Evolution – Lesson 3
Genesis 1:1-3
This the third block of material on the evolutionary theory; the first block of material was the preliminary definition in which we defined our words, cosmic evolution, macroevolution and micro evolution and showed that the first two words, cosmic and macro evolution, are very important as religious philosophy; not as science per se, not as pure science but as religious philosophy and therefore anti-Christian, anti-Biblical and the things to which we are objecting in this series.
However, the third word, microevolution, we made it clear that this was acceptable on Biblical grounds. The second block of material dealt with the philosophical background and as we go into the third block of material the Biblical text, we should be very clear in our thinking about these philosophical backgrounds and recall the three great ideas that we are faced with. I would say these three ideas are the axiom and the assumption of unbelieving attacks against the Bible. The thing I want to stress as we go into the Biblical text itself is that it points in our exposition of the Biblical text of Genesis and related Scripture, you are going to find yourself in tension. It’s unavoidable. You’ll find yourself in intellectual tension with certain things that are being taught today, and when this happens you have to ask yourself and continually review in your mind whether the tension that you feel was of the idea that seems to be so solidly entrenched in your mind actually is a true fact or whether it is an idea that is dependent upon of these three basic axioms of unbelief. I might add at this point that any criticism directed against Scripture that is grounded on any one or all of these three axioms, I would consider logically invalid because one cannot criticize a system when one does not share the axioms or the basic starting points of that system.
For example, it’d be useless if I went to build a numbers system on a base of 60, say, as the Babylonian system was and criticize you because when you use your number system based on 10 you get different answers than the “right ones,” (end quote) that I get based on the base 60. In other words, it’s unfair to criticize one system using the presuppositions of another system. And so here when we deal with the Biblical text we want to be careful that in our thinking and areas where we feel tension that we’re actually not feeling tension of another system of thought, rather than actual facts that are valid against the Biblical system.
So once again we want to review these three basic axioms of unbelief. The first one is that the universe is an autonomous or independent machine closed to divine manipulation and run by Law (with a capital “L”) or Chance (with a capital “C”); that the universe is a closed system, and by this we simply mean that in this assumption is stating that the universe goes on by itself; it is run by an inherent set of laws or somehow Chance operates through time to bring about certain effects in the real world.
The second basic axiom of unbelief was that in learning facts man starts with himself and moves outward and you might envision this as man drawing a circle about himself with himself as the center of the circle and as he learns he expands the radius of the circle, so you have an ever expanding circle of knowledge about the central person. And this, of course, puts the ultimate authority as man’s mind rather than an exterior objective authority. And when man’s mind is the ultimate authority, then this logically breaks down into the world is what man says it is.
And finally, the third great axiom of unbelief is that decay, sorrow and death are inherent parts of nature, that these things are inherent parts of nature. You want to be careful of this; this is the inherent part of nature. In other words, the very fact that we see these things are just evidences that it always has been this way, that existence itself, physical existence itself requires decay.
Now opposed to these three basic axioms of unbelief we postulated the following three counter ideas or the axioms of Biblical truth. In opposition to the first idea that the universe is an autonomous independent machine closed to divine manipulation, operated by Law or Chance, we said that contrary to this the universe in the Bible is seen as a creation by God and is not closed to divine manipulation but is open to His moment by moment manipulation and it is not run by Law or Chance, it is run by His Providence. So God is free, at any moment in history, to do His will in His creation and He has two choices, He can break in in a miracle or He can manipulate existing physical processes. But in any case, God is free to moment by moment control and accomplish His will at any point in any way or part of His creation.
The second Biblical axiom to counter the second axiom of unbelief, instead of knowledge proceeding outward from man, man first receives a framework for his knowledge from God by divine verbal revelation, setting up a framework in which he can think, giving for example, the doctrine of creation, telling man where He came from; the revelation that God is a person and thereby giving significance to man’s personality; the Biblical doctrine of where man is going, eschatology or prophecy, giving a pattern and a form to history; this thing that man thinks might be a form is really there.
And then finally, we said the third great Biblical idea to counter and oppose the third axiom of unbelief was the fact that decay, sorrow and death are not inherent parts of nature but they are abnormal additions to a perfect creation caused by man’s moral choice. That is, that the reason behind sorrow and decay is not rooted in the nature of reality. The reason behind sorrow, decay and death is rooted in the results of man’s fall, that man made a choice, that man brought in evil upon the scene. So the decay we see around us is not due to the direct hand of the Creator; it is due to man’s messing up of what the Creator had originally made perfectly.
We want to keep these three ideas in mind as we proceed into our analysis of the text of Scripture. In the third block of material which will be quite extensive I want to deal basically with six problems. These problems are: one, Genesis 1:1-3; the second problem; the problem of the “days” of Genesis; the third problem, Genesis 2:1-3; the fourth problem, man’s creation; the fifth problem, the problem of the curse in the Garden of Eden; the sixth problem, the problem of the flood.
I think these six problems basically summarize the focal points, the Biblical text, the main points that a thinking Christian has to consider in dealing with these problems of science and the Bible. Once again the six points: Genesis 1:1-3; the problem of “days;” Genesis 2:1-3; man’s creation, the curse and the flood.
Now proceeding to the text of our Bible, Genesis 1:1-3 and we’ll begin with the first of the six problems, the Biblical text. Our text says, “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.”
The first observation on the text is that time sequence, a definite time sequence, that is, time sequence that is measured in units, does not begin until verse 3. Time sequence that is measured in definite units, i.e., days, such time sequence does not begin until verse 3, when “God said, Let there be light:” verse 4, “And God saw the light…and God divided the light,” and then verse 5, “And God called…” and it was the first day. So time sequence in measured units does not begin until there’s light by which time can be measured. Therefore, as far as time is concerned, our observation is that Genesis 1-2 antedate units of time. So in the first two verses of the Bible, although we have time/sequence, we have no idea, no definition of how long time is involved in verses 1-2. They could be billions of years or it could be a second. In other words, at this point we just don’t know. Time in definite units begins in verse 3, not with verses 1-2.
Now let’s look at Genesis 1:1. There are basically three ways in which Genesis 1:1 can be taken. The first way is to take it as referring to an original creation of matter, from which the heaven and the earth was formed. In other words you would read verse 1, “In the beginning God created the material from which the earth and the heaven would be made,” and the account of that making would follow in chapter 1. A second way of taking Genesis 1:1 is to make it refer to an original creation which subsequently was destroyed, and this is the classical “gap theory.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and verse 1 would thereby refer to a complete and total creation which somehow met destruction and then verse 2 would pick up the narrative at the point, after this first creation was destroyed. A third way of taking Genesis 1:1 would be to refer to it as a chapter title, so that Genesis 1:1 refers to everything that follows, all the way on down to Genesis 2:3.
So there are basically three ways of taking Genesis 1:1; referring to bringing the raw material into existence out of which God would ultimately form the heaven and earth; (2) the gap theory, the idea that this is an original, total, complete creation subsequently destroyed, or (3) a chapter title. These are the three ways of taking Genesis 1:1. I might add that in modern translations, such as the New Jewish Version of the Bible and I think this is an alternate reading in the RSV translation of the Bible, and there is an increasing tendency to take verse 1 as a dependent clause, so you would read: “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and voice,” then in verse 3 “God said, Let there be light….” In other words, verse 1 would give you the state of things when verse 3 started. Verses 1 and 2 would describe the state in existence when God spoke in verse 3. You might even call this a fourth way of taking Genesis 1:1; this, of course, denies creation out of nothing, not necessarily that it is unalterably opposed to creation out of nothing but that creation of nothing must be proved from John 1 or some other passage. This has come into fundamental evangelical circles; Professor Unger at Dallas Seminary has advocated this, early in 1963 in an article in Bib Sac and in his latest Bible Handbook.
However, we prefer in Genesis 1:1 to take it as a chapter title. Of the three ways of taking Genesis 1:1 we would take it as a chapter title for the following reasons. First, the words, “the heaven and the earth,” these are a word pair, an antonymic word pair, that is they together form a whole thought. For example in the Hebrew oftentimes you have a “knowledge of good and evil,” and here we have “the heavens and the earth,” and “the heavens and the earth would refer to the universe in a completed form. In other words, one might translate this, “in the beginning God created the universe, all things,” and “the heaven and the earth” together as a word pair would refer to a completed heavens and earth. So this would eliminate meaning number one for verse 1; taking “the heaven and the earth” as an antonymic word pair referring to a finished creation you would be forced to go either one of two ways; either with the classical gap theory of taking verse 1 as original creation or meaning three, taking verse 1 as a chapter title.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The word create, bara, means to bring into existence something that never existed before; that would be the safest way of doing this, and of course here it includes the concept of ex nihilo, out of nothing. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” in the beginning, in other words, verse 1 would encompass all action from the very first act of God’s creation on down to Genesis 2:3. In other words, taking it as I am taking it, verse 1, as chapter title, it would refer to every creative act of God, from the very first, which would be the creation of angels, not mentioned here, this would refer to every single creative act and summarize all creative acts of God, from the very, very, very first one, all the way on down through verse 2, all the way through the six days and up to the seventh, of Genesis 2:3.
Then we come to Genesis 1:2, “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.” Verse 2 we take as a nominal clause, that is, verse 2 describes a state of being; it is not part of the narrative in the sense of this takes the action which didn’t occur in verse 1. Verse 1 is a verbal clause; verse 1 refers to something that happened, in this case I take it to refer to everything that God did, from the absolute beginning on down to Genesis 2:3. And verse 2 we would take as a description of the state of the earth at a particular time. The earth was empty, and this might be best translated in the following sense. “The earth was without form,” would be “The earth was empty and formless,” instead of “without form and void.” “The earth simply was formless and empty; darkness,” and was is in italics in the King James Bible indicating there is no verb in the Hebrew, darkness dash, “darkness—on the face of the deep.”
The next clause, “And the Spirit of God was moving,” it is a participle in the Hebrews, a participle that is describing and drawing a picture for us of the state, and in this state “the Spirit of God was moving upon the face of the waters.” The word “moving” here is hovering. If you check in Deuteronomy 32:11 you’ll see how it is used of a mother hovering over her young. So verse 2 is a static state, it’s a state of being. Now let’s look at this state of being a little bit more closely. Tohu waw bohu, those are the Hebrew words, “without form and void.” And I think it’s pertinent to observe as classical gap people have always done, that these words always refer to a waste, a desolate waste which has been brought about by a judgment of God. In Job 26:7; Deuteronomy 32:10, and Psalm 107:40 we have the use of tohu as a desolate waste but when tohu the next word, bohu, are used together, it refers to a desolate waste brought about by God’s judgment. And here we have two references, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23. In these two cases of tohu waw bohu we have always a desolate waste brought about by a judgment of God. Now this is not conclusive for a catastrophic judgment upon a prior creation for the simple reason that critics can reply that what you have in Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 is simply a return of the cosmos back to its original state, that God in judgment destroys the order that He imposed upon creation and brings it back to its primitive condition. So this shows that you cannot argue from tohu waw bohu for a cataclysm or a judgment upon an original creation definitely. I would say that it suggests this but it is not a definite argument.
Now the second observation in Genesis 1:2 is the word “darkness.” Here again we have a hint of something. “Darkness” is usually a symbol of evil in the Bible. We know that God dwells in light; we know that Satan, before he fell, was called Lucifer or the light bearer. See, for example, Psalm 104:2, 1 Timothy 6:16, where God is said to dwell in light. So in verse 2 where we have this creation, the earth sitting there in darkness, at least it should alert us, it should make us ask questions why? Why is it dark there in verse 2, coupled with the fact that it’s “waste and void” also.
Then thirdly, and I think this is a more significant point, the waters, “the deep,” the whole earth is covered with “deep.” Why is this? If you look through Scripture, and this is a common observation of scholars of the Old Testament, that “waters” are always viewed in a threatening way throughout the Bible. They’re always used in a threatening way; there’s something threatening about water. For example, in Job 38:8-11 we have a definite ominous backdrop to the word “water” and “deep,” there’s something ominous, something threatening about it. And it’s not without interest to note that in Revelation 21:1 there is no sea in the new creation. Everything’s the same, we have earth, we have a heaven, we even have water in the sense there’s rivers and so on, but there’s no sea, there’s no “deep.”
So these are three observations on the state that we find in verse 2. Let’s just say that in Genesis 1:1-2 we have a description of the state of the earth at the beginning of the chapter’s work.
Now we have a question: does verse 2 go with verse 1 or does it go with verse 3? Verse 1 has a main verb; verse 3 has a main verb; verse 2 has a verb but it’s treated in the nominal sense, describing a state of condition. Is the condition in verse 2 a condition which was in existence when God began to create or is it a condition which was in existence when God said “Let there be light?” Does verse 2 go with verse 1 or verse 3? We take it that it goes with verse 3, so that we would have: “In the beginning God brought into existence the whole universe, the heavens and the earth.” Then verse 2 begins, “And,” and this is how He did it, and one mustn’t be too influenced by the fact that there’s an “and” there in verse 2 because most of the books of the Pentateuch, in fact, I think all of them with the exception of Deuteronomy, and many books later on in the Old Testament begin with “and.” So the fact that you have an “and” there doesn’t mean that verse 2 carries on from verse 1 in the straightforward sequential narrative. It just simply means that this is an introduction.
I will translate Genesis 1:1-3 as follows. “In the beginning God brought into existence the whole universe, the heavens and the earth. [Now this is how He did it,] The earth was in a state of utter desolation, there was no light whatever on the surface of the watery covering. And the Spirit of God was hovering as a dove over the watery surface. And into this condition God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.”
This is the way I would handle Genesis 1:1-3. Genesis 1:1 I would take as a title, not an original creation. I do not, thereby, exclude prior existence to verse 2; I am simply saying that Genesis 1:1 is summary, it summarizes everything, not just the seven days work that follows but everything that went before verse 2 even, all the creation of the angels, the fall of the angels, the judgment upon the angels, all of this is covered in verse 1. Verse 1 is a summary statement including every action God did from the absolutely first thing on down through Genesis 2:3, and I would take this as chapter title rather than an original creation because of the following things.
First, in Exodus 20:11 we have a statement that God made the heavens and the earth in six days and “the heavens and the earth” here again occur together. [“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day….”] And it seems to me that Moses, at least Moses’ own interpretation of his own words in Genesis 1:1-3, his own commentary in Exodus 20:11 is that there were six days of divine work, and the heaven was made and the earth was made in these things. And the heavens and the earth as it now exists were made, he is saying in Exodus 20:11. Not a mystical heavens and earth somewhere off in eternity past, but the present heavens and the present earth were made in six days. And I would associate the present heaven and the present earth with Genesis 1:1. Genesis 1:1 refers to the present heaven, the present earth. He brought those things into existence, and Genesis 1:1 refers to all the events of God, from the absolute first, the creation of angels, all the way on down through to Genesis 2:3, a summary statement.
I think taking Genesis 1:1 as a chapter title fits better with the vocabulary of Genesis 2:1-3, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. [2] And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. [3] And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which He had made.” It seems that if you compare Genesis 2:1-3 with Exodus 20:11, without any strain, without any forced interpretation, it just seems logical, it just seems a relaxed way of taking it, to simply refer to a chapter title. Genesis 1:1 then is a chapter title.
Now we have to come to the obvious point of view; what do we do with Satan, the angels, the fall of Satan, the fall of the angels and the whole problem of the origin of evil? When did the origin of evil begin? Now in the history of Biblical interpretation the gap theory, first put forward you might say by, at least implicitly, in Augustine’s work where he did distinguish between Genesis 1:1 and the following seven days, but was developed to a more sophisticated format by Milton in Paradise Lost during the last part of the Middle Ages, and then it came on down to the 18th or 19th centuries when the scientific problem came to the foreground and the gap theory was then used to harmonize Scripture with scientific problems.
It has to be carefully said at this point that the gap theory is not due to scientific harmonization; it has been used for this and probably scientific harmonization was one of the great reasons why it has been used, one of the great reasons for its popularity, but one has to be honest to history and say the historical fact. As a matter of fact, the gap theory did not arise out of a desire to harmonize Scripture with science. The gap theory arose out of the desire to explain the fall of angels and the origin of evil. But this is a legitimate question: where do you put it?
It seems to me there are only two places where you can put the origin of evil and the fall of Satan and so on. Either you can put it before Genesis 1:2 or you can put it between Genesis 2:25 and Genesis 3:1, because by Genesis 3:1 Satan has already fallen, he’s already seen as an evil force, he’s already now beginning to tempt man, so sin had to have originated at least by Genesis 3:1. Now it obviously didn’t arise sometime during the six days work because there’s continuity in the narrative, there’s no break. The only two breaks in the narrative are Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 2:25 and Genesis 3:1. So there are only two points you can put this in.
Let’s ask ourselves, which is the best place. Utilizing all of the evidences of Scripture, where of the two points is it the most logical to place the fall of angels, the fall of Satan and the origin of evil? Before Genesis 1:2 or between Genesis 2:25 and Genesis 3:1. There’s the only two points, the only two places we could put it. For those of you who may be wondering at this point how I can even say…with my view of Genesis 1:1 how I can put the fall on angels before Genesis 1:2, it’s simple. One has but on a piece of paper to draw a line from the left to the right side of the paper; put a point on the line at the beginning of it on the left side where the line begins. Put another point on the line where it ends on the right hand side of the paper. Put a point in the middle. Now from the point in the middle of the paper to the point on the right hand side, I would place the six days of creation. Between the point on the left side and the point in the middle of the paper I would put all of the angelic problems, all of the fall of Satan and the origin of evil. And then I would take Genesis 1:1 as to include everything, from the farthest most point on the left side to the farthest most point on the right side, so my view of Genesis 1:1 allows for the fall of Satan and so on before Genesis 1:2.
Now let’s see, what would be the better place of putting the fall of angels: would it be better to put them between Genesis 2:25 and 3:1 or before Genesis 1:2? First of all, I would say if you look at Genesis 1:2 we say there are at least three things there that suggest something not quite right, tohu waw bohu, disorder, not a conclusive argument in itself because critics can return and neutralize out the argument by simply saying that Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 refer to God bringing back creation to its primitive state. But of the three that we mentioned, tohu waw bohu, the darkness and the waters, I would give greatest weight to waters. There’s just something threatening about these waters that are viewed there in Job 38; we’ll come back to Job 38 in a moment but first let’s deal with some other evidences. I would cite also Genesis 2:15 when man is said to “guard” the Garden, the “keep” the garden, for that little area of the Garden in Eden it looks like man was in a defensive position, defending himself against something. He’s supposed to “keep,” shamar, to keep, to guard the Garden. Why? There’s just a hint here, that at least by Genesis 2:15 something is there that may threaten man; man is to guard or protect the Garden. I’d also cite Genesis 1:28 where man is to go out and conquer the earth, to subdue the earth. Again, this is not a conclusive argument but I would say in the weight of Genesis 1:2, Genesis 2:15; Genesis 1:28, in the light of these verses if I had to choose between putting the fall of angels before Genesis 1:2 and between chapters 2 and 3, I would put it before Genesis 1:2.
More conclusive evidence can be seen by turning to Ezekiel 28:15, “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” This refers to Satan. Some people have difficulty in accepting Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 as references to Satan but somehow very inconsistently they have no difficulty in seeing Jesus Christ in certain of the Psalms of David. This is just a mode of interpreting Scripture and it’s just as valid to see Satan in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 as it is to see Jesus Christ in the prophetic Psalms; it’s the same kind of interpretation. I believe Delitzsch refers to this as typical prophetical interpretation of Scripture. So in Ezekiel 28:15 we have a reference to Satan and the statement is made that there was a duration of time between Satan’s creation and his fall, “until iniquity was found in thee.” So on the diagram that we have drawn with a line, if you look at the left most point, that was the creation of Satan; take that as the creation. Then you could go to the right of that point, a considerable distance, before Satan fell. And that’s what Ezekiel 28:15 is saying, that from the left most point you can move right across the paper some distance before Satan fell.
Now the question of course is when did Satan fall? Did he fall between the middle point in the paper, Genesis 1:3 or did he go all the way on over to the right most point, past Genesis 2:3? Remember the line on the paper, horizontal line stretching from the left side; the first point of God’s creation, to the right side which would be Genesis 2:3, the middle point would be Genesis 1:3. So Ezekiel 28:15 suggests an interval between Satan’s creation and his fall.
Now we have to compare Ezekiel 28 with John 8:44. In John 8:44 we have the accusation against Satan by Jesus Christ indirectly through the unbelievers of his day. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” The phrase I want to direct your attention to is in verse 44, Satan, the devil, “was a murderer from the beginning.” Now somehow we have to synthesize Ezekiel 28:15 and John 8:44. This is valid to see and demand logical consistency in Scripture for we believe that the Scriptures are a consistent verbal revelation of God, though it was given over many centuries of time, God is immutable, God is sovereign, able to work through cultural medium, able to work through [can’t understand word] languages, God is omnipotent and omni-scient, He created man knowing that he would have to reveal things to him, and so there is no limitation, no cultural limitation, no such thing as a cultural limitation upon verbal revelation from God’s viewpoint. So God is perfectly able to maintain rational consistency, whether Scripture is separated in giving by four or five centuries by different authors and languages and so on. We have a right to demand rational and logical consistency throughout Scripture.
So Ezekiel 28:15 cannot be a contradiction of John 8:44. And here’s how one would synthesize the two. Again referring to the line diagram, if we refer to the left most point on the diagram as Ezekiel 28:15, that is the creation of Satan, and then we place Satan’s fall about one quarter of the way across the paper toward the right.
X
Fall of Satan/origin of evil X Six days of creation X
Eze. 28:15 Fall of
Satan Gen. 1:3
Gen. 2:3
My point is that Satan, an evil liar from the beginning, and could be a liar from the beginning and yet have the duration demanded by Ezekiel 28:15 by placing the point of the fall of Satan between your left most point and Genesis 1:3, the midpoint on your line. To see this more clearly let’s look at the “from the beginning” phrase of John 8:44. What does from the beginning mean? To see this turn to Matthew 19 where Jesus is in the midst of a marital dispute involving the divorce question, and to settle the matter…incidentally, proves that Jesus, regarded the historicity of Genesis very highly, for in this matter Jesus could have referred to any of the rabbinic traditions of His day. Instead he went straight to the Scripture, rejecting the religious tradition and picking out the one absolute authority rather than picking out secondary authorities within the rabbinic schools of His time. Jesus in Matthew 19:4 and following appeal to the Scriptures. “And He answered and said unto them, Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning, made them male and female.” Now drop down to Matthew 19:8, “He said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered [permitted] you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” And here we have in the Greek the same phrase used in John 8:44, “from the beginning, apo arche.
Now let’s look at this apo arche to notice a few things and to summarize what we have said. apo arche or “from the beginning” means that man and woman, here in Matthew 19, from the beginning man and woman were created perfect, and to be joined together, and not to be cast asunder. So here “from the beginning” refers to the point of Genesis 2:3. So on your paper, beginning the interval of time, represented by the noun “beginning” terminates with your right most point, Genesis 2:3. So on your paper now you should have a horizontal line, the left most point, God’s first creative act, the creation of Satan or the angels, the middle point on the line, Genesis 1:3, the right most point on the line Genesis 2:3. And then halfway between your mid-point and your left most point you should have the fall of Satan.
Now, “beginning,” the noun “beginning” includes that part of your line that stretches from the left most point to the right most point. In other words, man was in his male and female form from Genesis 2:3 onward. “Beginning” terminates, the noun “beginning” refers to a period of time that terminates before the fall of man. Genesis 3 and all of the fall of man occurs after that time interval denoted by the noun “beginning” has terminated. In terms of the diagram you should have on your paper Genesis 3 is way off of the right margin, way out beyond your right most point, Genesis 2:3. So we have now the word “beginning” defined for us as that interval of time that terminates with Genesis 2:3.
B E G I N N I N G
X
Fall of Satan/origin of evil X Six days of creation X
Eze. 28:15 Fall of Satan
Gen. 1:3
Gen. 2:3
Creation of Satan
If that is true, then Satan has already fallen by Genesis 2:3, so that when God finishes His creation work “in the beginning,” Satan already has become a liar according to John 8:44. And since we only have two places to put the fall of Satan in Scripture, between Genesis chapters 2 and 3 or before Genesis 1:2, we put the fall of Satan before Genesis 1:2. So now on your line you would have the left most point, creation of Satan, your right most point, Genesis 2:3; middle point, Genesis 1:3 and halfway between Genesis 1:3 in your leftmost point you should have the fall of Satan. And then you could write “beginning over the line, stretching it from the left most point to the right most point. Here again you see why I take Genesis 1:1 as a chapter title, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In other words, between your left most point and your right most point, in that interval of time God brought to a completion the heavens and the earth and all things that are in them, and of course all the angels and so on before Genesis 1:3.
Now there is a further hint that things happened before Genesis 1:2 in Job 38. If you’ll turn into Job 38 we come into the middle of a discourse in this book where God is speaking, and here therefore the words become crucial to our understanding and you must understand in Job 38 the argument at hand. Job 38:1, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, [2] Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? [3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me. [4] Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” So the argument in Job 38 is that God did things before man was created. So all of the acts of Job 38 precede the existence of man, precede the sixth day.
Now let’s look at Job 38 in detail and see if we can get more information from Job 38. First notice verse 4, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.” “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth” would refer to the primitive form, when one lays the foundation for a building, he’s not talking about the building, he’s talking about the foundation on which the building rests. And similarly here in verse 4 God is not said to have here founded the entire earth. There’s another expression for founding the earth, and that’s not what is meant here. This is the foundations of the earth; this the basis of the earth; interpreted in physical terms might say in modern terminology that in Job 38:4, “Where were you when I created the core of this planet? Declare,” in other words, the planet was not finished in verse 4, it was just the beginning of God’s work. And in terms of your diagram, I would put the action of Job 38:4 between your left most point, the creation of Satan, and that point that you put on there denoting the fall of Satan. So about one-eighth of the way to the right from your left most point one would have this other point denoting Job 38:4.
B E G I N N I N G
X
Fall of Satan/origin of evil X Six days of creation X
Eze. 28:15 Job Fall of Gen. 1:3
Gen.1:3
Creation 38:4 Satan
of Satan/
angels
G E N E S I S 2 : 3
Here you have the earth, the foundations of the earth, the basis of the earth Made. So clearing up our line we would have in sequence, running from left to right, the first point, the creation of angels and Satan; second point, about one-eighth of the way across your paper the foundations of the earth made according to Job 38:4. And then about one-quarter of the way across to the right you would have the fall of Satan. And then one-half of the paper to the right you would have Genesis 1:3 and all the way over to the right you’d have Genesis 2:3.
Now notice in Job 38:4, “foundations of the earth.” Verse 5, “Who has laid the measures of it, if thou knowest? Or who has stretched the line upon it? [6] Whereupon are its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone,” you see, this is all basement. In the metaphor used here of building a building it’s not speaking of the earth as the building in the sense that God created the whole building, He’s just laying the foundations, this is just the basic part of the earth. But the important verse is Job 38:7, “When the morning stars sang together, an all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Notice, all the sons of God shouted for joy when the morning stars sang together. In other words, at this point on your diagram…this is why I say put it to the left of that point where you have the fall of Satan because here in verse 7 there has not yet been a rupture in the angelic realm, “for all the sons of God” are shouting for joy, this joy, all of the sons of God. “Sons of God” here refers to angels as it always does sin the Old Testament. Beni ha Elohim does not refer to good men in Genesis 6, it refers to angels there and any Hebrew lexicon will tell you this. It’s only embarrassed Christians who try to explain away Genesis 6, but if you take good liberal scholar in the Old Testament, take any person who knows Hebrew lexicography, Beni ha Elohim always denotes angels. It denotes angels in Job, it denotes angels in extra-Biblical literature and so on.
So “all the sons of God shouted” refers to all the angels, “all” the angels; “When the morning stars sang together, and all the angels…” So obviously, by the time of the action of Job 38:4-7 there has not yet been a rupture within the angelic realm and so this is why on your paper you should have the action of Job 38:4-7 depicted by a point one-eighth of the way across your paper before the fall of Satan. So you have creation of Satan and the angels, then your next point is this action described here and then you have Satan and the fall of angels.
Now beginning in verse 8 and running down through verse 11 we have a shift. Here there’s something ominous, and here you have the generation of the sea. And I might add, if you look at Job 38:8-11 carefully, here you have the creation of the ocean, here you have the creation of the deep, and I want you to notice, this action has already occurred by the time of Genesis 1:2 and proved conclusively that Genesis 1:2 presumes prior acts of God. Genesis 1:2 is not the first act of God, it does not describe the first of all things because Job 38 takes you back further in time; takes you back further in sequence. Job 38:4-7, for example, presume already the creation of angels. Here in Job 38, as far back as Job 38 takes you, it still doesn’t take you all the way back to that first point on your paper, the left most point, it just starts you at one-eighth of the way across your paper to where you have the action of Job 38:4-7.
Now in verse 8-11 of Job 38 we have the generation of creation of the sea, “Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb, [9] When I made the cloud a garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling blanket for it, [10] And broke up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, [11] And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall thou proud waves be stayed?” Now I want you to notice here, here’s this ominous tone that you see throughout Scripture of the sea; there’s something ominous about it. For example, if you notice in verse 8, “who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and here you have the idea that the earth was a dry earth, perhaps with the water included underneath it, so that by the time of Job 38:4 the foundations of the earth, of the core of the planet included water inside the core. And then in verse 8 this water burst through the surface of the earth flooding the earth so that by Genesis 1:2 the entire earth had been flooded. Now Genesis 1:2 sequentially would follow Job 38:11. “Who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb; [9] When I made the could a garment thereof and thick darkness a swaddling blanket.” And you want to see again the motif of birth, obviously referring to the birth of the sea, but there’s something about the birth of the sea. First you have the thick darkness that overcomes, the thick darkness which is a word used throughout the Hebrew text of the Old Testament always referring to God’s judgmental presence. When God is on Mount Sinai the smoke and darkness, and thick darkness, it referred to a Theophany of God. God had been in a sinful creation, and so you have this thick darkness, “a swaddling blanket for it.” The thick on darkness on Mount Sinai was the sign that a holy God was visiting a sinful world and coated Himself with thick darkness. And here you have…and I believe that the thick darkness here in Job 38:9 is a reference to the Holy Spirit who in Genesis 1:2 is brooding and hovering over the waters. Here again, the thick darkness is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters.
But in Job 38:2-11 notice again you have this ominous nature of it, [10] And broke up for it my decreed, and set bars and doors, [11] Hitherto shall thou come and no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? Now it could be argued that this is but an exaggeration of the physical power of the sea that awed the Israelites living at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and so on. But the vocabulary would suggest, at least there’s enough omininity here to give credence to the fact that the fall of Satan has somehow already occurred here. There’s just something about the ominousness of the whole thing.
And so on your paper I would construct the following diagram now. I would have my left most point the origin of angels, creation of Satan. My next point, one-eighth of the way across to the right would be the founding of the earth, and then one-quarter of the way to the right I would have the fall of Satan. And then three-eights of the way to the right, between the fall of Satan in Genesis 1:3 I would have the rupture of the waters from beneath the earth of Job 38:7-11. And then in the middle of the paper Genesis 1:3 and all the way over to the right hand side Genesis 2:3 and that would be the diagram as I would understand it.
B E G I N N I N G
X
Fall of Satan/origin of evil X Six days of creation X
Eze. 28:15 Job
Fall of Job
Gen.
1:3
Gen.1:3
Creation 38:4 Satan 38:7-11
of Satan/
angels
G E N E S I S 2 : 3
From the midpoint of your paper to the right would be the days and from the midpoint of the paper to the left would be an unknown duration of time, I don’t know how long and I don’t think Scripture tells us how long. So here would be evidence again that Satan’s fall occurred before Genesis 1:2 and not after Genesis 2:3; in addition to the John 8:44 reason and so on.
One final evidence I would cite, and again this is just a suggestion but it shows you that the idea of a fall before Genesis 1:2 is not at all anti-Biblical. And that would be to look carefully at the structure of John’s Gospel. Do you notice John 1:1-4, notice a strange thing about John; John opens his Gospel narrative in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” and one can’t help, and scholars have noted this over the years, one can’t help but feel that John had consciously in mind Genesis 1:1 when he penned his first verse here. When he says “in the beginning” it’s hardly doubtful that he had on his mind Genesis 1:1 and particularly John was writing in Greek and he opens his Gospel up with the exact Greek phrase of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. [tape runs out, but context is continued on tape 4, which begins:]
And notice what John does, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All tings were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. [4] In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Now all of a sudden, after verse 5, beginning with verse 5 John shifts, the word tenses shift out of the past into the present. And John takes us from that creative work depicted in verses 2-4 to verse 5, the present history, and he also introduces us into a dark history. [5] “As the light is shining in darkness; and the darkness has not comprehended it.” So between verses 4 and 5 you have a gap in John’s Gospel. He doesn’t explain where the darkness came from, though it’s obvious throughout the rest of his Gospel, and particularly John 8:44, so John is well aware of where the darkness came from. John is well aware and yet he deliberately skips over the origin of darkness here and between verses 4 and 5 you have a gap in John’s Gospel. And I would suggest that this gap seen in this Gospel, between verses 4 and 5, is of exactly the same kind of gap that is before Genesis 1:2, and shows you that it is not foreign to the writers of Scripture to put gaps in like this. And in their conceptions, particularly of origins, to leave out the details of the origin of evil and I would say John 1:1-4 versus John 1:5.
So if you have been following with the lines I think you have a summary of my ideas of Genesis 2:1-3 and when we consider these things we want to understand that whether one takes the gap theory or not, or whether one takes my view which I consider a modified version of the gap theory, or whether one takes a classical type of exegesis of St. Augustine of Genesis 1:1, referring to the creation of raw material which is subsequently formed and so on, whether one takes any of these three one still finds himself faced with the problem of the fall of Satan, the creation of angels, which are not mentioned in Genesis 1 at all, but must be there somewhere; one finds Job 38 with the angels already on the scene as God is founding the earth. So whether you agree with the details of this diagram, at least you will understand that Genesis 1:1-3 provides for time; it gives time and not that we’re trying to use this to get away from some of the problems but you have to understand that it’s there, not because of a desire to harmonize but simply there out of a desire to avoid contradiction with Ezekiel 28; John 8 and passages that deal with the fall of Satan and the creation of angels and so on.
So time in defined units begins only with Genesis 1:3 and this is the whole point of discussing our problem, the first of six problems in this treatment of the narrative; this problem has been the treatment of Genesis 1:1-3.