GENESIS
1: THE CREATION
.
TEXT: GENESIS
1:1–2:4
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Introduction to
chapter one
The Bible begins with the words “In the
beginning.” That is the name of the
first book of the Bible in Hebrew,
because the books are named by their
first words. In Greek, the name is Génesis,
brought into English as our name for the
first book as well. It means “coming to
be.” The book is concerned primarily
with the coming to be of the covenant
people of God, but also with the coming
to be of the world.
Genesis is the introduction to the first
five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch,
and to the history of the people of
Israel.1 The bulk of Genesis
is the account of the patriarchs
(Genesis chapters 12– 50). There we find
a description of the origin of the
people of Israel. But the people of
Israel were not the first human beings,
and human history did not begin with the
events narrated in Genesis 12, the call
of the first patriarch, Abraham.
The beginning of the human race is
recounted in Genesis 1–11. These
chapters form an “introduction to the
introduction” and tell us briefly of the
origins of the human race, of the
fundamental realities we encounter as
human beings, and of human civilization.
But creation did not begin with the
human race. Chapter 1 goes back to the
very beginning of creation and situates
the beginning of the human race in that
context. It tells us what was there at
the outset – God. As it says in
Psalm 90:2:
Before the mountains
were brought forth, or ever you had
formed the earth and the world, from
everlasting to everlasting you are
God.
God with his creative
power was there in the beginning, and
he was the origin of everything else.
In this chapter we will look at
Genesis 1. The account of creation in
Genesis 1 does not end until the first
few verses of chapter 2, but for
convenience, we will refer to the
whole account as Genesis 1. It is here
that we will begin. What comes first
lays the foundation for what comes
after, and we will see that this is a
repeating pattern in stage after stage
of God’s plan for the human race.
One of the main questions that comes
up for most readers of Genesis 1 (and
Genesis 1–11) is “how literally” to
take what the text says. The
exposition of the texts in the first
part of this book simply approaches
the narrations as they present
themselves. The issue of how literally
to take the texts is reserved to the
second part of the book – in the
methodological discussion “2.
Scriptural Interpretation and Literary
Genre” p. 447, where the position is
upheld that we should only take a text
as literally as the text is intended
to be taken.
In that same second part of the book,
we will also take up historical
questions that are often raised about
the account in Genesis 1. How does the
account relate to what we know from
modern science? Where does it fit in
human history? (see “2. Scriptural
Interpretation and Literary Genre,” p.
447 and “9. Historical Reliability,”
p. 519).
In this book, we are not going to be
mainly interested in the historical
questions about the people and events
we will be discussing. We will use
understandings of the events narrated
in Scripture that are historically
defensible according to modern
scholarly historiography, but we will
not engage in defenses of the
positions we have adopted. We are
interested in how as Christians we
should understand these people and
events. For that we will primarily
rely on both testaments, including the
typological and spiritual
interpretations they contain.
Creation
The Bible begins with a solemn
opening, one unique in human
literature for its simplicity and
power. The first verse states:
In the beginning
God created the heavens and the
earth.
There was an origin to
the universe that we live in, and that
origin was due to God. He created or
made heaven and earth. This
means he created everything, since heaven
and earth is a scriptural idiom
for saying “all there is.” Everything
other than himself, then, came into
existence by God’s action
(Revelation 4:11; Hebrews 11:3; 2
Maccabees 7:28–29). This has been
traditionally described as creation out
of nothing, sometimes referred to by
using the Latin creatio ex nihilo.
Beginning with verse 3, we have the six
days of God’s work of creation. Each day
is described within the same verbal
structure, starting with and God
said, and ending with and
there was evening and morning, [another]
day. At the end comes the seventh
day. The opening in verse 1 and the
closing in verse 4a2 frame
the account (marked by an inclusion):3
Genesis 1, then, is the account of the
creation of the heavens and earth, all
things.
Before the six days of creation begin,
the account sets the scene for God’s
action of creation in a way that
intensifies the dramatic nature of what
is to follow. The second verse says,
The earth was
without form and void, and darkness
was upon the face of the deep; and the
spirit of God was moving over the face
of the waters.
The verse speaks of
the earth being absent or empty – probably the former
since the earth is not created until the
third day – perhaps a way of
saying there was no place for us. It
speaks about formless waters (the deep
or the abyss) that go down on
and on, darkness covering everything. We
are looking out, and there is no
identifiable thing, no thing in
particular, to be found. Moreover, there
are no boundaries, no perceptible outer
limits to what we see, no horizon. There
is only an indistinct darkness. Then we
can sense something like a breeze or a
wind beginning to move. The spirit of
God is starting to work.
Whether the description in verse 2 is of
a pre-existent formless or unknown state
as a contrast to what is to come or a
way of saying that there was nothing at
the outset, verse 3, the beginning of
God’s work of creation, presents the
incomprehensible creative power of God
beginning to act:
And God said, “Let
there be light”; and there was
light.
All of a sudden
there is a blinding flash, something
too powerful for human beings to
imagine, something too powerful for
human beings to endure.4 We
are fortunate not to be there, only to
be told about it by the only one who
was present.
Even in modern science, light is
understood to be special – pure energy. We
would not want to be struck by
lightning. We do not want to stare at
the sun. A soft candlelight would burn
us if we touched it. But behind the
light that entered this world was God;
for God is light as the Apostle
John tells us (1 John 1:5). The light
that appeared at the outset of
creation was directly connected to God
himself, who dwells in
unapproachable light (1 Timothy
6:16).
The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:6
quoted the words in Genesis by saying,
God…said, “Let light shine out of
darkness” or to use his next
phrase in the darkness. He seemed to
be saying that when God in Genesis
said, Let there be light, he
was not bringing light itself into
existence. Rather, as many Christian
Fathers and early Jewish interpreters
have held, he was determining that the
uncreated light of his own being shine
in the nothingness and begin the
process of creation.5
This, however, does not mean that all
light is uncreated. There is, for
instance, sunlight – energy of limited
extent – and we exist as
beneficiaries of that light. The
description of the events in day 4 of
creation speaks about the sun and moon
and stars, created beings, as
“lights.” We ourselves, when we strike
a match, in a certain way bring some
created light into existence.
However, the existence of created
lights is a participation in the
uncreated light, which is God himself
and his word. His light, uncreated
light, enables created lights to exist
and function. Like all created things,
a created light truly exists as a
limited being, but only because it is
sustained by the Creator God and
participates in, that is, draws the
kind of existence it has
from, his nature as light. When God
said “Let there be light,” his own
uncreated power was bringing into
existence the created order.
The shining forth of God’s light into
the nothingness was not just a work of
power. It was also a work of wisdom
(Psalm 104:24; Proverbs 3:19–20;
Proverbs 8:22–31; Job 28:20–28). God
spoke and the created world came into
existence. His speech was a word of
command, and as a command it stated
what the result of his speech should
be. It contained in itself the nature,
or plan, or rationality, of the
universe. God not only brought into
existence the created universe, he
formed it in a wise way. The word of
God was not just speech, but the
speech that comes from reason or
wisdom or, more likely, reason itself,
the divine reason, the divine wisdom.
The created result of light shining
forth is not an unformed chaos, but a
formed or ordered whole, an
intelligible structure, a whole that
is structured to be something good.
For the most part, we find ourselves
occupied by particular things within
our experience: a meal to eat, a task
assigned by our boss, a friend to
help. Some people may get no further
than that. But most people, at some
point, are impressed by the pervasive
background of their life.
Yes, there are meals, assignments, and
friends. Nonetheless, there is a world
in which all these occur, and this
background has an unchallengeable
stability. Gravity takes over when we
drop something. The sun rises and sets
and gives us warmth and light. At
night the stars come out and go
through a pattern of movement that
does not change year after year.
Now, with modern science, we have a
complex and vast, though still
limited, description of how these
things happen, and we have found more
change over time than we perceive in
our ordinary experience. Nonetheless,
can we affect that? Can we alter it?
Can we get the star Sirius to rise a
second earlier or gravity to reverse
direction? We know we cannot.
God could. God simply said, “Let there
be light,” and there was light. He
spoke and it came to be; he
commanded and it stood forth, as
Psalm 33:9 says. We cannot imagine how
there could be
nothing or formless matter, then all
of sudden a word from God, light
bursting forth, and afterwards things
coming into existence. But that, the
opening description of Genesis tells
us, is the ultimate fact about this
universe we find ourselves in. In the
beginning God already was, and it was
his decision and his command that
everything come into existence.
Moreover it came into existence the
way he said it should.
As children we slowly emerge to
consciousness. At some point, if we
are fortunate, we come to know about
God and we learn that we too were
created. The beginning of Genesis is
not merely a description of a cause
and effect relationship, a
metaphysical statement about the
origin of the universe that indicates
the existence of a First Cause. The
beginning of Genesis tells us
something important about our own
existence as mere creatures.
Because God created everything, he has
the right to determine what everything
should be and do. We can see this
principle stated in Isaiah 45:9–12:
“Woe to him who
strives with his Maker, an earthen
vessel with the potter! Does the
clay say to him who fashions it,
‘What are you making’? or ‘Your work
has no handles’? Woe to him who says
to a father, ‘What are you
begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With
what are you in travail?’” Thus says
the LORD, the Holy
One of Israel, and his Maker: “Will
you question me about my children,
or command me concerning the work of
my hands? I made the earth, and
created man upon it; it was my hands
that stretched out the heavens, and
I commanded all their host.”
A clay pot simply
has to accept the decision of the
potter about what it should be and
how it should function. Because a
father is the source of his son, a
new human being, he has an authority
over his son and a responsibility
for him. The same is even truer of
the relationship of God and his
creation. The same is true of God
and each one of us.
God created everything. Because he
created everything, he has authority
over and responsibility for
everything. He is the one who knows
how everything should go, because he
created everything for a purpose
(Isaiah 46:8–11; Ephesians 1:11;
Proverbs 16:4, etc.). Therefore, if
we want to live in the way that we
are made to live, we need to
understand God’s mind and his
purpose. If we want to live within
creation and in harmony with the way
creation is supposed to be, then we
need to cooperate with him, the one
who made it.
THE CREATION OF THE
WORLD
The creation
The first sections of Genesis 1 have more
to tell us about the nature of creation,
the world we live in. After the appearance
of light and the separation of light from
darkness, the account says,
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, one day.
There
is a detail here, one that is easily
overlooked. It says, there was evening
and there was morning, one day. We
would be inclined to say “the first day,”
especially since we find the next days
described as the second day, the third
day, and so on to the seventh. Many
traditional Jewish and Christian
commentators, however, saw the difference
in phrasing to be significant.
In this understanding, “one day” indicates
that the first day, the beginning, was
special. When light shone in the darkness,
day began and all of creation came into
existence. The rest of the days of
creation unfolded what already had been
done on the first day, the day that
the Lord God made heaven and earth
(Genesis 2:4). The shining forth of light
into nothingness is in principle the
creation of everything.
The first three days of creation recount
the beginning steps of creation. Light
appears. Then heaven appears, creating a
space in the middle of the waters. Then
the dry land appears in that space,
separating the earth and the seas. All
three of these are described in terms of a
division or separation. God lets the light
shine in the darkness and separates the
light from the darkness. God then creates
the “firmament” (RSV), perhaps a “dome”
(NAB) or an “expanse” (NIV), and separates
the waters above and the waters below. God
then creates the earth and separates the
land from the seas. In all three days
there is a shaping of creation into
distinct realms.
The starting point is emptiness or at
least formlessness. Then God steps in, and
as he creates, he makes a separation here,
a separation
here, and a separation here, and so brings
order into his creation. Creation is the
bringing into existence of an ordered
whole. The very word cosmos, the
word derived from the Greek that we use
for the totality of material creation,
means that it is an ordered whole.
The second three days – days
4, 5, and 6 –
involve the creation of beings who
populate the places created in the first
three days. The fourth day, when the sun,
the moon, and the stars were created,
seems somewhat different from the fifth
and sixth days. We would not think the
sun, moon, and stars to be living beings
in the same way as other creatures.
Nonetheless, they move, even though their
movement is limited to a set path. In
fact, what we see in the text is a
progression from the creation of things in
the first three days that do not move but
are the spaces in which things can move,
to things that move in a set path, to
things that have freedom of movement
(birds, fish, and land animals), and then
to things that not only have freedom of
movement but also can choose how to live
and so where to move (human beings).
The first three days of creation and the
second three days of creation roughly
correspond to one another. On the fourth
day, we have the creation of the sun, the
moon, and the stars. They are the beings
that “rule over” what had been created on
the first day, the day and the night. They
are the beings that mark off the units of
time, especially the times for the sacred
observances within each year and from year
to year, the divisions that should be the
background of human life. They are also
the beings that give light to the earth.
Then on the fifth day we have the creation
of the fish and birds, who occupy what had
been created on the second day, the sky
and the sea. On the sixth day we have the
creation of the animals that live on the
dry land, which had been established on
the third day, and the human race, which
also lives on the dry land but is intended
to rule over all living creatures.
The result is a habitable, limited dry
land in an ordered, formed creation. But
outside of that cosmos, as far as we can
see, there is only darkness and the abyss.
In creation, the Lord formed an ordered
world of definite things, something good,
in the midst of the kind of nothingness that prevailed in
verse 2. As a created world, it only stays in
existence, is sustained rather than falls back
into nothingness, by the action of God, but, as
we will see, is constantly threatened by that
nothingness.
The later Scriptures indicate that from the
darkness and abyss comes an opposition to God’s
work that produces corruption and destruction,
what is described as the kingdom of darkness
(Colossians 1:13). The Apostle John,
speaking of the course of God’s work of creation
and salvation, going on even now but begun on
day one, said the light shines in the
darkness and the darkness has not overcome it
(John 1:5). Other places in the Scriptures
speak of conflict with various beings in the
course of the work of creation (e.g., Psalm
74:12–14; 89:8–10; Job 26:11–12; Is 51:9–11).
From the abyss [RSV: the bottomless pit] can
come various hostile beings (Revelation 9:11;
11:7; 20:1–3).
As we shall see, at the end of this present time
night shall be no more (Revelation 21:25, 22:5),
and the action of God will triumph and secure
the existence of his good creation. But in the
meantime not everything goes smoothly. In
Genesis 1, however, this opposition does not
appear and all is simply the good work of God.
As the first chapter of the Bible this is the
overriding perspective, the background within
which all subsequent challenges to God’s plan
need to be seen (Psalm 89:11).
In summary, creation is an ordered whole. Even
as the creation itself is described as an
imposition of order, so the narrative, the very
way the creation is described, is seeking to
present the creation story in an orderly
fashion. The account seems to be written in a
way that itself makes a point about the creation
that it is describing, namely, that the creation
in its initial goodness flows from God, that the
creation has an order and harmony that comes
from God himself, and that God’s work involves
actively forming and establishing the creation
in the face of the alternative of chaos and
nothingness.
Reading the Old Testament
in the Light of the New
The presence of the
Trinity
There is a long-standing Christian perspective
on the beginning verses of Genesis that many
Christians nowadays are not familiar with, what
we might call a Trinitarian perspective. To
begin with, in the text of Genesis, God’s
creative work is connected with his word and
with his spirit. Verse 3 says, God said, “Let
there be light,” and there was light.
Things happen as God speaks through his
almighty word. In verse 2 we also see the
presence of the spirit of God: the spirit
of God was moving over the face of the
waters. The spirit of God is present and
at work; the word of God goes forth; the
realities of the universe are created.
This description of creation is developed
further in Psalm 33, which contains a short
summary of the truth stated in Genesis 1. In
Psalm 33:6 we read,
By the word of the Lord
the heavens were made, and all their host by
the breath of his mouth.
The
word “breath” is another English translation
of the words for “spirit,” both in Hebrew and
in Greek, and it was through God’s breath or
spirit and through God’s word that the heavens
were made.6
There is an obvious connection between the
breath and the word. When people speak, they
breathe out and form the breath into sounds.
The word and breath come out together from the
speaker and belong to him, the word expressing
the meaning or reason of his action and the
breath the power behind the speaking. Psalm
33, probably based on Genesis 1, understands
God’s word and his spirit as his agents of
creation. God acted by speaking a word, and
therefore acted by sending forth his word and
spirit (breath).
Many Christian teachers have seen these verses
as a reference to the action of the Persons of
the Trinity in creation. To some extent this
view is based on Old Testament texts like
Psalm 33, as we have seen, and Psalm 107:20
which speaks about God sending forth his word,
… he sent forth his word, and healed them And
delivered them from destruction
and Psalm 104:30 which speaks about sending
forth his spirit:
When
you send forth your spirit, they are
created and you renew the face of the
earth.
Although the Old Testament
speaks about God’s word and his spirit as if
they were agents of creation, seemingly
somewhat separate from God, they are his own
word and spirit, and therefore also divine.
In the New Testament we see even clearer
statements. The Apostle Paul says in 2
Corinthians 3:6 that the Spirit gives
life. The Spirit of God then, is a
life-giver and so a creator.
The word of God is also a creator. The key
place where we see this is in John 1:1–3, a
commentary on Genesis 1:1, beginning with
the same words as Genesis 1:1—In the
beginning.
In
the beginning was the Word and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.… All
things were made through him, and without
him was not anything made that was made.
This Word (of God) was the
one through whom all things were made,
or in whom all things were created
(Colossians 1:16). To say, then, that the
Word was the one who created all things is
to say that he is divine, because the one
true God is the one who created all things,
and the only one who created all things.
Therefore, the Gospel of John says the
Word was God [RSV] or the Word was
divine.
What was God’s word when he created all
things? God said Let the light shine out
of (or in) the darkness.
The Word of God was the light that shone in
the darkness. This Word was “true God from
true God, light from light,” as the Nicene
Creed puts it. This was the Word who
became flesh (John 1:14) in Jesus
Christ.
When we say that Genesis 1:1–3 contains a
Trinitarian reference, we are not
necessarily saying that the authors of
Genesis or Psalm 33 conceived of God as
three hypostases or three persons in one
substance (being), to use the formulae of
the early Christian creeds. We are, however,
saying that now that we know about the
Trinity through Christian revelation, now
that we understand that there is one God in
three hypostases or persons, we can go back
and ask whether the
Trinity was manifested at all in the Old
Testament.
Many of the Fathers said that of course
the Trinity was manifested, and one place
we can see that is in the first verses of
Genesis. When Genesis talks about God
speaking (with his word and his spirit or
breath), it is speaking about a
threefoldness in God. We now know, as a
result of the Incarnation of God’s Son,
the Word, and as a result of the
outpouring of the Spirit, that the Trinity
was being spoken about in the first
chapter of Genesis. The threefoldness to
which these verses refer is manifested
more fully in the New Testament, and was
understood better after the discussions of
the early Christian Fathers that led to
the creedal statements of the early
ecumenical councils.7
To read the Old Testament in the light of
the New, then, does not mean that we
necessarily think that Old Testament
authors understood things the way
Christians do. Probably they did not,
unless they had some special revelation.
It means, however, that we now understand
some things about God and his plan that
they did not. As a consequence, we can see
some things in the Old Testament that old
covenant readers would not have seen,
either because we know something more
about the realities of which they speak or
because we know something more about what
God was aiming at. In doing so, we are not
adding anything to the text or reading
anything into it.8
To use an example, when whalers three
hundred years ago said that there were
great fish called whales in certain areas
of the world, and their blubber gave
useful oil, we know perfectly well what
they were talking about and agree with
what they said. However, we would not
describe whales as fish but as mammals,
because they take their oxygen from the
air, not from the water, using lungs, not
gills. Earlier, anything that swam in the
waters and used fins for locomotion was
called a fish.
We have changed our terminology because we
have a more developed (and useful)
understanding of biological structure, so
we would not classify whales as fish
anymore. But the whalers of old and
writers who passed on what they said were
talking about the same animals we are, and
saying true things about them. We have no
trouble in finding those animals and
verifying what those older authors said
about them, even though we have a more
developed knowledge of the animals – and we rightly read
what they said in the light of our more
developed knowledge about whales.
In a similar way, as a result of the
coming of Christ and of the Trinitarian
discussions in the patristic period, we
would now speak of the Spirit of God as
a distinct hypostasis or person in the
Trinity. But the human author of Genesis
was talking about one and the same
Spirit of God we are, and saying true
things about him, things that we can
recognize and accept. He was in fact
talking about the Holy Spirit, the same
Holy Spirit Christians believe in. And
likewise he was talking about the same
Word of God Christians believe in. So
when we say that the Triune God was at
work in the creation, we are not
contradicting what the text of Genesis
is saying or reading something into it
that was not there. We understand it in
a fuller way because we have more
knowledge about the Spirit of God and
the Word of God.
THE CREATION
OF THE HUMAN RACE
The human
Day three and day six correspond to
one another in the order of account of
creation because they both have two
acts of creation, not just one. On
day three God makes earth (the dry
land) appear, separated from the
sea, and then in a second action God
creates plants to cover it. On day
six God creates the land animals and
then in a separate action creates
human beings to rule the fish,
birds, and animals. Days three and
six seem to be a center of focus
toward which the account is leading.
On the third day the place of main
concern, earth (dry land) covered
with plants, the source of animal
life (Genesis 1:29–30), is created.
On the sixth day, the living beings
of main concern, land animals and
human beings, are created. The goal
of the work of which God did in
creation (Genesis 2:3) is
human beings who live with animals
on the vegetation-covered earth.
The completion of the work of
creating material beings in Genesis
1, then, occurs in the second part
of the sixth day with the creation
of the human race. Not only does it
describe the last act of creation,
but it is also the lengthiest
account and one that is special in
several ways. It begins this way:
Then God said,
“Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness; and let them
have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the birds of the
air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon
the earth.” So God created man in
his own image, in the image of God
he created him; male and female he
created them. And God blessed
them, and God said to them, “Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill
the earth and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the air and
over every living thing that moves
upon the earth.”
Verse 26 [RSV]
says, Let us make man in our own
image. The Hebrew word
translated as “man” is “‘adam.”
“Adam” can be used as a corporate
term in Hebrew, meaning “human race”
or “humanity,” as well as the proper
name of an individual human being.
Sometimes, in fact, the word
translated in the RSV as the proper
name “Adam” is translated by others as just
“human,” because the meaning of the
name of the first human being in
Hebrew is “human.”
In addition, the text shifts back
and forth from the singular to the
plural: Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the birds of
the air. God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he
created them. The word adam,
then, is the antecedent of both a
singular and a plural pronoun. This
implies that Adam was an individual,
but he also was humanity. This first
individual human being sums up and
represents – and begins – the whole human
race.
Adam, then, is “The Human.”
Throughout the Scripture a name
often reveals something of the
identity and significance of the
person (as the name Abraham means
“the father of the people” and the
name Joshua or Jesus means “the one
who brings salvation”). So the name
of this particular individual – Adam, Human – indicates who
he is. He is the human race, the
beginning of the human race, the
head of the human race, and the
father of the human race. He is,
simply put, “The Human Being.”
Two truths
In this text we have two facts about
the way Adam is created and
therefore about the way the human
race is created: first, that the
human race is created in the image
of God, and second, that the human
race is created male and female.
These are the two primary truths
that we are told about God’s
creation of the human race: God created
man in his own image … male and
female he created them
(Genesis 1:27).
These two facts are connected in a
parallelism to two commands. The
first command is, Have dominion
over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing that
creeps upon the earth (Genesis
1:27). This first command, to rule
or exercise dominion, is connected
to the first fact: The reason that
the first human beings can and
should rule is because they are
created in the image of God and so
are capable of representing God.
Human beings, the human race, were
created to share God’s rule over his
creation.
We can see something of what it
means to be in the image of God by
looking at Genesis 5:3, where we
have a reference to the birth of
Seth, born as the son of Adam and
described as in Adam’s “image and
likeness.” Image and likeness,
when used in regard to human
beings, can be a way of speaking
about sonship and so a sameness of
nature. Therefore, as Seth was the
son of Adam, Adam (the human race)
was the son of God.
Such an understanding can also be
found in the Gospel of Luke, which
traces Christ’s genealogy back to
Adam, and then traces Adam’s back
to God himself. Luke makes God
part of the genealogy, concluding
the genealogy by saying: … who
was the son of Adam, who was the
son of God (Luke 3:38). The
reference to image and likeness in
Genesis 1:26, then, is an
indication that Adam is created to
be the son of God and to be like
God as a son is like his father.
To see what is involved for a
human to be in the image of God,
we should begin by looking at what
God is like in Genesis 1, the text
that describes human beings as in
God’s image. God orders creation.
He determines what things are and
how they are to act. He names them
and so can identify them. He
speaks in a personal way to those
who are capable of understanding
speech. He acts with a purpose in
mind, a final vision of what he is
trying to bring about. The result
of his action is good.
To be in the image of God does not
mean that we are omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, that is,
all-powerful, all-knowing and
everywhere present, and so on. If
we were, we would be God, not one
of his creatures. We do not have
the same (divine) nature as he
has. But we are nonetheless like
him. To be created according to
God’s image is to be like him in
the ways he acts in Genesis 1,
that is, to be a rational agent,
an agent who can act with wisdom
and understanding, deliberately
bringing about a good world.
There is, however, another aspect
of being in the image of God that
we might miss. It does not have to
do solely with intelligence and
with power to do things, but also
with good character. Good
character is the developed
orientation to seeking that the
things we do are good
(desirable). It especially
involves seeking that the things
we bring about are morally good
(desirable because they uphold
the good order of the universe).
We can see this in the book of
Colossians in an exhortation
about being in the image of God:
Do not lie
to one another, seeing that
you have put off the old
nature [literally, old human
being] with its practices and
have put on the new nature
[literally, new human being],
which is being renewed in
knowledge after the image of
its creator.… Put on then, as
God’s chosen ones, holy and
beloved, compassion, kindness,
lowliness, meekness, and
patience, forbearing one
another and, if one has a
complaint against another,
forgiving each other; as the
Lord has forgiven you, so you
also must forgive. And above
all these put on love, which
binds everything together in
perfect harmony. (Colossians
3:9–14)
This
exhortation begins with
encouragement to put off the old
nature, the one we are born
with, and put on the new nature.
The new nature is one that is
renewed after (in accordance
with) the image of God. Then,
when the passage continues to
explain what that is like, we
have a list of good character
traits, moral virtues, traits
that God has and that we need to
have if we are in his image.
Therefore, the human race, if it
is renewed in the image of God,
should be like him in his
character and as a result make
use of the power and authority
that God gives to order the
world in a good way, a moral
way, a beneficial way. If we
make use of our nature to rule
but rule in a bad way, we may
not have destroyed but we have
certainly marred the image of
God in us – as fallen
human beings regularly do.
Many of the early Christian
Fathers distinguished between
the image and the likeness of
God in human beings. They
understood the image of God as
the nature given us and the
likeness of God as something we
need to attain by growth in
character. In such an
understanding, we are in the
image of God, but we need to
grow in the likeness of God.
The extent of good human
responsibility in a situation,
then, depends on the extent to
which we are like God in the
way we exercise the
responsibility we have been
given. The more like God we
become in the way we act, the
more we do what is good, the
more effectively we can govern
as his representatives,
bringing creation to the
purpose for which he made it.
Our exercise of the authority
God has given us has important
consequences for what happens
on earth, and if we exercise
this authority the way he
would, we will see good
results, results that will
fulfill what his purpose was
in creating the world in the
first place.
The second command to the
first human beings is be
fruitful and multiply and
fill the earth. The
second command is connected to
the second fact, namely that
the human race is created male
and female. After human beings
are created male and female,
they are commanded to be
fruitful and multiply. The
creation of sexual
differentiation is connected
to the command to be fruitful
and multiply, or, as we might
put it, a primary purpose of
sexual differentiation,
certainly the primary purpose
according to Genesis 1, is to
have children. That in turn
should result in human beings
filling the earth.
It is not only human beings
that are created male and
female. The animals are as
well. Being male and female is
a characteristic human beings
share with the animals, a
manifestation of their animal
nature, because both humans
and animals reproduce
sexually. God, on the other
hand, is not male and female.
Unlike human beings and the
rest of the animal kingdom,
unlike Pagan gods, he does not
increase and multiply. There
is only one God and never will
be another.
To say that human beings were
created male and female is to
say that they, unlike God, but
like the animals, can and
should have offspring in order
to fulfill the purpose for
which God created them. Being
male and female, the second
fact in this passage contrasts
with being in the image and
likeness of God, the first
fact in the passage.9 Both put
together say that we are
animals (with emphasis on the
way that we, like other
animals, reproduce), but at
the same time transcend
animality by our
rationality. To use another
biblical wording, we are
both earthly and heavenly in
the way we were created.
The second command also
tells us something important
about the developmental role
of human beings in God’s
creation. God created Adam
and Eve good in themselves,
and he created both of them
in his image and likeness.
But he did not create them
in a way in which they could
fulfill his command to rule
the earth all by themselves.
They had to increase and
multiply and fill the earth
with a race of human beings.
This would take time. In
other words, the human race
was made to complete God’s
work of creation and, in a
process of development, to
make his creation as a whole
into what he intended it to
be. The world was not
created perfect or complete –
although it was created good
in principle – but was
created to eventually
become completely what God
had in mind.
The connection of the two
commands to the two facts
about human nature shows us
something additional about
the way God’s commands
function. God commands us to
do things that are in
conformity to the way we are
made. His very first two
commands are not just
arbitrary requirements, but
follow from the nature of
human beings. We cannot say
that all of God’s commands
can be tied precisely to the
way we are created. In fact,
we shall see in the next
chapter of Genesis that he
does give a command that
does not seem to be tied to
our nature. But for the most
part God’s law is a
reflection of his creation.
His commands are not usually
arbitrary or simple tests of
obedience. And the most
important ones are not
commands just to deal with a
temporary situation. They
are for our own good and the
good of others, given to
enable us to express, by how
we act, the way in which we
are created, and they enable
us to accomplish the purpose
for which we and the things
around us were created.
This illustrates another
important fact about God’s
creation. Genesis 1 could
seem as if God simply does
everything that needs to be
done: he speaks the word and
creation simply comes into
existence. But Genesis 1
makes equally clear that
there is more to it. The
plants bring forth seeds
that become more plants; the
birds, fish, and other
animals increase and multiply;
the human beings do
likewise. All his
creatures take an active
role in furthering the
work of creation.
God brought into existence
a set of creatures, a part
of his creation, to
represent him by ruling
over that creation on his
behalf. He made those
creatures with an animal
nature and so capable of
reproducing so they could
gradually fill the
earth. And he made
them capable of ruling
over creation by bestowing
on them his image and
likeness. As the corporate
son of God, the human race
was to be God’s viceroy in
creation.
Presumably, God put the
human race in such a
position so that in a
certain way creation could
develop itself, since
human beings were part of
creation and could act as
created beings, who could
lead in the development of
creation –
although, of course, not
without God’s providential
sustaining power. But he
constituted them in such a
way that they would not
rule by their own
arbitrary or selfish
decision, but as his
ministers, ruling
according to true wisdom,
the wisdom that God gives
to those he made in his
image and likeness to be
partners with him in
bringing creation to its
full purpose.
Let us . . . There
is another feature of the
text on the creation of
the human race that seems
small, but that has been
the source of much
discussion. The passage
starts off by saying, Then
God said, “Let us make
man …” This itself
marks off the creation of
the human race from the
rest of creation as
something of special
importance. Instead of
just commanding something
to come to be, God
addresses “us” and calls
“us” to make man. This,
however, raises the
question: to whom is he
referring when he says
“us”?
There have been a number
of proposals about the
“us,” both over the
centuries and now in
scholarly writings. None
of these has received
universal agreement,
especially among modern
scholars. One of the
better proposals is that
God is here addressing his
heavenly court, made up of
angels, the hosts of
heaven. This has the
advantage that the rest of
the Bible has many
references to such beings.
It has, however, the
difficulty that these
beings have not been
mentioned in Genesis 1 as
either created or involved
in creation. It would be strange
to just refer to them as
if readers –
perhaps readers who are
reading the Bible for
the first time and start
at the beginning –
would understand that
the members of his
heavenly court were the
“us.” Moreover, they are
never spoken of as
involved in the work of
creating human beings.
The Medieval theologian
Thomas Aquinas,
representing a common
view, held that this
opinion was “perverse.”10
He said this because
most traditional
Christian interpreters
saw “us” as a reference
to the Trinity. This
view has the significant
advantage, especially
over understanding the
reference being to the
angels, that the “us” is
involved in an act of
creation, and the Hebrew
verb for “create” (at
least in the forms used
in our passage) is only
used of God. Moreover,
after speaking of
creating the human race
in “our” image and
likeness, the text
speaks of the fact that
the human race was
created in the image of
God. Such a phrasing has
the consequence that the
“us” was God. In other
words, as Aquinas
thought was important,
the “us” has to be
divine. As a result, the
passage lets us know
that there is some kind
of plurality in God.
We do not have to see
Aquinas’ view as any
more than a common
Christian
interpretation. We do
not have to see it as
the only one
interpretation a
Christian teacher can
take and be a faithful
Christian teacher.
However, it is likely
the leading
interpretation in
Christian tradition,
deserving of special
respect. More important
for our purposes here,
it shows the importance
Christian teachers have
placed upon the fact
that human beings are
created in the image and
likeness of God.
God’s
good work
After the creation of
the human race, God
establishes the
relationship of the
human race (and of all
animals) to the plant
kingdom:
And
God said, “Behold, I
have given you every
plant yielding seed
which is upon the face
of all the earth, and
every tree with seed
in its fruit; you
shall have them for
food. And to every
beast of the earth,
and to every bird of
the air, and to
everything that creeps
on the earth,
everything that has
the breath of life, I
have given every green
plant
for food.” And it was
so. And God saw
everything that he had
made, and behold, it
was very good. And
there was evening and
there was morning, a
sixth day. (Genesis
1:29–31)
This
passage describes God’s
provision for human
beings (and animals).
God provides for human
beings as a father
provides for his
children (and his
domestic animals), in
this case giving them
food. In fact, several
elements of God’s
fatherly care are shown
in this chapter. He
provides a place for the
human race to live; he
gives them work, the
responsibility of ruling
the material creation;
he calls them to take
his place of authority;
and finally he gives
them physical provision.
At the end of God’s work
of creation, which was
accomplished in the six
days, the text says, And
God saw everything
that he had made, and
behold, it was very
good. The results
of all he did were very
good, not only
intrinsically worthwhile
but also fulfilling the
purpose he set out to
accomplish.
The goodness of all
creation is an important
Christian (and Jewish)
teaching, one that has
often been a point of
controversy. In the
early church, one of the
greatest heresies was
Gnosticism, and a
fundamental tenet of
many forms of Gnosticism
was that the created,
material world was evil.
However, the Christian
teaching is that all
creation, including the
material world, was good
when it first came from
the hand of God. The
origin of evil in human
history first comes up
in Genesis 3, and we
will discuss that in the
next chapter.
THE
SEVENTH DAY
The first three verses
of the second chapter of
Genesis form a literary
unit with the first
chapter. They have the
same style and also
connect by content with
the material in chapter
1. They describe the
last day of the week of
creation:
Thus
the heavens and the
earth were finished,
and all the host of
them. And on the
seventh day God [had]
finished his work
which he had done, and
he rested on the
seventh day from all
his work which he had
done. And
[RSV: so] God
blessed the seventh
day and hallowed it,
because on it God
rested from all his
work which he had
done in creation.
The
text then adds, as we
have seen:
These
are the generations
of the heavens and
the earth when they
were created.
The
generations of the
heavens and the
earth seems to
mean the elements –
or elements in a
series –
that made up the
heaven and earth.
Creation is here
presented as having
lasted a week. The
seventh day comes at
the very end of the
section we are
referring to as
Genesis 1. When God
created the world, he
worked for six days
until he finished his
creation of heaven and
earth, and then he
rested (ceased) on the
seventh from all
his work which he
had done.
But what did God do
when he “rested” on
the seventh day? With
modern ideas of rest,
we might be tempted to
think he slept in to
recover from his work
week, or at least took
a long nap, or perhaps
headed for the beach.
But a study of the use
of “rest” in the
Scriptures shows that
it does not usually
imply inactivity, much
less engaging in
entertainment or
refreshing recreation.
Therefore, here it
most likely does not
refer to complete
inactivity but to a
different sort of
activity than “work”
does.
“Rest,” the
translation of two
different words in the
Hebrew Bible that are
rough synonyms (see
Gen 2:2–3 and Ex 20:11
where the two Hebrew
verbs are
interchanged), is used
in a somewhat
different way than in
ordinary English. As
in English these words
can be used for
ceasing work, mainly
for ceasing difficult
or laborious work. In
Isaiah 14:3, the
Hebrew Bible describes
a rest God would give
his people as “rest
from your pain and
turmoil and the hard
service with which you
were made to serve.”
“Rest” in Scripture is
especially used to
speak about the state
in which an individual
or people has become
free from enemy
attack, either because
they have fended it
off and so been
victorious or because
the enemy has lost the
ability to be
dangerous. For
instance, Second Samuel 7:11 reads,
and I will give you rest from all your
enemies. Fighting, whether in attack or
defense, was a very strenuous effort. To say,
then, that God rested on the seventh day seems
to imply that he was able to cease from what we
would understand to be the difficult or
burdensome work of bringing the creation he
wanted into existence, perhaps with a certain
amount of fighting.
“Rest,” however, is commonly used in a broader
way in the Bible. It is used, for instance, for
the kind of rest that involves creating a space
for celebration. Esther 9:17 describes the
celebration after the deliverance of the Jewish
people by saying, And on the fourteenth day
they rested and made that a day of feasting
and gladness. In other words, resting
(from work or fighting) creates a space for
feasting and gladness. Many overlook the
important truth that the sabbath day in the
Jewish calendar is a feast day – the primary feast day (Lev
23:1–3) – and so
is not “a day off,” but a day of celebrating the
goodness of the Lord.
“Rest” can even be used as a synonym for delight
(enjoying a good result that is finished).
Proverbs 29:17 says, Discipline your son,
and he will give you rest; he will give
delight to your heart. In Genesis 1:31 we
possibly see a similar indication as to what God
did on the sabbath feast day. There it says, And
God saw everything that he had made, and
behold, it was very good. In other words,
at the end of the sixth day, he had completed
his work of creation and, so to speak, stepped
back, looked at it, and was satisfied with what
he had done. He then took a day to rejoice or to
celebrate or to delight in what he had done. To
say that God rested on the seventh day therefore
seems to indicate that it was a time for God to
contemplate and enjoy a successful
accomplishment after striving, even fighting, to
reach his goal.
Genesis 2:3 adds that God blessed and
hallowed (made holy) the seventh day.
This could mean that he set it apart for a
special purpose. He made it a special day, the
way he set apart feast days for special
observance (cf. Nehemiah 8:9, 11). We probably
most naturally think that the phrase blessed
and hallowed means he set the seventh day
of our week apart so that we would observe it as
a day of rest.
Certainly God has set apart
the sabbath for a day of rest, for the Jews
especially, but also for Christians. We find
the commandment to do so in Exodus 20:8–11
when he requires it as part of the law. This
commandment is linked to the fact that God
rested on the seventh day:
Remember the sabbath day,
to keep it holy.… for in six days the LORD
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, and rested the seventh day;
therefore the LORD blessed
the sabbath day and hallowed it.
The
reason for the observance provided in the text
is the Lord’s example, and this has been a
very common reason given for God’s action as
described in the Genesis 1 account of
creation. God, in this view, intended to give
a good example of resting after a work week,
and we therefore should follow that example.
But Genesis 2:1–3 does not contain a command
to do likewise. It does not tell us to set
apart one day in seven for a day of rest. That
only comes after the Exodus, when God provided
manna for his people in the wilderness (Exodus
16:22–30) and then when he commanded them to
observe the seventh day as a sabbath to
the Lord (Exodus 20:8–11). This likely
indicates that the main significance of the
hallowing of the seventh day of Genesis 1 has
to do with God and not with us, even though
later on it was to be taken as an example to
imitate.
To hallow or to “make holy” or to “consecrate”
or to “sanctify” – all
possible translations of the Hebrew verb with
slightly different connotations in English – can
mean to set something created apart for God.
Setting something apart makes it a holy thing,
something that especially belongs to God. But
something becomes holy not only when human
beings set it apart for God, but also when he
becomes spiritually present in it, as when he
becomes present in a temple. In this case it
is made holy by his presence, as the Lord,
speaking of the door of the tent of meeting,
said,
There I will meet with the
people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified
by my glory;
I will consecrate the tent of meeting and
the altar. (Exodus 29:43)
If this is an aspect of
the meaning of hallowing the seventh day,
the fact that God hallows the seventh day
would indicate that he becomes especially
present in it. This meaning would also go
along with the fact that he blesses
and hallows the seventh day. We can
see in Exodus 33:14 that God’s presence is a
source of blessing and rest.
Making the day holy then is connected to
God’s rest on the seventh day. When someone
or something spiritual becomes present in
some place or thing, especially when they
become present in an ongoing or abiding way,
they are said, in the Hebrew idiom, to
“rest” there. Such an idiom is commonly used
of temples. When God established a
tabernacle or temple, he then came to rest
in it and dwell in it (Exodus 40:34–35; 1
Kings 8:10–11, Psalm 132:5, 8), hallowing
it, setting it apart as something that was
especially his. In so doing he filled it
with his presence and power, and from it
came salvation and blessing for his people
(Psalm 132:13–18).
The fact that God rests (dwells) in a temple
is significant for understanding the seventh
day because in the Torah the old covenant
teaching from God, the temple and the
sabbath are connected. In Leviticus 19:30 it
says, You shall keep my sabbaths and
reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD,
linking the two as if they were similar holy
things. The laws in Exodus about the
building of the tabernacle are linked with
laws about keeping the sabbath (Exodus
31:12–18; 35:1–3), indicating that the two
are related. The likely implication is that
the sabbath is like a temple in time, that
is, a time when God is especially present.
It, then, is the time when the purpose of a
temple is most fully achieved and the time
when those who observe the sabbath receive
blessing from God.
Finally, the description of the completion
of the temple seems to contain allusions, or
at least parallels, to the completion of the
work of creation.11 If that is
so, then creation itself is intended to be a
kind of temple, a place where God intends to
dwell. This truth is expressed more directly
in Isaiah 66:2, a passage that will be
discussed in the next section. These considerations
about God’s seventh day rest might well
indicate that the seventh day of creation
is a time when God rests in his creation
and makes it holy. These considerations
raise the question: when did God begin to
dwell in the temple of his creation?
The sabbath
and the age to come
The most common interpretation of the
seventh day given now by Christian
teachers is as a description of God
ceasing work and resting at the end of the
first week of creation, a time in the
distant past. From that is taken the
understanding that we are to imitate him
in observing the sabbath once a week, and
he will bless our doing so. But there is
another view of the seventh day in Genesis
1, namely, that it refers to something
that has not yet happened: the age to
come. God’s work of creation is not yet
completed, but will be in the age to come.
There is a special feature of the text
that seems to point toward the seventh day
as something that will happen in the
future. All the days so far in Genesis 1
have been described by saying there
was evening and there was morning, a
limited period of time. But there is no
evening and morning on the seventh day.
Some traditional commentators have said
that this indicates that the seventh day
is an eternal day. In addition, the text,
though similar, is also quite different
from the texts of the previous days. It
simply says three times, emphatically,
without the usual features of the
descriptions of the other days, that God
ceased from his work, indicating that the
work of creation was now all done.
Many have interpreted these things to mean
that the seventh day is an image or
symbol, perhaps even a prophecy, of the
age to come. In such a view, we are in the
sixth day.12 And there is
something yet to come, something that will
last for all eternity: the day of God’s
rest.
This understanding seems to be stated in
some places in the New Testament. Christ
himself spoke about God “still working.”
He said, My Father is working still,
and I am working (John 5:17). He
said this after having healed the
paralytic on the sabbath (and also having
warned him not to sin again). In doing
this he was imitating his heavenly Father
who even
on sabbaths now brings human beings into
existence and judges them, as Jewish
teachers of the time would admit. But, he
said, the hour is coming (John
5:28–29) when there will be a last
judgment. This seems to imply that after
the Christ comes again and summons the
dead from the tombs, God will then cease
from his work—at some future time.
Likewise, Second Peter, after describing
the Second Coming of Christ, which brings
the day of God, the new heavens and
new earth, concludes with a doxology to
Christ,
But grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both
now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
(3:18)
The
day of eternity probably refers to
the age to come that occurs after the
redeeming work of Christ will be
completed.
The view presented in these passages
builds upon a prophecy in Isaiah. Isaiah
65:17–25 speaks of the new creation, the
new heaven and the new earth to come, and
then in Isaiah 66:1–2, the Lord, probably
speaking of the dispensability of the
earthly temple building, says:
Heaven is my throne
and the earth is my footstool; what is
the house which you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest? All
these things my hand has made, and so
all these things are mine, …
In
other words, the heaven and the earth are
a temple in which the Lord rests, that is,
a temple in which he dwells and from which
he rules, seated on his throne. If the
Lord speaks of heaven and earth (the
cosmos) as a temple, then the seventh day
of Genesis 1, the day of the completion of
his creation, is the day on which he rests
in the temple of the cosmos.
In such a view the seventh day then would
be the day of the new creation in which
God dwells or takes up his full residence
in all of creation, having completed his
work of bringing it into
existence, filling it or ruling it, so
that it is fully his and fully pleasing
to him (Rev 21:1–8). It is the age to
come when all of his creation is fully a
holy place in a holy time, the day when
he will be everything to everyone
or all in all (1 Corinthians
15:28).
It is perhaps not common for Christians
or Jews now to look at the seventh day
of Genesis as a symbol or prophecy of
the age to come. Many Jews, however,
have done so. In the time of the second
temple in Jerusalem, during the liturgy
of the daily offering, “On the Sabbath
they [the Levite singers] sang A
psalm: a Song for the Sabbath Day,
a Psalm, a song for the time that is to
come, for the day that shall be all
Sabbath and rest in life everlasting” (Mishnah,
Tamid 7:4). Many of the Christian
Fathers have done so as well. For
example, Ephrem, the Syrian Church
Father, said of the seventh day in
Genesis, “It was given to them in order
to depict by a temporal rest, which he
gave to a temporal people, the mystery
of the true rest, which will be given to
the eternal people in the eternal world”
(Commentary On Genesis 1.32–33.2).
We can therefore see the seventh day as
the completion of God’s work of all
creation – when he does not
just rest in a single place (a temple)
or on a single day to be present to
bless his people as he does in the old
covenant (and in a different way in the
new covenant). Rather, he rests or fills
all of his creation, making it his,
making it holy, and making it something
that is completely according to his
will, completely his kingdom, completely
a realm of blessing. We will see the
significance of this in chapter 11 of
our study, when we look at the end of
the book of Revelation.
Genesis 1 is a mysterious part of
Scripture. It first of all speaks about
the beginning, so it is not surprising
to find it speaking in a hidden way of
all of God’s work of creation. But the
end is the time when the beginning is
fully established and complete, so it
would not be surprising to find it
speaking of the end as well. We might
add that the first and the last together
are a scriptural designation of God as
Creator of everything (e.g., Isaiah
44:6; Revelation 22:13), the one who
begins all things and brings them to
completion.
Moreover, as we have seen, the first chapter of Genesis
is presented in the form of an orderly
account. It is described as a week of
seven days, and it is encoded with the
number seven, the number of
completeness or perfection.13
The use of the number seven for the
seventh day, then, indicates the
complete and perfect order of creation
and of its goodness in the way God has
planned it and will complete it.
If the seventh day of creation refers
to the age to come, then we can see
Genesis 1 as the affirmation of God’s
good creative work. Whatever defects
we may see now in his creation, God is
not finished. When he is done,
everything will be very good and his
full intention will be accomplished.
When Christ comes again and raises the
dead, the human race will enter into a
life that is life indeed. If we take
this interpretation, we can see
Genesis 1 as the summary of all of
God’s work and read the rest of the
Scripture in the light of it.
There are, then, two understandings of
the seventh day, one that sees it as
the last day of the first week, the
original creation; and the second that
sees it as prophetic of the completion
of all creation at the end. We do not,
however, need to choose between the
two understandings of the seventh day,
especially if we note the significance
of the sabbath day and the
tabernacle/temple in this age. The
sabbath and temple together in this
age are the first fulfillment of the
seventh day of creation. They are the
feast time and holy place that are a
step toward establishing what God was
aiming for when he created material
things. They were therefore ordained
when the old covenant was established
on Sinai. They also, however, point
toward and symbolize the completion of
all creation at the end, when God will
fully “rest” in this space–time world.
A fuller understanding of that link
will be presented in chapters 8 and
11.
Concluding
comments
The first chapter of Genesis from its
literary form appears to be a special
work. It is highly structured,
especially forming the whole around
the number seven. It has strong
regular features combined with
variation that provides an orientation
to the nature of the universe and of
God’s work. It is, moreover, placed at
the beginning of the Torah (the
Pentateuch) and therefore at the beginning of the whole
Old Testament and of the whole of the
Bible, the Holy Writings. It seems
designed to be a statement about God’s
work as a perfect whole in the light of
which everything else should be
understood.
When we look at Genesis 1 as a whole,
however, at least two things stand out.
The first is that God is the Creator of
the universe; he made everything by a
word of command or by himself making
particular things. That means that the
beings the pagans worshipped – the sun, moon,
stars, and the animals – are simply
creatures of God. A main purpose of the
Genesis account is summarized in
Deuteronomy 4:15–20:
“Therefore take good
heed to yourselves. Since you saw no
form on the day that the LORD
spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst
of the fire, beware lest you act
corruptly by making a graven image for
yourselves, in the form of any figure,
the likeness of male or female, the
likeness of any beast that is on the
earth, the likeness of any winged bird
that flies in the air, the likeness of
anything that creeps on the ground,
the likeness of any fish that is in
the water under the earth. And beware
lest you lift up your eyes to heaven,
and when you see the sun and the moon
and the stars, all the host of heaven,
you be drawn away and worship them and
serve them, things which the LORD
your God has allotted to all the
peoples under the whole heaven. But
the LORD has taken you,
and brought you forth out of the iron
furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people
of his own possession, as at this
day.”
The second thing that
stands out is that human beings are
created in the image and likeness of God
himself, and they are placed in the
world to have dominion over all of
material creation. They are not to
worship and serve God’s creatures.
Rather, they are to develop creation,
bringing it to the purpose for which God
created it. As we will see in the next
chapter, they were created to be the
priests within the cosmic
temple of this creation.
If we look at the New Testament
references to Genesis 1, these are the
main things that the New Testament
picks out as well. The New Testament,
however, adds an important truth:
Creation happened in and through
Christ by the Holy Spirit. The one
true God is threefold, and the Son of
God, the true image of God, took on
human nature and began the human race
anew, now re-created in the image of
God, and he did so through the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This,
too, we will look at more fully.
Notes:
1For
“Some Terms for Parts or Versions
of the Bible,” see the glossary on
p. 392.
2Here we follow
the view that Genesis 2:4 is a
transitional verse, ending the
previous section and beginning the
new section, but expressing a
unity to the two sections by the
chiastic way the verse is
constructed.
3For “chiasm,”
“inclusion,” and other technical
words for biblical style that will
be used in what follows, see the
glossary “Some Literary Terms for
Describing Biblical Style” on p.
394.
4The physicist
Robert Jastrow, quoted in Francis
Collins, The Language of God:
A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief (London: Simon
& Schuster UK, 2007), 67,
describes the “Big Bang” by
saying, “the chain of events
leading to man commenced suddenly
and sharply at a definite moment
in time, in a flash of light and
energy.” Many nowadays hold, with
some good reason, that Genesis 1
should not be interpreted by
concordism with modern science
(see the discussion of “Scriptural
Interpretation and Literary Genre”
on p. 447). Nonetheless it would
seem strange to ignore the fact
that the scientific description of the origin of
the universe of which we are now
confident—the Big Bang—conforms so
well to Genesis 1:3, and also
gives us some further
understanding of what Genesis 1 so
succinctly describes.
5For a fuller
presentation of the view in Old
Testament, Christian, and Jewish
tradition that the light on day 1
was uncreated light, see Mark S.
Smith, The Priestly Vision of
Genesis 1 (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2001), 73–77.
6See also Judith
16:14, probably quoting and
developing Ps 33:6: “Let all your
creatures serve you, for you spoke
and they were made. You sent forth
your Spirit, and it formed them;
there is none that can resist your
voice.” See also Wisdom 9:1;
16:12; and 18:15 for the portrayal
of the word as an agent of
creation.
7Rather than
speaking about God’s word as
describing the agency of Christ in
creation, some of the Christian
Fathers said that Christ was the
beginning, and all things were
created in him, that is, in him
who is the beginning. All of the
Christian Fathers who wrote about
the creation were convinced that
Christ and the Spirit had to be
agents in the creation, and that
their presence could be traced in
the text of Genesis 1.
8The question of
what constitutes eisegesis
(reading something into the text
that is not there) is discussed
more fully in the section
“Eisegesis and Ideological
Exegesis,” on p. 507.
9See Stephen B.
Clark, Man and Woman in
Christ: An Examination of the
Roles of Men and Women in Light
of Scripture and the Social
Sciences (Ann Arbor, MI:
Servant, 1980; East Lansing, MI: Tabor House,
2006), 11–13 (hereafter cited as Clark, MWC),
for a general presentation of “image and
likeness”; see Fergus Kerr,
Twentieth–Century Catholic Theologians: From
Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 194–5, for
important observations on how the idea has
functioned in traditional and contemporary
theology.
10Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae, hereafter ST, I, 91, 4, ad
2. For one example of the main view among
Christian teachers, see Ambrose of Milan, De
paradiso (New York: Fathers of the
Church Inc., 1961), 253.
11A summary of this
understanding can be found in the technical
note “Numerology, The Number Seven” on p.
419.
12Augustine of Hippo in De
Trinitate, 4.4.7: “Sacred Scripture
commends the perfection of the number six to
us especially in this, that God completed
his works in six days and made man in the
image of God on the sixth day. And the Son
of God came in the sixth age of the human
race and was made the Son of man, in order
to re-form us in the image of God. This is
the age in which we are at present, whether
a thousand years are assigned to each age or
whether we settle upon memorable and notable
personages as turning points of time. Thus
the first age is found from Adam to Noah,
the second from that time to Abraham, and
after that … from Abraham to David, from
David to the carrying away to Babylon, and
from then to the birth of the Virgin. These
three ages added to those make five. Hence
the birth of the Lord inaugurated the sixth
age, which is
now in progress up to the hidden end of
time.”
13There is also a
pervasive numerology in the text that
indicates we are being given a statement
about the completeness (including, likely,
the future completion) of the universe. In
addition to the seven days that structure
the account as a whole, there are seven
Hebrew words in 1:1; 14 (7 x 2) in 1:2;
and 35 (7 x 5) in 2:1–3. In Gen 1:1–2:3,
God is mentioned 35 (7 x 5) times, earth
21 (7 x 3), heaven/firmament 21, and the
phrases “it was so” and “it was good” 7
times. Seven is the number of completeness
and probably also the number of divine
action. It is coded into the Israelite
festal calendar as well and into the
account of the building of the tabernacle
(see the technical note “Numerology” on p.
419). The coded numerology indicates that
we are reading an account of the complete
work of creation.
This
article is excerpted from The Old Testament in the
Light of the
New:
The Stages of God's Plan,
Chapter One, copyright © 2017 by
Stephen B. Clark, and published by
Emmaus
Road Publishing,
Steubenville, Ohio USA. Used with
permission.
Steve Clark
is past president of
the Sword
of the Spirit
and founder of The
Servants
of the Word.
Praise
for Steve Clark's book, The Old
Testament in the Light of the New
“Steve Clark’s The Old Testament in the
Light of the New is a welcome and
well-done contribution to the Church’s
ancient tradition of understanding what
in the Old Testament anticipated and
prefigured what is only fully realized
in the New. This work helps us more
clearly understand everything written in
the law of Moses and in the Prophets and
the Psalms, precisely in the light of
Christ.”
–
DONALD CARDINAL WUERL Archbishop of
Washington, D.C.
“There are
few subjects more important
for Christians today than
how to understand the Old
Testament, for it is widely
recognized that it is
impossible to understand the
New Testament without proper
knowledge of the Old. This
book is an enlightened and
accessible guide to Jesus’
Bible, and therefore a
crucial source for
understanding Jesus
himself.”
–
GERALD R. MCDERMOTT
Chair in Anglican
Divinity,
Beeson
Divinity School
“Throughout
the liturgical year, we are challenged
to understand and present how the Old
and New Testament readings fit together,
not merely in the minds of those who
compiled the Lectionary, but rather, in
‘the mystery hidden from ages’ but now
revealed in Christ: God’s plan of
salvation. Stephen Clark helps us to see
in Scripture how this plan unfolded and
how we are part of it.”
–
MOST REVEREND WILLIAM E. LORI
Archbishop of Baltimore
“A
Lutheran reading Clark’s
book will come away from
this Thanksgiving Table
not just stuffed with
biblical knowledge and
satisfied that his every
Lutheran itch has been
scratched (e.g.,
law-gospel distinction,
Christocentric-incarnational
anti-gnostic content, the
tensions arising from the
theology of the Cross
dialectic, and all this in
a full course meal of
biblical theology) but
rather, better equipped
and energized to follow
Jesus into the world,
making authentic disciples
of all nations.”
–
TED JUNGKUNTZ
Professor of Theology
(retired), Valparaiso
University
“One
of the chief challenges of a
contemporary reader of the Bible is to
discern through vast medley of books
and authors one single story. Stephen
Clark offers a framework that will
equip the attentive reader to discover
the threads of the plot that drives
the narrative of our salvation.”
– MOST REVEREND
MICHAEL BYRNES Coadjutor
Archbishop of Agana in U.S.
Territory of Guam
“Without
the Scriptures which Jesus
opened to his
disciples, the message
which he conveyed and
embodied would be
incomprehensible. Clark
leads his readers on a
journey like that which
was taken by the two
disciples on the road to
Emmaus; we can all
benefit by walking that
road with him.”
–
MARK S. KINZER
President Emeritus
of Messianic Jewish
Theological
Institute
“Stephen
Clark admirably demonstrates the
integral unity found between the Old
and New Testaments, a unity found
within the person and work of Jesus.
Theologians, students and seminarians,
pastors, and the laity will all
benefit from Clark’s book not only by
obtaining a proper understanding of
the relationship between the Old and
New Testaments, but also by deepening
their faith in Jesus who inhabits both
and is the truth that gives life to
both.”
– THOMAS G.
WEINANDY, Capuchin College,
Washington DC
Dominican House of Studies
and the Gregorian University
“Stephen Clark has done careful,
scholarly work for many years.
His new book is no exception. Many
Christians are perplexed about how to
understand the relevance of the Old
Testament to the Christian life. While
the first half of the book is
accessible to the general reader, the
second part is included for those
interested in its scholarly
underpinnings. Stephen Clark has made
a useful and ecumenically sensitive
contribution to understanding this
important issue.”
– RALPH MARTIN,
S.T.D. Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Consultor to the Pontifical Council
for Promoting the New
Evangelization President, Renewal
Ministries
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