Creation: Days 1 to 4

Gen. 1:2 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.

Some commentators place this verse in the preface, as I will, and others make it a part of day one. Either way, it is key to understanding the verses that follow. First, it gives the viewpoint or frame of reference from which to understand that which follows. (Ross, 1998). This is critical in science and also in our everyday lives. It is also true throughout the Bible. For instance, when we study prophecy, we need to understand who was speaking, where they were speaking from and what their world was like. We understand that for the New Testament, the Roman world was the whole world. The customs of China were irrelevant. The gospels were written from an 1st Century Jewish perspective and it should be understood from the perspective of ancient Israel. Using a 1st century Greek perspective gives the wrong picture.

Verse 2 shows that the perspective of the observations for the rest of the chapter are from the surface of the earth. When I read that point in the book, “Creation and Time” by Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe, it was like a light went on. I had already recognized that much of the account fit with scientific data, but some parts were less clear. It was important to me not to be forcing the scripture to say something that it didn’t mean. Did the scripture really tell us how to apply it? With this simple observation, I could now have confidence in this methodology.

Our first verbal picture of earth shows it to have been a dark, foreboding place, yet God’s spirit was there. It is worth noting that there is no place today that is so dark that God is not there. Today’s darkness comes in many forms. The picture of God’s Spirit hovering above the waters says God was about to do something special here. If we are comparing creation in Genesis to earth’s history from science, how does it fit? This verse tells of a time of darkness and has earth’s surface covered with water. Did such a period exist in our planet’s history? First, was there a period when light from the heavens could not reach the earth’s surface? Current scientific models have the sun and planets forming in space with much dust and debris. The sun was less luminous and had hydrogen and helium layers such as exist today on Saturn and Jupiter. This would have made the planet a dark place. That fits the verse 2 description.

What about the surface having been covered with water? Just this year many popular science reports have flashed the discovery that earth had a period as a “waterworld”. See this as one example:  https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/ancient-earth-may-have-been-a-water-world-without-any-dry-land   Actually, cosmologist also theorize that the earth may have been covered with water prior to the “amazingly fortunate” collision that gave us our moon. (Lunine, 2006). Collisions may have driven off water bodies repeatedly during the earth’s early history. The latest reports suggest that in particular, the earth was indeed covered by water 3 billion years ago. We don’t have direct evidence for when this “waterworld” began.

Conclusion 1: Though we have no direct evidence of the opacity of the atmosphere, it is reasonable that the initial conditions of darkness over water covering the earth as described by Gen 1:2 existed.

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.
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

This picture of the first creative period, a first day, has God speaking into existence light to reach the earth’s surface. The phrasing in the verses read almost as if they were from the book of John or perhaps the book of I John. It is crystal clear where John came up with his theme of light vs darkness. Here “the light was good”. Physically, Genesis does not say what form this light took but it is consistent with the earth becoming a planet with clouds such as Venus. Light reaches the planet but the sun is never visible. Such light would have been essential for early broad-based life. Science tells us that life began to appear by at least 3.5 billion years ago. God caused light to reach the surface by that time, though the processes probably did not look “miraculous”. His normal working through nature was adequate.

Conclusion 2: The period of darkness ended and light came to the surface, though it is reasonable that the sun and other bodies would not have been visible at first.

6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.
8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Our next picture of creation focuses on water. Many news stories seem to declare that the only thing a planet needs in order to be habitable is liquid water. Actually, there are many requirements but it is true that our planet is tremendously blessed to have a stable hydrologic cycle. It is phenomenal that earth has had abundant water in all of its 3 phases: liquid, solid, and gas for billions of years. It is reasonable to expect that this is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Solomon described the cycle this way: “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.” Ecclesiastes 1:7 (ESV). Our hydrologic cycle indeed cycles water through the atmosphere to fall to earth as rain, some of which makes its way to rivers and to the sea, only to evaporate up again. When did this cycling begin? Earth’s earliest rocks are sedimentary that were deposited by water about 4 bya (Dostal, Murphy, and Nance). When did this cycling stabilize? Timing is uncertain because a stable hydrologic cycle might mean different things depending on what parts of the system we choose to define as required. It must have been early, but it could easily have been after our first day here.

Conclusion 3: A stable hydrologic cycle came to exist just as the Bible says.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.
12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

The verbal portraits of “a third day” have continents appear and explode with the extravagant, abundant life. That is not to say that no land had existed prior to this or that no lifeforms existed. It was however, a major development preparing this planet for more advanced life. Genesis does not elaborate on the mechanisms that were used, but makes it clear that the driving force was God’s Word. The planet Venus provides an important point of comparison. It is a rocky planet at a similar distance from the same star. We saw that Venus has a translucent atmosphere similar to what our planet once had. However, it doesn’t have continents. Why? It never developed the plate tectonics that geologists recognize as critical to the creation of our continents. Long-lived plate tectonics has been essential for maintaining the balance of ice, liquid and gaseous water that we have. We see moons in our solar system that had episodes of plate tectonics but none compare to our own. The fact that this tectonic process developed and continued for as much as 4 billion years results from many linked and complex factors. This situation has got to be rare in the cosmos. As a geologist, I see the mechanism of plate tectonics but marvel at the many ways it has impacted earth to benefit advanced life. This picture presents God’s work in preparing earth for us.

Verses 11 and 12 tell of the creation of land plants. I do not think the text is really telling us much about what type of plants these were or what processes or mechanisms were used in their creation. The verses probably describe the creation of early forms that would lead to the more advanced forms, thus represent the period when the processes began. We recognize land plants in the geologic record from 475 mya (Wellman, Osterloff, and Mohiuddin 2003), though one would suspect that early forms of algal plant life may have existed on land earlier. Perhaps the verse simply tells us that God began the process of complex life that would develop into the amazing abundance of flora that we have everywhere today. It is worth noting that just as science finds, plants appeared before animal life.

Genesis makes it clear that life is the result of God’s action. He is the ultimate cause. Often people demand that the scripture should have given more explicit details or even to claim that the Bible claims that they just suddenly appeared on command. This observation from J.W. Dawson, a famous Canadian geologist from the late 19th century is useful:

“With reference to the precise manner of the introduction of life, or the secondary causes, if any, employed in introducing its various forms, neither record (note: science or the Bible) gives any definite information. In the sacred record, the term “create” is used in the case of the first animal life and of that of man. The other stages are indicated by a word of less power, “make” and by the expression, “let the waters bring forth” let the land bring forth.” So in the geological record the waters and the land bring forth successive dynasties of life, which continue for a time and perish, without telling us how or why they appear, and giving us few hints as to the causes of their decay and disappearance.”

Genesis 1 tells the ultimate cause for life, the reason it exists. Life itself and particularly advanced life demands an incredibly intelligent designer and Genesis 1 tells us who this is.

Conclusion 4: Continents appeared with a pattern of long-lived plate tectonics. The continents are covered with plants of many, many kinds.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,
15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.
17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

I have had both skeptics and believers with questions point to these verses over and over as evidence that the order of creation in the Bible cannot be reconciled with science. After all, science from many different areas tell us that the sun and moon were formed long, long before plants appeared on our continents. You will have recognized that I take a very different view. When Genesis 1:1 proclaims that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, the phrase “heavens and the earth” always includes the sun, moon and stars. It is no different here. Given the perspective of an observer on the earth’s surface, this represents the clearing of cloud cover so that sun and moon were visible from the earth’s surface. Verse 14 tells us why God chose to make them visible at this point: “to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for season, and for days and years”.

This observation from the great geologist, James Dwight Dana in 1885 addresses this issue:

“The great purpose of the sources of light was, therefore accomplished by them, whether they were “made” or made to appear. It was fully accomplished when the sun became to the earth, the actual source of day and night and seasons, and that would have been when it first shone through the earth’s long existing envelope of clouds.”

We don’t have a rock that tells us when the skies cleared. We do have indirect evidence; in that we can recognize the earliest record of creatures that we know use the sun and moon for navigation and we have other clues. Thus, knowing that insects use the sun and moon, their first appearance in the Devonian geologic period, 407 to 396 million years ago gives a minimum age. (Wikipedia). Interestingly, corals also appeared in this period that provide a measure of the number of days of the year in their growth rings. Thus, using them, it has been demonstrated that the years were 400 days long in the Devonian. (Arbab, 2009). It really is a fact that the years are going by faster and faster. These annual rings reflect the observation of “days and years” as in verse 14.

The phrase “And God made the two great lights”, is not a command by God resulting in an action at that time. It simply records that God created them. Why would the author want to record the appearance of the sun and moon rather than specifically recording His command for their creation? Why is it significant that God named them? Remember that Egypt and the Ancient Near East (ANE) worshiped the sun in Egypt and believed that the movements of the stars controlled their destiny in Mesopotamia. Moses deliberately lowers their status. They aren’t even primary in the order of creation. In passing, he points out that God made them. In that culture (and in many ways ours as well), to name something is to claim authority over it. The sun, moon and stars were not gods to be worshiped. They were the creation of the one true God.

Conclusion 4: The atmosphere clearing to allow the sun, moon and stars happened by ~400 mya.