“In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth”: Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5

Although this is probably the most well know story in the Bible, in many ways it is the least settled. Certainly for me, this has been a narrative that I struggled with during my first few years as a member of the Church, and then beyond into my early 30s- it is only latterly that I have become comfortable with where I am. More of this later!

The Role of the Saviour in Creation

First though, this is one part of the Old Testament that points directly to the Saviour, Jesus Christ- not that it does so in an obvious fashion, more so because of later scripture. In the New Testament we read:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:1-3).

We know that Jesus Christ is the Word, and that He was in the beginning with the Father and was the ‘agent’ of creation. We read further in Hebrews:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Also, Restoration scriptures confirm the Saviour’s role in creation:

And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them (Abraham 3:23-24).

We need to do a little bit of work with this passage, but the ‘one… like unto God’ is understood to be the Saviour who created the world under the direction of the Father. We know that the Saviour is the pre-mortal Jehovah, who is the God of the Old Testament (see Week 1). The Book of Mormon teaches this truth with characteristic clarity:

Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God. I created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are. I was with the Father from the beginning. I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and in me hath the Father glorified his name (3 Nephi 9:15).

What I find interesting is that apart from the spirit moves across the waters there seems to be no mention of the Holy Ghost in the creation narratives. Of note is that He is largely absent from Old Testament narratives, maybe this is one of the ‘plain and precious’ things that have been removed (see 1 Nephi 13). That He was present and known is evident in the Book of Mormon where He is spoken of often, and we also know, from the Lecture on Faith, that “these three are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things: by whom all things were created and made, that were created and made: and these three constitute the Godhead, and are one.”

The light of Christ “proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space.” Further, it is “the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God” (D&C 88:12-13). Therefore, the light of Christ has “creative, governing, life-giving, and ‘intelligence-inspiring power.’” The power of the light of Christ is manifested in the light of the sun, moon, and stars and is the power by which they and the earth were made.
Thus, when the Mosaic account of the creation says that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2), and when Abraham records of those same events that “the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters” (Abr. 4:2), the revealed word is speaking of the light of Christ. And when Job says that “by his spirit [the Lord] hath garnished the heavens” (Job 26:13), and the Psalmist explains that all things were created because the Lord sent forth his spirit, by which also he “renews the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:30), both are teaching the same truth. Creation itself came by the light of Christ.

For Latter-day Saints, while the Son created the earth under the direction of the Father, the tool he used to give life to everything was the light of Christ; hence the light of Christ continues to be the ontological cause and sustaining force within all creation: “God is a personal being of body— a body limited in extent. He cannot, therefore, at a given moment be personally everywhere… By his power, will and word, [he] is everywhere present… The holy spirit [meaning the light of Christ] permeates all the things of the universe, material and spiritual.”

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Ps. 19:1-4; see also Rom. 1:19-20).

There are different creation stories that we experience- firstly one in Genesis 1, another in Genesis 2, one in Moses and one in Abraham. The Temple Endowment also clarifies aspects of a creation account and places the Saviour front and centre in the creation story, except as you may note in the creation of humanity, which the Father completes with the Saviour alongside.

The main question for me

Although I have said in the last couple of weeks that the most important application when we read the scriptures is what they mean to us today, this does not mean that understanding what they meant at the time is irrelevant. In relation to understanding the creation narratives I think they are key. Indeed, the Come Follow Me manual says:

for the most part, people today aren’t the primary audience of the Old Testament prophets. Those prophets had immediate concerns they were addressing in their time and place—just as our latter-day prophets address our immediate concerns today….when you read ancient prophecies, it can help to learn about the context in which they were written.

My friend, Ben Spackman, has done a lot of work in this area and I am indebted to him for helping clarify and crystallise my thoughts. The main question I struggled with through my early adulthood was whether the creation stories are true. I have come to realise that the answer is yes, but not in the way that I thought. When I joined the Church I thought that the only acceptable approach to creation was to be a young earth creationist- the world is six thousand years old (though I always struggled with that; the world was created in six days as described in the Bible; and that evolution is false. I am now at a place in my understanding that I don’t believe any of those things anymore. I’m not sure I ever did- but I thought I should and I tried my hardest to do so. As much as I loved my mission president, he was Joseph McConkie- son of Bruce R. McConkie and grandson of Joseph Fielding Smith- both of whom were strongly against anything but a literal reading of creation. Where there was room for debate and nuance, I didn’t think there was.

How do I believe the story of creation is true, yet reject that it happened exactly the way as described in Genesis (and other places)? I’m going to refer to Ben a lot in these notes (you might prefer to go straight to the source). We should not be trying to read Genesis as a science textbook, Ben reiterates this:

The purpose of Genesis 1 is not revealing facts about science and history. It’s not talking about science poetically, not metaphorically, not at all. Yes, God comes down and speaks at our level (that’s called accommodation, see here and here) but he’s not simplifying the science of creation for them. Rather, in Genesis 1, God accommodates by using the common ancient Near Eastern understanding of the universe to answer their pressing questions and teach them more important things.

One of the struggles I had in reconciling the story of creation was the presence of plants before the creation of the sun. Ben mentions that:

Questions like “how was there day and night without the sun” are concordist, assuming that Genesis is a documentary of the material creation of the universe. Again, it’s not. Genesis is an ancient Near Eastern, highly literary, theological document, arguing against the polytheism and nihilism of Israel’s neighbours.

As an aside, in another place, Ben also explores the Hebrew of God separating the day from the night:

I addressed the puzzling issue of God “separating” light from darkness in Genesis 1, as if they were just Legos that needed sorting into their own bucket.

That Hebrew verb hivdīl — translated as “divided”— does indeed have a physical and spatial meaning, “to divide, separate” as in Exo 26:33 where “the veil separates the holy place from the holy of holies.” But it also has a more abstract meaning, to “designate, distinguish between.” Note how in Ezekiel 22:26, the priests are condemned for their failure to make and teach important distinctions, using the same verb.

[Israel’s] priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

I told my class that Genesis 1:4-5 could be translated as “So God made a distinction between the light and the darkness by naming the light ‘Day’ and the darkness ‘Night.’” I explained further that this translation makes much more sense in light of what “creation” meant for Israelites; creation is a transition from non-existence to existence.

But for Israelites, “existence” was not defined in physical or material terms; to exist meant having a name and a function. Per John Walton and others, in Genesis 1 God creates by separating and distinguishing through naming and assigning functions. (This, I think, is what Lehi is talking about when he says “opposition in all things” and “compound in one.” He’s not talking about “opposition” in the sense of “resistance” but in the sense of separating out and defining opposites.)

Well. The next session of my Institute class, a student spoke right up with a story, which I’ve anonymized.

I’m on the University sportsball team, and one of my good friends on the team is mostly an atheist. We talk about scripture a lot. The day after your class, he was talking about how weird and illogical the Bible is, and so it can’t really be true. He brought up separating light and darkness as if they were physical things. So I told him what we’d talked about, and he was impressed! ‘I guess I didn’t know any context for that one, that’s really interesting.’
My student positively beamed; that positive experience is the direct result of scholarship.

When we try to recover the past and read scripture in context— which require scholarship to discover, process, and popularize that context— we can more easily make sense of difficult and foreign passages.

Back to the original post, Ben continues:

Essentially, the Israelites and their neighbours conceived of the universe as a watery chaos. The earth was a flat disc, with a solid dome above restraining the cosmic waters…

I love Ben’s conclusion:

Genesis is absolutely true. But it’s describing a part of reality different than what our modern scientific minds assume, and different than surface-level context-free readings indicate. Rather, Genesis shows how God is good, creation is divinely deliberate and good, and humanity’s place in creation is elevated, deliberate, and VERY good.

I realise I’ve cheated a lot by using lots of Ben’s work, and I’ve read a lot more that has helped me become comfortable with where I am. Unfortunately there really isn’t time to put it all into one document. I am at the point where I appreciate what Genesis is trying to teach me- I don’t need to suggest that the days were of varying length or anything else that tries to harmonise science and the story. They’re trying to achieve two different things. I know that the world was created by Christ under the direction of the Father. I know that it was created so that I could progress and become like my Heavenly Parents. I know that I am a child of God, created in the image of my Heavenly Parents. I also know that however the world was created, it shows forth the majesty of God. In contrast to many in the Christian and Jewish world I don’t believe in creation ex-nihilo, out of nothing. Though in and of itself I’m really not stressed whether He did or didn’t- They just created it.

Care for Creation

Knowing that, it gives me a greater respect and love for the world. We have been given dominion and stewardship over the earth and its creations. Sometimes when we read about stewardship and dominion, it is often presented surrounds stewardship being about caring for, and looking after the world; while dominion leads inevitably to the subjugation of Creation and that it can be used how we want. Recently a research project that I was involved with has highlighted how simplistic that approach is. The Christian Ethics of Farmed Animal Welfare (CEFAW) report highlights a Godly dominion which is a more accurate reading of the Bible:

Dominion in the image God is also complicated for the people of God who interpret scripture in their own circumstances. Dominion responsibility can be described as stewardship, guardianship, vocation of care, or management. In certain periods, dominion has been understood as domination or mastery, but this policy framework agrees with most biblical interpreters in finding that domination does not accord with other biblical and theological accounts of godly relationships. Instead, our emphasis is on dominion in the image of God as a responsibility for animals that reflects God’s sustaining care for all creatures… Scripture offers examples of dominion responsibility in the image of God in its presentation of good shepherds who provide for, protect, and gently guide their sheep (Ps 23; Isa 40:10–11); who know and are known by their sheep (John 10). The Lord, as the Good Shepherd of humans, exercises the divinely perfected version of the good shepherding that humans can partially reflect. Prophetic visions of non-violent human/animal coexistence contrast the fulfilment of God’s will (Isa 65:17–25, 66:1–3; Mic 6:6–8) with the creaturely conflict common in this life (p. 8).

In reinforcing polarity we can sometimes proof text scripture and go for the most simplistic reading that doesn’t take into account context, bias and links with other scriptural passages. Of course, people have used the scriptures to suggest masterly dominion but knowing there are alternative readings brings a richness to the discussion and removes the either/or that has become such a blunt instrument.

Elder Causse spoke about the need to be careful stewards of the earth:

As God’s children, we have received the charge to be stewards, caretakers, and guardians of His divine creations. The Lord said that He made “every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures.”

Our Heavenly Father allows us to use earthly resources according to our own free will. Yet our agency should not be interpreted as license to use or consume the riches of this world without wisdom or restraint. The Lord gave this admonition: “And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion.”

President Russell M. Nelson once remarked: “As beneficiaries of the divine Creation, what shall we do? We should care for the earth, be wise stewards over it, and preserve it for future generations.”

Beyond being simply a scientific or political necessity, the care of the earth and of our natural environment is a sacred responsibility entrusted to us by God, which should fill us with a deep sense of duty and humility. It is also an integral component of our discipleship. How can we honour and love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ without honouring and loving Their creations?

There are many things that we can do—collectively and individually—to be good stewards. Considering our individual circumstances, each of us can use the bountiful resources of the earth more reverently and prudently. We can support community efforts to care for the earth. We can adopt personal lifestyles and behaviours that respect God’s creations and make our own living spaces tidier, more beautiful, and more inspirational.

Our stewardship over God’s creations also includes, at its pinnacle, a sacred duty to love, respect, and care for all human beings with whom we share the earth. They are sons and daughters of God, our sisters and our brothers, and their eternal happiness is the very purpose of the work of creation.