Creation One. Almost done! We’ve been exploring a totally epic story and so ought to begin wrapping up in suitable style. What we need is the beating heart of the narrative on display, its most astounding image or challenging truth…

God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth’. God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it… See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. (vv 26-29)

Apart from God, of course, it turns out we’re the big story: HUMANS, or, if you prefer, Homo sapiens. One might say it’s a story of the blindingly obvious and befuddlingly mysterious. In a way, we are history. There is no story to tell without us. It’s confusing we would be so important in the grand scheme of things! The sixth day represents the apex or climax of God’s activities, which relates directly to the central mystery of Christianity: God Himself became human. The royal seal of approval!

These realities are so far beyond articulation that only stories and the power of image can serve as appropriate signposts. Even then, all paths ultimately lead away into the prayerful silence of sacred darkness. Nonetheless, it’s still the express purpose of stories to shine like the brightest stars. They are designed to startle, and there’s nothing more astonishing than the idea that we are made in God’s image and likeness! The Hebrew words connote carving: like we’ve been crafted into living effigies of God.

The writers appear to be aware of the preposterousness of such a comparison. How can bounded humanity be compared in any credible way to unbounded divinity? Of course, strictly speaking, we can’t. Nevertheless, a fundamental part of the power of story resides in making imaginative leaps. God Himself told us as much. Such truths cannot be approached head-on (pun intended). We call it analogy.

So, what specifically does this comparison reveal?

Complementarity

The first truth about image and likeness is that it only finds proper expression in male and female taken together. The word man should be understood as generic in the Genesis passage: as in, human. This is echoed in the poetry of the great John Donne:

No man is an island entire of itself

And, most notably, distinction isn’t by division this time. Diversity is less significant than unity. We are all us. It isn’t about eros here, either. The hardwired reciprocity of the sexes has more to do with mission: women and men working together more effectively, because enhanced by respective and respected differences. Gender antagonism runs directly counter to this vision.

We’ve already noticed there are often unspoken words bubbling away beneath the Genesis text and this time the word is love. God’s love brings us into being, and so our likeness to Him is rooted in our love for one another as sisters and brothers. In a hyper-sexualised world, flooded with fake valentines, the story that we’re simply made for each other is really the true romance, and incredibly liberating. It casts a whole new light over the search for life partners.

And this is captured in the DNA of stories. In a broad sense, they are all essentially about this I-Thou: protagonist and antagonist; heroes and villains; genius and foil; master and apprentice; the lovers; parents and children; aliens versus us; divinities and humanity; even, solipsist me against the whole world. And, of course, stories are told to be heard, written to be read. The audience is the other, often unstated, Thou. Story is performance. Even a personal diary, destined for your eyes only, is written in shared language. Even if written in a private language, it’s still articulation; an external decipherable form. Language is inherently dialogical. The words of each story yearn to be discovered.

Procreation

Notice there follows a standalone blessing for procreation. It’s portrayed as an additional vocation relating directly to this particular couple. They first represent the idealised brother-sister template for human cooperation but then, in addition, they embody the fundamental meaning of Genesis: generation. To this end, they must be more than friends, and so also represent the fecundity of a divinely ordained coupling. God literally speaks fruitfulness into their lives. The meaning of this blessing is explored more deeply in Creation Story Two but, suffice to say, this is clearly the originating Biblical aetiology for marriage.

Amid modern overpopulation doomsaying, the imperative to fill the earth can seem gratuitous, yet this is portrayed as a blessing/imperative/duty. It represents the flourishing or blossoming implied in the Hebrew word for blessing. Of course, as an ideal. Not everyone has this calling. It’s more a broad brushstroke: no kids, no future.

Stewardship

Thorny words these: mastery, conquest, subduing and dominance. They’re curiously muscular, almost hubristic. Why not rather go and turn the whole world into a work of art, or a hippie commune? The writers appear to be deliberately alluding to the struggles of lived existence and the contesting subliminal chaos. It’s nowhere near as effortless for humanity as for God, who simply speaks Creation into being. This is a foreshadowing of the human toil and striving stalking the near horizon (3:17).

Indeed, such words might not feel wholly out of place in the works of Darwin or Nietzsche. We’ve already explored how the two narratives of natural history and salvation history might intertwine. Mastery and conquest, subduing and dominance can be read as an aetiology for human environmental dominance on this planet. Of course, this is relative to human measurement and perception. That Speciesism could even be a thing, never crossed my mind until I studied moral philosophy. I believe cases have been made for viruses, fungi, ants or worms being more dominant in their respective domains. But, as said, they’re not the ones telling the story!

Our natural history highlights developments such as opposable digits, tool- and weapon-making, bipedalism, predation, campfire cooking, diet innovation and food storage, communication, cooperation and construction, but most of all, relatively large highly complex brains, which appear to have underpinned this competitive advantage. The conclusion might be along the lines of: curious mutations leading to greater environmental adaptation leading to overall competitive dominance (for now). Essentially, a tale of pluck and luck for us, but not really for everything else.

This is an impressive but hardly overwhelming narrative. Just because we’re a single species doesn’t necessitate there being an us at all, (see Lord of the Flies, 1984 etc). This type of dominance might lead to any number of divisions or oblivions: sleepwalking into selfishly frying ourselves off the face of the planet; wiping ourselves out with viruses of our own nefarious making; the nuclear elephant still very much in the room; genetic engineering and autonomous AI; the manipulation of voters and demise of effective democracy; reemergent totalitarian ideologies; permanent wealth inequity; global erosion of human/civil rights and intolerance towards (particularly religious) minorities; the vast silent destruction of babies in the womb; the vast vociferous destruction of people on the internet, etc.

Which is why Creation One is also at pains to express mastery and conquest, subduing and dominance in a rightful vocational context. That is, inside a corrective framework.

In the ancient world, only the monarch was endowed with the incomparable dignity of being the gods’ representative on earth. The rest of humanity formed the largely expendable masses. So, it’s an incredible counter-statement of worth that we’re all to be masters on God’s behalf: lieutenants, deputies, understudies, royal stewards, ambassadors. We’re directly accountable to Him in our managing of His creation: dominance with duty, conquest with care, subduing with sense, mastery with mercy. This is the archetypal vocation of all humanity; the gift and onerous responsibility of the children of God. Cooperation is elevated over competition. We do not truly own anything. It’s all on loan. Entrusted to us not to exploit, including one another.

Notice there isn’t even predation here, which is highly significant given the natural narrative. Order implies complete harmony between creatures. All God’s creatures are given only the plants to eat, (1:30). Meat-eating comes later, in the Noahic Covenant, (Gen 9:1-7), arguably marking a further fearful distancing from the once pristine order.

The survival/ascendance story of natural evolution is still significant given the events to come in chapter three, but it’s not the key narrative. Our most primitive identity is care. The story told here, one to inscribe upon our very hearts, is that we only become most fully ourselves when we treat our common home and all within it as God would have us so.

Conclusion

What an incredible opening story of the Bible: a mosaic of beauty and breathtaking portrait of reality! It has taken us from the birth of the universe itself at the dark margins of space/time to a vision of ordered benevolence and joyful flourishing. Through the unparalleled power of Word, story itself is brought into being along with language and history. God’s spirit sweeps across the narrative, banishing fear, and marking out humanity for special honour and responsibility. This momentous integration of spirit and matter forms the foundation of all romance and tragedy. Paradoxically, the frenetic energy of creating gently swings inside a divine hammock. And one word, too obvious for stating, saturates the story from start to finish: love. Love brought all this into being, sustains it in being, and will bring it to completeness of being. Because Creation is in motion, it has a purpose, a direction, and like us all, is also on a journey in search of final fulfilment.

Creation One answers the question deep-rooted in every human heart - who am I? The answer it gives resounds like cathedral bells across a clear morning sky: you are my beloved child, an echo of my living voice, my most precious work of art.

As God takes a well-earned rest and this chapter of the story draws to a close, the question left ringing in our ears is: will you, with all your heart, live out this destiny?

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As an experiment in form, I’ll be releasing this story first on Notes, a sentence a day.

For readers not on Notes, I’ll continue posting other edifying stuff in the meantime.

Big loves

Adrian

Warning: Missing Trigger Warning

Reader discretion advised

Large pizza boxes lie discarded throughout the dingy studio apartment. Most are empty. Those that aren’t conceal half-eaten slices variously congealed upon greasy cardboard squares. Beneath the smeared glass-top coffee table, as though flood piled, small cartons of empty garlic dip gather. The place smells as you might expect, if you’re expecting a lavatory. Raggedy sunfringed drapes hang like the flayed skins of creatures long forgotten whilst black mould strategically seals sash windows against the violation of fresh air.

Street sounds press against the panes like the nose of a lost child: the ghostwhining of electric cars at low speed, yawping dickheads with their phones set to speaker, strings of distant sirens, sidewalk disputes of varying intensity and duration, and the explosive purgations of pre-dawn post-party puking, all of which excitedly take their place alongside the incessant yap-yap emanating from number sixty-nine’s irredeemably chippy Cockerpoo, the omnipresent doomquake of descending passenger jets, and, to top it off, unfeasibly frequent performances from the Captain Rod and Coochie Chorus upstairs.

Mistaking itself for a convection heater, a home cinema screen dominates a whole wall as well as the room’s centralised sofa bed which appears to be gawking back at it. Thus, the place, on this humid August day, bears no small resemblance to the sweaty breathlessness of a summer launderette. The bed sheets are as you might expect, if you’re expecting something akin to ingrained garlic dip. A team logo, acting as a screensaver, drifts with indolence across the wide digital display.

Speaking of bathrooms, that’s where we’ll currently find Hank. He’s nodded off having previously exhausted himself in the quest to squeeze out something tremendously resistant. A Pyrrhic victory, then. He now appears to be in suspended animation. The combination of personal bulk and merciless toilet seat means he’ll be without the aid of legs for a good five minutes upon awakening. I shall leave it to your imagination as to the various sanitary navigations required to achieve a satisfactory conclusion to the enterprise at hand.

Unfortunately, Hank’s successfully restored presence to the sofa bed occasions our returned attention. Now settled, he appears half-consumed by oversized pillows. A Playportal 8 visor (not dissimilar to a Kendo mask) currently obscures his facial features but for a rat’s tail braid dangling from a concealed goatee which drips perspiration with committed regularity. The visor spares us noting the pomodoro stains about his chops, his bloodshot eyes and general puffiness of cheek. Clothing amounts to a generous pair of shorts with screensaver-matching logo, (the presence of any undergarment cannot be verified at this time), and an ill-fitting T-shirt which was once surely and proudly white. A dusty belt skulks in the corner like discarded snake skin. Matching bathrobe appears peripatetic.

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Photo: with sincere thanks to Natalya, my cleaning lady.

The heavens proclaim the glory of God

And the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.

Day unto day takes up the story

And night unto night makes known the message.

No speech, no word, no voice is heard

Yet their span goes forth through all the earth,

Their words to the utmost bounds of the world.

There he has placed a tent for the sun;

It comes forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent,

Rejoices like a champion to run its course. (Ps 18/19:1-6)

Love this. It’s essentially a commentary on, or perhaps ecstatic song about, Creation One. Notice in line three how creation is portrayed as a story. It’s the story of adorning glory. There’s a whole cosmological vision here which we’ve touched on in previous posts, (here, here & here), but it’s well worth exploring further, [Hebrew Cosmology].

As the above Psalm declares, the heavens themselves reveal God’s glory. In other words, creation is its own proclamation of prayer and praise. This is another implication of that super-goodness we explored. We all stand on holy ground under the mantle of a sacred sky. The whole creation is God’s Holy Temple, a place of majesty and worship.

The emphatic message is: joyful praise is everywhere unconfined, leaping hart-like. There’s a thrilling transcendence to be discovered in creation, a polyphonic Gloria ringing out. God cannot be confined to musty old churches but is there, for ready and heady imbibing, in the sacrament of the sun, (to borrow a Chesterton).

We’ve noted this isn’t about making Arguments from Design, still less is it a question of Pantheism. Being open to God’s presence within the whole of creation is prerequisite to any genuine encounter with Him. Weirdly, this includes the void. We don’t need to boldly go where Captain Kirk literally did to be overwhelmed by the seemingly unending darkness of space. Yet our mysterious God inhabits all space even as we can barely survive on this tiny place called Earth. It’s a reminder of His incomprehensible transcendence. A spiritual goal of Creation Story One.

Thus, God makes all space sacred and so our sacred spaces are meant to serve as reminders of this universal sacredness. They are meant to be places of awe, where we might be lost for words as before the Milky Way, and not mausoleums for dreary and forgettable gods or ecclesiastical prisons of false holiness. Equally, we should treat all creation with the same reverence as our finest cathedrals.

So will I build my altar in the fields,

And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,

And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields

Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,

Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise

Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.

(To Nature (extract), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834 AD)

For the beauty of each hour

Of the day and of the night,

Hill and vale, and tree and flower,

Sun and moon and stars of light:

CHRIST, our God, to Thee we raise

This our Sacrifice of Praise.

(Extract from Hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Folliott S Pierpoint (1835-1917)) [And lovely Rutter setting]

This is about much more than ‘nature appreciation’. Even though we may not hear the precise speech, word or voice of creation’s praise, still that story echoes unto the utmost bounds of the world. It is being told right now, its song filling the air. By consciously seeking it out and entering into its beauty each day, we can learn its sacred speech, feel a new flame kindling upon our tongues and within our pens, and so weave heavenward words, rising like incense in loving gratitude for God’s good earth.

There are no unsacred places;

There are only sacred places

And desecrated places.

(Extract from How To Be A Poet, by Wendell Berry)

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Táim Sínte ar do Thuama

I am stretched on your grave
and will lie here forever.
If your hands were in mine
I’d be sure we would not sever.
My apple tree, my brightness,
it’s time we were together:
for I smell of the earth
and am worn by the weather.

When my family thinks
that I’m safely in my bed.
Oh, from night until morn
I am stretched out at your head.
Calling out to the air
with tears hot and wild.
For the loss of the girl
that I loved as a child.

Do you remember
the night we were lost
in the shade of the blackthorn
and the chill of the frost?
Thanks be to Jesus
we did what was right
and your maiden head still
is your pillar of light.

Oh, the priests and the friars
they approach me in dread.
Because I still love you
my love and you’re dead.
I still will be your shelter
through rain and through storm
and with you in your cold grave
I cannot sleep warm.

So, I am stretched on your grave
and will lie here forever.
If your hands were in mine
I’d be sure we would not sever.
My apple tree, my brightness,
it’s time we were together:
for I smell of the earth
and am worn by the weather.

Anonymous 17th century Irish poem translated by Frank O’Connor

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Speaking of super-goodness, I have a bone to pick with Manichaeism. I mean, life’s tough enough without a heresy specifically designed to make us feel bad about our frail and mortal selves.

We’ve fought hard to expectorate the cosmic dualisms encountered along the way but this one seems especially determined to lodge in the windpipe. At the centre of Manichaean belief lies the pitting of largely good spiritual realities against largely bad material realities. Although originating in the third century AD, (much later than the formation of Genesis), there’s a correspondence with those earlier dualisms we explored. When it’s stated seven times that the material universe God brought into being is supremely good, you know the emphasis is about more than simple storytelling.

The unequivocal vision that the universe is originally good and only good is all the more telling given the imminent spoiling events of Chapter Three. Yes, things got broken but the truth still holds: created matter is inherently good. Why do we need to hear this to the point of perfect hearing? The Cosmic Dualists and Manichaeans have long since disappeared, haven’t they?

Well, I’m not so sure. A particular poison of Manichaeism is the idea that the body can be bad/evil simply because it is material and not spiritual. Fast backwards to those God v Devil sermons. God was presented as over there, and the world, the flesh and the Devil over here. We’re all stuck on this side whether we like it or not and there’s a whole universe of effort ahead to never make it over to God’s lovely side. By default, we’re not reasonably good but unreasonably bad. And that’s especially because of all that filthy flesh we’re hauling around and illicitly pleasuring. Feeling good about ourselves and our bodies is manifestly evil, because that’s corrupting pride – Obvs!

My particular spiritual / literary bone of contention here is: is it any wonder this false, hopeless caricature of Christianity tends to blunt inspiration, stunt imagination and kill any revival in Christian storytelling stone dead?

Of course, I’m not suggesting insidious forms of self-loathing can’t ever make for a good read. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis would hardly have stood the test of time were that not the case. What I am thinking is that they’re unlikely to make for a good write. Kafka didn’t appear to be the happiest chap ever to grace God’s earth and his last wish was for his works to be burned. Even Flannery O’Connor’s uncompromising stories are at least imbued with an oblique sense of grace; that goodness is fundamental if it were only genuinely sought out. I plan to expend all my fiction writing energies trying to top this line in A Good Man Is Hard To Find:

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”1

The personal awakening began when I simply stopped listening to those dismal sermons and started paying attention to the actual Scriptures they ought to have been about.

For the entertainment of y’all across the pond, there was a quaint UK children’s program called Bagpuss on TV when I was growing up. As a writer, it’s tough to admit I’m struggling to sum it up in words, but here. See what I mean! Yet clever old Bagpuss was teaching me something in secret all those years, (I mean apart from how to become a bona fide English eccentric). And it was all there in the ending. I fast realised that Bagpuss was the object of Emily’s love precisely because he was an old saggy cloth cat, baggy and a bit loose at the seams.

The penny (cent?) dropped when I also learned of the undeflectable love of the God of Genesis One and realised I was just like battered old Bagpuss held firmly in Emily’s embrace. Just loved. For no other reason. Because inadequate. Even whilst discovering that inadequacy is not my true nature, identity or destiny - because He loved me into being, fur n’all, and that love makes me fundamentally good.

Volcanic gratitude erupted from me in response, and this is surely the flow state of authentic Christian storytelling: despite our weakness, to commit to crafting tales of explosive and disruptive beauty. It’s a very different way of wanting all our stories to burn.

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Despite the breathtaking speed at which we’re tearing through the book of Genesis, it’s entirely understandable that you may have been tempted to read ahead. Well, of course, temptation does indeed lie ahead but before then, you may have noticed there’s a whole lot of goodness going round, (vv 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), the last of which is very or wholly good.

Rather than the ten opening words usually comprising English translations of Genesis – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth – the Hebrew text is in fact a sentence of seven words. Now, if you would kindly run an arithmetical eye over the above goods you should arrive at the same number. And, whilst we’re at it, how about counting the days of the week. Yes, seven is a sacred number.

For the mathematically-challenged amongst us (ahem), the wonder is how any number could ever be designated holy. But it’s catching. How many Signs in John’s Gospel? How many proto-churches, angels, seals, trumpets or stars in the Book of Apocalypse? How many times should I forgive my brother? Where’s the most perfectly mystical place to which you could ever travel?*

And it’s also there in the general Christian tradition. In the cardinal virtues and deadly sins. So weirdly ordered that there’s neatly seven each! How many principal Catholic Sacraments? It’s present in other faiths but equally not just an obsession of religion. How many wonders of the ancient world? How many habits of highly effective people? How many brides for how many brothers? Tell me the top prize on a slot machine? What’s most people’s favourite number? How many visible colours of the rainbow? Do you recall that classic Western The Magnificent Six? Right, I’m going to stop now due to the risk of sounding like one of those expositions in a Dan Brown novel. Yes, we get it: it’s seven!

That said, it isn’t all about the seven. There are other sacred numbers, like three (it isn’t seven persons in one God!), and twelve (tribes of Israel/Apostles), yet uncannily, seven just keeps popping up. Ok, so it is a prime number but, then again, there are also quite a few of those. Quite simply, there’s something about seven which seems curiously hard-wired. I mean, try imagining a week of a different number. Creation One appears to be attempting to reflect something deep in the human psyche relating to the idea of perfectibility.

So, how’s this for a mystical, creative, spiritual, number theory?

God metaphorically rests on the metaphorical seventh day (Gen 2:2). It’s a very different day from the preceding six. But they’re not a lump of days either. The first three are traditionally grouped together as something like The Days of Separation and the second three The Days of Ornamentation.

Effectively, we have two mirroring triduums and then a perfecting day. If you count up these groupings, you’re left with the sacred number three, (stay with me)! So, three and seven are mystically related here. Blessed is the first divine enterprise (separation), blessed the second (ornamentation), and blessed the third (rest). Good. Very good. And, err, super good. Thrice blessed: Holy, holy, holy (2:3). But why not three blocks of three, then, if it’s a question of symmetry? Good question! Well, it appears to come down to the meaning of the seventh day.

Sabbath is the day of divine rest. It’s also, therefore, creation at repose in her creator God and so a foretaste of heaven. The Eternal Day can’t be represented by a block of three days because it’s one never-ending day. The one day (heaven/rest) makes sense of the preceding two sets. This is why evening and morning comes for all the other days except the seventh.

Traditional stage plays tend to be set in three acts and even when that number changes, there’s something about the meaning behind the original structure that’s retained: Act One - the journey out, Act Two - the journey back, and Act Three - the journey on; the happy vale, the dragon threat, the conquering hero; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. There’s a psychological template here that’s somehow related to emphasis: then, then again, and finally. God speaks, He speaks again, then rests.

Hang on, why are we now discussing the number three? Well, it looks as though the divine number seven is a hyper-extension of the perfection of the divine number three where two sets of three are brought to completion by the single divine number one. Back to the hero’s journey of traditional theatre. One play. Three Acts. Seven key elements. Act One: everything’s cool (1), everything’s suddenly not so cool (2), everything needs fixing (3). Act Two: attempt to fix (4), abject failure (5), licking wounds and learning crucial lesson (6). Act Three: facing the monster again and finally overcoming. Hooray (7)!

The point seems to be: look, there’s the utterly perfect amount of divine goodness going on in Creation which reflects God’s own perfect nature and is most curiously expressed in a vision of mathematical harmony. God is one. Yet His nature is revealed in thrice blessedness. This blessedness is expressed in the created order as sevenfold perfection.

It should be clear the writers aren’t trying to present a cogent Design Argument here, ie that the harmonious intelligibility of the universe is cast iron proof of the existence of God as portrayed - all forms of which are fraught with intractable difficulties. Rather, it looks more like an elaborate portrait of some uncanny confluences between mathematics and symmetry on the one hand, and beauty, story and psychology on the other. And once you start looking, number significance appears everywhere in the Bible. Seven, though, retains its preeminence as the magic number of the created order.

It really does seem that you can’t make the perfect cosmic omelette without breaking precisely the right amount of beautifully shaped eggs.

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God said, ‘Let there be a vault in the waters to divide the waters in two’. And so it was. God made the vault, and it divided the waters above the vault from the waters under the vault. God called the vault “heaven”. 1:6-8

All in a day’s work, I guess. Day two, in fact. Which brings us to our second act of dividing, ie waters above the earth from waters below. The first was separating light from dark.

We noted that division / separation is not rooted in a sense of superiority but rather order. It’s about carving out sacred spaces – sanctuaries. Once defined by borders, these places can be made safe and fertile, become oases, flowing with milk and honey, somewhere to raise kids in security and even comfort. Here God’s chosen people can worship without fear and live out their happy days far from the corrupting idolatry and falsehoods of the outside world. This is the vision: keep shape, name and identity and thereby preserve destiny; live free from enemies, from subjugation, from ravaging want, and from that encircling chaos.

We also noted that darkness is a sacred reality in the Bible but, for the sake of storytelling, is portrayed in opposition to light; originating with the darkness over the deep. On the other hand, water is normally a positive reality in the Bible – from the beautiful Psalm of Isaiah: with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (12:3), to the living water of Jesus Himself, offered to the midday lady of Samaria (Jn 4:5ff). But this is the sweet, fresh water of deep, cool springs and babbling brooks.

Creation One is referring to a rather different water: that grimy primordial brine directly associated with the forces of chaos. Its character is far darker and requires dividing and managing in order to temper its power. This is the sort that gleefully wrecks caravels out there in the lonely mid-Med; it’s the shifting tides and suck pools of seductive polytheisms; the hypnotic crash of waves unleashing wild libido and orgiastic oblivion; syncretism’s fearsome flood where religious distinctions become so much beach-blown froth and foam.

For the writers of Creation One, this watery chaos symbolises the source of fear itself - the preternatural grounding of rational and irrational dread. It is the equivalent of Creation Story Two’s serpent. How many times do we hear the words fear not / do not be afraid in the Bible? That’s a rhetorical question - I looked it up: 365 apparently. There’s a lot of fear flying around. Justified fear of the unknown but also of the known. Is it any wonder? Even the good guys can be scary!

We all know how chaos can overtake any one of us; how things fall apart. Murphy’s Law, the delightful FUBAR, COVID, assorted pestilences, famine, destructive nature, global conflict, permanent injury, addiction, ennui, depression, relationship breakdown and so on. Fear can be crippling and hollowing. And now we have doom-scrolling and AI for company! Kurtz’s last words in Heart of Darkness are: The horror! The horror! Joseph Conrad is recorded as having had a vision of the nature of the universe as something akin to this, aligned to Tennyson’s sentiment about bloodthirsty nature. Poor humanity… who trusted God was love indeed.

The writers of Creation One very cleverly leave the phantom menace faceless. This unsettling elemental feel contrasts with and complements the very visual serpent of Creation Two. In other words, evil can be experienced as both impersonal and personal. Conrad saw aright: this dark-hearted chaos is voiding and horrifying. He sensed an alternative world, without God’s protecting love.

Some sort of menace is arguably the frame for every story and here even the vault of heaven. All epics are built on overcoming fear in order to face down the chaos. The vault represents the necessity of dividing to conquer since we can’t battle universal evil. Our only chance is to tackle it in smaller segments. But we need the help of One with total power over it and to whom it poses no threat. At all. That’s why God is portrayed as simply boxing it up and putting it to use - saltwater into rainwater, the sea now a happy home for all the fishies.

The statement here is emphatic. God alone has the measure of the chaos, circumscribes the sum of all fears. His benevolence sets the limits which holds back the worst and stops us sinking into those unmarked quicksands. The simple question hidden within all this dividing is: will we set aside our fears and trust His judgement in the drawing up of these boundaries? Poor humanity… who doubted God was love indeed.

☘️

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In the previous post we explored the benefits of getting our science and revelation story ducks in a row. We saw how scientific insight aids our interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts by better identifying the non-literal in the texts, ie metaphor and extended imagery. In other words, the tremendous power of these stories is amplified not diminished by contextually appropriate non-literal readings. All good.

But that’s still only one side of the equation. Whilst it’s an error roundly to dismiss science when it challenges literal readings of these texts, it’s equally erroneous to dismiss revealed truths on the grounds they’re not scientific. And as powerful as the scientific narrative is, Genesis tells the deeper, more important story aimed at addressing that cosmic Why?

One doesn’t need to be a believer to see that these stories are crammed with powerful insights over a whole range of questions which, whilst not strictly scientific in the modern sense, are nonetheless scientifically significant. An outstanding example would be Dr Jordan Peterson’s Genesis series. His analysis reveals how uncannily rooted in sound psychology these stories are. At the very least this should be cause for pause: for those attempting to use science to invalidate the wisdom found in these stories; for believers in communicating the basics of their faith to psychologically savvy truth-seekers.

We previously touched on the humour found in Hitchhiker’s. Well, it also contains more serious statements:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Although this serves as the epigraph for that large, red and unaccountably popular herring that is The God Delusion, it’s still worthy of our attention. I like it for two reasons. Firstly, it gets to the heart of the matter, and, secondly, it means I get to reflect upon Chesterton again.

On the first point, it’s a clever reworking of the invalidation argument identified above. In other words, there’s enough enchantment in nature without recourse to any fanciful supernatural stuff. It’s clever because framed as a rhetorical question which touches on a truth. It’s a fair point that certain forms of spirituality or approaches to the supernatural do falsely overshadow the natural and rob it of its rightful glow. However, it’s not so clever that it precludes the possibility of a straightforwardly honest riposte: no, it’s not enough; and, I don’t have to believe, I choose. It’s based on the false mathematics that fairies subtract rather than add. It’s also a little ironic that Adams wrote sci-fi stories: you know, stuff you make up that isn’t exactly real in order to communicate deeper realities that can’t be approached head-on. But, fair enough, it’s always worth considering what the fairies are bringing to the table.

Cue Chesterton…

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery… The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies… compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong… I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of The Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon.¹

Chesterton is getting at a similar thing we’ve already explored about story. Fairy tales might not be intended as literal but they are intended as serious, because they are condensations of wisdom, hyper-realisations, psychological ciphers, survival traditions. They represent the right ideas about things, consensus or common sense, the various perspectives and experiences of the many gathered into a memorable tale, epic, or rhyme which is always a story echoing a journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Nonsense is often mixed in precisely for contrast.

So, do fairies exist? Highly unlikely, and, absolutely! At the very least, they’re busy discreetly ferrying about the wisdom that can’t be squeezed into test tubes. After all, the idea of the moon is much harder to quantify than the moon itself.

But, it’s Chesterton’s contention that there’s something abnormally right about religion that’s worth exploring further. Because, of course, not every idea we have or everything that can be imagined has physical reality or should be believed, or believed in. It’s much more reasonable to assume that fairies aren’t literal. But only up until the moment one shakes you by the hand. Then it becomes grossly unreasonable.

To Genesis. The writers are essentially saying: here’s a story trying to describe how God shakes us by the hand. Chesterton’s abnormally right refers to Revelation. The creation stories quite obviously aren’t scientific accounts in the modern sense. They bear more resemblance to the wisdom traditions of fairy tales and mythologies. Which is why they’re often mistaken as such. However, fairy tales/mythologies/epic sagas represent the best of human storytelling whereas, first and foremost, God is telling His own story here through inspired humans.

It’s very difficult to define the genre of Creation Story One. It’s something like a hymnal/liturgical or poetic credal reflection. As such, it presents truths figuratively. The narrative form serves to enrich not weaken the truths. So, unlike pure fables, its power isn’t merely figurative or moral, and it absolutely contains truths directly relating to history and science. But its purpose is theological not scientific. Which is just as well since I suspect the average story is generally far more accessible than the average astrophysics treatise.

What, then, is the deeper vision relating to this Chestertonian abnormally right?

It should be clear that science cannot (is not designed to) lead us to the knowledge of a loving creator God and the truth that His love sustains the universe in being. Or answer why something exists rather than simply nothing. Or why any order exists rather than utter chaos. Or especially why we humans appear uniquely hardwired to seek answers to religious questions.

Creation One comes to meet these intuitions by telling a true story in stark elemental prose. It tells of the mighty El, unrivalled and kindly king, who has built a great temple palace for his cherished people. The beauty of these ordered courts is beyond breathtaking, ever raising the spirit in praise. It is a realm of safety, a domain from which chaos has been banished, and where all things flourish according to their nature. The King has marked out humanity by giving us this blessed domain for our inheritance: an immeasurable honour. All are welcome here, held equal in dignity, and even known by name. No one is disregarded or despised but rather cherished and loved. The King is, in fact, our Father and we bear the great dignity of being his children.

So, the universe is deep down lovely and good, and comes to us as gift. It can be experienced as something intended, nourishing, even personal. It isn’t a product of freak chance or brutal adaptation but rather of love, spoken forth in golden words. From the brightest star to the smallest blade of grass, all things are held in gently regarding hands. This can be sensed. Its vision confirmed not merely in temporal but in transcendent beauty. Even mysteriously entered into as a relationship. But not grasped or circumscribed or tightly defined in a definitive or empirical way. Because, in truth, proof has a very broad character in human affairs. How do we definitively evidence love, truth, beauty, justice, integrity, empathy, humility, courtesy, courage, resilience, reflectiveness, kindness, ambition? What final proofs are there for any of these, yet good luck living without them!

Yes, true stories can have factual inaccuracies and myths can be full of scientific errors. Yet, to dismiss them on this basis is to miss the point entirely. The point of Creation One is to engage our hearts with the most original truth of all - not, in fact, the origins of the universe and where we come from but, rather, where God is always coming from.

O who can witness with a careless eye

The countless lamps that light an evening sky,

And not be struck with wonder at the sight!

To think what mighty Power must there abound,

That burns each spangle with a steady light,

And guides each hanging world its rolling round.

What multitudes my misty eye have found;

The countless numbers speak a Deity:

In numbers numberless the skies are crown’d,

And still they’re nothing which my sight can see,

When science, searching through her aiding glass,

In seeming blanks to me can millions trace;

While millions more, that every heart impress,

Still brighten up throughout eternal space.

O Power Almighty! whence these beings shine,

All wisdom’s lost in comprehending thine.

A Look At The Heavens, John Clare

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Evening came and morning came: the first day.

An incredible trick in absence of the sun, which doesn’t make its appearance until verse fourteen (along with moon and stars). As discussed before, it’s a clear sign to the reader that some elements of these stories aren’t meant to be taken literally!

It’s puzzling that some Christians cling to a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. It’s a problematic stance for at least two reasons. Firstly, the stories themselves don’t support a literal interpretation. Secondly, it’s based on the assumption that where there’s conflict, the science must be wrong.

Yet this seems curiously compartmentalised. Of course, God is fundamentally the author of the Genesis creation stories, but He’s also author of the actual universe. In other words, He’s written a single story in two narratives. One narrative (and perhaps the more obvious) unfolds as our natural history and the second as our spiritual history. The former focuses on the many whats and the latter on the big why. The former relies on physical evidence for the telling and the latter upon revelation. Revelation’s rightful domain is in the communication of truths that could never be elicited from an examination of the physical evidence alone.

By definition, then, there can’t be any fundamental contradiction between the two narratives even if the story plates collide as we continue deepening our knowledge. Problems only appear when either encroaches on the other’s sovereignty. Reflections on God’s existence patently lie beyond the scope of scientific enquiry: the domain of science is nature, God is supernatural. Science (not the Bible) clearly takes precedence when extrapolating the characteristics of the natural order. Discounting credible scientific evidence because it doesn’t fit with something mythic in the Bible is tantamount to denying that God is the author of both narratives.

Even if it hasn’t always been a comfortable journey, Christian understanding has been greatly enriched by scientific insight. The central scientific narrative regarding the origins and nature of our universe presents no essential problems for interpreting the Genesis creation stories. If anything it helps, since it sharpens appreciation of which elements are figurative and so serves to deepen theological understanding.

Once properly correlated, focusing upon the scientific narrative in tandem with Genesis can even help reframe our spiritual vision…

A Question of Time

There’s surely spiritual significance in the universe being twelve to thirteen billion years old rather than about six thousand years old. It’s an eye-watering recalibration and certainly redefines how we might interpret the word soon in the Bible.

The Psalmists were already onto it...

Lord…

To your eyes a thousand years

are like yesterday, come and gone,

no more than a watch in the night.

Make us know the shortness of our life

that we may gain wisdom of heart. (Ps 89/90:12,4)

Now try it again, subbing a thousand for a billion. Wisdom indeed! That of perspective.

It also makes clearer sense of this passage:

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Heb 1:1-2)

The last days can sound a touch apocalyptic yet following the celebrated twenty-four hour clock analogy, modern humans haven’t just arrived on earth at the eleventh hour but more like at 23:59.59, ie with one second to go! And if it’s a question of visualising recorded human history in twenty-four hours then Jesus appears a mere quarter of an hour before the end. It turns out there’s a sizeable difference between being spiritually prepared for the end of the world and actually expecting it today shortly after one’s post-prandial nap.

So, is it really a problem that God didn’t literally take a week to create the universe but that it came into being in an instant? The Big Bang provokes important spiritual questions about the text: why is it presented as a week, then? What’s with the seven-day cycles? How do we rightly understand and organise time? What’s the correct proportional relationship between work and leisure (5/2, 6/1, 4/3 days)? What constitutes appropriate rest? What is a Holy Day? What makes it so?

To be explored in a later post

A Question of Significance

The Psalmists deliver again…

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,

the moon and stars which you arranged,

what is man that you should keep him in mind,

mortal man that you care for him? (Ps 8:3-4)

The night sky does have a way of making us feel small. Appropriately small. But science reveals another breathtaking recalibration. It turns out these little lights aren’t mere ornamental illuminations, but other suns. And there are something like three-hundred billion in our galaxy alone. And something like one billion trillion observable stars in the known universe. And we learn that, far from being the physical centre of anything, earth is simply one planet among many others orbiting this lonesome star we call the sun.

This time the science can leave us feeling bereft and cosmically insignificant, explored with great humour by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s. Earth is due to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace expressway. The brilliant insouciant message of the rapidly departing dolphins says it all: So long, and thanks for all the fish.

But once more it’s a question of perspective. Given such vast scale, we now have greater appreciation of the mind-blowing mathematical improbability of this fragile life-laden planet ever existing. The various conditions are so unlikely that some scientists posit the fanciful existence of multiverses in an attempt to square the (we’re still not that special) circle. If you need visual confirmation of earth’s peculiarity, follow the Psalmists’ lead and look up at the utterly lifeless moon. It isn’t that far away. Relatively speaking.

And there’s more. We’ve discovered that so many things come from stardust or are related to it, including us, and how likely it is that all life on earth has a common origin. For some reason, spheres and the golden ratio seem to be the uncanny order of shape and beauty and, well, order. And at the heart of it all swirls the incomprehensible anomaly of human consciousness and reflexive intelligence.

Back to our Psalmists:

What is man that you should keep him in mind,

mortal man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him little less than the angels,

and you have crowned him with glory and honour. (Ps 8:4-5)

Yes, dolphins are incredibly bright. But they didn’t write that Psalm.

Further contemplation

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When I was a young physics student shaking off the atheism I’d been raised with, one argument hit me like a revelation: the fine-tuning of the universe for life. The fundamental parameters of our cosmos—the mas…

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As an astrophysicist who’s spent years digging into the physics of the universe, I keep running into the same stubborn fact: the more I’ve learned, the harder it’s been to believe all of this is an accident. In fact, this is why I dropped my lifelong atheism in university and…

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Well, there goes 2025. That’s the sound of me drop kicking it over the fence. Personally ready for and deeply in need of a reset.

Looking back to look forward. Heartfelt thanks to all who kindly supported my work with their hard earned spondoolicks. Particularly, Caroline who has been there in the top tier from the very start! Also, Alan, Winston, Mike, Danny and Jacquie. Do have some of this: 💝. And thanks to all who add to the fun with insightful comment and conversation. Particularly, Daniel, Jacquie, Mary, Danny, Johanna and Bryan. I know not everyone likes to comment and I really appreciate the IRL accompaniment along the road-kill strewn literary highway - Tom, Ben, Kitty, Marissa.

It isn’t my intention to traumatise any of you so soon into the new year, but I do intend to keep writing as long as the bladder allows.

May the Morning Star ever light your way.

Adrian

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