Genesis 1:1--2:4a, the first word of the Bible, “The Generations Of The Heaven And The Earth When They Were Created,” is God’s testimony of His work of creation. It narrates seven days, of dark/light periods, six of work and one of rest. The obvious origin of the weeks mankind still observes is rooted here. The first 5 verses account for the first day of that week: “1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
This whole passage is obvious historical narrative, brief and terse, pointed and lordly. There is no waste of words. It is economy of speech with absolutely stated propositions. Suggestive as the language is, it never-the-less moves from verse to verse relentlessly connecting events and propositions until the whole is told. It bears the marks of eye witness, and implies by its information as well as by its tone that it is the testimony of the Creator himself. The Holy Spirit knew the preeminence of these truths; That is why they are planted here in Scripture: “All Scripture is God breathed…2Tim3:16,” and the placement in the writing is not by accident, as all the writing is what is breathed by God.
In what are we first instructed by our creator? Let us look at day one: “1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This first proposition is not a title nor a summary, rather it is the first stage of the work. Verse two, starting with “and”, bears that out by commenting on the heaven-and-earth product that is brought into being in verse one. Without form, and void, and darkness are remarkable stage related issues that are dealt with in the succeeding narrative. All the physical mater of the universe is brought into being in this first work. It is not formed yet and it is lacking the divine finished design that supports life as God has ordained it. But the space/mater/time mass of the universe now exists by the creative act of God. Its beginning has begun. This proposition, if true, and God cannot lie, draws a line between God’s being and the everything else of this physical universe. God exists independent, self existent, from eternity, but the heavens and the earth exists by a creative act of God and come into their own being dependently contingent on His speaking them into existence. God is infinite and eternal, heavens-and-earth is finite and temporal. Any confusion of this dividing line is thence in all scripture treated as the lie. Were this a plum line hung in the gallery of all philosophical and religious opinions both rustic and polished, I believe only the Bible, biblical theology, and biblical philosophy would be found to alien with it.
For starters, all creation is finite; its materials did not exist before the beginning; that alone is a logical razor that separates away the bulk of worldly philosophy, science, and religion, new age or old age. God on the other hand is infinite, not created physics, spiritual, and eternal. And, as this testimony is meant for mankind (persons each and every one), written in words conveying purpose and appreciation, it is evident God must also be a person or even a trinity of persons. Eternal mater or mater being an aspect of divinity are both sliced off; this removes pantheism, polytheism, and monistic materialism from the possible realm of truth and into the realm of the lie. So also goes modern atheistic scientism, evolution, communism, or their political daughters like socialism. Closed system physics is lie. Modern intellectual and moral skepticism is lie. The list goes on: it is a wonderfully rich proposition.
Next, concerning the personality or eternal personal nature of God, it is evident in this first proposition that God already exists as God when the heavens and the earth begins. He is the acting subject of the absolute verb “to create”. Thus: a personal God is prior to that beginning action, and thus: He is eternal, having no beginning. In verse two He personally notes a few things that are inconsistent with his final purposes for that universal mass which in its space/mater/time properties is yet incomplete. He has acted with design and staged and stepped purpose. He has acted in council. His using language to create and using words to tell mankind about it, is personal. Language and communication, meaning and sense, truth and logic are personal and have their origins, first, in the personal God himself, and then second in His communication to man in His image. They are thus not random, accidental, or subjective to human persons; but rather have an objective eternal source in the nature of God. The further Biblical revelation of the trinity of eternal persons within the indivisible essence of the one God (all consenting to and involved in this work) makes language eternal and objective. It is most interesting that the verb “to create” is in the Hebrew a singular, which requires a singular subject. And equally interesting is the plural noun, Elohim “God”, which is that unitary subject. In the next verse we see the Holy Spirit moving on the faces of the waters, and so soon after the Word, “Let there be light.” And then a few verses away counsel is revealed in the creation of mankind, “Let us make man in our image.” All this is so very consistent with the further Biblical revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that it actually requires that teaching to satisfy the gravity attached to these propositions as they are found here in the beginning.
Reviewing then, God is not the universe and the universe is not God, the universe begins—God does not, God is personal—the universe is not, and Language is how the personal God communicates and creates. Divine language and logic, council and purpose, brings the heaven and earth system into being from no preexistent materials, gives it a being separate from God’s being , and circumscribes it’s special, temporal materials into a planed system to be developed over the succeeding days. And lastly, the Trinity as it is taught in the rest of scripture illuminates this passage’s personal elements.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God comments on the circumscribed spatial/temporal materials just brought into being, noting wherein they are deficient unto His final purposes: they are unformed according to His own finished standard of form, useless or empty according to His own final standard of fullness, and darkness is on the faces of the deep. These noted deficiencies frame the actions of the next days and drive the furthering narrative. “Without form” is a judgment based on a previous criteria and so is “void”. Light separated from darkness, heavens from the waters below and above, and dry land from the seas are some of the formative works that negate the formlessness. Light bearers in the heavens, botanical and zoological life for the seas, air and land, and man as vice-regent and image bearer reigning over these works are the filling up and purposive works that negate the empty or void condition. Those works all follow. But first is the energizing activity of the breath of God, the Spirit, moving over the faces of the deep, initializing the surfaces to break out into planed order at the command of God’s word. “Moved” connotes energizing vibration, and “face” is in the plural: lit. faces. The deep represents the unformed and unfilled watery mass of verse one’s production. Heavens and earth, here called the deep, are now readied for the first recorded command of God.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. The word is brought forth, “Let there be light:” and fiat ex-nihilo light comes into being. Later it will be made to dwell in the mediate light bearers as the sun, moon, and stars are created (filling up the heavens), but now the formative light in its divine and immediate illumination shines. So, “: and there was light”. Ex-nihilo light means light out of and from nothing or no pre-existent mater. Fiat light means light by command. It is a created light, not mediated, framed by the word of God. Created light is not God, who is divine light, but it is in some way commensurate to the light that God is: so that the rest of scripture can say of creation, that it is full of His glory, (1Jo.1:5; Is.6:3). “And God said,” tells us very much about language, why men speak and communicate. It also grounds the scientific activities of mankind in an objective world with an objective logic with a verbal origin and form to be discovered thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness. God is the only source of goodness from which to apply a judgment of good. Light is thus good. And because the narrative closes with a “very good”, we may conclude that it is good that light be divided from the darkness. Both these ideas receive explanation throughout the rest of scripture in the salvation and judgment works of God. (e.g. 2Cor.4:6; Matt.25:33; 1Jo.2:11; Jud 1:6) Lastly at this point, note how the logical categorical separating of diverse ideas and the law of contradiction has its origin in God’s nature; it too is not an invention of man. No wonder the rules of grammar and logic are similar.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” Following the created separation of light and darkness, God names them day and night, and then He notes the ordinal position of the first day. Thus is the first 24 hours of creation now completed. There is no way any other period than a 24 hour day could be meant here. Nor is there any need to interject one against the common meaning of the text. Mankind’s week, a universal anthropological artifact, is here grounded in the mathematics of the Creator’s work, (cardinal and ordinal numbers as well as the practical operations dependent on their algorithms are grounded in the objective knowable world that by language God has created and made. q.v. Is.40:12.)
Conclusion: A number of truths are given us by our Creator that are absolutely essential to our well being as His creatures. Satan, knowing our Creator's love of us, seeks to assault these truths with lies so that he may destroy man and further his ruin in sin and dissipation. To do this he sows doubt as to the historical validity of these first chapters of Genesis. The following list is not exhaustive in any means, but it does summarize this short meditation.
TRUTHS
1) theistic creation of Space/Mater/Time mass of the universe (fiat, ex nihilo, finite and open/not closed, Triune space/mater/time and trinity of persons in the Godhead)
2) creation of light (divine light and physical light/day 4 connection)
3) darkness/light divided and named (separation naming and the law of contradiction/foundation of logic)
4) goodness: a divine judgment (formless and void with darkness as criteria for judgment)
5) 24 hour light dark periods established, called days (days of a Sabbath week)
6) ordinal and cardinal numbers and math (Is.40:12 and operations dependant on their algorithms)
7) language and the cosmos (objective science, verbal propositional truth exists)
LIES
1) atheism or pantheism: no god, swap the creature for the creator (eternal, infinite and closed, idolatry, naturalism)
2) materialism and relativism: time chance, no design, no intelligence, no absolute criteria of judgment, no good nor evil
3) light is eternal uncreated physics not subject to the word of God (law of contradiction is relative…no true truth)
4) Good has only a changing humanistic relative meaning and no authority or true truth meaning
5) no design in days and weeks, Sabbath is a myth (why not have 10 day weeks—enlightenment trial)
6) math is subjective relative not absolute (algorithms are either relative or pantheistic absolutes)
7) language evolves from grunts, not connected to the cosmos or truth (knowledge skepticism, irrationalism)
DGB
This whole passage is obvious historical narrative, brief and terse, pointed and lordly. There is no waste of words. It is economy of speech with absolutely stated propositions. Suggestive as the language is, it never-the-less moves from verse to verse relentlessly connecting events and propositions until the whole is told. It bears the marks of eye witness, and implies by its information as well as by its tone that it is the testimony of the Creator himself. The Holy Spirit knew the preeminence of these truths; That is why they are planted here in Scripture: “All Scripture is God breathed…2Tim3:16,” and the placement in the writing is not by accident, as all the writing is what is breathed by God.
In what are we first instructed by our creator? Let us look at day one: “1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This first proposition is not a title nor a summary, rather it is the first stage of the work. Verse two, starting with “and”, bears that out by commenting on the heaven-and-earth product that is brought into being in verse one. Without form, and void, and darkness are remarkable stage related issues that are dealt with in the succeeding narrative. All the physical mater of the universe is brought into being in this first work. It is not formed yet and it is lacking the divine finished design that supports life as God has ordained it. But the space/mater/time mass of the universe now exists by the creative act of God. Its beginning has begun. This proposition, if true, and God cannot lie, draws a line between God’s being and the everything else of this physical universe. God exists independent, self existent, from eternity, but the heavens and the earth exists by a creative act of God and come into their own being dependently contingent on His speaking them into existence. God is infinite and eternal, heavens-and-earth is finite and temporal. Any confusion of this dividing line is thence in all scripture treated as the lie. Were this a plum line hung in the gallery of all philosophical and religious opinions both rustic and polished, I believe only the Bible, biblical theology, and biblical philosophy would be found to alien with it.
For starters, all creation is finite; its materials did not exist before the beginning; that alone is a logical razor that separates away the bulk of worldly philosophy, science, and religion, new age or old age. God on the other hand is infinite, not created physics, spiritual, and eternal. And, as this testimony is meant for mankind (persons each and every one), written in words conveying purpose and appreciation, it is evident God must also be a person or even a trinity of persons. Eternal mater or mater being an aspect of divinity are both sliced off; this removes pantheism, polytheism, and monistic materialism from the possible realm of truth and into the realm of the lie. So also goes modern atheistic scientism, evolution, communism, or their political daughters like socialism. Closed system physics is lie. Modern intellectual and moral skepticism is lie. The list goes on: it is a wonderfully rich proposition.
Next, concerning the personality or eternal personal nature of God, it is evident in this first proposition that God already exists as God when the heavens and the earth begins. He is the acting subject of the absolute verb “to create”. Thus: a personal God is prior to that beginning action, and thus: He is eternal, having no beginning. In verse two He personally notes a few things that are inconsistent with his final purposes for that universal mass which in its space/mater/time properties is yet incomplete. He has acted with design and staged and stepped purpose. He has acted in council. His using language to create and using words to tell mankind about it, is personal. Language and communication, meaning and sense, truth and logic are personal and have their origins, first, in the personal God himself, and then second in His communication to man in His image. They are thus not random, accidental, or subjective to human persons; but rather have an objective eternal source in the nature of God. The further Biblical revelation of the trinity of eternal persons within the indivisible essence of the one God (all consenting to and involved in this work) makes language eternal and objective. It is most interesting that the verb “to create” is in the Hebrew a singular, which requires a singular subject. And equally interesting is the plural noun, Elohim “God”, which is that unitary subject. In the next verse we see the Holy Spirit moving on the faces of the waters, and so soon after the Word, “Let there be light.” And then a few verses away counsel is revealed in the creation of mankind, “Let us make man in our image.” All this is so very consistent with the further Biblical revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that it actually requires that teaching to satisfy the gravity attached to these propositions as they are found here in the beginning.
Reviewing then, God is not the universe and the universe is not God, the universe begins—God does not, God is personal—the universe is not, and Language is how the personal God communicates and creates. Divine language and logic, council and purpose, brings the heaven and earth system into being from no preexistent materials, gives it a being separate from God’s being , and circumscribes it’s special, temporal materials into a planed system to be developed over the succeeding days. And lastly, the Trinity as it is taught in the rest of scripture illuminates this passage’s personal elements.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God comments on the circumscribed spatial/temporal materials just brought into being, noting wherein they are deficient unto His final purposes: they are unformed according to His own finished standard of form, useless or empty according to His own final standard of fullness, and darkness is on the faces of the deep. These noted deficiencies frame the actions of the next days and drive the furthering narrative. “Without form” is a judgment based on a previous criteria and so is “void”. Light separated from darkness, heavens from the waters below and above, and dry land from the seas are some of the formative works that negate the formlessness. Light bearers in the heavens, botanical and zoological life for the seas, air and land, and man as vice-regent and image bearer reigning over these works are the filling up and purposive works that negate the empty or void condition. Those works all follow. But first is the energizing activity of the breath of God, the Spirit, moving over the faces of the deep, initializing the surfaces to break out into planed order at the command of God’s word. “Moved” connotes energizing vibration, and “face” is in the plural: lit. faces. The deep represents the unformed and unfilled watery mass of verse one’s production. Heavens and earth, here called the deep, are now readied for the first recorded command of God.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. The word is brought forth, “Let there be light:” and fiat ex-nihilo light comes into being. Later it will be made to dwell in the mediate light bearers as the sun, moon, and stars are created (filling up the heavens), but now the formative light in its divine and immediate illumination shines. So, “: and there was light”. Ex-nihilo light means light out of and from nothing or no pre-existent mater. Fiat light means light by command. It is a created light, not mediated, framed by the word of God. Created light is not God, who is divine light, but it is in some way commensurate to the light that God is: so that the rest of scripture can say of creation, that it is full of His glory, (1Jo.1:5; Is.6:3). “And God said,” tells us very much about language, why men speak and communicate. It also grounds the scientific activities of mankind in an objective world with an objective logic with a verbal origin and form to be discovered thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness. God is the only source of goodness from which to apply a judgment of good. Light is thus good. And because the narrative closes with a “very good”, we may conclude that it is good that light be divided from the darkness. Both these ideas receive explanation throughout the rest of scripture in the salvation and judgment works of God. (e.g. 2Cor.4:6; Matt.25:33; 1Jo.2:11; Jud 1:6) Lastly at this point, note how the logical categorical separating of diverse ideas and the law of contradiction has its origin in God’s nature; it too is not an invention of man. No wonder the rules of grammar and logic are similar.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” Following the created separation of light and darkness, God names them day and night, and then He notes the ordinal position of the first day. Thus is the first 24 hours of creation now completed. There is no way any other period than a 24 hour day could be meant here. Nor is there any need to interject one against the common meaning of the text. Mankind’s week, a universal anthropological artifact, is here grounded in the mathematics of the Creator’s work, (cardinal and ordinal numbers as well as the practical operations dependent on their algorithms are grounded in the objective knowable world that by language God has created and made. q.v. Is.40:12.)
Conclusion: A number of truths are given us by our Creator that are absolutely essential to our well being as His creatures. Satan, knowing our Creator's love of us, seeks to assault these truths with lies so that he may destroy man and further his ruin in sin and dissipation. To do this he sows doubt as to the historical validity of these first chapters of Genesis. The following list is not exhaustive in any means, but it does summarize this short meditation.
TRUTHS
1) theistic creation of Space/Mater/Time mass of the universe (fiat, ex nihilo, finite and open/not closed, Triune space/mater/time and trinity of persons in the Godhead)
2) creation of light (divine light and physical light/day 4 connection)
3) darkness/light divided and named (separation naming and the law of contradiction/foundation of logic)
4) goodness: a divine judgment (formless and void with darkness as criteria for judgment)
5) 24 hour light dark periods established, called days (days of a Sabbath week)
6) ordinal and cardinal numbers and math (Is.40:12 and operations dependant on their algorithms)
7) language and the cosmos (objective science, verbal propositional truth exists)
LIES
1) atheism or pantheism: no god, swap the creature for the creator (eternal, infinite and closed, idolatry, naturalism)
2) materialism and relativism: time chance, no design, no intelligence, no absolute criteria of judgment, no good nor evil
3) light is eternal uncreated physics not subject to the word of God (law of contradiction is relative…no true truth)
4) Good has only a changing humanistic relative meaning and no authority or true truth meaning
5) no design in days and weeks, Sabbath is a myth (why not have 10 day weeks—enlightenment trial)
6) math is subjective relative not absolute (algorithms are either relative or pantheistic absolutes)
7) language evolves from grunts, not connected to the cosmos or truth (knowledge skepticism, irrationalism)
DGB
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5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." This simple truth that God pre-existed all of his creation, and caused its finite existence by the infinite power of his word in which they are also held together, is for us now: diagnostic of odious error and in the end it is for all mankind: final adjudication of intractable rebellion. It is in this way like a sharp razor, as Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
