2024-07-17 _ Creation is Salvation: God Revealed Without Exegesis (Genesis 1:1-3)

The Book of Genesis is the second longest Book in the Bible after Jeremiah. It is the first of five Books that comprise the Torah. The Torah in Hebrew combines the words for law and teaching/guidance, so Torah refers to God’s Law as imposed on Man to teach Man to be again in a right relationship with God. The implication is that when Man violates God’s Law he is not just violating God’s will, he is hurting himself, because Man is at best a dying perversion of his own humanity when out of sync with God’s will. Genesis is the Prologue for the story of the formation of Israel which begins with the Book of Exodus. It describes a distant past remembered through the lens of legend. This is not a denial of the historicity of the Book of Genesis, but it helps us to understand how that history is characterized by the author. Characters are larger than life or older than the years. In the case of Adam and Eve, they interface directly with God, or like the women in Genesis 6, they procreate with Fallen Angels and produce Giants. Men take on legendary exploits: An attempt with the Tower of Babel to build a tower that reaches Heaven; an Ark that can carry two of every kind of beast and withstand the Great Flood; two debauched cities literally destroyed by fireballs cast down from Heaven; etc. There are singular personalities who, by the grace of God, defy the normal course of human history: Enoch is taken up to Heaven without dying, which later we know to be a foreshadowing of the Ascension; Melchizedek is the High Priest of God, not in virtue of being in a priestly line, but by being ordained directly by God, which later we know to be a foreshadowing of the High Priesthood of Christ Jesus; etc. Primordial history takes on a legendary character in Genesis because God is so intimately interconnected with the history of Man in setting the stage for the formation of Israel, His Chosen People. Genesis is “larger than life” history because God is so much larger than Man, and though Man keeps on falling away from God’s will, God still paints Man’s destiny in “larger than life” colors to hint at what is in store for Man if and when Man returns to God. The legendary character of Genesis reminds the reader that he was made to be with God and that his life now in sin is so much smaller, less heroic, and less beautiful than it should be. Also, in establishing the legendary backdrop to the story of Israel, which begins in the next Book, Genesis reminds the reader that Israel’s history from the start was never meant to be the history of a small, peripheral, tribal people. For Israel is setting the stage for the Incarnation of God, which is the salvation of all men and the establishment of a New Creation greater than what Eden had been. The legendary prologue (the Book of Genesis) sets the stage for the legendary epilogue (the Book of Revelation), and so we learn that as much as Genesis serves as the Prologue to the Torah, it is also the Prologue to the entirety of the Bible: the first bookend with the second bookend being Revelation. If Genesis tells us that Men once walked with God and conferred with Powers and Principalities, but lost over time the legendary nature of their humanity through sin, then Revelation tells us that Men, if reborn in Christ Jesus, will walk with God and confer with Powers and Principalities yet again. There is the tragic pathos of remembering what we lost, and there is the hope in intimating what we may be able to reclaim, and so the interplay of pathos/hope permeates Genesis: Sara endures the pathos of being childless into old age, but then by the grace of God has a child; Abraham endures the pathos of having to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but then by the grace of God that sacrifice is avoided; Joseph is cast into a well by his brothers, which is to say, ostracized and left for dead by his family, and yet he was the one given the coat of many colors (see the rainbow as the sign of God’s covenant with humanity), and so he is risen up from the well to live a life of prominence “among the gods” (the Pharaohs) and to be one who later reunites his broken family; etc. Because of God’s Providential Hand in humanity history, Man’s sinfulness need not descend into a self-obsessed despair, which is how the Devil wants Man to respond to his own sinfulness, but rather, in spite of his sin, Man can have hope still that he may be restored even from his death (like Joseph, risen up from his well).

Theme in Genesis: Creation; Fall of Man (Sin); Covenant (God’s Promise); Election (God Chooses and Ordains); Blessing; Proper Worship (Man’s Obedience); Estrangement among Brothers; God Preserving Life; Exile, Journey, and Restoration in a land far from home (the Hero’s Quest); In pathos, there is always hope; In God’s judgment, there resides His mercy.

In the beginning (B’rêshîth): This expresses the idea of the earliest time imaginable. We are in time when God begins to create the universe. A better translation of B’rêshîth would be: “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth….” This separates God from “the heaven and the earth,” and since God creating the heaven and the earth is in time, we should deduce that God properly is not in time. For God is before what He created, not in a temporal sense (before time temporally being an absurdity), but in the fundamental sense of being the basis of or the reason for something. God is the reason there is time and space, and in the earliest moment when time and space exist, because He wills for that to be, God created the heaven and the earth. God did not step into a time and a space that someone else existed, and then when in that state create the heaven and the earth, but rather God is the Creator of the canvas as much as the Painter on that canvas. God is not just one of the characters in the drama about to unfold. This is His story, and all the other characters to be discovered will be best understood as they relate to Him or endeavor to escape from Him.

God created (Elohim bârâ): Elohim is the Name of God. It is the plural of Eloah, which is the singular Name of God and used rarely in Biblical poetry and in the later Books of Nehemiah and Daniel. The more proper Name of God (and the more theologically substantial Name of God) is Elohim. The plural Name suggests His power and authority (similar to the use of the Royal We). Theologically, it suggests that the many attributes of God are One in Him: God’s judgment is His mercy; His transcendence is His immanence; His revelation is His mystery; etc. The word bârâ refers narrowly to the acts of God, in doing, or in calling into existence in accordance with His will what is new and marvelous. The heavens and the earth indeed are marvelous because they are created in accordance with His will. They are marvelous not in themselves but in that they reveal Him.

Normally, we think of the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3 as creatio ex nihilo, which is to say, creation out of nothing. Genesis 1:1 dispels that idea, though, for when God created the heaven and the earth, time and space in some manner already exist (“In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth…”). Genesis 1:2 continues with that point, for though the heaven and the earth alone have been created, there is already a darkness that is upon the face of the deep and the face of the waters over which the Spirit of God moves.

Rather than thinking in terms of creatio ex nihilo, it is more accurate to interpret Genesis 1:1-2:3 as God bringing order to what had been disordered. God is both the Creator of the Canvas and the Painter, as we said before, but now we see that when He approaches the Canvas in time He sees a disordered splash on the canvas. In the verses that follow, God creates by adding divisions of elements within this splash, and then adding various new colors and textures, until what had been disordered is rendered new and marvelous. In a way, God is simultaneously painter and restorationist, which is to say, creator and savior.

And the earth was without form (tohu), and void (bohu): The Hebrew words tohu and bohu mean wasteness and emptiness, respectively. These words are used not just to describe a physical state but to suggest the emotional or even spiritual reaction to that state, namely, that being without form, and void, the earth conjures up a feeling of dreariness. Without yet the spark of divine order, the form, and the void, are dreary and horrifying.

And darkness was upon the face of the deep (tĕhôm): The word tĕhôm suggests confusion, the restless waves of an ocean that move in every direction at once. What is far down in the deep is confused, mad, a hellish disorder. The face, or the identity, of this disordered state is darkness, which obscures the features of an identifiable face. In essence, it is a face that is no face, not a blank slate, but a dark shadow that inspires a feeling of menace.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters: The Spirit of God is a mighty wind, and yet it protects as much as it dislocates. It protects what is good, so that what is good is later nourished and grown, and it dislocates what is bad, so that what is bad is cast away.

For elaboration on the Spirit of God, see:

John 3:8: The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

The man who has been reborn of the Spirit cannot understand how the Spirit is acting on him, for the Spirit is God, and in comparison he is like an unborn child in the womb. What results from all this divine wind acting on him is a new creation born out from that womb.

And the Spirit of God moved: In the original Hebrew, the connotation is that God fluttered lovingly and protectively. The Spirit of God is like a womb sheltering what is in His care for something new and ordered to be born out from the chaos.

For elaboration on how the Spirit of God moves, see:

Deuteronomy 32:11: As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.

Upon the face of the waters:  In the original Hebrew, the connotation is a confused state that is nevertheless capable of being tamed. Here, again, we see another face. Before we saw the face of the deep, which is a shadow face that conveys no identity. Now, we see a face over which the Spirit of God hovers lovingly. This face is disordered, for the waters at this point are the precursors of life, not actual life, but it is not a total darkness like what covers the deep. Therefore, there is something identifiable in this face – a hint of life that God Himself will nourish into actual life. Taming the waters is the act by which a potential life becomes life, for taming the waters suggests disorder that is ordered, the mad rush of what is fertile becoming a stable, growing, unborn child in the womb.

For elaboration on the face of the waters being tamed, see:

Matthew 8:26: And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.

Christ Jesus rebuking the winds and the sea, so that the storm is replaced by a great calm, is a sign of His divinity. For as the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters like a hen protecting her potential chick, it is the Word of God who brings order to this disorder, and in so doing turns potential life into life.

And God said: This is the Word of God, the Logos, which we Christians understand to be the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, that is, the Son of God, who is later incarnated in the person of Christ Jesus. Therefore, just as we have seen that creation is the same divine act as salvation, which is to say, taking what is disordered and giving it that order by which it is in sync with God’s will, so we see that the Word of God (“And God said…”) is God creating and also God saving. The Word of God is also God’s self-revelation (And God said…” is like every uttered word a revelation). We hinted at this earlier when we saw in Genesis 1:1 that everything about to unfold is God’s story, which is to say, His self-revelation. So, we see in these first three verses of Genesis that for God creation is salvation is revelation. Thus, if a man is saved in Christ Jesus, he is a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and that man will reveal the Father as Christ Jesus reveals the Father (John 14:9).

Genesis is the first book of the Torah (Pentateuch), authorship of which is attributed to Moses, who is believed to have been alive on earth approximately 2000 years before Christ.  However, the events of Genesis (i.e. the flood) are believed to long antedate Moses, possibly 4000 years before Christ.  The events and characters recounted in Genesis are of mythic proportions: larger than life-size, older than normal maturity, more dramatic than natural events and heroic and supernatural in ambition.  Normal proportions are distorted in the Genesis account because this was the time when man walked very closely on the earth with God, and the promise of God’s likeness in man’s character was still fresh and untarnished by centuries of sin after the fall from grace.  Genesis is therefore written as a prologue for the Torah (and is placed at the beginning of the Bible), setting the stage for the creation of Israel and then the salvation offered to all of mankind through Jesus Christ. At the far end of the Bible stands the opposite bookend in the Book of Revelation, which also is told in mythic proportions and represents the possibility of what man can become again in right union with God.  Throughout Genesis, there are stories which illustrate the pathos of our loss of God’s likeness in our lives, resolved in conclusion by the hope that God’s likeness will be restored to us by God’s loving grace if our actions are in obedience to His will. The interplay of pathos/hope permeates Genesis along with the themes of creation, covenant, blessing, sibling rivalry, and divine mercy.

By definition, God is an omnipresent, omnitemporal and omnipotent being. His presence is therefore logically prior to all of the created world.  We cannot say that God is temporally prior, since "before time" is definitionally absurd. Instead, we can say that God is the basis of and the reason for the created world. As the first and the final cause, God’s being logically precedes the being of His creation.  God chose to create heaven and earth within time, while maintaining His infinite presence extra-temporally (proper translation is "In the beginning, when God created..." and this implies time already existing when God wills into existence the material universe).  God is named in the original Hebrew as “Elohim,” a plural form which indicates the power and authority of many attributes, combined in one divine being where all these attributes are totally compatible with one another. Thus, in God, His judgment is His mercy, His transcendence is His immanence, etc. Elohim is the author of heaven and earth by exertion of His will, which is His self-revelation in creation. 

God’s action on the dark, formless earth and waters imposes new and marvelous order on these formerly dreary voids, which saves them from the eternal darkness that is the endpoint of disorder without salvation. We see that creation in Genesis is not so much creatio ex nihilo, as it is bringing order to what is disordered. God's action is the outward expression of His will, and His will is in absolute harmony with His ordered, harmonious, loving nature.

As the Spirit of God moves over the face of the waters, He hovers in a loving, womblike embrace of the disordered precursors of life, protecting what is disordered so that it can later become stable, growing, ordered creation.

It is God's Word, distinct from the Spirit of God, that initiates the first stroke of order on complete disorder ("And God said, Let there be light..."). Imposing order on what had been disordered is salvation, so God's Word is creative and salvific. God's Word also reveals God's nature, and so it is also revelatory. So, the Incarnation of God's Word in Jesus Christ will be creative (we are made "new creatures" in Christ), salvific (we are saved in Christ), and revelatory (if you see me, you see the Father). Creation = Salvation = Revelation.