On the Fourth Day, Part 1: Brother Sun, Sister Moon

The hero (who looks a lot like a certain governor of California) is trapped in an elevator. Outside hovers a menacing helicopter full of bad guys, with a big Gatling gun on the left side and two small guns on the right side. Change to a close-up of the hero in the elevator. Switch back to the helicopter, still outside hovering ... but wait a second, the big Gatling gun is now on the right side? It's too fast, we're back in the elevator and the hero's planning his escape. Now cut back to the helicopter again, and ... the Gatling gun is back on the left. What's going on here?

The movie I'm remembering is the mid-90's The Last Action Hero. In the tradition of other movies such as The Purple Rose of Cairo, this is a movie about movies: characters step into and out of movies thanks to some "magic" device. To help promote the sense that you're "in a movie," the director deliberately introduced continuity errors like that flipping Gatling gun.

I mention this because sometimes errors have a purpose. (It's debatable whether they accomplished that purpose in The Last Action Hero, since it never caught on with audiences and is not one of the highlights of that actor-politician's career, who shall remain unnamed. However, I've talked with film students who waxed eloquent about the depth of the artistry and irony set up in that movie -- but I never detected it. That's why they're the art students.) It is certain that there was at least an intended deeper meaning to the apparent error.

So to the 21st century scientifically literate reader, Day 4 induces a similar sense of whiplash (and the end of Day 3 did as well). Let's read the passage and then discuss the alternatives.

Then God said, “Let there be lights / in the firmament of the heavens / to divide / the day from the night / and let them be for signs and seasons / and for days and years / and let them be for lights / in the firmament of the heavens / to give light on the earth" / and it was so / Then God made two great lights / the greater light to rule the day / and the lesser light to rule the night / He made the stars also / God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth / and to rule over the day and over the night / and to divide the light from the darkness / And God saw that it was good / So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

So in Day 3 I mentioned that flowering plants are a "flash-forward" of sorts in the Genesis account. Day 4 might be a "flash-back" and/or something else is going on here.

1.) Literary rearrangement. This is one way to take the passage. The Bible says the sun was made after the earth in Day 4, and therefore the material must have been rearranged, because our best physics tells us the sun was made before the earth even cooled. This doesn't bother many theologians, who say it's not intended to be a sequence, but an example of Jehovah's dominion over other gods. Adding to this theory, Days 1-3 have significant parallels to Days 4-6, so it looks like material was rearranged to give it a three-day parallel structure.

Ok, so far, but I think this sells short the parallels between the Biblical account and the scientific account that we've seen to this point. The exact sequence is at least possible to align with the scientific account, as long as you start from the science and work from that to understand how the Bible fits into that. This is fair to do because God gave us reason and experimental ability to test and figure out the order of the world's creation, and gave us just a little detail in Genesis about the visual order of the process, with some rearrangement for literary purposes. Personally, I see more parallels than rearrangement, as should be clear from my discussion so far, and I'll bet there's a reason for every rearrangement. So to remain consistent with my interpretation for pretty much everything else in this series, I'll try to find some way the scientific account can fit with the main account. Maybe it's stretching a bit, but if the glove fits nine fingers and leaves a little wiggle room for the tenth, it's still a functional glove, especially compared to the alternatives.

So what could fit with this? What if, as I mentioned before, these are visions given to the author about the creation of the universe? If so, they would have to be visual, and they would be anthropocentric -- that is, they'd be from the perspective of man, the end point in creation. So they would be from the perspective of the surface of the newborn earth, which gives us a second theory:

2.) Atmospheric unveiling. Do you remember how the stromatolites were spitting out oxygen and changing the composition of the atmosphere in Day 3? At some point in this conversion, scientists think the atmosphere transformed from an opaque, cloudy mess to one that was finally transparent to sunlight. The earth's surface felt the kiss of direct sun for the first time. Someone "watching" from the primordial oceans would see the sun come out (no need to bet your bottom dollar), and the moon. This is about the right timing for this transition, and the Venus-like veil of clouds would be lifted to reveal the sun and moon.

If this were multiple choice, I'd like to take none of the above. I'm not certain in my advocacy of option #2. But I feel that option #1 is unnecessarily extreme in divorcing the Biblical account from the scientific. There's too many points that I can put together (primacy of light, separation of "waters" by gravity, etc.). If I'm uneasy about number 2, it's because I feel I have to stretch the text, which says "made" right there, into "appeared." A part of my dramatic nature does like the idea of the "ta-da" moment, and it fits with the idea of 7 days, 7 visions. I just don't want to rest my faith on the opacity of the atmosphere 2 billion years ago, so for the record, either option is fine with me, depending on future developments in the exciting field of ancient atmosphere opacity. I won't lose my faith if I'm wrong about this.
One more option remains, that I don't even list; that somehow the science is badly misguided and the sun really was made after flowering plants. Unfortunately, this involves ignoring the evidence I mentioned previously (and will mention in the future). This requires a God who hides truth so deeply that no one can know it without revelation (contrast this to Paul's description of natural theology in Romans 1). That simply will not do, because I worship a God of the truth, and although man is sinful, I can't invoke a worldwide conspiracy theory that would involve hundreds of faked papers a year from every continent on earth just to fit my specific interpretation of the first page of the Bible. So I try to bring the two together, and I keep my mind open to options #1 and 2.
I also note, speaking of metaphors, that the unveiling of the sun and moon fits with a biological insight that comes from what happened in the development of life at about this time -- something too small to see, but of great import and similar to the demarcation of the sun, moon, and stars. More on that later.
Now that I've established my agnosticism about when this day took place, I can ask, why was God doing that? What's the point? There's a deep parallel. Let's read the text without trying to prove it, and ask "why would God do this?" So scroll back and re-read it.



No, really, you go ahead. I'll wait here. I'm not going anywhere.





Ok, now that you read it again, the question is, what does it mean? God carves up light like he carved up planets with gravity. He reveals the source of light, the great glowing ball of gas that is his servant, and He also reveals the "perfect" sphere of rock that mirrors that light. Before this point, the earth was alone and shrouded. Afterwards, it had two lanterns in the sky for company, and all the starry host. This set up a relationship between the earth and the sun and moon, and two other relationships: the sun + the day, the moon + the night. Two other "powers" in the sky, countless smaller stars, with God above and beyond them all. The sun is below God but above us.
I was just walking through my darkened house last night and looked out through the window. The moon is nearly full now and the sky was clear (which doesn't happen often around here in Seattle). I gave a bit of a start when I looked out the window because it was so bright. By the moon's blue light, I could see the blades of grass, the (finally) trimmed bushes, the toys tumbled across the lawn ... and it was all thanks to the moon, a reflective dirt mirror, placed just far enough away that it looks the same size to us as the sun, much bigger but also much farther. The moon was ruling the night.
I think Francis of Assisi wrote about these relationships in his Canticle to Brother Sun:
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made /And first my lord Brother Sun, Who brings the day / and light you give to us through him / How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor! / Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars / In the heavens you have made them, bright / And precious and fair.
The sun and moon are part of our family, siblings under a powerful and loving Creator. The earth first "saw" them on Day 4.
Let me sum this up in my over-analytical way = God : sun :: sun : moon. God gives the sun light as the sun gives us light, and so God gives us light through brother Sun. Stop me before I start speculating on the fact that earth + sun + moon = 3, which happens to be one of God's favorite numbers ...
The sun is a sign of God's power and faithfulness. It puts out more energy than we could ever use, and much of it speeds away, untouched, into space. If we could just capture a fraction of merely what hits the earth we'd solve all sorts of energy problems. The sun is a prodigal brother, like God is a prodigal father.
In the Israel of the psalms, the nations around them worshiped the sun, but the Israelites worshiped the invisible God who made the sun. Consider how the gift of the sun was praised and connected to God's general faithfulness:
Psalm 89: I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever / With my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations / For I have said, “Mercy shall be built up forever / Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens / I have made a covenant with My chosen, I have sworn to My servant David / ‘Your seed I will establish forever / And build up your throne to all generations.’” / (Selah) / And the heavens will praise Your wonders, O LORD / Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the saints.
Psalm 85: Mercy and truth have met together / Righteousness and peace have kissed. / Truth shall spring out of the earth / And righteousness shall look down from heaven / Yes, the LORD will give what is good / And our land will yield its increase.
It all ties together, the earth, sun and moon, faithfulness and righteousness, the rains on the just and unjust. God flings his word out like seed, and he accomplishes his purpose, the creation and re-creation of people to know and love Him.
That's just on the surface. Pan down again: In the churning of the waves a bunch of little blobs of life were about to take another step and set up a new relationship that would change everything, and harness the power of the sun. Without this, the earth could not respond to its Brother Sun. It was too small to see, but it changed the history of life, and it, too, was all about setting up a relationship that wasn't there before. More about that ... in part 2.