Many of you will have heard of the Big Bang Theory. The idea that the universe began from nothing when matter exploded into existence.
But do you know who came up with the concept? [take suggestions]
In 1927 the idea was first proposed by Fr George Lemaitre a Belgium Roman Catholic Priest. Many atheist scientists at the time were horrified by the idea. The Universe had to have gone on for ever. If the Universe had a beginning that might imply someone created it – which might imply God….
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When I was a student at Oxford St Aldates church did great evangelistic work. One event they organised was a free Sunday lunch with a talk. They had invited a scientist who was a Christian to come and talk about his faith and how he could be both a scientist and a Christian. He was a professor of Genetics.
Well there was another church in Oxford called Oxford Community Church – they arranged to flood this lunch with their members to harangue the professor with their questions. How could he claim to be a Christian when he believed in the heresy of evolution.
I don’t know what any atheists who had come along to the lunch made of it. They certainly didn’t get a look in when it came to questions. As I sat there I was SO embarrassed – though in hind sight I wonder whether seeing that Christians had different views on this matter and were not all creationists might actually have been helpful for any non-Christians present.
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So – what does the bible say about Creation?
For this I need someone either with a bible or with a phone to look up for me Genesis chapter 1.
So tell – how many days does Genesis 1 say it take to make the heavens and the earth ?
[get answer – 6]
Hang on, hang on hang on…
But in our reading today from Genesis 2:4 it says “In THE day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens”
Ok lets try another one.
In Genesis 1 on which day are the plants made and on which day in humanity made?
[after someone gives and answer – perhaps get them to read out –
1:11Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And
1:26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,* and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’…..[skip to verse 31]
31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
So you are saying that plants were made first and then humanity later?
[get an answer yes from congregation]
Hang on, hang on hang on…
But in our reading today from Genesis 2:5-7 "when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up… 7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being"
So our reading today says that humans were created first and plants afterwards.
Ok
what about animals?– according to Genesis chapter 1 – which was made first animals or people?
[get the answer: "animals." Get them to read out from Genesis chapter 1;21ff]
"1:21So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
24 And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. 25God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind* in our image"
Hang on, hang on hang on…
But in our reading today from Genesis 2:18 ff it says:
“18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ 19So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them;”
So our reading says humanity was made first and the animals later.
So which is right?
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I am going to take you back to the time that the book of Genesis was written.
But before we get there – first lets go back to some of the great thinkers of the early church – Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, Origen – as well as the Jewish philosopher Philo.
You see according our creationist brothers and sisters “Christians have ALWAYS [place great stress on that word] believed that the world was made in 6 days”.
But if you go to the British library and look up the writings of early Christian scholars like Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, Origen – as well as the Jewish philosopher Philo – you will see that is a load of TOSH.
For example Origen (who lived between 185 and 254 AD) writes
“For who that has understanding will suppose that the first and second and third day existed without a sun and moon and stars and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally”[1]
You know – how can you have a literal evening and morning the first day – when you don’t have a Sun to come up and go down.
Some early Christians spotted of the tree life that Adam is told “in the day that you shall eat it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17) yet in Genesis 5:5 we are told “So Adam lived a total of 930 years and then he died”.
The more literal minded of the early Christians said “well that’s OK because in 2 Peter 3 it says “a thousand years is like a day in the sight of the Lord” – and Adam died just under a thousand years old – so in God’s eyes that is still on the same day.
Others felt the whole thing was just an allegory – what mattered was not the literal details but the message God was trying to give us through this. [2]
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So lets go back before this - way back – to 597BC.
In that year – 597 BC – something terrible happened. The vast Babylonian army – after a year of siege – sacked Jerusalem – burnt the palace, the city and the Temple to the ground. People were raped, people were killed.
Then – in part of a deliberate strategy to destroy their enemies’ cultures, the Babylonians deported tens of thousand of the cream of the Israelites to the far opposite of the Empire.
Every time they conquered someone they did this. They would impose their language their religion on the displaced people. And cut off from everything and everyone they knew, the conquered people would all become “good Babylonians”
But with the Israelites that did not happen. Their prophets had been warning that this dreadful disaster would happen because they had not been faithful to God – so the solution was to become MORE faithful to God.
Many stories of the origins of Israel – which before now had only circulated orally – began to be written down for the first time. The origins of what would become our Old Testament.
And while they were there they encountered highly educated Babylonian scholars – people who could calculate the movements of the moon and the stars with their incredible calendars – who could foretell eclipses and new moons – they were clearly so intelligent.
And these Scholars had two theories of how the world began.
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Firstly there was the theory from Babylon itself -
Many ancient near east land lubbing people feared the sea – It was chaotic and it was dangerous and storms could arise suddenly and people would drown on it.
So naturally one of the most feared beings is the Sea-serpent Goddess of the waters of Chaos – Tiamat. She is the mother and and grandmother of all gods and she is evil. But the hero god sometimes known as Bel, sometimes as Marduk in a terrifying battle slays Tiamat.
And then out of her watery corpse he begins to fashion things. He raises up a firmament to keep some of the waters separated up above – and that becomes the Sky. He separates the rest of her corpse into two portions one he calls land and one he calls sea. Then he makes the birds and animal and fish – and humanity.
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Then there was the older theory – that came from the Sumerians, one of the Empires before the Babylonians.
In this myth, the gods have a planted a beautiful garden. But they need someone to do the hard work so they create human beings to relieve themselves of the toil of working on the earth. Now the gods can lie around and relax while the humans do all the work.
However – while the gods are trying to lie around and enjoy themselves – well these humans are just too noisy.
Enlil, the chief deity, becomes particularly irritated by the clamor and decides to reduce the human population to restore tranquility. First he creates a serpent with a cursed bit to the bite the humans to take away their immortality – then he casts them out of the garden to be further away. But there is still too much noise – so he creates a flood to drown all humanity –
But the goddess Enki or Ea takes pity on the humans – and warns one man Utnapishtim to build a boat of very precise dimensions to save both human and animal life.
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Any of these stories sound a bit familiar?
The Israelites perhaps had not thought very much about the origins of the universe. But – the one thing they did know - however bright these Babylonian scholars were – however good they were at forecasting solstices and eclipses and river floods and other phenomena – they did not know everything!
So lets take this first story in which Marduk in a terrible battle of the gods slays the Chaos dragon Tiamat.
Well perhaps the world was created out of the waters of Chaos and a firmament put to separate the sky from the sea and the sea separated into dry land and water….
… but this does not come from some titanic battle of the gods – because there are not lots of gods. Because there is only ONE GOD – Yahweh – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.
That idea of God defeating the waters of chaos stayed in Israelite thought – its there many times in the psalms – and we see it in todays Gospel.
Luke 8:22-25 “ One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ So they put out, 23and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A gale swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. 24They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. 25He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’”
The biblical Genesis 1 didn’t have multiple gods defeating chaos – but just the one God bringing order to the waters of Chaos – so if Jesus can do that Jesus is…?
[let them say “God”]
The Israelites also did something else with this Babylonian myth. They knew Moses had been given the command about keeping Sabaath. Now in exile in Babylon they could not go to the Temple. They could not perform many of the rituals of their faith. But one thing they could do was keep sabbath. Sabbath become incredibly important to them.
Sabbath seemed so natural – part of how the universe was made – even if those great Babylonian scholars had overlooked it – it was natural for people to need to rest every seven days - so the Israelites wrote it into the story. While the Babylonian epic just lists the different things that Marduk had done to make the world- they broke it down into 6 distinct days – with on the 7th day God rested.
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And what of the other story of a garden?
Well the Israelites were happy to admit they didn’t know everything. Perhaps the world was created by a garden being planted.
But hang on a second – the idea that the garden was planted because the gods needed to eat and they were too lazy to do it themselves?
That’s ridiculous- first of all – there are not lots of gods – Enlil and Ninurta, and Ennugi, Adad and Shullat and Hanish and EA /Enki. there is only ONE GOD – Yahweh – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.
And he is certainly not some pathetic skiver who only makes humanity because he can’t be bothered to do the work to feed himself. I mean – God doesn’t need anything. He’s God the creator – he doesn’t need food. And he’s certainly not lazy. So instead this intimate scene of the loving God who breathes life into Adam and cares that Adam should not be lonely so creates first animals and then people. And who puts Adam into a garden where at first he does not have to do any work
So why then did humanity get kicked out of the garden? It can’t be anything as pathetic as human beings making too much noise. God is not that pathetic.
But they had experienced something. SIN
They had experienced the horrors of war – the children killed the women raped the homes lost – they had experienced the sin of proud Babylon. And they knew that this disaster had happened to them because of they had rejected God and his protection and themselves turned to sin.
That was the answer!
Sin – must be the root of all human problems.
The snake – that can’t be simply biting people to take away their immortality – it must be tempting them to sin. And sin must be cause of why they had to be cast out of the garden and why life was no longer easy and blessed
Genesis 3:17-19
“cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.’
And as for the flood – again that could not be because of the pettiness of gods getting upset about human noise.
But imagine you are a Ukrainian having seen the horrors that had been done to your family and your land – could you not wish God would wash away the Russians? Well the Israelites had experienced a similar things with the horrors of the fall of Jerusalem. They probably wished God would wash away Babylon. But he didn’t. Perhaps he had once washed the whole awful sinful world in that flood the sumerians talked of – and afterwards had promised never again to do that – and that is why sinful people – even the awful Babylonians were allowed to survive on earth.
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And so the Israelites took the greatest Scientific theories of the day – and retold them telling the fundamental truth – that when the world was made it was God who made it.
In the 20th Century the great evangelical preacher John Stott sought to do the same
“Not many Christians today find it necessary to defend the concept of a literal six-day creation, for the text does not demand it, and scientific discovery appears to contradict it. The biblical text presents itself not as a scientific treatise but as a highly stylized lierary statement (deliberately framed in three pairs, the fourth “day” corresponding to the first, the fifth to the second, and the sixth to the third)…
“It is most unfortunate that some who debate this issue (evolution) begin by assuming that the words “creation” and “evolution” are mutually exclusive. If everything has come into existence through evolution, they say, then biblical creation has been disproved, whereas if God has created all things, then evolution must be false. It is, rather, this naïve alternative which is false. It presupposes a very narrow definition of the two terms, both of which in fact have a wide range of meanings, and both of which are being freshly discussed today…
“But my acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-Adamic ‘hominid’ may have existed for thousands of years previously. These hominids began to advance culturally. They made their cave drawings and buried their dead. It is conceivable that God created Adam out of one of them. You may call them homo erectus. I think you may even call some of them homo sapiens, for these are arbitrary scientific names. But Adam was the first homo divinus, if I may coin a phrase, the first man to whom may be given the Biblical designation ‘made in the image of God’. Precisely what the divine likeness was, which was stamped upon him, we do not know, for Scripture nowhere tells us. But Scripture seems to suggest that it includes rational, moral, social, and spiritual faculties which make man unlike all other creatures and like God the creator, and on account of which he was given ‘dominion’ over the lower creation.” [3]
Do you remember the name of the man who came up with the idea of the big bang? Fr George Lemaitre. And the atheists at the time were horrified at the time because a universe that began implied a universe that was created which implied a creator of the universe.
Now of course atheists try to say the very opposite.
But I go back to what Fr George Lemaitre believed.
I don’t know for sure how the world began – but that the universe began with the Big Bang and that life began through evolution – those seem the most likely theories.
But what I DO know for sure is that God was behind it.
If the world was created through the defeat of the waters of chaos – it was not Marduk – but God
If the world was created through a garden being planted – it was not the many deities of Sumeria, but God
And if the world was created through the Big Bang and evolution, it was not nothingness and random chance, but God!
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1} Origen, The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
2} https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/coming-to-grips-with-the-early-church-fathers-perspective-on-genesis-part-2-of-5
3} John Stott, Understanding the Bible: Expanded Edition; 54-56
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