Genesis 1:2-5

Day One: Energy-Matter, Motion, Light (Genesis 1:2-5)

And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1. The writer singles out the earth for special emphasis. This is consistent, of course, in that it points up the fact immediately that the entire Cosmogony is to be written from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of earth. However, as Lange points out (CDHCG, 163), the description given here of the genesis of the earth may well serve, by way of analogy, for the generation of the universe.
2. The earth was waste and void. (1) This description takes us back to the first stages in the Creative Process subsequent to the first putting forth of energy from the being of God; the Spirit, literally, was brooding; that is, the process was actually going on when the account opens; as yet the primal energy (was it psychical or physical?) had not transmuted itself into gross matter (which present-day physicists describe as frozen or congealed energy). There was only formlessness and voidness: literally, the earth was formless and empty.Again quoting Lange (CDHCG, 163): It is through the conception of voidness, nothingness, that Thohu and Bohu are connected. The desert is waste, that is, a confused mass without order; the waste is desert, that is, void, without distinction of object. The first word denotes rather the lack of form, the second the lack of content, in the earliest condition of the earth. It might therefore be translated form-less, matter-less.

(2) There are some who hold that the phrase thohu vabohu supports the notion of a previous overthrow, a cosmic upheaval. For corroboration they refer us especially to Isaiah 34:11, where the same terms are rendered, respectively, confusion and emptiness (cf. also Jeremiah 4:23), Whitelaw (PCG, 41) rejects this view: the phrase, he contends, does not suggest the ruin of a previous cosmos, because Elohim never intended anything to be thus formless and empty, hence utterly functionless (that is, not good for anything); rather, He created the earth to be inhabited, and to be inhabited by man as the crown of Creation. Obviously, the Genesis Cosmogony gives us the clear picture of an organized cosmos, the ultimate end for which the Divine activity was first set in operation. Our God is purposeful: He sees (plans) the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-11).

(3) I suggest that form (in formless) here does not connote shape or configuration essentially, but, rather, the ancient concept of form as the principle of specification, that is, of the identity of particulars in any given class. For example, one who looks at a mustard seed and a poppy seed can hardly distinguish between them. But one thing is sure: one cannot plant a poppy seed and get a mustard plant, for the obvious reason that all poppies have the form of poppy-ness, whereas all mustard plants have the form of mustard-ness. Or, just as a mind or soul informs the human body, so man is specified (set apart as a species) by his thought processes. Hence, we have in this verse of Genesis a picture of the earth when it had not yet assumed the form of a planet, but was still only a part of a huge, shapeless, objectless, motionless, and tenantless mass of world stuff (the hydrogen fog of Hoyle? or Gamow's ylem? or Whipple's dust cloud?), perhaps little more than a potential field of elemental forces, out of which the earth and all other planets and suns, and perhaps all other universes, were eventually to emerge as a result of the brooding of the Ruach Elohim.It was that state in which all electronic, gaseous, liquid, and solid elements were commingled (present only potentially), but as yet lacking any trace of differentiation. Moreover, this primal world-stuff was shrouded in the thick folds of Cimmerian gloom, giving not the slightest promise of that fair world of light, orders, and life into which it was about to be transformed.

3. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.(1) Is this a reflection of the Babylonian cosmology in which the earth was thought of as resting upon a subterranean ocean? Such a view is based, of course, on the presupposition that the Babylonian traditions of the Creation and the Deluge were the originals from which the Biblical accounts were deriveda view which ignores altogether the possibility of Divine revelation as the source of the Genesis Cosmogony (or the account of Noah's Flood). In opposition to this derivation-theory, it will be noted that the preceding affirmation (in Genesis 1:2) that the earth was formless and empty, indicates clearly that as yet the earth as such did not even exist, that in fact the whole heavens and earth were as yet unformed, at this stage of the Creative activity. It is granted, of course, that the deep is a term used frequently in the Hebrew Scriptures to designate the sea (cf. Psalms 42:7, Job 38:30, Isaiah 44:27). But again there is no evidence that a sea or ocean existed at this point in the Creation. The writer is not picturing here the ultimate state of the cosmos; rather, he is describing its state prior even to the beginning of its arrangement into a cosmos, prior to the genesis of physical force, motion, and ultimately gross matter, through the continuous activity of the Spirit of God. In view of these considerations, I suggest that the deep, in this particular connection, could well refer to the deep of limitless Space.(This could be the import of the term as used in Genesis 8:2 also.) Under this view, then, we have here a picture of limitless Space filled with, and shrouded in, thick darkness, with the world-stuff beginning to emerge at God's command, through the Spirit's activity of stirring, energizing, that is, actualizing forms of energy which had not before that moment operated, and which were capable of transmutation into the kinds of matter known to us today. (It is impossible for the human mind to conceive of the transition from Eternity to Time (which necessarily involved the beginnings of what we call the physical aspects of the Plan of the Ages) as having occurred in any other way. Basically, to be sure, this transition must always remain a mystery to human intelligence because it embodies the ineffable, and must, in the final analysis, be largely a matter of faith.) In its first state, of course, the very first world-stuff was motionless and objectless (that is, wholly undifferentiated); as a matter of fact, had there been anything at this point desirable to be seen, there was no light by which to see it, for thick darkness was upon the face of the deep. This interpretation is supported by the language of the very next sentence, And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, the term waters suggesting an even more advanced stage in the Creative Process, probably the stage at which matter had begun to assume, incipiently at least, a gaseous (atmospheric waters), or perhaps even the beginning of a fluidic, state.

(2) It is significant, I think, that the tradition of such a primordial Chaos, the chief characteristics of which were formlessness, emptiness, and darkness, was widespread among ancient peoples. The Greek word, Chaos, for instance, meant primarily, empty, immeasurable space, and only secondarily, the rude, unformed mass of something out of which the universe was created. Thus Hesiod, the Greek poet of the 8th century B.C., wrote as follows: Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bare from union in love with Erebus. And Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods (Theogony, HHH, LCL). Of course, these are all personifications, but their import is obvious. Chaos (Space), says Hesiod, was first of all; of him was born Erebus (Darkness) and black Night; and by the union of Darkness and black Night came Aether (the upper air) and Day. And Plato, some four centuries after Hesiod, writing in an imaginative vein, in his well-known likely story (mythos) of the Timaeus, described the Creation of the cosmos, by the Demioergos (Master Craftsman), out of the Receptacle of Becoming (Space) according to the patterns supplied by the Eternal Forms or Ideas that go to make up the World of Being. Plato seems to imply that these Eternal Forms (principles of specificity, e.g., the cow-ness of a cow, horse-ness of a horse, etc.) exist in the Divine Reason, although I have never been able to find any passages in which he affirmed this explicitly. The Receptacle, he describes as having no qualities of its own; it is not, according to the Platonic picture, that out of which things of our World of Becoming are made, but that in which the qualities that make up this physical or corporeal world (in the form of the Opposites which are said to be continuously passing, the one into the other and back again, cyclically) appear as in a mirror (See F. M. Cornford, PC). Lange, on Genesis 1:2 (CDHCG, 163): Chaos denotes the void space (as in a similar manner the old Northern Ginnumgagap, gaping of yawnings, the gaping abyss, which also implies present existing material), and in the next place the rude unorganized mass of the world-material. (Incidentally, one principle that must always be kept in mind in the study of the Old Testament is that mythological (and traditional) distortions of ancient beliefs and practices all point necessarily to a genuine original.)Certainly it is worth noting well, in this connection, that one of the concepts which has gained widespread credence among physicists of our own time is that Space may have been the very first stuff of which the physical universe had its beginning. For example, Mr. Walter Russell, one-time President of the Society of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in the metropolitan press several years ago, as follows: The question arises, Is there any line of demarcation between a spiritual and a physical universe? And have we been calling the invisible universe spiritual just because we could not see it? We have begun to see something tangible and inspiring beyond place, mass and dimension. There must be a limitless source of static energy somewhere back of all this dynamic expression. With reference to the ultimate particles or forces of which matter is composed, continued Mr. Russell, which seem to constitute light, and which carry energy, scientists find them all acting suspiciously like some of the processes of human thought. He added: Tomorrow physics will undoubtedly divorce energy from matter and give it to space. What we call the spiritual universe may prove to be the static source in space of electric energy. If Einstein's prophecy is fulfilled it would cause a far greater upheaval in science than Copernicus caused in the concept of Ptolemy. Basic conclusions of today would be either reversed or discarded entirely, for if energy belongs to space as the new cosmogony suggests, light would belong to space, as Jesus inferred. When energy is found to belong to space, light will be understood to be an emergence from space, and God will be found to be what Jesus said He wasLight. As we study Jesus-' teaching from the point of view of science, we become convinced that He understood light, energy, motion, and space, and knew what filled space. Jesus taught that life is eternal, that there is no death. Science may prove this to be literally true, and that the body, like all other material phenomena, merely registers the intensity of the thinking of a Supreme Intelligence. If science proves this, it will give meaning to the words of Sir James Jeans that -matter may eventually be proved to be pure thought.-' (Recall Pascal's vivid line: The eternal silence of infinite space is terrifying. Cf. Psalms 139:7-10.) We might well ask: Can any real line of demarcation be drawn between psychical (mental, spiritual) light (illumination) and physical light (illumination)? (See again the comments by Fred Hoyle on continuous creation, as quoted on preceding pages.) (Of course, we must always avoid dogmatizing in our attempts to correctly apprehend the sublime truths that are incorporated in the Genesis Cosmogony.)

(3) The Bible teaches throughout that our physical cosmos is an embodiment of Divine Thought as expressed by the Divine Word (Logos), and as actualized by the Divine Spirit. The Will of God is the constitution of the totality of being, both visible and invisible (Psalms 148:1-6; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Hebrews 11:3). These are fundamental truths to which the physical science of our time is gradually groping its way back, despite its tendency to cling tenaciously to pantheistic assumptions,

(4) As in the physical realm, so it is in the spiritual. M. Henry (CWB, 2): This chaos represents the state of an unregenerate graceless soul: there is disorder, confusion, and every evil work; it is empty of all good, for it is without God; it is dark till almighty grace effects a blessed change. (This change is wrought, of course, through our hearing, accepting, and obeying the Gospel of Christ.)

4. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.(1) Literally, the Spirit of God (Ruach Elohim) was brooding.Not a wind of God, for the obvious reason that the air did not exist at this particular stage in the development of the cosmos. Skinner (ICCG, 17-18): Not, as has sometimes been supposed, a wind sent from God to dry up the waters, but the divine Spirit, figured as a bird brooding over its nest, and perhaps symbolizing an immanent principle of life and order in the as yet undeveloped chaos. In accordance with Biblical usage generally, writes Whitelaw (PCG, 4), this term, Spirit of God, must be regarded as a designation, not simply of -the divine power, which, like the wind and the breath cannot be perceived, (Gesenius), but of the Holy Spirit, who is uniformly represented as the source or formative cause of all life and order in the world, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual. As it were, the mention of the Ruach Elohim is the first out-blossoming of the latent fulness of the Divine personality, the initial movement in that sublime revelation of the nature of the Godhead, which, advancing slowly, and at the best but indistinctly, throughout Old Testament times, culminated in the clear and ample disclosures of the gospel. (Cf. Job 26:13; Job 27:3; Job 33:4; Job 32:8; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 104:29-30; Acts 17:25).

(2) The Spirit of God was brooding.The Hebrew word used here has a double meaning. In the first place, it conveys the idea of a stirring, a fluttering, as of an eagle stirring up her nest and teaching her young to fly. (The word has this import also in the Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:11.) Thus the entrance of the Spirit into the primordial Chaosformless, objectless, immeasurable Spacewas signalized by a stirring therein, an energizing, a setting in motion.In the second place, the word merachepheth (from rachaph, to be tremulous, as with love) signifies a brooding, an incubation. The complete picture is that of a mother-bird brooding over her nest, hatching her eggs, and nurturing her young. In Milton's stately elegiac verse, the Spirit

... from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like, sat'St brooding on the vast abyss,
And mad'St it pregnant.

Rotherham (EB, 3, n.): The beautiful word brooding, an exact rendering of the Hebrew, is most suggestive, since it vividly describes the cherishing of incipient life, as a preparation for its outburst. The participial form of such a word clearly denotes a process, more or less lengthened, rather than an instantaneous act. John Owen, (HSGP, 56): The word -moved-' (merachepheth) signifies a gentle motion, like that of a dove over its nest, to communicate vital heat to its eggs, or to cherish its young. Without him, all was a dead sea, a rude unformed chaos, a confused heap covered with darkness; but by the moving of the Spirit of God upon it, he communicated a quickening prolific virtue. This is a better account of the origin of all things than is given us by any of the philosophers, ancient or modern. Moreover, does not this verb suggest clearly that the Creation was an act or outpouring of Divine Love as well as of Divine Powerof Divine Love seeking perhaps the fellowship of kindred holy spirits, that is, the spirits of the redeemed of mankind? And may we not reasonably conclude that this activity of the cherishing Spirit was the origin of the myth of Eros, and of the mythological world-egg, whether regarded as Persian or Greek?

The breath of man, writes Lange (CDHCG, 164), the wind of the earth, and the spirit, especially the spirit of God, are symbolical analogies. The breath is the life-unity, the life-motion of the physical creature, the wind is the unity and life-motion of the earth, the spirit is the unity and life-motion of the life proper to which it belongs; the spirit of God is the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity. It is not a wind of God to which the language here primarily relates. From this place onward, and throughout the whole Scripture, the spirit of God is the single formative principle evermore presenting itself with personal attributes in all the divine creative constitutions, whether of the earth, of nature, of the theocracy, of the Tabernacle, of the church, of the new life, or of the new man. The Grecian analogue is that of Eros (or Love) in its reciprocal action with the Chaos, and to this purpose have the later Targums explained it: the spirit of love.M. Dods (EBG): This, then, is the first lesson of the Bible: that at the root and origin of all this vast material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as the moth, there abides a living, conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. (Cf. John 4:24; Psalms 104:29-30; Job 26:13; Job 27:3; Job 33:4; Acts 17:25; Genesis 2:7, Psalms 33:6the breath of his mouth; Exodus 31:1-11; Exodus 35:30-35; Numbers 11:16-17; Deuteronomy 34:9; 2 Samuel 23:12; 1 Chronicles 28:11-12; John 14:26; John 16:7-14; John 20:22-23; Acts 1:1-5; Acts 2:1-4; Ephesians 2:19-22; John 3:1-7; Romans 5:5; Acts 2:38; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Romans 8:11.) Robinson (CEHS, p. 5): The Bible is the Book of the Spirit. On its first page there is painted the impressive picture of chaos, when darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God was brooding, like a mother-bird, upon the face of the waters. From the last page there rings out the evangelical challenge of the Church to the world, -The Spirit and the bride say, Come.-' Between them there is the story of a divine evolution, which is from God's side, revelation, and from man's side, discovery.

(3) As the first brooding of the Spirit over the primordial deep was the beginning of the actualization of the physical creation, so the overshadowing of the Virgin by the same Holy Spirit, effecting the conception, hence the incarnation, of God's Only Begotten Son, was the beginning of the actualization of the spiritual creation, the Regeneration (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). The divine creation of the physical nature of Mary's Son, the incarnate Logos, constituted His body the perfect offering as the Atonement (Covering) for the sin of the world (John 1:29), and also constituted it a body over which death had no power. Thus it will be seen that the Incarnation by the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and the Resurrection are all necessary to the framework of Christianity; not one of these doctrines can be rejected without vitiating the entire Christian System.It would be well for the unitarians and the cultists to keep this in mind. (I am reminded here of the man who said he had flirted with Unitarianism for a long time, but simply could not bring himself to address his prayers, To whom it may concern.) (Luke 1:35; John 1:14; Luke 24:45-49; Acts 2:30-33; Acts 4:10-12; Romans 8:11; Hebrews 4:14-15; Hebrews 7:26-28; Hebrews 9:23-28; 1 Peter 2:21-25; 1 Peter 3:21-22; Revelation 1:17-18).

(4) Note here also the correlations of various Scriptures which identify the Spirit of God of the Old Testament with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord, of the New Testament. Correlate Luke 4:18-19, Isaiah 61:1-2, Acts 10:38; Matthew 22:43, Psalms 110:1; Acts 4:25, Psalms 2:1-2; Acts 1:16, Psalms 69:25; Psalms 109:8; Hebrews 3:7-11, Psalms 95:7-11; all these with 1 Samuel 16:13, 2 Samuel 23:2; Acts 2:17-21; Acts 2:4; Acts 2:32-33; Acts 28:25-28, Isaiah 6:9-10; Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:18-19; John 3:34, Matthew 12:28; Luke 11:20; Exodus 8:19; Exodus 31:18; Exodus 32:16; Exodus 34:1; Exodus 34:27-28; Deuteronomy 9:10, Psalms 8:3 (the finger of God in Scripture is a metaphor of God's Spirit-power): 2 Peter 1:21, 1 Peter 1:1-11. Note where identifications occur in the same passage: Acts 16:6-7; Acts 5:3; Acts 5:9; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18; Romans 8:9. The Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit (Nehemiah 9:20, Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38, John 1:33), the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Lordall these are terms designating the one and the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:11, Hebrews 9:14). (Cf. also Isaiah 63:10-11; Isaiah 11:2; Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 48:16; Isaiah 61:1; Matthew 3:16, John 1:32, etc.)

(5) The transmutation of psychical energy into physical energy and action occurs all the time in man: it occurs when any human being makes up his mind to walk, run, climb, jump, sit down, lie down, or to use his mind or body in any way. There is no more mysterious power in our human experience than this power of thought and will to direct the activity of mind (as in cases of voluntary recollection) and that of the body (a notable example being that of the pitcher who throws the baseball if and when and where he makes up his mind to throw it.) Yet this is so commonplace in our lives that we never give any thought to the unfathomable mystery involved. May we not reasonably conclude, then, that in the possession of such powers man but reflects the spark of the Infinite which was breathed into him originally by the Spirit of God (Genesis 2:7; Genesis 1:26-27)? And if psychical energy in man is capable of self-transmutation into physical energy, who can gainsay the fact that psychical energy in God (who is Spirit, John 4:24) is capable of an absolute creation of physical energy? We hold, therefore, that primal energy is Pure Thought, the activity of pure Spirit. (We recall that Aristotle defined God as Pure-Thought-Thinking-Itself.) This primal energy is the source of every other form of energy in the cosmos. Spirit-power, Willpower, Thought-power, Word-power (which is Thought-power willed and expressed) in God are one and the same in activities and in effects. Our cosmos is the product of Universal Intelligence and Will, the construct of Pure Thought. This is precisely what the Bible teachesthat God the absolute Spirit, by the instrumentality of His Word and the agency of His Spirit, is the eternal (unoriginated) First Cause of all things that exist. Moreover, the Creation itself was essentially that act of Pure Thought which embraces the entire Space-Time Process (Continuum) in a single Idea; hence, with God it is always the eternal NOW (Exodus 3:14). As Augustine writes, referring to the Creator (Conf., 262, 260): Thy years are one day; and Thy day is not daily, but To-day, seeing Thy To-day gives not place unto to-morrow, for neither doth it replace yesterday. Thy To-day is Eternity; therefore didst Thou beget the Co-eternal, to whom thou hast said, This day have I begotten Thee (Psalms 2:7. This divine begetting referred to in the Psalm was in the Eternal Purpose of God: it became concretely actualized in the Incarnate Logos.) Again: In the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present.

(6) The beginning of the brooding of the Spirit over the thick darkness of the deep marked the first transmutation from the psychical to the physical. The introduction of physical energy was the creation of motion: the natural transitions followed, from motion to heat, to light, etc. It is important to note, however, the distinction between energy, which is primary, and the propagation and application of energy in terms of force, which is secondary. It is obvious, moreover, that the application of energy in terms of force presupposes a directing Will.Without the guiding Intelligence and Will to direct the expenditure of energy along definite and well-prescribed lines, and for specific and respective ends depending on the kinds of energy put forth, the result would surely be disorder and catastrophe, It seems evident that all natural law, which is but descriptive of the operations of natural forces (in terms of specific formulas), is of necessity predicated upon the guiding Intelligence and Will which is superior to that which it directs and governs: speaking by way of analogy, law, of whatever kind, presupposes a lawgiver. Science, in its use of the word law which it borrowed from jurisprudence, wittingly or unwittingly, pays tribute to the cosmic Lawgiver. The guiding Intelligence and Will which directs the expenditure of energy in terms of force presupposes, in turn, the Divine Personality. It is unreasonable to presuppose an impersonal energy, or source of energy, as the First Cause. This definition of force as applied and directed energy is fundamental to any proper understanding of the cosmic processes. Moreover, wherever there is divine Will, there is divine Personality; and wherever there is divine Intelligence and Will, there is the Eternal Spirit. In a word, apart from the Eternal Spirit there is no rational explanation either of energy or of force; however, with the acceptance of the activity of the Eternal Spirit, no other explanation is needed, either of energy or of force, or of the Creation and Preservation of the Cosmos.Where the Eternal Spirit is, there is law, light, life, love, order, peace. (Cf. again John 4:24, Hebrews 9:14.) Where the Spirit is not, there is license, darkness, death, hate, disorder, strife: in short, evil in every diabolical form. Or, as someone else has put it: It is indeed significant that the two characteristics of the primordial Chaos which occur in all the ancient traditions are those of emptiness and darkness.That is to say, where God is not, there is always emptiness, darkness, non-being. Where God is, there is, by way of vivid contrast, life, light, being. And the ontological difference between non-being and being consists in the activity of the Divine Spirit.We shall now follow the account, as given in the remaining verses of the Genesis Cosmogony, of the progressive development, step by step (day by day), of the primal undifferentiated world-energy, under the continuous brooding of the Spirit of God, into the organized cosmos that is the object of man's scientific quest throughout the ages.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1. Literally, And God said, Light, Be! and light was. According to: Scripture, God as Father plans, God as the Word (Logos) executes (decrees), and God as the Spirit actualizes that which is decreed (Psalms 148:6; Isaiah 45:22-23; Isaiah 46:9-11; Ephesians 3:9-12). In the first verse of Genesis, Elohim, the Absolute, the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9), is introduced to us as the originating First Cause; in Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God is introduced to us as the actualizing First Cause; in Genesis 1:3, the Word of God is introduced to us as the executive First Cause, of the initial phase of the Creative Process. From this point on, throughout the entire Cosmogony, the formula, And God said, introduces the account of each successive advance in the physical (natural) Creation. That is to say, whatever God willed and decreed at the beginning of each day, was done (actualized) on that day, in that particular stage of the total Process. Just how it was done seems to have been a matter of little or no concern to the inspired writer, or, therefore, to the Spirit who inspired him to write; the purpose was to emphasize only the religious fact of the Creation, namely, that it was God who did the creating, through the executive agency of the Logos and the realizing agency of the Spirit. The problem of the how of the Process was left for human science to spell out slowly and laboriously throughout the centuries. Hence, under the energizing activity of the Spirit, the Word, we are told, the Logos, interposed His executive authority, ten times in succession, in the form of Divine ordinances or decrees, to give intelligent direction and order to the Process as a whole. We must not forget that our Godthe living and true Goddeclares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). The end result was the organized cosmos, the cosmic order which makes human science possible. As a matter of fact, it is this order which makes human life possible; man simply could not live in an unpredictable world.

2. From this verse onward we must not forget that we are thinking in terms of the writer's point of view, that is, in terms of earth, and of the solar system of which the earth is a planet, in short, of the viewpoint of a person on earth. Of course, the development described here, apparently, of what occurred in the formation and development of our solar system, may be regarded as paralleling what was occurring in other celestial systems (galaxies, or island universes).
3. How long a time elapsed between the first stirring of the Spirit of God in the primeval deep, and the issuance of the first Divine decree, Let there be light, we do not know and obviously cannot know. Both the Bible and science indicate, however, that the stretch of time was very, very long: the various heating and cooling processes hypothesized by science, and the activity of brooding attributed in Scripture to the Divine Spirit, all imply an indefinitely long period.
4. The Logos.(1) In the Old Testament, we meet God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God: in the full light of the New Testament revelation, these become Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Peter 1:2). Why was not this triune personality of the God of the Bible clearly revealed to God's ancient people, the children of Israel? We cannot say definitely. It is obvious, of course, that God did not fully reveal Himself in Old Testament times. Perhaps if He had disclosed His triune personality to the Hebrew people, they would have drifted into tritheism, that is, into the worship of three Gods instead of the one living and true God. Hence, under the Old Covenant, it is the uniqueness of God which was given special emphasis, in the oft-repeated creed, Deuteronomy 6:4, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah, that is, the only Jehovah (Yahweh). (Deuteronomy 4:35; Deuteronomy 4:39; Isaiah 45:18; Isaiah 46:9; Acts 17:23-29.) It seems that the revelation of the tri-unity of God was withheld from the Israelites of old, lest they drift into polytheism and idolatry, the besetting sins of the ancient pagan world. However, although the doctrine is not fully disclosed in the Old Testament writings, there are many clear intimations of it, as we shall see later.

(2) We are especially concerned here with the significance of the name Logos as it occurs and its meaning is fully revealed in the Bible as a whole: Let us not forget the principle of interpretation which is followed throughout this textbook, namely, that any Bible doctrine must be studied and interpreted in the light of the teaching of the Bible as a whole, in order that its full meaning may be brought to light. Hence, with reference to the Logos, we find that Scripture unequivocally, from beginning to end, identifies the One whom we know historically as Jesus of Nazareth, and whom we confess as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as the true Biblical Logos. In proof of this statement, note the following catenae of Scripture passages: (a) Those which affirm generally His pre-existence, His co-eternity with the Father, and His pre-existence, moreover, as a personal Being (Philippians 2:5-7; Hebrews 2:14; John 1:18, John 10:17-18; John 17:5; John 17:24; Colossians 1:17; John 8:58; Revelation 1:17-18; Revelation 21:6; Isaiah 9:6; Micah 5:2; John 6:38; John 6:62; John 7:33-34; Galatians 4:4); (b) those which present Him as the executive Agent of the Creation and Preservation of the world (Colossians 1:16-17; 1 Corinthians 8:6; John 1:1-3; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 1:10); (c) those which declare either explicitly or implicitly, His deity (John 8:58, here He assumes :for Himself the great and incommunicable Divine Name, Exodus 3:14), John 1:18; Revelation 1:17-18; Revelation 21:6; John 1:1-3 (and the Logos was God), John 20:28 (here Jesus accepts forms of address due to Deity alone); Matthew 1:23 (God with us); John 10:30, Romans 9:5, Colossians 2:19, 1 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 1:3, 1 John 1:2); (d) those Old Testament passages which intimate pre-incarnate appearances of the eternal Logos. These include the passages referring to the activity of the Angel of Yahweh (Genesis 3:2-4; Genesis 16:7; Genesis 16:9; Genesis 16:13; Genesis 18:1-2; Genesis 18:13; Genesis 18:17; Genesis 18:20; Genesis 18:23; Genesis 22:11-19; Genesis 31:11-13; Genesis 32:30; Exodus 3:2-4; Exodus 14:19 (here the Angel's presence is indicated by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, symbols, respectively, of the Spirit and the Word, who go together, Isaiah 59:21); Exodus 13:21-22 (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, Hebrews 11:26-27), Judges 13:20-22, Joshua 5:13-15, Daniel 3:25; Daniel 3:28, Micah 5:2); those passages in which Wisdom is represented as existing eternally with God, though distinct from Him (Job 28:20-23, Proverbs 8:1-6; Proverbs 7:21 (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:22-24; 1 Corinthians 1:30); Jeremiah 10:10-12); those passages in which the Word, as distinguished, from God, is presented as the executor of God's will from eternity (Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:5-6; Psalms 119:89; Psalms 147:15-18; Psalms 107:20; Hebrews 11:3, 2 Peter 3:5).

As Epiphanius, one of the Church Fathers, wrote, in substance: the Divine unity was first proclaimed by Moses (Deuteronomy 6:4); the Divine duality, that is, the distinction between the Father and the Son, Messiah, by the prophets (Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 11:1-2; Micah 5:2); but the Divine tripersonality was first clearly shown forth in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles (Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Peter 1:2).

The term Logos was in rather common use at the time of our Lord's ministry in the flesh. Hence, John wrote his Prologue (Genesis 1:1-18) to set forth the true doctrine of the Logos, in Latin Verbum, in English, Word.The Logos, he declared, is not the Platonic World Soul, not the Gnostic inferior intermediary between God and the world, not just the Philonian Divine Thought (Word) or its manifestation in the world (Wisdom), not the Stoic World Fire, but the Person who became flesh and dwelt among us as Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God.(1 Timothy 2:5, Matthew 16:16). Lebreton (HDT, I, 187): The Messianic belief is as foreign as belief in the Incarnation to the Philohian theory of the Logos, and is equally characteristic of Christianity. As the Messiah, prepared for by the whole past of Israel, awaited and predicted by the prophets, came upon earth to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and redeem the elect, and due, later on, to return to judge the whole world, Jesus fills the whole of history. The Philonian Logos is foreign to history; he may be the object of the speculation of philosophers, he has no contact with the life of men. Again (ibid, 414): Human speculation flattered itself in vain that it could sound the depths of the life of God, its proud efforts resulted in nothing but barren and deceptive dreams; it is in the humility of the Incarnation that the mystery of God has been revealed: for the Jews a scandal, a folly to the Greeks, the strength and wisdom of God for the elect.

A. Campbell has written on the doctrine of the Logos (John 1:1-3), in the Christian Baptist, May 7, 1927, as follows: The names Jesus, Christ, or Messiah, Only Begotten Son; Son of God, etc., belong to the Founder of the Christian religion, and to none else. They express not a relation -existing before the Christian era, but relations which commenced at that time. To understand the relation betwixt the Savior and His Father, which existed before time, and that relation which began in time, is impossible on either of these [i.e., the Arian or Calvinistic] theories. There was no Jesus, no Messiah, no Christ, no Son of God, no Only Begotten, before the reign of Augustus. The relation that was before the Christian era was not that of a son and father, terms which always imply disparity; but it was that expressed by John in the sentence under consideration. The relation was that of God and the -Word of God.-' This phraseology unfolds a relation quite different from that of a father and a sona relation perfectly intimate, equal and glorious. This naturally leads me to the first sentence of John. And here I must state a few postulata. 1. No relation amongst human beings can perfectly exhibit the relation which the Savior held to the God and Father of all, anterior to His birth. The reason is: that relation is not homogenial, or of the same kind with relations originating from creation, All relations we know anything of, are created, such as that of father and son. (Note: where there is father and son, the father must of necessity antedate the son.) Now I object as much to a created relation as I do to a creature in reference to the original relation of God and the Word of God. This relation is an uncreated and unoriginated relation.2. When in the fulness of time, it became necessary in the wisdom of God to exhibit a Savior, it became expedient to give some view of the original and eternal dignity of this wonderful visitant of the human race. And as this view must be given in human language, inadequate as it was, the whole vocabulary of human speech must be examined for suitable terms, 3. Of the terms expressive of relations, the most suitable must be, and most unquestionably was, selected. And as the relation was spiritual and not carnal, such terms only were eligible which had respect to mental and spiritual relations. Of this sort there is but one in all the archives of human knowledge, and that is the one selected. 4. The Holy Spirit selected the name, WORD, and therefore we may safely assert that this is the best, if not the only term, in the whole vocabulary of human speech at all adapted to express that relation which existed -in the beginning,-' or before time, between our Savior and His God. What are the implications of this name? At this point I paraphrase Mr. Campbell's answer to this question thus: (1) A word is commonly defined as the sign or symbol of an idea. It is the idea expressed in written or spoken form, (When I speak of a chair, for instance, there immediately flashes into your mind an image of the thing of which I have the same image in my own mind; and the image represents an idea.The word is therefore the sign or symbol of the idea.) (2) the human intellect thinks, i.e., it formulates and relates ideas by means of words, and the result is language.Men cannot express their ideas without words of some sort. (3) It follows that the word, and the idea which it represents, must have their origin at the same time, and are therefore of like antiquityor, as we say, co-etaneous. And though the word may not be the same in different languages, the same idea is expressed. (4) The idea and the word are distinct, of course; that is, they are two.(5) Yet the relationship between the two is the most intimate of which we have any knowledge, and is a relationship of the mind or spirit.An idea cannot exist without a word, nor a word without an idea. (6) To be acquainted with the word is to be acquainted with the idea, for the idea is in the word, and the word stands for the idea.

We continue Mr. Campbell's exegesis verbatim from this point, as follows: Now let it be most attentively observed and remembered that these remarks are solely intended to exhibit the relation which exists between a word and an idea, and that this relation is of a mental nature, and more akin to the spiritual system than any relation created, of which we know anything. It is a relation of the most sublime order; and no doubt the reason why the name, Word, is adopted by the Apostle in this sentence, was because of its superior ability to represent to us the divine relation existing between God and the Savior prior to His becoming the Son of God. By putting together the above remarks on the term Word, we have a full view of what John intended to communicate: (1) As a word is an exact image of an idea, so is -The Word-' an exact image of the invisible God. (2) As a word cannot exist without an idea, nor an idea without a word, so God was never without -The Word,-' nor -The Word-' without God. Or, as a word is of equal age, or co-etaneous with its idea, so -The Word-' and God are co-eternal. (3) And as an idea did not create its word, nor a word its idea, so God did not create -The Word,-' nor -The Word-' God. Such a view does the language used by John suggest. And to this do all the Scriptures agree. For -The Word-' was made flesh, and in consequence of becoming incarnate, He is styled the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father. As from eternity God was manifest in and by -The Word,-' so now God is manifest in the flesh. As God was always with -The Word,-' so when -The Word-' becomes flesh, He is Immanuel, God with us. As God was never manifest but by -The Word,-' so the heavens and the earth and all things were created by -The Word.-' And as -The Word-' ever was the effulgence or representation of the invisible God, so He will ever be known and adored as -The Word of God.-' So much for the divine and eternal relation between the Savior and God. You will easily perceive that I carry these views no farther than to explain the nature of that relationship uncreated and unoriginated, which the inspired language inculcates.

Mr. Campbell concludes as follows: These views place us on a lofty eminence whence we look down upon the Calvinistic ideas of -eternal filiation,-' -eternal generation,-' -eternal Son,-' as midway between us and Arianism. From this sublime and lofty eminence we see the Socinian movement upon a hillock, the Arian upon a hill, and the Calvinist upon a mountain; all of which lose their disproportion to each other because of the immense height above them to which this view elevates us. The first sentence of John, I paraphrase thus: -From eternity was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was, I say, from eternity with God. By Him all things were made, and He became flesh and dwelt among us. He is become a child born and a son of man. As such He is called Immanuel, Jesus, Messiah, Son of God, Only Begotten of the Father.-'
Again, in the Millenial Harbinger, 1846, pp. 634-636, Mr. Campbell wrote the following on the same subject, the Person of Christ, the Savior: Our attention is first called to his person. Right conceptions of his person are, indeed, essential to right conceptions of His office. Our guide to both are the oracles of God. What, then, say the Holy Scriptures? They represent the person called Jesus the Messiah as having been born of a Virgin in the reign of Herod the Great, and in the thirtieth year of Caesar Augustus. But while they thus represent his nativity as having been at that particular time, they also intimate that his birth was only an incarnation of one who previously existed, whose -goings forth have been from of-' old, from everlasting.-'. Jesus is the name of an incarnation, but it is not the name of that which became incarnate. It was not Jesus, but the Word that was made flesh. The person called THE WORD -became flesh and dwelt among us.-'. Evident, then, it is that Jesus of Nazareth had in some other nature a pre-existence. His human existence commenced at a fixed date, and in a certain place; but in some other nature, and in some other place, he pre-existed. What that nature was, and where that abode, must be learned from that Spirit which searches all thingseven the deep things of God.-' Finally, We have, then, GOD, the WORD of God, and the SPIRIT of God; and these three are not three Gods, but one Goddenominated in the remedial system as the FATHER, the SON, and the HOLY SPIRIT, relations of a truly mysterious and sublime character. We can, indeed, apprehend, though we may not comprehend them. They are intelligible, though not comprehensible. (I consider Mr. Campbell's explanation of the doctrine of the Logos the clearest I have been able to find anywhere. Hence I have taken sufficient space here to reproduce it in its entirety.)

Logos has a twofold meaning in the Greek: (1) reason or intelligence, as it exists inwardly in the mind, and (2) reason or intelligence as it is expressed outwardly in speech; hence, an account, a tale, a study, a revelation. Both of these meanings are implicit in the use of this word as the eternal name of our Savior. Jesus is inwardly the Word of God in the sense that He exists from everlasting to everlasting in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), and, as nothing is as close to a person as his own thought, so there is no one as close to the Father as His Only Begotten Son. Jesus is the Logos outwardly in that He reveals to us the good and acceptable and perfect will of God both in life and in teaching (Romans 12:1-2; John 14:9-12; John 16:13-15). He was with God before the world was called into being, before even time began; He is with God now, seated at God's right hand, the Acting Sovereign of the universe and the Absolute Monarch of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 28:18; Acts 2:36; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Ephesians 1:20-23; Colossians 1:13-20; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 1:1-4; 1 Peter 3:20-22; Revelation 1:17-18). He is God in the sense that He is one Person of the Divine Tri-unity, of which He is the executive Agency (John 1:1-3). The manger of Bethlehem was not the place of Christ's beginning: on the contrary, He is the Logos personally and timelessly, the Logos unbegun and unending; His goings forth have been from everlasting (Micah 5:2; John 17:5; John 17:24; John 8:58; 1 Timothy 3:16). What really happened at Bethlehem was that the pre-existent Logos took upon Himself a new order of being: in the Apostle's language, the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, left eternal glory (John 3:16; John 17:5; Galatians 4:4) and took upon Himself the nature of the seed of Abraham (Hebrews 2:14-18; Philippians 2:5-11), to purchase redemption for sinful man (John 1:29; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 1:18-20; Hebrews 9:12; Revelation 5:9-10). That is to say, the non-material passed over into the material. This happens every day when man causes his own thoughts to transmute themselves into corporeal activities of many different kinds. Conversely, man transmutes the material into the non-material (or at most, the quasi-material) in the application of the ultimate forms of energy and the relations existing among these, which are apprehensible only in terms of mathematical formulas. Those who discount or reject the Virgin Birth are called upon to explain away the doctrine of the Savior's pre-existence, one of the explicit and most prominent doctrines of the Bible.

To summarize: Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, is known to us historically as Jesus (Jesus of Nazareth); His eternal name, however, is Logos, Word; his temporal name (that which existed only in God's Eternal Purpose until it was given actuality in our world, at Bethlehem, in the reign of Caesar Augustus) is Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father (Psalms 2:7; Colossians 1:13-18; Luke 1:30-35; John 1:14); His official title is Messiah, Christos, Christ, meaning The Anointed One. These names are all meaningful, and must not be wrested out of their respective Scriptural contexts.

5. Let there be light: and there was light.(1) Note well the manner in which these decrees were expressed, the formula which occurs throughout the whole Cosmogony: Let there be, etc., etc. (Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:9; Genesis 1:14; Genesis 1:20; Genesis 1:24). Does not this intimate that the Divine Will was operating through the media of what we speak of as secondary causes, that is, the laws of nature? Note the significant change in Genesis 1:26: it is no longer, let there be, it is now let us, that is, Elohim communicating within His own being, a Divine Consilium of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit.

(2) What kind of light is indicated here? Do we have here the idea of light without a sun? Simpson (IBG, 469): Light was therefore created before even the sunone of the features of the story which renders impossible all attempts to bring it into line with modern scientific knowledge. This statement is dogmatic, to say the least, Of course, this is to be expected of exegetes who find the source-material of these Scriptures in various aspects of the Babylonian myths. True it is, that in the early pagan accounts of Creation, we find a sun-god, that is, a personification of the sun, presented as creator; and that we also find in these accounts the antithesis of darkness and light portrayed under the guise of a deadly conflict between this sun-god and some kind of a chaos-monster. But the idea of light as the first created being is not to be found in any of these pagan traditions (which, by way of contrast with the Hebrew account, are myths in the proper sense of that term). It is agreed, of course, that it was not the intention of the writer of Genesis to give us a scientific account of the Creation (indeed the entire book was written in pre-scientific times). It was his intention, rather, to give us the religious (spiritual) truth about the origin and development of the Creative Process. But who has any legitimate ground or right to assume that the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of Truth (John 15:26), could not have put this account in language that would be found to be in accord with human science as the latter advanced in its understanding of the mysteries of the physical world? Indeed the broad general terms in which this narrative is communicated to man has made it adaptable even throughout the changes which have occurred from time to time in scientific theory.

(3) What kind of light was this first light, as decreed in Genesis 1:3? In opposition to the dogmatism of the mythologizing interpreters, it should be noted that among physicists of our time it is a commonplace that the primal form of energythe ultimate, the irreducibleto be called into being was some form of radiant energy. But there are many kinds of radiant energy, in addition to those few reflected by a surface and then refracted by the retina of the human eye to give man his sense of colors, those embraced within the limits of the visible spectrum. There are many other forms of radiant energy operating both above and below these limits, such as radio waves, for example. Cosmic rays which bombard us constantly from outer space are perhaps the most mysterious of all these primal forms of energy. Or, again, was this first light some form of molecular light?- light resulting, let us say, from heat produced by the motion induced (by the Divine Energy) into the now gradually shaping cosmic mass, which by this time was probably molten? There is no certain answer to these questions, of course. We know, however, that luminosity is the result of incandescence. Any solid body can be rendered luminous (incandescent) by being heated to some 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Any liquid that can absorb as great a quantity of heat likewise emits light. To be incandescent is to be white, glowing, or luminous with intense heat. Strong (ST, 395): The beginning of activity in matter would manifest itself by the production of light, since light is the resultant of molecular activity. This corresponds to the statement in Genesis 1:3. As the result of condensation, the nebula becomes luminous, and this process from darkness to light is described as follows: -there was evening and there was morning, one day.-' Here we have a day without a suna feature in the narrative quite consistent with two facts of science first, that the nebula would naturally be self-luminous, and, secondly, that the earth proper, which reached its present form before the sun, would, when it was first thrown off, itself be a self-luminous and molten mass. The day was therefore continuousday without flight. Someone has rightly remarked that men called Moses a fool for putting light previous to the sun, and Laplace a scientist for doing the same thing.

(4) In a famous essay, On Light (De Luce), Robert Grosseteste, made the first Chancellor of Oxford in 1221, apparently anticipated some of the concepts of present-day physics, in his treatment of lux (light in its source) and lumen (reflected or radiated light). His theory came to be known as the light metaphysics, and was elaborated by two of his contemporaries, Roger Bacon and the Italian mystic, Bonaventura. According to this theory, along with the Creation ex nihilo of unformed matter, God brought into existence the first form, lux spiritualis.This lux, conceived as an extraordinarily rarefied form of corporeal light, something, in fact, that approximated spirit, originated space; and as the form of corporeity in primordial matter, was the primary source and cause of all created things. As McKeon writes (SMP, I, 261): The characteristic of all light is to engender itself perpetually, and diffuse itself spherically about a point in an instantaneous manner. Originally, the luminous form and matter were equally unextended, but the first form created by God in the first matter, multiplies itself infinitely, and spreads equally in all directions, distending thus the matter to which it is united and constituting thus the mass of the universe. Moreover, according to this theory, just as light is the power by which the purest Spirit produces the corporeal world, so too it is the instrument by which the soul comes in contact with the body and the things of sense; hence, viewed in this aspect, the lux becomes lumen.Commenting on Grosseteste's theory, Miss Sharp has this to say (FPOTC, 23): It appears that Grosseteste experienced the same difficulties as modern physicists. The functions he assigns to light. show that he regards it as an energy; but his desire to speak of it as resembling body is strikingly like the present-day application of such terms as -wave lengths-' and -rays-' to the ether, which in itself is admitted to be imperceptible to the senses and is thought of only as the subject of activity or as that which is conserved throughout change. As a principle of unity in the universe, this light is comparable to the modern ether, which fills all space from the most distant star to the interspaces of the atom. Again, Grosseteste's theory is not unlike the modern hypothesis of the convertibility of matter and energy. Lastly, we find something resembling the modern ethereal attributes of electricity, magnetism, and chemical activities, in his view of lux as the source of all movement and life and as the basis of sound. (Modern physics, to be sure, has abandoned the notion of ether; however, this does not affect the foregoing argument, as space itself seems to have taken over the role once assigned to the ether.) Two other pertinent facts should be pointed out in this connection: first, that Grosseteste's theory of lux and its creative function is strikingly parallel to the tendency of present-day physicists to regard radiant energy as the ultimate irreducible of matter; and second, that this light metaphysics is strikingly adaptable to the Biblical doctrine of the ultimate glorification of the bodies of the redeemed (Daniel 12:3, Romans 8:11; Romans 8:30; 1 Corinthians 15:35-49; Acts 9:1-9; 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, etc.) and it was used by its advocates, by Bonaventura especially, to elaborate that doctrine.

(5) That the light decreed in the third verse of Genesis was not the light of our sun seems obvious. Solar light did not penetrate the vapors which enveloped the earth until the fourth day. Moreover, it seems that our entire solar system was in process of being formed, but only in process of being formed at this stage of the Creation: as part of an organized cosmos, it did not yet exist as a solar system.Lange (CDHCG, 165): The light denotes all that is simply illuminating in its efficacy, all the luminous element; the darkness denotes all that is untransparent, dark and shadow-casting; both together denote the polarity of the created world as it exists between the light-formations and the night-formations, the constitution of the day and night. However, whatever may have been the nature of the light described in this meaningful passage, the religious truth remains the same, namely, that the entrance of the Divine Word always brings light, whether that entrance be into the impenetrable darkness of the primordial Chaos or into the dark recesses of the human soul. Where the Spirit of God operates through the Word, the darkness flees before the light; so in the Creation, there was at first darkness, non-being, but when the Spirit began to energize there was light and being. On Day One, then, occurred the beginning of matter-in-motion in the primal forms of energy and light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

1. The light was called good.In Scripture anything is called good that is doing what the Creator designed it to do in the total scheme of things. Hence we may rightly say that the Creation was the field in which God's perfections were manifested. Note also that only the light is called good, not the darkness, nor even the co-existence of light and darkness.

2. God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.(1) Because God is all-powerful, all that He creates is good for some purpose or end. Did God Himself bring the darkness into existence? Whatever the darkness implies here, whether it be an absolute void or a motionless, objectless, amorphous world-stuff, man does not have and cannot even claim to have the certain answer to this question. It may well be that the darkness existed by God's sufferance; hence, whatever may be implied by the term, this darkness when reduced to order by Divine decree, became a good: the whole Creation was later Divinely pronounced good, and after the creation of man, very good (Genesis 1:25; Genesis 1:31). Thus has God always been bringing forth being out of non-being, perfection out of imperfection. (2) Titus Burckhardt writes (Cosmology and Modern Science, in Tomorrow, Vol. 12, No. 3): Modern science will never reach that matter which is at the basis of this world. But between the qualitatively differentiated world and the undifferentiated matter there lies something like an intermediate zone: this is chaos. The sinister dangers attendant on atomic fission are but a pointer indicating the frontier of chaos and of dissolution. (3) By thus separating the darkness and the light, as specificyet relationalforms, God imposed order on the darkness and gave meanings to both darkness and light, meanings both physical and spiritual. (4) At the same time that He gave meaning to both darkness and lights, as Lord of both, He gave them their appropriate names, Night and Day, respectively, and thus set in motion the ordered alternation of night and day generally.

3. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.(Literally, Day One.) (1) Simpson (IBG, 471); rejects the aeonic-day theory. While this view, he says, might have made the account of creation less irreconcilable with modern science, it would have involved a lessening of God's greatness, one sign of which was His power to do so much in one day. Is not this a begging of the question? How is God's greatness lessened by the view that this first day was one of indefinite length? Did it not take the same measure of power to actualize the Creation regardless of the length of time that God may have taken to do it? (2) We certainly do not take the position here that God could not have created the cosmos in six days of twenty-four hours each: God can do whatever He may will to do that is consistent with His Being and Character. M. Henry (CWB, 2): The Creator could have made his work perfect at first, but by this gradual proceeding he would show what is, ordinarily, the method of his providence and grace. (Cf. 2 Peter 3:8). Whitelaw (PCG, 12): Of course the length of Day One practically determines the length of all six. If it was a solar day, then they must be considered such. But as the present sidereal arrangements for the measurement of time were not then established, it is clearly gratuitous to proceed on the assumption that it was. M. Henry again (ibid., 2): This was not only the first day of the world, but the first day of the week. I observe it to the honour of that day, because the new world began on the first day of the week likewise, in the resurrection of Christ, as the light of the world, early in the morning. In him the dayspring from on high visited the world. (Luke 1:78, Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1-2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1-10, Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, Revelation 1:10). (3) How long was the darkness that preceded the light of this Day One? This question could be answered only if we knew precisely what the darkness was. This, however, we do not know. That the darkness was of indefinite duration seems obvious from the reading of the text. It has been asserted that this sequence of darkness and light, night and day, evening and morning, was determined by the Hebrew custom of reckoning time from sunset to sunset. Is it not more reasonable to think that, on the contrary, the Hebrew custom was derived from the Hebrew Cosmogony as handed down from the remote past in the Torah?