On my own website
here I had written much (speculation) concerning the general dilemma here (from a YEC/OEC bias), I share a little of it with you (and all you lurkers). Feel free to refute, rebut, deride, and/or de-spamatize unto the beneficience of us all. Apologies in advance for cheezy analogies, poetics, etc. To wit:
... Thus, it seems apparent that the 'stretching out' of heaven was created without any chaotic explosion at all! (More of this on the second day's discourse.)
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.
...That an apparently diametrical disorder (the formlessness and void, which is NOT called good by God) is spoken of next, seems to indicate:
(1) That 'heaven and earth' came about over the next six 'days' commencing with formlessness (and perhaps timelessness, at least from many cosmological dating perspectives): Dissolute, totally dark, earthy, fluid-like, black-hole-like orbs were present before the bright light and heavenly orbs were ushered by God: yet all omnipresently at the very beginning, which seems semantically acceptable; and/or,
(2) That the earth was created and it 'BECAME' ... 'formless and void'--a physical and/or metaphysical black-hole, inert (without time, at least from many cosmological dating perspectives), possibly by an 'event' (or series of events), i.e. 'after' some sort of time (atomic, gravitational, conceptual and/or divine time--I don't know) ...a time of judgment upon sin might be construed as latent here, even the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13.8)
Dogmatically you conclude there are no diurnal, solar, atomic, or even gravitational clocks until light 'shines forth'; time becomes null. 'When' is a word cosmologists use to denote time coming into existence--i.e., just outside a black hole or a universe. With formless void and darkness there is no 'when' within, just absolute eternal nothingness! Soberly you pray:
When Christ the mighty maker died
Engulfed by darkest depths therein,
Forever Light in darkness hides
To save a man from ALL his sin!
So why should I decline verse two
When tears of hope it ere shall bring
While earth bars bring eternal woe
They soon shall break, my prayers shall sing!
His Spirit moves to break my bands
Though deep in sin my heart hath gone;
Oh pull me Lord with both thy hands
Oh pull me to thy Holy Throne!
Oh move Thee down from Heaven's Host;
Upon earth's depths of darkness pass!
Baptizing waves and billows boast--
Thy Light shall bring me Life at last!
Yet formless void and darkness is also 'created' ('bara') by God (in Isa 45.7). Time itself would have diametrically infinite 'when's (light divided from the darkness in vs. 4) it seems. And perhaps time would be nonexistent or null until God's Spirit imparts form, order, fullness (e.g., darkness upon the 'face of the deep' becoming actuated by, through, and into God's Spirit moving upon the 'face of the waters'), and Light professed next by God, manifested a conceptual evening and morning in God's mind. I don't know precisely. Thus the primordial "evening and morning" of God's work may be interpreted as an 'embryonically created diurnal cosmological time constant, "a day with the Lord", and (as per vs. 5) comprehending ALL ages of light (day) and darkness (night), while perpetrating man's '24 hour 'pocket-watch' perception of it. Is it precisely during this 'when' that 'events' now usher forth? It seems to me that the first, second, and/or third event(s) ushering forth occur(s) as the 'Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters'.
...
The "face of the deep" seems geological enough. ...enough to allow you and I to simplistically accept the scriptures that this is indeed the 'earth'. But it is pervaded with a seemingly universal darkness of geometric and relativistic uncertainties. Otherwise it would not have been called "without form, and void". Thus the state of the earth here is subject to incomprehensible abstractions.
The 'deep' with its waters seems oceanic enough. But are these waters also pervaded with metaphysical darkness, a darkness of geometric and relativistic uncertainties? Consider Christ's surreal statement to Simon Peter: "Launch out into the DEEP"... (Luke 5:4); after preaching (in a ship) thereon. Consider David's sublime rescue: "And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies ...He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of MANY WATERS; "(2 Sam 22:12-17). David's 'many waters' are 'dark' and holy, mysterious and surreal, metaphorical but very real (i.e., even 'baptismal waters' of salvation). Consider the many instances of water's spiritual, metaphorical, and/or sublime meanings of which we cannot begin to discuss without volumes of commentaries! The spiritual precedes the empirical (as does God's Word over the intellect). 'Waters' then are complex substrates of God's (created) realities in spite of our scienti-fictious deductions of the phenomenon -- deductions that are too often just formalized babblings that are 'without-form-and-void' empirically, allegorically, and spiritually.
'Waters' might hence be perceived as a 'loaded' Word (of God); H2O is just one (chemical) aspect describing our limited reality of it. 'Waters' are 'pregnant' with life on all levels, beyond mere scientific comprehension: "And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues"(Rev 17:15). "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance...(Isa 40:15)" "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of MANY WATERS, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth"(Rev 19:6). And finally, "living waters shall go out from Jerusalem (Zec 14:8)" ..."And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely"(Rev 22:17).
Who dogmatically states that these primordial waters then are probably just simply 'H2O' or just a sum of the creeks as you and I perceive them? Primordially, spiritually, and also in the end of time, these waters are supernatural waters of God. We may carnally and spiritually perceive water as 'wet' and such. And yet our bodies are indeed primarily water whose wetness nor mutability we do not always perceive. Ironically, the 'First' waters then were probably extremely surreal spiritual substance(s) that existed before seas and that may be perceived by 'spiritual' persons currently. God created much of the medium of the universe out of these many (DEEP) waters.
'Later', the primordial atoms themselves, hydrogen (with deuterium isotopes, etc.) quickly assimilated with oxygen the 8-protoned sphere forming the 10-protoned compound chemists refer to as water. When and how LIGHT (and/or the WORD of God) catalyzed 'chemical' water (H2O) formation seems subject to many (even vain) speculations. Catalysis of hydrogen with oxygen to form H2O does require/and/or produce light intrinsically ...in atomic, sub-atomic, and electromagnetic forms of radiation... and perhaps extrinsically in combustive, solar, and/or other energies. Moreover, when viewed quantum-ly, this kind of water, H2O cannot even exist without light ...at least inherently. The 'first waters' then were of a mysterious surreal nature to say the least ...scientifically and scripturally speaking. The reality of water then is extremely complex.
'The waters' with their extensive physical mediums of matter-energy ('heaven and earth') have noteworthy primary attributes however. They are of a sublimely 'deep' and homogenous consistency. Once created they are 'lawfully' neither created nor destroyed. They seem to have become omnipresent in the space-time continuum. They invariably are mutable and become 'without form, and void', sometimes violently so. They contain complex substrates even of life. They are perceived by you and me (although methinks spiritual water eludes from us).
Therefore, scripturally and scientifically, the primordial waters, their atoms, and all atoms (at least of the earth) either 1) became DEAD ('without form, and void'), 2) were DEAD when God created them 'in the beginning', or 3) were DEAD when as yet they were mentioned. Consider this: 'Excellence', 'beauty', 'symmetry', 'proportion', 'harmony', etc. is simply VOID in the 'SECOND' sentence. Their is no scriptural mention of 'good' on the 'first day' except as regarding 'the light' itself. This is not to assert that God is not good or that the Spirit moving upon the face of the dark waters is not good. But the scriptures seem to me to assert nothing good about the creation in the second sentence.
Were it not for the 'AND' of "AND the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" the doleful deadness of earth would be without its diametrical comforter, life-giver, resurrector, and 'nothing' would exist.
The Spirit touched over ALL the waters, comprehended every dark dead homogeneous vacuole and the formlessness of all the earth (possibly spewed in the water as a mixture), and acted upon the medium 'in-toto' by His presence.
The Spirit was made to recount Christ's sufferings, as Christ too became "without form or comeliness" thus becoming our 'living waters'. Thus the Spirit of God clothed Himself upon His primordial elements. The Spirit no doubt 'quickened' them with intrinsic light in diametrical contrast to what the elements were so that they would no longer be as "without form, and void". Rather the heart of the earth became realized with all foundations of life. Order is acting upon the chaos. Spiritual order is awakening living substrates and organic compounds as well. Though dead as the other worlds (not yet divided out, since the firmament is yet forthcoming) the earth becomes increasingly ordered so that the earth alone supersedes all other planets in complexity.
The Spirit of God moved...with fiery glory, with groanings and travailings, with lightnings and thunderings, with sparks ascending upward, etc. as befitting a 'Holy' spirit that comprehends ALL waste and void, that willfully covers that which is NOT GOOD of itself, to elaborate on the implied sin-wreckage.
That the earth is in the form of completely evil darkness and sin-wreckage here should be dogmatically asserted and explained scripturally. 1) God divides the light from the darkness on the first day and in no wise calls the darkness good, 2) John (John 1.5) states "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." thus animating them as powers of darkness here ...inferring all evil and the devil.; 3) 'Darkness' although loaded with meaning is never mentioned as good despite God's repeatedly using darkness to magnify His glory and to execute judgment on sin.
The surreal metaphor of "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" is the truth of all reality itself: Namely Christ's death burial and resurrection for our sins and our baptismal regeneration via the Holy Spirit. That the empirically awesome creation becomes merely a metaphor of redemption seems credible since this creation will pass away once the new heaven and earth appear (Rev. 21). Moreover the sea as we know it--perhaps all H2O and all molecules as we presently know them--will also dissapear in that day.
Thus the elements of our Baptismal Creation are metaphysically, metaphorically, and mystically set forth "in the beginning"--a Baptism wherein our space-time continuum truly subsides. God's thoughts then have become our 'hard-core' creation-environment.
Taste and Swallow my death Oh Lord;
Move over my deep troubled soul.
Though I be "without form, and void"
Help me when I am gray and old.
Not without LIGHT can there be matter-energy mediums like H2O as we now perceive them. Thus Einstein's (ad hoc) "repulsion principle" -- which he used to explain offsets of gravity during the so-called 'Big bang' -- can not explain the entropy of primordial creation here. Neither can gravity itself correct for the disordering of elements left to themselves without electromagnetic and nuclear radiation (light). The incomprehensible primordial and/or spiritual light alone actuates matter-energy mediums as we now perceive them. Withdraw that LIGHT (Christ) and dissolution, even our utter annihilation, is immediate.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
What do members think of the interpretation that I was given during the time I was a fundam. christian?: The idea that Genesis 1:1 is a summary statement of all that comes after it:
In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth.(And here is how it was done.): The earth was without form & void, and darkness... Got it? Anyone??
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