Creation

This is not a blog that gives any answers and it merely poses questions and observations on things I speculate. There are things I affirm, and things I reject.

I understand God to be outside of time, so I do not believe that it took God any time to create everything, as I do not believe God is inside of time. Time is a created measurement of days and nights. So from Gods perspective then I believe that creation, and everything that has every transpired in time, happens in God's perspective as something we can't even imagine, a perpetual now. The question is, when was time created, and how does that effect the days of creation. Was there a time before the 4th day where a sun was created to give light? Was time present at the first instant something began? To think about a being outside of time doing things inside of time is one of the reasons that I can't be hardcore in any camp. We're dealing here with abstract concepts with our feeble human minds. Anyway, on with the blog.

The six days in Gen 1 are as follows:
Day 1 - Creation of the earth and light. Division of light and darkness (day and night)
Day 2 - The waters separated and the sky dividing the waters above from the waters on earth
Day 3 - The waters are gathered together, dry land appearing, and vegetation and plants created
Day 4 - Creation of the sun to give light to day, and the moon to give light to night
Day 5 - Creation of the animals in the water and in the air
Day 6 - Creation of the animals on the land and of man and woman

I clearly reject the theory that each "day" of creation was a long era where the earth and animals evolved and changed. People use this argument to defend an old earth view that "explains" how the earth changed, and things evolved, but each segment of earth change shows signs of death (fossils) and death being a product of the fall, this cannot be. Now we understand days to be solar days with 24 hour periods of time. On the surface, 6 day creation means that each day was a 24 hour period. The sun not being created until the 4th day, the latter 3 days of creation could have been solar days, but the former 3 couldn't have been. So the idea of a 24 hour day (as dictated by our solar days) seems to be imposed on the text because that is all we as humans can understand days to be. This is clearly possible. In genesis one, each day is defined by "And there was evening, and there was morning—the _______ day." I don't know if this statement is to be understood sequentially or simultaneously. From our perspective in our environment to experience night and day, it has to be in sequence because day precedes night. But if the text is to be read that the presence of night and day is what dictates a day, then that process could happen instantaneously. While it is night time in Fillmore, it is day in Paris. At this instant there is both night and day.

Now looking at the text in Gen 2 is something else that seems to complicate my understanding of a 6 day creation.

4 These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Here we see a barren earth, with no vegetation. From that earth God brought forth water and from the dust created man, and then created vegetation and put the man in the midst of that. The tension here is that the creation of man seem to precede the creation of vegetation. I cant understand how sequentially this does not contradict the creation account in Genesis chapter 1. If these are different explanations of a simultaneous act of creation, then there's no issue at all in my mind. So the account in Genesis 2 inclines me to believe a simultaneous creation as I understand it now.

Another matter that has been on my mind all day seems to incline me to a literal 6 days. What about the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a day that was commanded as a day of rest, for the reason that God rested on the 7th day of creation. Not that God didn't cease to be God and hold all things together, for if he did then we would have died on the 7th day. So clearly God never ceases to do what he does as God. But the reason behind the 4th commandment is the 7th day of creation, a day where the work of creation was finished and God ceased to create. Having a literal day set apart definitely inclines one to believe that the 7th day was actually a day, and thus the first 6 must have been. From an instantaneous view, the Sabbath couldn't be literally defined by the 7th day of creation, but could only be understood as a symbolic day set apart to praise God for his completed work in creation. This has more tension here.

Long story short, I have many questions, and few answers, and a lot of study and thinking to do on the topic.