Louis
Berkhoff writes in his book Systematic
Theology on page 165 of “The Hexaemeron, or the Work of Separate
Days” on
the paradigm of the six days of creation. He interprets Genesis
chapters one and two from a conservative perspective, rather well in
fact, and his evaluations of the opinions of various scholars that
have taken different approaches to finding alternative meanings for
the days in Genesis with extended time periods is helpful.
Some
scholars have taken the days of Genesis to represent geological
epochs, and I have considered that myself, yet is not necessary to
regard the first reasonable alternative meaning for the days of
Genesis as the gospel truth even if they may be found to be not in
conflict with scripture. Language has an intrinsic capability for
permitting several possible meanings, unlike arithmetic expressions
that have a single sum in regard to the numbers.
Much
of the conservative approach centers on the meaning of the Hebrew
word for day; yom. Berkhoff writes on page 166 that; “it must be
admitted that the Hebrew word yom does not always denote a period of
twenty-four hours in Scripture, and is not always used in the same
sense even in the narrative of creation. It may mean daylight in
distinction from darkness, Gen. 1:5,16,18; day-light and darkness
together, Gen. 1:5,8,13 etc.; the six days taken together, Gen. 2:4;
and an indefinite period marked in its entire length by some
characteristic feature, as trouble, Ps. 20:1, wrath, Job 20:28,
prosperity, Eccl. 7:14, or salvation II Cor. 6:2.”
It
is difficult to find a particular value for the meaning of yom in
Genesis that would be exhaustive and exclusive of other possible
meanings in natural science today. God is eternal and time periods
are temporal. The nature of what time really is isn't actually known.
Time
is considered to be a relationship of matter, energy and change that
is observed. Max Tegmark noted that in a Multiverse (my
recapitulation of a point made in 'The Mathematical Universe' of a
Level 4 Multiverse) it could be that consciousness passes though a
static, pre-existing field where all things past, present and future
always exist and consciousness experiences the passage as time. If
God is unchanging and eternal, every possible Multiverse that could
exist, in every form, may exist eternally too (my point).
Eternal
God might have a different criterion for temporal space-time than can
be presently understood of humanity. If one takes the six days of
creation as a basic paradigm for God's creation or endowment of a
Universe-for-others (human beings) explained to mankind, then the
description of Genesis may be consistent with an evolving Universe as
it is observed by humanity (with science) that is in-itself a nominal
stage within the eternal and omnipotent being of God.
Contemporary
cosmology has speculated that the size of the Universe adjusted for
early hyper-inflation may be ten billion trillion light years rather
than the much smaller approximate 100 billion light years of the
observable Universe. Whatever the size of a Universe that may exist
within the context of an infinite Multiverse is, the field itself-a
Higgs field, that lets solid state forms of energy exist as mass,
could be itself embedded in a field, within a field, within a field
with infinite regress.
There
are secularists that theorize creation out of nothingness can be
achieved naturally from virtual particles emanating from the Higgs
field for an instant before disappearing . As a source for the
singularity and all of the energy and mass of the Universe virtual
particles cascading into being in a vacuum would need to aggregate
and then form a singularity before exploding and inflating. If the
field from which virtual particles formed then hasn't changed, it is
a paradox that the existing mass clumps in the Universe such as stars
and planets don't attract additional cascades of virtual particles
and a multitude of singularities and Big Bangs at least more often
than every 13.7 billion years.
Virtual
particles may be fluctuations of the Higgs field rather than that of
an absolute vacuum that may not exist in any case (a logical irony).
That vacuum energy may not be infinite however. Instead it may exist
as a form of energy also within the Higgs field endowment. The entire
Universe or Multiverse may exist within a greater field pre-existing
the singularity. It seems to me a little churlish to get too
insistent about how God actually worked the first light of the
Universe on technical points or to what he was actually referring. It
is a beautiful paradigm that is probably true at several levels.
Uncertainty exists in the world of physics, in that of knowledge, and
is a reciprocal of spacetime, being, nothingness and intervals with
the certainty of probability. Theologians may benefit from the
certainty of uncertainty too. Faith in God is the best certainty
anyone can have, and the truth of scripture, minus the uncertainty of
interpretive error.
The
days of Genesis may refer to periods of light dark that can be
paradigmatic recurrence yet not in form or type of event. Light
being separated from the darkness-the first day, may have been within
the first second of the Universe, however the darkness of space
before the appearance of stars was a potential second recurrence of
day, as could have been the formation of galaxies and of life as
vegetation at various locations across the Universe. If earth is
taken to mean dirt then the appearance of life on it, in a Universal
sense could have been non-local.
Berkhof
makes much out of the difference between particular seeds reproducing
their own kind as distinguished from evolution. That seems a
misunderstanding of evolution biology though, in that evolution did
evolve species to do exactly that (cattle not giving birth to rabbits
for example). Evolution does reach the stage the Bible speaks of, yet
not instantly as if by magic. Genesis may have referred to the
salient feature of Gods work rather than every little detail.
If
historical conservatives of the future in a time when no one
remembers much about car manufacture said that ancient documents (car
scripture) said Ford made automobiles on a certain day, each after
their own kind and disagreed with mechanical production evolutionists
that say that Ford bought steel and synthetic metals, electronics,
tires etc and evolved forms of cars that hat a common ancestor model
T on the production line, to my way of thinking the point is that
each are true points that describe the same event in different ways.
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