FAQ

Traditional interpretation asserts the following: the light created by God on the first day should be understood not as light from celestial bodies, but as something else. Prior to the formulation of the Big Bang theory, most commentators believed that this referred to light in a different, spiritual sense of the word (as this concept is used, for example, in the Gospel, referring to the Light of Christ) — or something else entirely. Currently, there is a popular view that this refers to the light originating from the initial flash that accompanied the Big Bang, preserved in the form of what is known as cosmic microwave background radiation. This is indeed light that does not emanate from celestial bodies, yet it propagates throughout the Universe. Thus, modern physics helps us to understand elements within Revelation that could not be comprehended during earlier stages of scientific development. However, the understanding of this primordial light as a spiritual light, distinguishing truth from the darkness of falsehood, also remains profoundly relevant. Furthermore, it is important to remember that prior to the creation of the luminaries, we likely cannot speak of days and nights in the physical sense of the words. The Hebrew word "yom," like its corresponding Greek word "hemera," possesses a broader meaning and can denote a period of time of indefinite duration, unified by a specific event or characteristic. In this sense, the Bible speaks, for example, of the "day of wrath" and the "day of salvation," adding that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Therefore, strictly speaking, celestial bodies are not required to separate the days of creation from one another: these may refer to periods or stages.