Light

And God said, "Let there be light," And there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

I caused quite a stir this morning after suggesting that this passage is not talking about physical light. I know we've been accustomed to interpreting Genesis 1 in that way, but I think there's much more going on here than meets the eye.

It's interesting to me that light is not used in the physical sense through the rest of Scripture. It's used more as an action of God to bring the knowledge of God to the nations. He gathered a people (created them) to be bearers of that light to the nations. If we're going to stick to the hermeneutical principle of "Scripture interprets Scripture", then a re-interpretation of Genesis 1 is necessary.

(A quick aside: The ancient rabbis said that the first thing God created was the Torah. Genesis 1 says that light was the first thing created. Looks to me like the rabbis equated Torah with light. Very interesting indeed!)

Certainly the New Testament doesn't use the word "light" as referring to particles and waves. St. John begins his gospel account with the same three words that Genesis begins with: In the beginning. In reading the rest of John 1, we get the sense that the light was lost among humanity, who loved the darkness rather than the light. But it was not enough to squelch the light. In the person of Messiah Jesus the light shone once again to enlighten both Jew and Gentile. This is John's claim, and the rest of his gospel account is an expanded exposition of this claim. He patterns his writing after the number 7 (the number of completion and perfection), which can be seen in the miracle accounts (there are seven), the "I am" statements (of which there are seven). What's fascinating here is that Genesis 1 has creation taking place in 6 days with the seventh day as a day of rest. The Israelites patterned their work week based on this numeration. Or, perhaps Genesis 1 was patterned based on the work week. You decide.

But here's the point: John is saying, through symbolism, metaphors, and archetypes, that creation is made complete (perfected, if you will) by the coming of Jesus. The world has finally come into its holy rest, the very thing it was seeking. It has finally entered the seventh day! St. Paul picks up on this in 2 Corinthians 4:6-- For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," (notice: that's Genesis 1:3!) has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Why do I say all of this? I'm finding that the arguments in the creation vs. evolution debates are becoming increasingly shrill and beside the point. The discussions get bogged down and tiresome, with one side defending a literal, six day creation of the universe and the other side holding on to scientism and a 15 billion year formation of the universe. And then there are the theistic evolutionists who make a valiant attempt at reconciling the two sides by saying that God took 15 billion years to create everything, just like it says in Genesis. Gadzooks!

Could we at least entertain the possibility that the Genesis creation account(s) have very little, if anything, to do with the formation of the universe and our planet, and that it has something entirely different in mind? Could Genesis be telling us that God set out on a mission to win the hearts of humanity?