Creation - Genesis 1:1-2:3
To understand the Bible, we have to discipline ourselves to look first at the original intent and situation that the human author was focused upon. Every book in the Bible has an original author, who is writing to an original audience about a particular topic set in an original context.
In the case of Genesis, Moses was first writing to the people of Israel, who were about to journey into the Promised Land after being rescued from slavery in Egypt. Moses was not going with them into the Promised Land, so he wrote these first five books of the Old Testament (called the Pentateuch) to help the people of God be clear about their identity as they went into that future. Up until that point, there had only been oral traditions, unwritten stories that were passed down from generation to generation, but no written revelation. So, God inspired Moses to write Genesis and these other books as a theological history, grounding His people so they could face the challenges ahead. This is important to remember as we approach this passage because Genesis was not written to be a scientific textbook but rather a theological history. There may be things we can glean to help us understand scientific things, but that was not God’s purpose in writing Genesis.
The challenges that the people of Israel faced were unique because the people of Israel were monotheists in a world of polytheists. They believed in one God among nations that believed in many Gods. One of the main purposes of this passage was to help them understand their uniqueness amid cultures that made idols out of created things. In the creation account, we see that God exists outside of creation and stands above it. His people don’t worship creation but the Creator. He is also writing to people for whom life seemed chaotic and out of control. This pre-industrial society consisted of farmers and shepherds who were completely dependent upon the cycles of nature. In the creation account, we see a God who created order out of chaos and who is in complete control with a plan.
With those big concepts in mind, this passage is challenging because it raises a lot of great questions about how creation specifically happened. Did God create the world in a literal seven-day period? What about evolution? Is the earth a billion years old or a thousand years old? Do Bible and science collide? In answering these questions, Christ-followers now and over the centuries have had theories, each of which stands apart from atheistic evolution and affirms that there is a God who created the universe, and each tries to deal with the biblical passages on the matter. Here are some of the views in discussion.
Historic Creationism: This view believes that the earth is very old but in its present form is relatively young, somewhere between 7,000 and 30,000 years based on the genealogies of Genesis with gaps in those genealogies taken into account. In this view, Genesis 1 and 2 describe creation not of the entire universe, but of the ordering of the earth to allow human life to flourish. God was renovating the uninhabitable earth to make it possible for human life to exist and took the six literal days to do so.
The Gap Theory: Similar to historic creationism, this view sees a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. At some time in the distant past, God created everything (1:1) and the earth was formless and void. Some believe that this is because of Satan’s rebellion with his angels that destroyed the original created earth. Billions of years might have gone on after that until verse 2, where God hovers over the chaos waters and takes the uninhabitable and makes them livable in six literal days. In the gap theory, the universe and matter are very old but the renovated earth is relatively young.
Young Earth Creationism: This view holds that God made the universe and all living things in six literal days and took a day of rest on the seventh, and that everything in existence is relatively young (between 7,000 and 30,000 years old). Proponents of this view argue that the fossil record and geological evidences for a much older earth are a consequence of the big flood, and they note the existence of apparent age in creation, meaning that God created things already aged (like Adam who came on the scene as an adult male).
Day/Age View: This view holds that the days mentioned in Genesis 1 are not literal 24 hour periods of time, but ages or epochs of time. Therefore, the universe might be billions of years old. Proponents note that often the Hebrew word for “day” in the Bible is not a literal 24 hour time period. In fact, in Genesis 2:4, the entire week of creation is reflected as “the day that the Lord made earth and heaven.”
Theistic Evolution: This view holds that God is the one behind evolution; it is a process that He orchestrates to create the earth. Proponents of this view don’t worry too much about the literal wording of Genesis 1 and 2. They believe that God was the kick-starter behind the evolution process, and then the process went on from there.
Progressive Creation: Progressive creationists believe in a very old earth, and that creation occurred over a long period of time. Unlike theistic evolutionists, they reject macro-evolution, recognizing the biblical wording that God created each species uniquely and also recognizing the absence of transitional species in the fossil record. In this view, God continually introduced new creatures and new species over the ages.
Literary Framework View: Some biblical scholars believe too much is made of the word “day” in the passage because they note that Genesis 1 is written in a certain poetic style common in that era. All scholars, whichever view they hold, agree that Genesis 1 is written in poetic form, in the style of an epic poem, in keeping with the kind of poetry common in that day. We now have Akkadian and Ugaritic literature from the same time period, in the same part of the world, written with similar characteristics like seven consecutive days as a mark of perfection. In this view, the idea is that Genesis 1 followed that framework to signify God’s creation as a perfect divine act, and the point wasn’t a literal seven day process. They emphasize the balance between the first three days and the last three days: Days One and Four discuss light, Days Two and Five discuss the waters, and Days Three and Six discuss dry land with its vegetation, and the creatures that inhabit it.
These views all attest that God created the world, but they are obviously very different about the specifics. We don’t have a view on which position is correct. What we do agree on is referred in Hebrews 11:3, that the entire universe was formed at God’s command.