A Reasonable God
The Spirit of God is the spirit of a sound mind
‘In the beginning was the Word’, so starts the beginning of the Gospel of John, in conscious imitation of the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Old Testament, which starts ‘In the beginning God…’. The gospel is written in Greek and the word translated as ‘Word ‘is Logos, it is the root from which we derive the words ‘logic’ and ‘logical.’ Translations often leave much to be desired and this is no exception, the primary meaning of the word Logos is ‘reason’ and by the time that John was writing in the late first century AD it was in common use by Stoic philosophers to refer to the generative principle, the cause, The Reason, of the universe. To choose this word as a description of the divine person who had incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth and refer it the first line of the first book of the Bible was genius, for the first passage of the book of Genesis (the creation account from Genesis 1: 1 – Genesis 2:3) is an as well-structured, clear and rational piece of writing as you will find anywhere. Logos is God John was declaring, a divine spirit with a mind that is rational, orderly and reasonable, and nowhere is that more clearly demonstrated than in that first passage of Genesis. Christ the Logos is both The Reason for the universe and the incarnation of the reasonable God; as the Apostle Paul was later to write to his disciple Timothy, the Spirit of God is the spirit of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
The book of Genesis is one of the five books attributed to the Prophet Moses, who had lived some 1500 years prior to the birth of Christ and had led the people of Israel out from enslavement in Egypt. Whereas creation narratives from contemporaneous cultures such as Egypt and Sumer recount of the creation of the gods, wars between the gods and the creation of humanity from the remains of a dead god; Moses succinctly attributes all creation acts to the pre-planned actions of the single creator God enacted by the speaking forth of His word. Though similarities can be seen between the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Hebrew worldviews, such as the primeval watery chaos of the cosmos, it is clear that Moses has re-written that and other similarities by the light of his faith in the one God of Israel. So it was with John 1500 years later when he co-opted the Greek word / concept of Logos and re-interpreted it by the light of his faith in Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God. To communicate foundational truths both writers took from the surrounding cultures and contemporary understanding and interpreted it by their faith. Today a theistic evolutionist such as Francis Collins1 might be seen as attempting to do the same task, interpreting current understandings of the creation of the cosmos in the light of his faith in one God incarnated in Jesus Christ.
Looking in more detail at the creation narrative (Genesis 1: 1 – Genesis 2:3) it is easy to discern the structure of the piece. The very first line ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ is a statement of faith, with no explanation given, but in itself it stands to contradict other beliefs such as the Hindu concept of an eternal cosmos or the modern idea of multiverses or endless cycles of a universe that re-creates itself by the forces of physics. That the verse also chimes with a modern understanding of a universe that began with a Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, a theory formulated last century by the Catholic priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaitre, is welcome but in the future may just be seen as a scientist reading his own prejudice into the data if ongoing research throws the theory into doubt.
What it says on the tin
Following the initial sentence the book of Genesis quickly focuses the narrative away from the big picture of the cosmos as a whole to the Earth. Verse two reads:
‘The earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.’ 2
The Earth is described as being without form, empty, dark and watery; it is these four aspects God addresses in the bulk of the passage (Genesis 1: 3 – 30) as He brings it light, shapes it and fills it with life. At the end of the passage (Genesis 1: 31 - Genesis 2: 3), God reviews His handiwork, declares it ‘very good’ (Genesis 1: 30), finished (Genesis 2:1) and rests from His labours. The picture given is of a task planned and completed, the turning of a chaotic state into a world fit for beings made in the image of God Himself, with whom He can walk and talk and share His life. This picture acts as the backdrop to the whole of the Bible story and very specifically to the following chapters of Genesis. From the general picture of a perfected world in chapter one, chapter two tightens the focus onto mankind, his place in the world, the creation of the woman and the relationships between man, woman and God. Finally, in chapter three we come to the discovery of evil in the worldly paradise, the great disruption in the relationships of men, women and God and the corruption of the entire world. The perfection of creation depicted in chapters one and two makes all the greater the contrast with the catastrophe of chapter three.
To return to chapter one, the various actions God undertakes to remedy the primeval state of the world are these:
The First Day
(i) the creation of light (verse 3), to address the darkness.
(ii) the creation of the daily rhythm of day and night by the separation of the light from the dark (verse 3). An aspect of the forming of the Earth.
The Second Day
(iii) (verses 6 - 8) the creation of the sky by the separation of the ‘waters above’ (the clouds) from the ‘waters beneath’ (the seas and ‘the fountains of the deep’, c.f. Genesis 7 : 11). This is another aspect of the forming of the world and is the first phase in addressing the purely watery nature of the Earth.
The Third Day
(iv) The separation of the waters below into various seas and the emergence of dry land (verses ( & 10). A further action of forming the Earth and deals with its exclusively watery state.
(v) The creation of plants (verses 11 – 13). The first action regarding filling the void with life.
The Fourth Day
(vi) The creation of the Sun, Moon and stars, to bring light to the Earth by day and night and to govern the seasons (verses 14 – 19). A further action bringing light to the Earth and forming the cycle of the Earth by seasons and years.
The Fifth Day
(vii) The creation of the fish and all sea creatures and the birds of the air (verses 20 23). Further actions of filling the Earth with life.
The Sixth Day
(viii) The creation of the animals of the world and of mankind. The filling of the Earth with life is complete and mankind, created in the image of God, is blessed and given the care of world. God reviews His creation and declares it ‘very good.’ (verses 24 – 31)
The Seventh Day
(ix) The creation of the heavens and the earth is finished, God blesses His creation and rests from his creative works.
Two times Seven
The rhythm of the seven days is the most obvious of the structural devices of Genesis 1, revealing as it does God’s pattern of works in completing His creation. The seven day pattern reflects the Hebrew conception of seven as symbolising fulness, completion, perfection. A second repetition of ‘And God saw that [it] was good’ also appears six times, with a final seventh ‘it was very good’ to emphasise the fulness and completion of the work. A third pattern of ‘And / then God said…’ is repeated nine times, seven times being matched by a corresponding ‘And God saw that [it] was good’. The two occasions God did not declare the goodness of what He had commanded being when He is not making something new but is working with pre-created materials (darkness in Gen. 1: 4 and water in Gen. 1: 6.) The declaration of ‘good’ is reserved for acts of new creation. From both the clear statements of the passage, the structure of the passage and the rhythm of the ‘sevens’, the completion and perfection of creation are made clear.
The structured nature of the passage reflects the mind of the author, much thought has been put into what is written, why it is being written and how it is written. The author reveals a definite purpose and logic to how he is writing and it is necessary for the reader to appreciate this in order to fully understand the piece. Not only are things being revealed about what God said and did, God is also revealing the nature of His own mind and character. ‘This is what I am like,’ He is saying, ‘God who is Creator of all things, who does all things well and brings them to completion, who declares things plainly, revealing mysteries and giving wisdom to those who ask. You can know me.’ What is declared explicitly in the beginning of the Gospel of John is discerned implicitly at the beginning of Genesis, the very beginning of God’s self-revelation to mankind; God is Logos.
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-terms/logos-in-the-bible-definition-and-significance.html
1 author of ‘The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief’; Free Press, 2006
2 Genesis 1: 2, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson, 1982
