NOTES for Gen 1:14-23
There is a well-known traditional question that atheists ask Christians, and other believers too: if the luminaries were created only on the fourth day, where did the light come from on the first day of creation? Of course, it is not so hard to answer, even while remaining within strictly scientific ideas: light, as a physical phenomenon, did indeed exist in the universe before the formation of such heavenly bodies as stars and planets. One can answer differently as well: the description of the first day of creation is not speaking about physical light at all, but about the radiance that accompanies the theophanies described in the biblical books. Both answers will be true. But the author of the Pentateuch was not writing a scientific work or a theological treatise. He wrote a poem about God's creation of the world, a poem in which meaning is inseparable from the images in which it is enclosed. And at the level of imagery, there really is a direct and immediate connection between the first and fourth days of creation. On the second day of creation, water rushed into the world: chaos invaded the formerly harmonious and perfect creation. But God opposed the forces of chaos, and in the course of this confrontation He created the world we know today. And the appearance of the luminaries becomes a kind of victory over chaos, perhaps not yet final, but still a victory: for now, as on the first day, day is again separated from night, although evidently not as it was in the beginning. Our world is not the one that existed originally; it has endured a certain catastrophe, the scale of which we can only conjecture. But God does not leave it at the mercy of the dark powers; He intervenes in events in order to change their course and save His creation. And the human being, according to God's plan, was to become His helper in carrying out this purpose.