How may one find the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures? The method illustrated
1. The story of Creation
What message of permanent religious value is there in the story of creation?
In the story of creation, one thing stands out clear and distinct. The universe is God's loving wish. Creation is God's will going forth. God simply said, Let it be, and it was. So far as Christian scholarship has yet advanced, it does not realize how a thought more fundamental, spiritual, and moulding could enter the mind of man. That a loving God wills the universe, is the great diapason note in the hymn of creation. And the next great note is that of Divine appreciation,—"God saw that it was good." Then follows the note of blessing. And, finally, the child bearing God's image is made lord over all. These four epoch-making truths constitute the imperishable word of God.
These four truths represent the sum and substance of all I have been trying to elucidate throughout this book. Slowly, but surely, modern philosophy and science are helping us to understand this superb affirmation of Genesis, uttered thousands of years ago. Not that physical science knows anything about God, but that the discoveries of science make it easier for the intelligent Christian to believe that God willed, and continues to will, the universe. This idea of one good God causing and sustaining the universe by the mere fiat of His will, did for religion what the Copernican theory did for astronomy. As the Copernican theory made modern astronomy inevitable, so this view of God and His universe led unerringly to the Christian religion. And the Kingdom of God, in its vast sweep through eternity, will rest upon these fundamental facts so beautifully expressed in the first chapter of Genesis. That they were uttered so long ago, in a world of polytheism and low morals, fills the mind with wonder and praise.
The writer of this story, however, did not have a scientific knowledge of the universe which, religiously and philosophically, he so perfectly related to God. But the religious value of the story is not injured in the least by the author's manifestly crude knowledge of astronomy and geology. In spite of all our advancement in science, since Bible times, our knowledge of the universe is still very crude. To learn all about nature scientifically will require eternity. It was the poetical, philosophical, and religious significance of the universe that the inspired writer discovered; science could abide its time. The writer of Genesis, like his contemporaries, regarded the earth as the center and main bulk of the universe. His universe was the child's universe, the universe of the unaided senses. On a very large scale the world, in his thought, was something like the old-fashioned cheese dish with a glass hemisphere over it. This huge covered dish floated in a universal sea. The glass cover, or firmament, kept the upper sea out except when its windows were opened to let the sea through in the form of rain. The dish, or earth, kept the lower sea out except in time of great floods when, as they supposed, the sea worked its way up through crevices in the earth. The sun, moon, and stars were supposed to be inside the vault.
This ancient conception of the universe pervades the Scriptures. In the twenty-fourth Psalm we read, "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof: for Thou hast founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods." Religiously this is superb, but scientifically it is incorrect; the earth does not rest on a sea. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof:" for Thou hast hurled it into space and lovingly marked out the way that it should go.
The Babylonian bible, which is many centuries older than the Old Testament, says that Apsu and Tiamit first created the gods of order, or light. This corresponds to the first day in Genesis. But our author discards all these gods and goddesses when he tells us that "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Whether light was the first act of creation or not, the best modern philosophy would confirm the statement that light was the result of God's wish. Light energy is a mode of the divine Will.
The Babylonian bible tells us that after Marduk had slain Tiamit in a great battle, he took his sword and cleaved her in two as you would a fish. With one half of her he made the firmament and fastened it to keep out the upper sea. This corresponds to the second day in Genesis. While the biblical writer does not change the Babylonian day, yet he has no use for the monstrous idea that the firmament was made out of one half of a goddess. According to our Bible, "God said, Let there be a firmament, and it was so." Our author, as the narrative shows, in keeping with the crude science of his times, thought that the firmament separated the sea that was above the firmament from the sea that was below the firmament; and that the sea under the firmament covered all the earth until God gathered the waters under the firmament unto one place and caused the dry land to appear. But if we know anything at all, we know that there is no firmament. God could not have made a firmament, for there is none. He could not have made space on the second day because space is nothing. And according to the story itself, He made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day,—the day after He had made grass and fruit trees. When, as a child, I thought that the apparent ceiling of the earth was the floor of heaven, my scientific ideas were no more crude than those of the writer who thought God made a firmament. But if there had been a firmament, as it appeared to the untrained senses, then it would have been made exactly as our inspired writer affirmed; and not after the ridiculous manner of the Babylonian bible. Our author's philosophy and religion in this case were perfect, but his science was wrong. So what is the use of trying to make out that the Bible always harmonizes with science, when it is absolutely certain that it does not?
When in college I asked my professor in geology how the earth could exist and grow grass and fruit trees bearing fruit before the sun was made. He replied that the sun, of course, was made previously, but that it did not appear until the fourth day when the vapor had settled by virtue of the earth's cooling. However, that would leave no creation for the fourth day; and besides, the second chapter of Genesis tells us that there was no vegetation yet because the Lord God had not caused it to rain. According to my professor's explanation it was too wet to see the sun, and according to the second chapter of Genesis it was too dry to grow grass. The biblical writers were not inspired to write science, but religion. And it is just as certain that they did not know much science as it is certain that they did know much religion. In this story of creation the writer took his crude, yet beautiful, little world and lifted it up into such perfect relation to the Infinite Creative Will that no one has ever been able to improve upon it; and the more we learn, the more certain it appears that we never shall be able to revise his statement of how the world is related to the Divine Will. Besides, the thought is so precious and so fruitful that we have no desire to change it.