Creation - The third Day ...

Thursday, Aug 8, 2013. We are in the middle of the biblical creation story. It talks about the origin of our universe, the origin of the world - and the origin of mankind. How have we come into being? What is the purpose of our existence? Basic questions need to be answered …

The third day …

The first day created light and darkness, day and night. The second day made the heavens and the earth - separating the waters below and the waters above. We now come to the creative activity of the Lord on creation day number three:

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. (Gen 1, 9-13)

On the third day we hear about the oceans and the land, about vegetation: plants and trees as well as their fruits.

How did he do it? …

How did God create all the things which are summarized in the creation stories? The bible does not tell us in detail. If you look at the account above: it just gives the summary. There are oceans and there is land. It comes into being since God says so. But we are not told how exactly this happened. The same with the growth of plants and trees. We are told that God wants them and that they grow. But we are not told how.

There is plenty of space of “natural science” here. We are invited to study the nature, which the Lord created and is creating. We are invited to use it and to take care of it. We are invited to learn about it, to find out how exactly he is generating plants and trees. Natural science has found cells and structures. It has found out about the chemistry of plants and trees, about driving physical and chemical processes. It has developed the mathematics of differential equations, which govern much of the processes which are taking place. And it has gone back into earth history to investigate the development and change of the oceans and the continents, of the atmopheric composition and temperature.

There is not much difficulty here to get to a coherent image of our physical world and of faith at the same time - in what we read so far. This could almost be part of any modern geoscience book. We will see how this applies to the next parts of the creation stories in the book of Genesis. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts