Why is the Moon there?
With apologies to the Sola Scriptura advocates, no Christian denies that God created the Earth and the Moon, and set them in place. But we are not bound in Faith to believe that they simply appeared instantaneously, out of nothing, exactly as they are now.
We can discuss this from a philosophical standpoint (thanks to Aristotle) who realised that there are four ways in which something can have a cause. Yes, God created the Earth and the Moon. But we are able to please God by exercising our gifts of intellect to examine the process by which this happened – if we are able, given the empirical evidence of the universe as we find it. This too is an act of adoration. It is incidental to the essential data of the Faith, but that does not mean that we are forbidden to enquire – indeed, it is a dis-service to God not to use our gifts in natural science, as with music, art and literature. The Bible never was intended to short-circuit all this by being an Encyclopaedia of All Knowledge.
So: Why is the Moon there?
Reminder:
The Material Cause – is the substance from which something is made.
The Formal Cause – refers to what gives the matter its form, arranged in a certain way such that it operates as it does.
The Efficient Cause – refers to the reason behind something’s existence. For example, a sculpture of King Alfred exists because the sculptor had the idea to carve one to resemble him.
The Final Cause – is the reason why a thing exists in the first place. This asks the question, what is the function of this object?
The Final Cause for the Moon’s existence is ‘for signs and for seasons and for days and years’ (Genesis 1:14) and also (although Genesis does not mention it) ‘for the Earth to be stable when it turns on its axis’.
The Material Cause is the rocky minerals of which it is composed.
The Formal Cause is its placement in orbit 240,000 miles from the Earth in the plane of the ecliptic.
The Efficient Cause appears to have been the precisely arranged collision with a planetary body of the approximate size of Mars with the prototype Earth.
See the excellent article in New Scientist::
“When I look at Thy heavens, the work of Thy Fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou hast arranged,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him,
And mortal man, that Thou keepest him in care?”
Ps 8