in spectral order.]
I took the photo of Anna, below, using an infrared sensor. The color isn’t real. The sensor’s pixels map the wavelengths of the infrared light in the scene and use an algorithm to determine the temperature that the pixel is “seeing”. False color is then added to encode it, as per the scale on the left. The warmest parts of the photo are her eyes, about 96°F. Next warmest is her face, followed by her tummy and legs. Her cold nose and the thick fur on her back and tail matches the cooler temperatures of the table she’s lounging on and the room to the right. The blue areas, our front door and glazed side panels, are quite cold. It was winter, and the windows here are single-glazed and very poor insulators.
In this photo, the small amount of heat registered from the window is a combination of heat from Anna and the room itself, being reflected back towards my sensor, heat generated by the window glass itself, and heat from outside conducted (see below) through the glass and woodwork.
All matter generates heat provided that its temperature is above absolute zero (−459.67°F). In the presence of any heat at all, the sub-atomic particles in atoms and molecules vibrate. The quantum mechanical mechanism causing this is beyond my scope here, but that vibration causes a release of energy in the form of heat. Heat energy is propagated in one or more of three ways:
Conduction – If two objects are touching each other, then the heat stored in the hotter will flow to the cooler (that’s the “first law of thermodynamics”).
Convection – In a gas or liquid, heat energy from a hot container will flow to the fluid by conduction and then the heated fluid will rise, setting up a convection current in the liquid.
Radiation – Whether or not either of the above occur, there will always be some heat flow in the form of electromagnetic radiation. To me, that is light, whether I can see it or not!
Absolute zero is theoretically unobtainable, because an object at absolute zero would cease all motion, including vibrations within the nucleus and movement of the electrons. All liquids and gasses (including the atmosphere) at this temperature would immediately solidify and collapse to a dense, inert lump, which I don’t believe describes the condition of earth in Genesis 1:2.
This is why I think that it would make no sense for light to have been created subsequent to the creation of matter in Genesis 1:1, whether you interpret that as a summary or a first event.
Since light is so intimately connected with matter, it is unthinkable to me that light would have come first.
Verses 4 and 5 are also difficult for me to accept in a literal sense. “Day and night” are conceptual nouns, and night simply refers to the shadow caused on one side of earth as it rotates away from the sun. But the sun isn’t created until Day 4. Some would say that this verse is where God created time. But time, as now understood by physicists, is part of the fabric of the universe itself (see Implications of God’s Omnipresence and Eternity in Space-Time).
sh’kinah
God’s own sh’kinah is also a light source, and one not connected with matter. It is the light source that led the Israelites out of Egypt, that lit up the top of Mt. Sinai, that resided in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and later the Temple, and that was described in the visions of several of the prophets.
Some commentators have suggested that God’s sh’kinah is the source of the light that God “created” on Day 1. This is absolutely a possibility, but if true, even if it functioned in exactly the same way as the light that we are familiar with, is it meaningful to say that God “created light” on Day 1 if the light he created was fundamentally different from the light that we know? On Day 4, God assigned the responsibility for light-bearing to the sun, moon and stars. In any case, I think the sh’kinah is one of God’s native characteristics, not a later creation.
“Let there be light…”
The Hebrew for this phase is yehi or. With its many linguistic modifiers, Yehi appears 3,561 times in scripture, so it is well understood. To my knowledge, there is complete agreement on the translation here, “let there be“. I am not aware of any context in which it clearly denotes a creative act. It is like saying, “Hey bub, flip on the light, will ya’?”
Interpreting verses 1:3–2:3
As for me, I don’t think that Genesis 1:3–2:3 can be a literal description of how God created the cosmos, because these verses do not describe the immensely complex universe in which we live!
In The Hijacking of Creationism, I mentioned a number of alternative theories proposed by conservatives to explain this passage, as listed in Millard Erickson’sChristian Theology. Another such list is presented below:
Concordist and Non-Concordist Interpretations of Genesis 1, from an article at biologos.com, “Comparing Interpretations of Genesis 1“, by Deborah Haarsma and Loren Haarsma
The authors of the above table define “concordism” as follows:
In concordist interpretations, God made the earth using the sequence of events described in Genesis 1. In non-concordist interpretations, God created the earth using a different timing and order of events than those described Genesis 1.
According to 19th century theologian, minister and writer, C.I. Schofield, Genesis 1 describes God’s miraculous 6-day rebuilding of an ancient earth after a previous judgement (of earlier humans and/or angelic beings) by inundation. This is a Gap interpretation, from the left side of the table.
What has long intrigued me about Schofield’s Gap Theory is that in the sequence listed, Genesis 1 describes precisely how earth would most likely have recovered from a general flood like that of Noah’s day. If that is true, then both floods were miraculous inundations of the entire planet, and the unnaturally rapid recovery in both cases was also miraculous. This is why I have for years called myself a “gap guy“, or more recently, a “two-flood” guy.
Still, I am no longer adamant about Gap Theory, because it can’t be proven one way or the other, and I don’t share Schofield’s opinion that the judgement leading to the earlier flood was connected to angelic corruption on earth. There is no Biblical evidence of angelic rebellion before Satan appears in the Garden of Eden.
More importantly, after doing extensive study during the last several years in the course of thinking about this series on Creation and another post on Gods and Demons, I feel drawn to a different interpretation that would be much more comprehensible to the people in Moses’ day and well beyond.
A better idea
What was the cultural background?
Regarding the culture of Moses’ day, it is inconceivable that he or his readers would have had the intellectual tools needed to process concepts like mass, energy, the nature of light, or even cosmically vast distances and time scales or a spherical earth.
We tend to think of ancient civilization as a scattering of isolated small city states like Sumer, Akkad, Elam, and even Egypt on the far end of the Fertile Crescent, but they all had a common heritage going back to Babel and even to the Flood.
And even in the distant past there were frequent interactions among peoples. Both war and peace brought people together, either in conquest or in trade. Consequently, there were many similarities between regions, in culture and religion. Though the names and functions of the pagan gods differed somewhat from region to region, there was general agreement about the nature of the world and the duties of the godhead in maintaining its order.
The region that became Israel was part of this milieu. The Israelites were descended from Abraham, who was Mesopotamian. Their later heritage was Canaanite and then Egyptian. The Torah (“Teachings“, the “Five Books of Moses”) that God delivered to His people, had the singular purpose of revealing Himself and His Divine Will to humankind.
In Moses’ day, as in Noah’s and even Jesus’ and beyond, the Israelites shared the beliefs of their Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) neighbors about cosmology (the nature of the heavens and the earth). Though their concept was, of course, deeply flawed, it was functionally adequate for millennia, and it diminished God’s role only in that it ascribed His creation to false creators. The following diagram shows the essence of what was universally accepted as true cosmology in the ANE.
Note that this is also clearly the cosmology described in Genesis 1!
Composite artist’s conception of the Ancient Near Eastern view of cosmology. Source unlisted.
The earth was a roughly disk-shaped island floating on the sea (possibly supported on “the pillars of earth”) and covered with a dome, the “firmament” of KJV. The sea was not only below the earth and feeding its springs (the “fountains of the deep”), but also covered the dome above (the “waters above the firmament”). In some versions the dome was supported at its rim by a ring of mountains (the “pillars of heaven”). The sun and moon traveled across the sky below the dome, sinking into the sea or through doors in the west, and traveling back east through the underworld to rise again. The stars and planets followed fixed grooves beneath the dome. Rain occurred when windows in the dome (the “windows of heaven”) were opened by the gods.
No matter how one interprets Genesis 1, the central issue that had to be addressed by God was that each element in the above diagram was believed to either be a god or goddess, or to be governed by one. And, of course, it was believed that all owed its existence to one or more chief creator gods. Rather than “nothingness” before creation, the cosmos existed, but was in a state of chaos (formlessness, or tohu wabohu, as defined above); thus, creation amounted to bringing order out of disorder.
So, what are my views?
A Genesis 1 alternative that makes total sense to me now is related to historical observations that the Israelites shared the culture and cosmology of the surrounding peoples. The Genesis account and the Bible as a whole condemns the pagan polytheistic connection, but does nothing to dispel the cosmological misconceptions, which were still believed by most cultures, including Israel’s, well into the Christian era.
The chart below displays relationships recognized by many conservative theologians who hold to a literal, Concordist, interpretation of Genesis 1; however, rather than interpreting the chart as an account of literally how God created the physical cosmos, I think it is better understood as a very abbreviated poetic description of the finished product.
From Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma
Understood in that way, it becomes one version of a Creation Poem Interpretation of Genesis 1. As such, it is essentially a polemic (a statement argumentatively refuting an opinion or doctrine held by others) against the creation myths of pagan cultures who credit their false gods, who most certainly did not create or rule the cosmos!
The ANE held no conception of infinite time or eternity. They thought no farther back than the initial chaos (compare Genesis 1:2), out of which arose the creator god, who then began to assemble the cosmos from the chaos. Only Yahweh claimed to be eternal and uncreated, and to create ex nihilo.
Whereas modern man sees existence as material in nature, with tangible substance and physical properties, it wasn’t enough for the ancients that something was visible and occupied space—as stated by John H. Walton in Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, it had to first “come into existence” metaphysically by being “separated out as a distinct entity, given a function, and given a name.”
A key insight that I have gleaned from Walton and others who have professionally studied the ANE is that the ancients viewed the ontological nature of the cosmos, i.e., “the nature of that which exists” in terms of function, whereas moderns view it in terms of substance. In other words, when a Big Bang Creationist like me thinks of God’s handiwork, I see mass and energy, bosons and fermions, stars and planets, rocks and trees, etc. A Young Earth Creationist similarly sees a universe of substance. To the ancients, in contrast, the substance of things is only incidental to their functions.
Consequently, I’m beginning to understand that God’s purpose in Genesis 1 was to ignore the misconceptions of the ANE regarding the physical nature of the cosmos, since that was a triviality to pretty much 100% of the population, and to say, in ways they would understand, “I, Yahweh, brought it into being [verse 1] and gave it function [the rest of Genesis 1].”
In this way of thinking,
Days 1 and 4 were about time, seasons, and the cosmic objects that differentiate them;
Days 2 and 5 were about the waters below and above, and about their denizens; and
Days 3 and 6 were about the land and its fecundity.
What point was God then making?
According to Walton, “The records of events in the ancient world were not given so that the reader could reconstruct the event. They were given so that the reader could understand the significance of the past for the present. In that sense, outcomes were more important than the events themselves.”
The pagan creation myth most familiar to modern scholars today is the Enuma Elish, from the Assyrian Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. I’ll close this post with a comparison of Genesis 1 with this pagan document, which I think clearly illustrates God’s point:
From Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma
Bibliography
Haarsma, Deborah B., Loren D. Haarsma, Origens: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design,2011, Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources.
Walton, John H., Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 2018, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
Most scientists, certainly, and probably most theologians agree that “theology is about God”, and “science is about purely natural and self-sustaining processes.” As someone who has been passionately interested in both theology and science from an early age, my view is that there is an unavoidable overlap. Both disciplines, in a very real sense, share the same goal—uncovering truth about the universe around us—and both disciplines come from the same source—the God who created and maintains the universe.
you can’t fully understand the universe without understanding the Designer who built it and instituted the natural laws that govern its existence, and you can’t fully understand God without understanding the environment He created for His creatures.
I am contending here that science is worth listening to and not simply dismissing as an enemy of faith. Most of my readers are intelligent Christian Believers but are neither scientists nor theologians. To those, I pose the question:
Can we only believe what our eyes show us if it conforms to what we have been taught? Can we not even consider that there are “mysteries” (Paul’s term) that can only be understood with the passage of time? We even have a theological term for that: “progressive revelation.”
Romans 1:19-20 (ESV) 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them [the ungodly and unrighteous], because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.
If God has revealed Himself in nature to the ungodly, then who are we as believers to say that there is no benefit to us in that same revelation? I live by the principle that God gave me “eyes to see and ears to hear”. If my senses seem to conflict with what I have been taught to believe, then I must question both my senses and my beliefs. That doesn’t happen often, because I’ve had pretty good teachers over the decades. But not everything in the Bible is crystal clear. Most trained pastors and theologians subscribe to a particular “hermeneutic“, or system of principles for exegesis, i.e., interpretation of Scripture. See, for example, the book, Basic Bible Interpretation, by Roy B. Zuck.
I am a Biblical “literalist”, but that doesn’t mean I take every last word as literal. Does anyone believe that Jesus’ parables were literally true stories? A parable, by definition, is a made-up story designed to teach a principle. Did Peter see a real sheet containing real animals? I don’t think so, it was a vision, not reality, and was meant to teach him a lesson about people, not about food. Is “three days and three nights” exactly 72 hours? No, that’s a well-attested Hebrew figure of speech which Biblical Jews would have understood meant part of one day, all of a second, and part of a third—which includes only two nights, by the way. The “evil” or “single” eye of Matthew 6:22, is a figure of speech, an idiom, about stinginess. Did Jesus promise me a mansion in Heaven? No that’s both a translation issue (“mansion” vs. “dwelling place”) and a misapplication of Hebrew wedding imagery, which Jesus’ hearers would have immediately recognized as such and not understood as a real estate promise (see “Jesus and Hebrew Wedding Imagery“). Will the meek inherit the earth? No, that’s a quote of Psalm 37:11 where David was clearly speaking poetically of the prophesied return of Israel (the meek) to the Promised Land. Are there helicopters in Revelation? Maybe so, maybe no, but everyone agrees the wording there could be symbolic.
On the other hand, did Jesus convert water into wine, and did He resurrect from the dead? Emphatically, yes! Science can’t demonstrate the possibility of either, but neither can they be disproved, and the facts are fundamental to my belief system. The same with Adam and Eve, the Genesis Flood, the Sea of Suf (Red/Reed Sea) crossing, manna from heaven, and numerous other phenomena that some folks can’t believe.
On yet another hand, was the Ark a ship, as some would have you believe is unarguable fact? Not in my opinion (see “Ships, Boats, Floats and Arks“), but the story itself is true, nevertheless. Did the Genesis flood change the entire structure of the earth’s crust? Not in my opinion (see “Fountains of the Deep“). There is no scriptural support for this simplistic theory, and there are better explanations for the apparent age of the earth. In my professional opinion, there are a number of geological phenomena, that simply could not have been caused by either a local flood or a general, worldwide flood (see Geology a Flood Cannot Explain). Nor could a flood account for the appearance of age in the extraterrestrial cosmos!
In my view nothing in the Bible is in any way flawed—ever—but the Bible is written to convey facts about God Himself, and about God’s Will as expressed through Theology.
Information the Bible offers about human or natural history, or about scientific principles, is only incidental to the goal of explaining and glorifying God and His Will, and in my opinion is not intended to be exhaustive or fully explained. Furthermore, the human instruments who penned scripture, and the ancient audience for which it was initially penned, were historically and scientifically naïve and would have had absolutely no perspective from which to correctly receive sophisticated explanations about the universe around them (see Genesis 1:1–5, Day 1).
Sometimes science presents us with observations that are very compelling but seemingly out of sync with our assumptions based on traditional interpretations of scripture. For example, the following KJV references are all from poetic scriptures (see how literary genre influences proper interpretation, in The Implication of Genre in Job, Ezekiel and Genesis) praising God for His power and greatness and for the stability and security of the planet He created for us:
For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. —Psalm 33:9
the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. —Psalm 93:1c
the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: —Psalm 96:10b
Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed [ESV: “moved”] for ever. —Psalm 104:5
the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved. —1 Chronicles 16:30b
and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. —Zechariah 1:11
These verses “prove beyond any shadow of doubt” that the earth is totally immobile, and the center around which the universe rotates! But no, thanks to progressive revelation, we now interpret those poetic scriptures figuratively, in ways that conform to observation. At some point in the course of using our God-given senses and intelligence, it may occasionally become necessary to thus reexamine certain scriptures to see if there is something that we may have missed, or a conclusion we reached in error because in the past “it seemed to make more sense” than any alternative view. Certainly, I’m not talking about giving up fundamental faith issues, but I am suggesting that we should be more astute about recognizing what is fundamental and what is merely tradition. To my thinking, scripture is clear that God is the Creator. That is a fundamental of my faith, but the brevity of the Genesis 1 account and its wording in the Hebrew makes me much less confident in the traditional interpretations.
I similarly question whether Genesis 2 is a recapitulation of Day 6 in Genesis 1, or a separate creation event. What is fundamental to me is that Adam and Eve were real people, created directly by God, and placed into a real paradise where they really sinned (see Exploring the Garden of Eden). Noah, too, was a real person and all subsequent humans are descended from him. Without these fundamentals, my whole concept of soteriology is flawed, and my faith is in vain.
The dual advents of Jesus were a mystery to all Believers until Jesus died, and His followers had to reexamine ancient scriptures and develop new interpretations of passages that were not as clear and final as had been thought previously.
I seriously doubt key claims of theories of biological evolution, for reasons that I may go into in a future post.
At the same time, I reject “Young Earth” hypotheses about the way God created the non-organic universe. I believe that Earth is some 4.54 billion years old (give or take a half million), and the universe nearly 13.8 billion. I’ll leave it to future posts to explain how I reconcile this with the “Genesis account”, which I refuse to explain away as mere symbolism. To reiterate, I believe in a literal, worldwide Genesis Flood, but I reject the theory that it accounts for the present geology of the earth. Not just because “scientists say so”, but because I personally understand the scientific principles involved and how they apply. And because God gave me eyes to see!
Please dismiss the idea that “the theory of evolution” has anything to do with the development of the universe. “Evolution”, as I use the term, is about biological processes and “natural selection”, neither of which have anything whatsoever to do with star formation or the origin of the Solar system. If the formation of a star from interstellar gas and dust is “evolution”, then I guess the formation of a sinkhole after a water main break must also be called evolution.
Similarities between Science and Theology
Both disciplines deal in theory. Christians are fond of saying that, “Evolution is just a theory, not an established fact.” Not a “Law.” When I was a kid, the “Scientific Method” recognized three discrete levels of understanding: hypothesis, theory, and law. Many people brought up in that era see the word “theory” and assume that this is something unproven and tentative. That is no longer the case, linguistically. Reality has blurred the boundaries between theory and law. Many things that were once considered “law” are now recognized to have conditions, or limits. “Newton’s Laws”, for example, are now accepted as useful approximations under certain conditions, but under others, they have to be replaced by Relativistic principles, and even Relativity now sometimes must give way to Quantum Mechanics. So, even though biological evolution is still called a “theory”, most biologists are totally convinced of its truth, or at least that it is a valid working principle. Insisting that it is “theory” and not “fact” is, in this era, an empty argument. In the same way, theological principles must be considered theoretical up to a point, because we aren’t God! We simply cannot have a perfect understanding of scripture.
Both disciplines have an infallible basis. What?! Theology is at heart based on the Bible, which we believe to be inerrant and infallible. That is axiomatic to our beliefs. Most sciences, too—not so much biology, but certainly cosmology (the study of how the universe developed from the time of the “Big Bang”)—have a mathematical foundation, and math is an “exact science.” Math is the inerrant “scripture” of science, and it, too, was authored by God. It originated with God, it is absolute, and much of it is very well understood by human mathematicians.
Both disciplines have elements that are subject to interpretation. Some branches of math, like Probability and Statistics, can be erroneously interpreted and wrong conclusions drawn; and proven valid equations can sometimes be applied incorrectly to observation. But the same can be said about scripture. Sometimes scripture can be misinterpreted or misapplied. Again, we are not God!
The Back of My Mind 