God Created The Heavens And The Earth

Here is a rendition of the opening story of creation in the Book of Genesis. The story is told in the frame of a week. There are eight acts preformed by God, each beginning with “And God said.” For each of these acts there is a five-part literary formula followed. There is the act of creation, a statement affirming actual creation, specification on what that actual creation was, praise that the creation is good, and then a note marking that a day had passed.

Marking each day may not be part of this five-part formula. Twice, two acts occur on the same day; additionally, the statement of a day passing makes no reference to the creation that occurred on that day. But before we conclude that the marking of the day was added later to the text, we must recognize the parallel form between the first set of three days and the second. So, even if the marking of the day is not part of the literary formula; the text is constructed originally to fit the six days of creation. Perhaps these markers are designed to be sub-headings (or sub-“footers” being that they follow each day).

The first act, the Creation of Light, serves as a template for this formula. Whereas in further acts the phrases “And God saw that it was good” and “And it was so” are used, in the first act there is no pronoun. “Light” is used in place of “it.” This may serve as an introduction to the literary formula for readers of this passage or it may be of little significance. This first act also transposes two aspects of the formula, the Praise and the Specification. My guess is that this is a grammatical consequence of including the noun “light.”

Here is the text from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, where this passage ends. My sub-headings are in bold while the rest of the text is taken without alteration from the ISV translation of the Bible. I chose the ISV mostly because of its readability and simply because it is of contemporaneous interest to me. The five parts of the formula are (C)reation, (A)ffirmation, (S)pecification, (P)raise, and the (D)ay marking.

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Prologue: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. When the earth was unformed and desolate, with the surface of the ocean depths shrouded in darkness, and while the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters,

CREATION OF LIGHT (Day One)

C: God said, “Let there be light!”
A: So there was light.
P: God saw that the light was good.
S: He separated the light from the darkness, calling the light “day,” and the darkness “night.”
D: The twilight and dawn were day one.

CREATION OF SKY (Day Two)

C: Then God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water!” So God made the expanse, separating the water beneath the expanse from the water above it.
A: And so it was.
S: God called the expanse “sky.”
P:
D: The twilight and the dawn were the second day.

CREATION OF EARTH (Day Three)

C: Then God said, “Let the water beneath the sky come together into one area, and let dry ground appear!”
A: And so it was.
S: God called the dry ground “land,” and he called the water that had come together “oceans.”
P: And God saw how good it was.
D:

CREATION OF PLANTS (Day Three, continued)

C: Then God said, “Let vegetation sprout all over the earth, including seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each kind containing its own seed!”
A: And so it was:
S: Vegetation sprouted all over the earth, including seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each kind containing its own seed.
P: And God saw that it was good.
D: The twilight and the dawn were the third day.

CREATION OF PLANETS (Day Four)

C: Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish day from night, to act as signs for seasons, days, and years, to serve as lights in the expanse of the sky, and to shine on the earth!”
A: And so it was.
S: God fashioned two great lights {—} the larger light to illumine the day and the smaller light to illumine the night {—} as well as the stars. God placed them in the expanse of the sky to shine on the earth, to illumine both day and night, and to distinguish light from darkness.
P: And God saw how good it was.
D: The twilight and the dawn were the fourth day.

CREATION OF BIRDS AND FISH (Day Five)

C: Then God said, “Let the oceans swarm with myriads of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth throughout the sky!”
A: So God created
S: every kind of magnificent sea creature, every kind of living sea crawler with which the waters swarmed, and every kind of flying bird.
P: And God saw how good it was.
Blessing & Order: God blessed them by saying, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the oceans. Let the birds multiply throughout the earth!”
D: The twilight and the dawn were the fifth day.

CREATION OF ANIMALS (Day Six)

C: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth each kind of living creature, each kind of livestock and crawling thing, and each kind of wild animal!”
A: And so it was.
S: God made each kind of wild animal, along with every kind of livestock and crawling thing.
P: And God saw how good it was.
D:

CREATION OF MAN (Day Six, continued)

C: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, the livestock, everything that crawls on the earth, and over the earth itself!”
Blessing & Order: So God created mankind in his own image; in his own image God created him; he created them male and female. God blessed these humans by saying to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and be master over it! Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, and every living thing that crawls on the earth!” God also told them, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant that grows throughout the earth, along with every tree that grows seed-bearing fruit. They shall produce your food. I have given all green plants as food for every wild animal of the earth, every bird that flies, and to every living thing that crawls on the earth.”
A: And so it was.
S:
P: Now God saw all that he had made, and, indeed, it was very good!
D: The twilight and the dawn were the sixth day.

Epilogue: With this the heavens and the earth were completed, including all of their vast array. By the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing, so on the seventh day he stopped working on everything that he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God stopped working on what he had been creating.

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First notes on the minor aberrations in the formula:

In the second act, the Creation of Sky, the Praise is missing. This may be the result of Moses or a later scribe removing one of the Praises so that there would exist 7 in total, a holy number. It may have accidentally been removed by a scribe or there may be further significance in its absence following the separations of the waters.

In the sixth act, the Creation of Birds and Fish, the Affirmation is missing. In its place the Hebrew verb “create” is used. This verb is different than the verb “make” which implies physical fashioning; “create” means to cause to be or bring into being, so it is a fair substitution for the actual verb “to be.” This change in the formula may have been akin to that posited above, to have 7 Affirmations instead of one for each of the eight acts. Why is it missing here? It is hard to say.

In the final act, the Specification is missing, but it exists in some manner in the elongated Praise. The Praise here is not simply “And God saw that it was good.” There is the added clause “all that he had created, and indeed…”. This functions as Specification, because it is pointing to something about God’s creation.

The Specification part of the formula is in some ways a catchall for the phrases appearing between the Affirmation and the Praise. But, it also points to the naming of creation, the process of creation (making, placing, according to their kinds, separating, fashioning, etc…), and emphasizes God’s hand in creation (except for the sprouting of vegetation, which does not allude to God). In the second act, the Creation of Sky, there is a bit of Specification placed before the Affirmation.

Blessing & Order:

This was not mentioned before, but not all of the text fits into the single literary formula. These “Blessing & Order” sections describe the relationships between these different parts of creation. In reading these there is an obvious order established: God > Man > Animals > Plants. The natural resources of the Earth would be subsumed into the “Plants” category. Plants were seen as part of the Earth’s natural resources, their creation placed in the first set of three days.

Nestled within the Blessing & Order is a section relating God to man: “So God created mankind in his own image; in his own image God created him; he created them male and female.” This is a little bit of poetry (note the reflexive symmetry, a common Hebrew poetic device) and likely was a common saying of Moses or earlier.

Government

While I won’t flesh out the ideas here, leaving this post as mostly a literary one, the theme in this passage is clearly one of God establishing order to a world in chaos. The description of this act is here stated with almost ritualistic formulaism. But it is meant to teach that God created order to the point of completeness and that we have been designated to bear the image of that Order Creator.

How that pertains to government we will see in the next few chapters. It is interesting to remember that Moses was a lawyer in many ways. In practice, Moses arbitrated between many disagreements amongst the Israelites while they were in the wilderness.  To free himself up, he established judges over the Israelites, so that he would only have to instruct those judges and they could arbitrate more effectively.  These first books of the Bible are largely the working documents that Moses gave these judges to use and they likely stayed in use, constantly being copied and maintained, for most of Israel’s history. And so, it is to be expected that the book of Genesis opens with an appeal to God’s order and the command for man to rule in the image of God.

Does Might Make Right?

Do we have a right to rebel against authority?

Rebel against Parents? Preachers? The draft? That nasty British tax on tea? What about “no taxation without representation?”

• Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement upon themselves. — Romans 13:1,2

“But, what about imperfect governments or those that prey on the weak?” The first century Roman government, under which Paul was writing, would definitely qualify as one of those “imperfect” governments.

I don’t really have an overarching “answer” but I think we, as Americans, naturally assume we have a (God-given) right to take up arms against our government if push comes to shove. This may or mayn’t (real word) be true, but the spirit of willing rebellion is found in almost every social institution we, for a time, devote ourselves to.

The concept of “loyalty” is hard to come by outside of close-friendships and family. Even then, if the economics of the relationship are poor we feel a sense of justification in reversing our previous oaths.

The paramount example of “just” rebellion, in my eyes, has often been the Exodus from Egypt.

Moses sees the persecution of his people by the Egyptians. What does he do? He takes up arms! He bloodies his hands! And then he high-tails it into the desert to escape justice for his actions. Clearly, he was not acting as God’s hand on Earth or his actions would certainly have been effective.

Fast-forward 40 years. Moses is back. Egypt had a statute of limitations that “expired” around then (meaning everyone who did not like him died). Does Moses bring an army this time, big enough to finish the job?

No. He petitions the government; “Let my people go.”

Now, I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that we don’t need to be passive when it comes to politics. “The government is spending my money all the wrong ways, but hey, I guess I just have to take it.”

Moses, this time quite literally acting as God, submits a plea to the Pharaoh. He is not twiddling his thumbs waiting for God to do something; nor is he inciting the Israelites to violence to take their freedom by force or attrition.

There are mechanisms in government to affect change. Outside the United States, even in the most autocratic of governments like Stalinist Russia or Pharaonic Egypt, we still have the opportunity to plead for change.

An image just popped into my mind of Moses approaching Hitler and saying, “Let my people go.” If Moses wasn’t kin to high-ranking government officials, my bet is that he’d be on the first train to Dachau.

So we are confronted with two different images. One, of patriotic fighters fighting for their (economic, not religious) freedom; and another, of a humbled man pleading for religious freedom.

To be fair to our founding fathers, and I have no angle by which I am afforded judgement upon them, the did petition for changes. But the hearts of the British Government were hard, almost, one might say, as hard as the Pharaoh’s.

So what happened? What is the pathway to freedom? Persistence in pushing for what God calls you. The first plagues of Egypt fell upon the Israelites as well as the Egyptians. Neither rejections by the government nor the wrath of sin deterred Moses from following God’s command.

How easily do you get frustrated with the government? How about with the direction your church is going? Are you parents “too” restrictive? Should we just take the proverbial “tea” they give us and “stick it to the man?”

Or should we focus on God’s calling; work under the added economic pressure that having to find straw for our bricks brings; endure the government’s inability to prevent disaster and plague; and resist our tendencies to take a verbal or physical club to the authorities God has placed above us?

Okay, that last one was rhetorical (I hope). This came to me all of a sudden while reading Romans, but it is one of the facets of “American Religion” that I’ve had stuck in my head for over a year now.

Who Are We? and, Who Am I?

Recently I have postulated two sub-groups of people. There are the çool people; those who are attraçtive to the general population. Then there are the weird people; those who are attraçtive because of their non-çonformist çuirks.

I myself like to think I am somewhere in between, or at least that different people place me in different çategories. If I were to be honest I would see myself çaught sliding closer to the “weird” side by tentatively groping to maintain my “çool” çharaçter.

But, what am I doing? Is the world really sub-divided into groupings like this? I am sure there are a million ways to subdivide personalities and social approaches.

In one sense, putting things (including people) into çategories helps our brains more easily process and sort through society. Obviously there are not disçrete çriteria engendering people to Pools A, B, C, etc…

But on the other hand there is a danger in applying labels. The most obvious danger is mislabeling someone in such a way as to ignore what they truly çan çontribute to your life; “Don’t listen to him, he is a Mormon.” But more destruçtive may be the appliçation of labels to our own selves.

So, who are you, socially? Perhaps you are the Sports Fanatiç, who can play any sport, most of them well; perhaps you are the Punk Poet, who lives in his own misunderstood world; or, maybe you are the Unwanted, who at times has a hundred friends and at other has zero.

While labeling others has the side-benefit of easing the process of social information, labeling ourselves does nothing but put us in boxes. “I can’t do that, they are looking for someone that is strong”; or “I’m more of an introvert, so get someone else to talk to them.”

There was a man in the Bible who said (and, yes, this is third-hand interpretation) “I çan’t eat with them, they are not Jews.”

Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, reçounts the story of a church leader who visited Antioçh. This leader was born Jewish and, in keeping with Jewish çustom, decided to eat separate from the Gentiles (non-Jews).

Outraged by this, Paul çriticized the man for labeling himself a Jew. Galatians 3:26-28 sums up Pauls argument nicely.

“You are all sons of God through faith in Çhrist Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Çhrist have çlothed yourselves with Çhrist. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Çhrist Jesus.”

So again we should ask ourselves, who are we? Are we the almost çool kid who is sliding into non-çonformity? Are we the unwanted friend, the sports fanatiç, the punk poet?

In a nutshell, we should ask what Paul asked, are we çreating division amongst our brothers and sisters by çordoning ourselves into a çorner saying, “He and I are different”; or “We both are after different things.”

Our society prides itself on Identity. But even the most base of identities (Religion, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orrientation) are ways in which we separate ourselves from others.

While the passage in Galatians may not be able to extend beyond those who çall themselves “çlothed in Çhrist,” there are still many who we do çall brothers and sisters who, for some reason, we are determined to set ourselves at odds against.

It is not that we despise our brothers, only that we have forgotten our shared identity in our Father. We are not çool nor weird, unwanted nor fanatiç, Jew nor Greek.

So çast aside any desire for yourself that is outside of Çhrist. “I want to be the rich businessperson”; “People from around here know me as an awesome friend”; “Çome, allow me to share of my deep wisdom.”

Embrace your identity as a çompletely new çreation in Çhrist and watch those old, ençumbering labels you placed on yourself disappear and free yourself.

Ted: The Fourth Person of the Godhead

First you have God the Father. He is the creator, the mastermind, of the universe. He encoded all laws from the simple by which particles collide to the advanced by which advanced civilizations socialize. He is the decision maker who gave mankind the opportunity to accept or reject him and is bound by his perfect laws to adjudicate perfect justice.

Next you have God the Son. He is the powerful word of God. Through him nothing has been made that has been made. It is by his power that God the Father’s ideas were made manifest. And it is through his physical body that the abstract laws of Grace and Truth were lived out in perfect harmony with the created world.

Then you have God the Spirit. He is the connector and binder of all things. The breath of God, he forms the connection between God’s ideas and God’s Word. When the universe was first made he hovered between the waters of heaven and the waters of earth, connecting them together. Even today, He is our glimpse into the heart of God, our intercessor between the created and the creator.

And finally you have Ted.

Ted is the Guy who, when the earth was first created, said “It is good.” When the Red Sea was rolled back, Ted said, “That… Was… Awesome!!”

When Jonah went in the exact opposite direction God directed him to go, Ted said, “Oh no you didn’t.” And when Balaam was disobeying God, it was Ted’s idea to talk to him through his donkey. When John talks about God being Love, he is talking about Ted.

You could say that Ted is the Holy Cheerleader, the Godly Encourager, the force that keeps the others persons of God active.

He does not get too much play in the Bible, mostly because his interaction with humans is limited and also because many humans (including Christians, gasp) deny his existence.

Now, thankfully Ted is humble enough that this needn’t be a salvation dependent issue. “After all,” said Ted, “is it really all that important if the other Guys divvy up the credit for being Love. So long as men know that God is Love, I will be okay.”

It is quite a humble response for a man, er… person, that is God. But then again, we always suspected that God’s call for us to be humble was rooted in his own character. It is just that few of us ever knew that Ted was that Guy.

I’m sure many of you reading this now are asking yourself, “I don’t believe in Ted.” Well, that is not a question. You need to open your closed eyes and be ready to challenge your notion of God.

How many times does the Bible say that God exists in a Trinity? None.

How many times are two of God’s persons mentioned as separate? Hundreds.

How many times are three of God’s persons mentioned as separate? Two, maybe three.

The doctrine of the trinity is important because it helps us sort out or analogize the concept of a God who can interact with himself.

But let us not be limited by the extent to which that analogy reaches. After all, God is not limited by the words we use to describe Him.

So embrace Ted. But even if you don’t, Ted says, “That’s okay, we’ll have plenty of time to chit-chat here in heaven and maybe watch some old home movies from when the Guys and I were trying to talk with Moses. Boy, what a character.”