The Creation
Read Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31, and Genesis 2:1–3. What is
the significance of the refrain “it was good” in the first Creation
account? What is the implied lesson contained in the conclusion of
Creation (Gen. 2:1–3)?
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At each step of the Creation account, God evaluates His work as tov,
“good.” It is generally understood that this adjective means that God’s
work of Creation was successful and that God’s observation that “it was
good” means that “it worked.” The light was illuminating (Gen. 1:4),
the plants were yielding fruit (Gen. 1:12), and so forth.
But this word referred to more than the efficiency of a function. The
Hebrew word tov also is used in the Bible to express an aesthetic appre-
ciation of something beautiful (Gen. 24:16). It also is used in contrast
to evil (Gen. 2:9), which is associated with death (Gen. 2:17).
The phrase “it was good” means that the Creation was working
nicely, that it was beautiful and perfect, and that there was no evil in it.
The world was “not yet” like our world, affected by sin and death, an
idea affirmed in the introduction to the second Creation account (see
Gen. 2:5).
This description of the Creation radically contradicts the theories of
evolution, which dogmatically declare that the world shaped itself pro-
gressively through a succession of accidental happenings, starting from
an inferior condition and progressing to a superior one.
In contrast, the biblical author affirms that God intentionally and
suddenly created the world (Gen. 1:1). There was nothing happenstance
or chancy about any of it. The world did not come about by itself but
only as the result of God’s will and Word (Gen. 1:3). The verb bara’,
“create,” translated in Genesis 1 as in the beginning God “created”
the heavens and the earth, occurs only with God as its subject, and it
denotes abruptness: God spoke, and it was so.
The Creation text informs us that “everything” had been done then
(Gen. 1:31), and according to the Creator Himself, it was all judged
“very good” (Gen. 1:31). Genesis 1:1 states the event itself, the Creation
of heaven and earth; and Genesis 2:1 declares that the event was finished.
And it was all completed, including the Sabbath, in seven days.
Why does the idea of billions of years of evolution completely
nullify the Genesis Creation story? Why are the two views incom-
patible in every way?