What Does the Bible Say About Creation?

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"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 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."

    Genesis 1:1-5 ESV

The first chapters of Genesis are a majestic and poetic account of the creation of the world. The creation narrative contradicted the religions of the day, which said that the Earth was formed by conflict between the gods. And it contradicts the Naturalism of today, which says that the universe has no maker and no meaning.

Genesis asserts that there is one God, that He is the creator of all things, that He calls His creation good, and that He made mankind in His own image and breathed life into Adam and Eve. These chapters are stuffed with theological significance, and they form the philosophical and theological foundation on which Judaism and Christianity are built. They are essential to understanding the universe from the Christian worldview.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are an overview of world history before Abraham, whose family is described in the rest of the book. Since these chapters are about pre-history, it's fair to ask who wrote them and where they come from. Tradition tells us that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Christian and Jewish scriptures) was revealed to Moses by the Holy Spirit.

The creation narrative unfolds in Genesis 1, while Genesis 2 focuses on the creation of Adam and Eve. In Genesis 1, the act of creation is described as occurring over six days, in this order:

Day 1: Light (day and night)

Day 2: The heavens

Day 3: Dry land and plants

Day 4: The sun, moon, and stars

Day 5: Sea creatures and flying animals

Day 6: Land animals and mankind

Day 7: Sabbath rest

Day 8: Beef tacos (not in Genesis, but according to legend)

 God's acts of creation are deliberate and personal, and each day ends with God calling His work good. And after the sixth day, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31)

Genesis 2 describes a barren land, where God "formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature" (Genesis 2:7). God planted the Garden of Eden for Adam to cultivate, and commanded him not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then God made Eve out of Adam's flesh, and the two were "both naked and were not ashamed" (Genesis 2:25). (Hooray for nudity!)

Many wonder if the creation narrative literally true, in the sense of the universe being fashioned over six 24-hour days, and mankind having existed from the earliest days of the universe? There has been intense debate over the issue since Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), but Christians have questioned the literal meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 for many centuries before that. The major modern Christian perspectives are called:

Young-Earth Creationism: belief that the universe was created in six 24-hour days, only a few thousand years ago;

Theistic Evolution (or Evolutionary Creationism): belief that the universe is billions of years old and evolution occurred under God’s providential hand, resulting in the variety of life on Earth;

Old-Earth Creationism: belief that the story in Genesis is literal, but the word day doesn’t mean a twenty-four-hour day - God created things by acts of special creation over millions of years;

Intelligent Design: belief that however the universe came to be, proof of an intelligent creator is woven into creation and can be discovered by scientific methods.

Each of these views is held by faithful Christians. Volumes of books have been written about each interpretation, but my next couple of essays take a general look at the different Christian understandings of creation. This much is certain: Genesis definitely tells us God made all things, He is awesome, and He deserves our worship.