Hey, welcome to the Methodist Voice. The purpose of our time together is to grow in the knowledge of God revealed in the pages of scripture. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 tells us that when we contemplate the God revealed in scripture, it transforms us into His image. That transformation beautifies our minds and hearts and we then beautify the world together. We think that's time well spent. Thanks for joining us. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Thank you for joining us on the Methodist Voice podcast. We are currently in a series called Primeval covering Genesis chapters 1 through 11. In our previous episodes we covered verses 1 and 2. Today we will be covering verses 3 through 5. So let's get right into it. Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And in verse 3, which begins our topic for today, and God said, let there be light and there was light and God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness He called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day. As we move on through Genesis, we immediately encounter a confusing problem right off the bat.
God creates light on the first day, but He doesn't create the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. So what is the light that God creates on the first day if it isn't the sun, moon and stars? This is a question that has perplexed theologians throughout time. There have been many attempts at explaining this problem rather than try and cover all of the possibilities, which would be endless. It'd be a really long podcast.
We're going to focus on the explanation that makes the most sense to us here. So as we begin the creation narrative, before we get into the light question, let's first address the term day. Now this is a huge controversy between those who insist on a literal 24 hour period and those who insist it is a non-literal ambiguous phase of creation that matches better with what we know from modern scientific speculation.
So to all to address both of those camps, I want to refer us back to Job 38 that's going to guide most of our discussion of Genesis 1 through 11. This is called primeval because this is content. A lot of it is mythological in nature and it covers events that happened thousands of years before any official recorded history. So let's be humble about our opining about what's written there. Here's what it says in Job 38 verse one.
God is speaking to Job out of the whirlwind and he said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements.
Surely you know, sarcasm noted that this is God telling all of us to be humble when we're opining about his motives, his actions, his methods, because really when it comes to the creation of the world, nobody knows what they're talking about. Least of all, scientists who try and speculate about how the world was created and they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
And so when it comes to whether or not it was a literal 24 hour period or an ambiguous phase of creation, I don't know and neither do you. And so we're just going to go with our best understanding based upon what we see in other places in scripture. So in the debate about whether or not Genesis one is describing seven literal 24 hour periods or not, I would refer you to an article by Steve Gardner at AuthenticTheology.com.
The title of the article is Exodus 2011 and 31 17 often cited by young earth creationists do not necessarily refer to six consecutive 24 hour days. And then here are some of the evidence that is cited from the article. First Yom, the word we translate for day is used to mean two different things.
Just right there in that single verse in Genesis one five, it says in Genesis one five, God called the light day a 12 hour time frame and the darkness he called night a different 12 hour time frame and there was evening and there was morning the first day. So Yom is translated day meaning daytime and then is translated day meaning something else such as a 24 hour or indefinite period of time. Another example would be from Daniel's 70 weeks in Daniel chapter nine.
Almost all commentators agree that the 77s should be understood as 70 weeks of years. In other words a period of 490 years. In other words the 77s are not literal days. It's used figuratively days of weeks. It's used figuratively to described long periods of time. One of the early church fathers St. Augustine writing in the early fifth century noted what kind of days these were. It is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to determine. Now that's a good humble statement.
Last bit of evidence we'll cite. The seventh day of creation from Genesis chapter two verses two and three is not 24 hours long. In Genesis two verses two through three where we are told that on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done and rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done so God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
The question we have to ask here is was God's creation rest limited to a 24 hour period? On the contrary Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4 teach that God's Sabbath rest remains and that we enter into it or prevented or we are prevented from entering into it. Next word I'll say on this topic is from Thomas Oden the great Wesleyan scholar in his work The Living God. It's a commentary on the teaching of the consensus teaching of the early church fathers. Here's what he says on the days of creation.
The word day or yom has several levels of meaning. It is used in biblical Hebrew to mean not only a 24 hour day but also a time of divine visitation or judgment or an indefinite period of time as in Psalm 110 5 Isaiah 2 11 and 12 and Jeremiah 11 4 through 7 or 17 16 to insist on a 24 hour day as the words only meaning is to intrude upon the text and to disallow the poetic metaphorical and symbolic speech of scripture.
So that being out of the way let's address let's move on to the light question. What is the light spoken of by Genesis 3 through 5 if it isn't the sun moon and stars? Again there have been many opinions upon this. I'll give you one example again going back to St. Augustine who lived from 354 to 430 AD he was the bishop of Hippo a prolific author and theologian. Augustine believed that the light on days one through three was specifically created not something which was later repurposed.
He believed that God created angels on day one and that they were the light which shone on the earth for three days likely based on scriptural references such as Psalm 104 4 Ezekiel 1 13 through 14 Matthew 28 3 Acts 12 7 angels are often lumped as luminaries or as bearing light. Job 38 7 again Psalm 104 4 Acts 12 7. Now this is just one of the many areas of theological discussion that I think that Augustine was wrong that came from answers in Genesis dot com that information about Augustine.
I happen to think that Augustine was off out of tune there like he was on on several topics. Of course he was a great thinker but he was also deviated from a lot of the thinking of other church fathers. To start with I believe that the light displayed by the angels is what is called the uncreated light of the glory of God. So it's not a created light like Augustine speculates the angels are just manifesting or reflecting the uncreated light of the glory of God.
It's not a different light it is a reflection of God's uncreated glory and light like that which is manifest by the Lord Jesus himself like he does on the Mount of Transfiguration. And I'm going to tell you I think from several different places where I think this is the correct interpretation. I think the picture we're going to get in Genesis 1 through 11 is that originally while you had a supernatural and a natural realm those two realms coexisted.
They lived together and so you will see human beings walking with God in the garden. You will see human beings interacting with angelic creatures divine beings. There wasn't this separation from the supernatural and the natural realm that we see now. When we get to the end of this topic we'll see that's actually the picture that the Book of Revelation paints. The Book of Revelation is a recombining a reuniting of the supernatural and the natural realms in the Garden of Eden.
And so we're going to cite from different thinkers of the past how there is evidence of this thinking of the light described in Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 through 5 being the uncreated light of the glory of God that is manifesting within the created order.
So from the Midrashic tradition the Babylonian Talmud suggests that God originally created a very special light on day one but that he hid that light and replaced it with sunlight because he saw that people would be too sinful to deserve the original special light. But was the light created on the first day? This is from the Babylonian Talmud. For behold it is written and God set them in the firmament of the heaven and it is further written there was evening and there was morning a fourth day.
This is to be explained according to Rabbi Eliezer. The light which the Holy One blessed be he created on the first day one could see thereby from one end of the earth to the other. Of course the text doesn't say that, it's just somebody opining. But as soon as the Holy One blessed be he beheld the generation of the flood and the generation of the dispersion and saw that their actions were corrupt he arose and hid it from them for it is said Job 38.15 but from the wicked their light is withheld.
Continuing with the commentary. And for whom did he reserve it? for the righteous in the time to come for it is said Genesis 1 4 and God saw the light that it was good and good means only the righteous for it is said say of the righteous that he is good. As soon as he saw the light he had reserved for the righteous he rejoiced or said Isaiah 3 10 he rejoices at the light of the righteous.
So this Midrashic solution to a textual problem eventually became an important concept and what is called the Kabbalah. Whole books have been written about what it refers to as the buried light. So the hidden light. And so you can see in the text if you think again metaphorically the text talks about the light being manifest and there's a separation between the light and the darkness.
God's uncreated light is only manifest in a certain sphere and we will say that that's what the Garden of Eden is. It's a place where God's presence and God's glory is fully manifest. And the mandate of human beings was to take the Garden of Eden and extend that environment throughout the earth. And so there is a separation between where God's presence his glory is fully manifest. There's a distinction between the Garden of Eden and the rest of creation.
We see that we're going to see that in the text. Let's look at what some other church fathers said. This is Tertullian from 155 who lived from 155 to 220 AD of Carthage. He was an early Christian apologist and theologian. He believed that the light was the physical manifestation of Christ's glory early in creation week for millennia before the incarnation. Now you will see the second person of the Trinity all over the Old Testament.
So in the Gospel of John, John testifies that the Logos, the second person of the Trinity was present with God and participating in the work of creation. So Tertullian is working off of good biblical exegesis. Then therefore, this is Tertullian again, then therefore does the word also himself assume his own form and glorious garb, his own sound and vocal utterance. When God says, let there be light. This is the perfect nativity of the word when he proceeds forth from God.
But in respect of the previous works of the world, what says the scripture in the first statement indeed is made when the sun has not yet appeared and God said, let there be light and there was light immediately. There appears the word and the true light, which lights man on his coming into the world. From John chapter one, verse nine and through him also came light upon the world. From that moment, God willed creation to be affected in the word Christ being present and ministering unto him.
And so God created again, that makes good sense. If you understand God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, God being an uncreated being, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity being an uncreated being, co-equal, co-eternal with God the father, but in his form, a man. Anytime you see God in the form of the man, in the form of a man, think of the second person of the Trinity. Carrying on with another church father, Irenaeus.
In previous times, man, it is true, was said to have been made according to the image of God, but he was not revealed as such for the word, according to whose image man was made, was still invisible. Therefore, also man easily lost to the likeness. But when the word of God was made flesh, he confirmed both image and likeness. For on the one hand, Jesus truly showed the image by becoming what his image was.
On the other hand, he firmly established the likeness by the co-assimilation of man to the invisible father through the visible word. So in the person of Christ Jesus, God unites, he ultimately unites the physical realm and the heavenly realm. Jesus Christ represents a union of both realms. And Jesus Christ, in many places in scripture, is said to manifest the glory or the light of God the Father. Now let's talk about that word glory. It's the Greek word doxa.
And it comes from the Hebrew word kavod. And so the dictionary entry on doxa, Strong's dictionary, says the usage means honor, renown, glory, and especially divine quality. The unspoken manifestation of God and his splendor corresponds to the Old Testament word kabo, to be heavy. Both terms convey God's infinite intrinsic worth, his substance, his essence.
So from Thayer's Greek lexicon, it says as a translation of the Hebrew term, again kavod, in a use foreign to Greek writing, it speaks of God's splendor and brightness. Properly, it's a word used of the sun, moon, and stars, Acts 22, 11, 1st Corinthians 15, 40, used of the heavenly brightness by which God was conceived of as surrounded by.
And which heavenly beings were surrounded when they appeared on earth, with which the face of Moses was once made luminous and also Christ in his transfiguration. In the Targum and Talmud, Shekinah glory, the glory of God, which is simply a bright cloud by which God made manifest to men his presence and power on the earth. The manifest presence of God, there's a heaviness to it. There's a weightiness to it. Sometimes there is a shining light associated with it.
There's all kinds of examples of that. The burning bush, when God speaks to Moses through the burning bush, says the bush looks like it was on fire, but it didn't burn. Well, fire was the only word they had for light. And so God's uncreated light was manifesting. Men referred to it as fire, but it didn't burn anything up. It was light. It was uncreated light. And that light was later manifest before Moses on the mountain.
And he came down and he spoke to the people and it says his face was shining and the people cringed when they saw it. We see the uncreated light of God manifesting. Again, it's a light that doesn't come from the sun, moon or stars or any other light source. It is the glory of God. When it manifests, it's bright. And it made it said it made Jesus face shine like the sun on the Mount of Transfiguration. On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell, it says tongues of fire rested on each one.
Well, what is that? It's shafts of light. It's the glory of God that fell on the disciples who were praying. And it was a shine, the shining light of the uncreated glory of God. After Stephen stoning when it says his face shone like that of an angel, the heavens opened and he looked up and he saw the sun seated at the right hand of God the Father. And when Stephen beheld that it caused his face to shine with the uncreated glory of God.
Different example when Paul's on the road to Damascus and God reveals himself to Paul, Jesus reveals himself to Paul and speaks. The same light that caused Stephen's face to shine caused an unregenerate and unredeemed apostle Paul to be struck blind on the road to Damascus. He was like the other Jews who cringed when the light was manifest. Jesus is described in Revelation with a face, the resurrected Jesus with a face that shines like the sun.
Let's read from scripture what the scripture says on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17 verse 1 it says after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother and led them up on a high mountain by themselves and he was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. He was shining.
It says the same thing about Jesus in Revelation 1 16 it says in his right hand he yelled seven stars from his mouth came a sharp to edge sword his face was like the sun shining in full strength. And then again Revelation 22 the end of the book you're going to notice it's going to describe the Garden of Eden conditions.
This is from verse 1 of Revelation 22 then the angel showed me the river of the water of life bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city also on either side of the river the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruits yielding its fruit each month the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations no longer would there be anything accursed but the throne
of God and of the Lamb will be on it and his servants will worship him they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and hear this so that's describing the Garden of Eden it's going to extend it's going to be extended throughout all the nations verse 5 and night will be no more they will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever.
In other words now it doesn't say there won't be any sun or moon or stars or lamps it says in the city verse 2 none of those artificial light sources or natural light sources are going to be needed because God himself will outshine them all by fully manifesting his uncreated light on the earth it will be powerful and it will be amazing and it will be awesome and it will be a beautiful thing to behold for the redeemed.
It says in Isaiah 24 23 then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed for the Lord of Host reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and his glory will be before his elders and it will be their great joy and pleasure to contemplate and behold the uncreated glory manifesting itself in the most beautiful light ever seen. To behold that and to be energized with it with an energy in life beyond measure.
It says in Numbers 14 21 but truly as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord and that is the plan it's the same plan we're going to read about from Genesis 1 & 2 God's mandate to human beings to take the Garden of Eden the place where God is made fully manifest and fully known in an unhindered and uninhibited way he wants the entire earth to be capable of being a receptacle of his uninhibited glory
that is that again Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 14 for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea. God wants the entire earth to be filled with his glory. Psalm 57 5 be exalted oh God above the heavens let your glory be over all the earth that is a prayer because that is the destiny of planet earth to be clothed with the very light and beauty and glory of God.
Psalm 72 19 blessed be his glorious name forever may the whole earth be filled with his glory amen and amen. I want to read to you a Wikipedia entry that describes this it is an ancient concept from it's a particularly important concept in the Eastern Orthodox Church it's the essence energies distinction that they make. God's essence is distinct from God's energies or his light or his glory however you want to phrase that in the same manner as the sun's essence and energies are distinct.
The sun's essence is a ball of burning gas while the Eastern Orthodox hold that God's essence is incomprehensible as the sun's essence is certainly unapproachable and unendurable so the Eastern Orthodox hold that God's essence is the same as the sun's energies on earth however can be experienced and are evidenced by changes that are evident like the sun can melt things it can harden things by dehydrating them it can grow things like plants it can
bleach things changing their color the same as said of God's energies though perhaps in a more spiritual sense like the melting of someone's heart or the sapping of someone's strength the hardening of someone's heart God's energies can cause spiritual growth God's energies can cause us to be bleached making our sins white as snow though more physical and psychological manifestations occur as well like in miracles or in divine
inspiration people are inspired to create a product to write a book to love God more whatever that might be the important points being made here are that while God is unknowable in his essence he can be known or experienced in his energies and such experience changes neither who or what God is nor who or what the one experiencing God is just as a plant does not become the sun simply because it soaked up the light and warmth and grew nor
does a person who soaks up the warmth and light of God and spiritually grows ever become big G God though such may be called a child of God or again according to the Eastern Orthodox Church a little G God just like the other divine beings in Eastern Orthodoxy they refer to that as theosis the divinization of human beings our mandate on the earth in the time that we have is to become people who are capable of receiving and reflecting the uncreated
light of God in greater and greater capacities and that process brings us to a place of theosis where we are eventually divinized at the resurrection from the dead if you're a Wesleyan or a Methodist we refer to that as a glorification but the ultimate destiny of every person is to be resurrected from the dead as people who are capable of receiving that light and reflecting it in differing magnitudes and differing magnitudes it says in first Corinthians 15 about the
resurrection from the dead just as star differs from star and brightness so it will be at the resurrection from the dead resurrected human beings according to how they grew in the things of God in this life will be capable of manifesting that light in greater and lesser degrees.
Here's what Pope Gregory the Great said he was Pope from 590 to 604 AD he wrote of people by whom while still living in this corruptible flesh but yet growing in incalculable power by a certain piercingness of contemplation the eternal brightness is able to be seen.
You can see it with your what the early church fathers called your noetic capabilities the inner eyes of the heart the inner eyes of the spirit you're capable through contemplation of seeing it here and now I wanted to end with a hymn from the 15th century it's a Latin hymn called Colestus Forman Gloriae here's how it goes a wondrous type o vision fair of glory that the church shall share which Christ upon the mountain shows where
brighter than the sun he glows with shining face and bright array Christ deigns to manifest today what glory shall be theirs above what joy and God with perfect love amen that's inspiring to me I believe that we're capable through contemplation through the cultivation of the inner life through union with God by faith in Jesus Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit we are receptacles of this uncreated light this energy this life and it manifests
all kinds of beautiful things in us and our goal in life is to grow grow in our relationship with this God grow in our capacity to see this light to experience this light to manifest this light in various ways and to have our labors rewarded one day at the resurrection from the dead with a ever increasing capacity in the next age to engage with this light to gaze upon it and enjoy it forever it's it's fascinating it's amazing so I believe
that's what Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 through 5 are teaching us God is manifesting his uncreated glory within physical creation withholding it from some places that are not yet prepared for it manifesting it in a particular place with the intent that through the work of human beings in partnership with human beings the entire environment of the earth would be a place where he would eventually be able to openly manifest his glory on the entire planet
that's the testimony of scripture that's the testimony of the book of revelation that's the end game God being able to fully manifest his glory with human beings who are capable of reflecting it and enjoying it and it's a thing of beauty great beauty to behold so that gets us through verse 5 we will carry on with the rest of the book in coming weeks hope you enjoyed this episode look to see you again next time have a good one bye bye