PART 1:
THE STORY OF MOUNT EDEN
2
GOD CREATES
On Genesis 1-2:3 and Psalm 104:1-24
Do you see the excellent distinction and the wonderful craftsmanship, surpassing all comment, happening by a single word and command?
-John Chrysostom
Every breath we take is a reminder that we were created by God. The words formed with our breath remind us of the word of God spoken by the Father when he created the sun, moon, earth, and sky. The oxygen that pumps through our lungs reminds us of the divine wind of the Holy Spirit, which moved over the abyss at the beginning of creation.
I remember the precise moment I fell in love with jazz music. I was listening to Blue Train by John Coltrane in my bedroom at age 15, when Lee Morgan's trumpet solo began in the middle of the track, and reverberated within my heart and soul in ways that I can barely describe in words. Before that moment, jazz music sounded to me like a random clash of noises and notes, the auditory equivalent of gibberish. But in the middle of that trumpet solo, those harsh noises suddenly transformed into sweet melodies. I began to recognize how the sounds of the piano, bass, and drums fit like puzzle pieces together to provide harmony and rhythm to undergird the beautiful melody. In that moment by the stereo in my bedroom, I crossed the Rubicon from liking to loving music, and there was no turning back. One of the natural outflows of this newly acquired love was that I picked up an instrument and learned to create music myself.
We create out of love and out of our loves. When we fall in love with someone or something, it often energizes us to create. If you fall in love with paintings, you might pick up a brush. If you fall in love with architecture, you might pick up a slide rule. If you fall in love with a person, you might write them love letters. The Bible says something similar when it talks about God creating the world. It tells us that God created the world, not by accident or out of necessity, but out of love. As such, we can use the metaphor of the artist and their artwork to guide our understanding of Genesis 1.1 The purpose of the first chapter of the Bible is to tell us the identity of the artist (God), how he goes about creating the world (through order and abundance), and finally, the purpose of this creation (delight).
WHO CREATES? GOD THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT
We can learn more about a work of art or music if we get to know the person who made it. In an art appreciation course, one might read the biographies of Van Gogh and Da Vinci to better understand their paintings. A painting does not simply fall out of the sky, but is created by a person, and as such, reflects something about them. Their art bears a stamp, a kind of reflection of their personality. So, when we learn something about an artist and the way they painted, we can better understand their artwork. My appreciation of the jazz album Blue Train led me to learn everything I could about John Coltrane and the making of that album. I even researched the specific location where it was made and the engineers who recorded it!
At some point in our lives, most of us have wondered where the world came from and who created it. Fortunately for us, the Bible begins by giving us some answers to these deep human questions. The opening lines of Genesis reveal the identity of the creator of all things: God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. He is one God in three persons, what Christians call the Trinity. We can see the Trinity in the wind and words in Genesis 1. In the Bible, the symbol of wind is often associated with the Holy Spirit and the breath of God. Also, the words of God are often associated with Jesus, who is both the Son of God and the Word of God (see John 1:1). In Genesis 1:2 we see that a divine wind is hovering over the waters, which is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Then, in the next sentence, God speaks these words: "Let there be light." These words are a sign of the presence of the Son of God. We learn from these first few sentences in the Bible that the creator of the world is one God, but is also three: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father speaks the Word (the Son), and the wind of the Spirit moves to create light, land, sea, plants, and animals.
An analogy that can help us picture what is happening in creation is to think of what happens when we give a command to a pet. When I tell a dog to sit, three things happen. I first think of the command in my mind, I then exhale wind out of my lungs, and with my tongue form the word "sit." As a result, the dog sits down in response. The thinking, breathing, and speaking are all intertwined actions of one being: myself. Similarly, at creation, we can picture God the Father commanding, God the Spirit as the wind and breath, and God the Son as the words: "Let there be light." The result of this command is light coming into existence. All these actions are simultaneously the work of one God.
This first chapter of Genesis continues to reveal more about the identity of God by telling us how He goes about creating. One thing you will notice in Genesis 1 is that there is no struggle or hardship involved in creation. Unlike other ancient creation stories, the world was not created through epic fights between rival gods. Nor was the world created by some arduous manipulation of matter, like the construction of a modern-day skyscraper. Also, God does not create the world out of loneliness or need or boredom. Instead, God effortlessly created all things seen and unseen, and after each day of creation, delighted in his work by declaring it good. What this tells us is that the world was created by God out of love, like a musician creates a song out of their love of music, or a painter creates a portrait out of their love for art.
God created the world out of love because God is love. Within God there is a dynamic and active love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. And it is this abundant Trinitarian love that "pours out and creates the goodness in things."2
HOW DOES GOD CREATE? ORDER AND ABUNDANCE
The artist crafts and shapes their work of love by bringing form and order out of chaos. The painter does not randomly slosh paint on canvas, nor does the pianist smash keys at random. Instead, they turn paint and notes into coherent forms: the glob of blue paint becomes a cerulean skyline and a brown smudge is shaped into an oak tree. These finished works of art all have a certain order and intelligibility to them that can be discovered and appreciated by an audience. For instance, as I delved deep into my love of music, I discovered that beneath the surface of Blue Train was an elaborate architecture of chord progressions and rhythmic precision.
God crafted the world by bringing form and order out of the matter he created. He began by creating, controlling, and taming the primordial waters. Water was akin to God's paint, which he controlled and formed to begin creation.3 He then continued onward-heaven is separated from earth, water from land, and fish from fowl. As the days of creation progressed, God's works became more complex and intricate, from inorganic to organic, from inert to energetic. There is an order and progression to creation that invites our minds to discover, just as I sought to learn about the depth and complexity of jazz music. In fact, many of the first modern scientists were inspired by a Christian view of creation to uncover the logic of creation. In so doing they discovered that this divinely created order extends even to gravitational constants and molecular structures. Isaac Newton, for instance, praised God for the beautiful and intelligible order of his universe, declaring that "it is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion."4
While God created in an orderly fashion, this does not mean that the world is ordinary. If creation was only orderly and efficient, it would look more like an automotive plant than an ecosystem. Works of art are more than just structured pigments and notes; they also exude an abundant beauty that exceeds their form. This is why the greatest works of art are the objects of infinite praise and discussion: thousands of people continue to appreciate the Mona Lisa and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony centuries after their creation. God's creation invites our awe and wonder in a similar way. The more time we spend in God's creation, the more we discover how many different plants, animals, colors, and sounds exist. When I was young, I thought there was only one kind of orange, a navel orange. But as I grew older, I discovered that there were hundreds of varieties of oranges in many different sizes and shapes. Similarly, one of the first times I walked through a botanical garden, I discovered that God created more than one color of tulip. In fact, He created thousands of unique tulip colors and patterns. The varieties of fruits and various colors of flowers do not need to exist in the world. Humanity could survive without tangerines and azure petals. But God is an artist who gives out of joy and abundance, providing us more than what we need and giving us a beautiful world that surpasses anything else we could imagine.
We can see the abundance of creation...
