6.2 Psalm 139 and God's Knowledge

Let me skip a little forward in my Science and Scripture writing to the next topic: Quantum Indeterminancy and Free Will. My last post of these breadcrumbs was here. Earlier ones are here.
__________________________
6.2 Psalm 139 and God's Knowledge
Psalm 139 is the locus classicus or "classic text" on God's omniscience and omnipresence in Scripture. Here are some of the key verses to that end:

"You know my thought from afar... Before a word is on my tongue, behold Yahweh, you know it all." (139:2, 4)

"To what place might I go away from your spirit? And to where from your face might I flee?" (139:7)

"You formed my inside parts; you wove me in the womb of my mother."  (139:13)

These are perhaps the closest statements in Scripture to a claim that God knows everything. Certainly, if God knows what I am about to say before I say it -- and God knows my very thoughts -- then God's knowledge is thoroughgoing. It would seem that God is everywhere and knows everything there is to know. 

It is worth noting, however, that the Bible is not very explicit about God's omniscience. It would be nice to have a crisp statement. Psalm 147:5 says that God's understanding is without measure, which indicates that God's comprehension of the world is extremely vast indeed. In John 21:17, Peter indicates that Jesus "knows all things" in relation to his heart. 1 John 3:20 says the same thing about God the Father in relation to our hearts. If we take the words out of their context, we might take them to indicate God's omniscience.

It is a reminder that there is at least a distinction between some of the core beliefs we have as Christians and the actual words of Scripture. Belief in the omniscience of God is eminently reasonable and, as we have argued, is a natural inference of ex nihilo creation. But to some degree, it represents a systematization of biblical thinking more than an explicit teaching of Scripture. Perhaps it is the assumption of the New Testament and the later parts of the Old Testament. It is not clear that it was the assumption of the earliest parts of the Old Testament.

2. Psalm 139 is also the clearest biblical statement of the belief that God is everywhere present. In fact, perhaps the psalm implies that God knows everything precisely because he is everywhere present to observe everything. Does he gain knowledge in the psalm in part from what he sees as he observes everything everywhere?

If the psalmist could ascend up to the skies, God would be there (139:8). [1] If he would go to the farthest reaches of the earth, God would be there (139:9). What about the darkness, might I hide myself in the night? No, God sees in the darkness as if it were light (139:11-12). God is everywhere present.

God is also in our past, present, and future. God knew the psalmist when he was still in the womb. The psalm pictures God knitting the psalmist together as his body was being formed in the womb. We can also assume that God was fully aware of those who never made it out of the womb as well. The point is God's thorough knowledge of everything and his presence everywhere.

3. Why does the psalmist say all these things? We begin to get a sense of the purpose of the psalm when we get to verse 19. God knows everything. God is everywhere present. God knows the heart of the psalmist thoroughly. Will not God destroy the wicked? The evil pursue the psalmist, desiring his blood. 

These wicked individuals are not only after the psalmist, but they have rebelled against God himself (139:20). They have risen against God and set themselves against him. These verses suggest that Psalm 139 is ultimately a psalm of individual lament, calling on God to take action against his enemies, who are more significantly God's enemies.

The bottom line is that God knows that the intentions of the psalmist are pure. "Search me, O God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts" (139:23). The psalmist is convinced that God will see that he is God's faithful and fully committed servant. Therefore, his enemies are in the wrong. They are God's enemies too and should be stopped.

4. We are blessed to have this psalm in Scripture, occasioned as it were by the struggles of a leader -- perhaps King David -- in a narrow window of history. Its message reaches far beyond that moment. This relatively short text more than any other place in Scripture proclaims that God is everywhere present and it gives us the most vivid picture of God's thoroughgoing knowledge of everything that goes on in the world. This knowledge extends to our very thoughts.

It does not, however, picture God determining our thoughts or actions. It portrays God as the weaver of the psalmist's inward parts in the womb but it does not extend that level of determinism to the psalmist's daily life. That is to say, it does not picture God dictating everything that happens. For the most part, God's knowledge in the psalm seems a matter of observation and participation rather than orchestration. The psalmist treats the future of his enemies as a matter as yet undecided. Indeed, the psalm aims to influence God's decisions toward them.

[1] A quick reminder that the headings of the psalms were added later. This is a "psalm of David" by heading, but this is later tradition and is not certain. Additionally, the New Testament never quotes the psalm. We cannot confirm that the psalmist was a "he," but it is by far the most likely option. 

4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2

This continues an exploration of Genesis 1. Previous posts:

4.1 Differing Views of Genesis 1
4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1 

Now 4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2
______________________
4.3.1 Taking Off Our Glasses
Now we get to the verses themselves. At first glance, they may seem simple enough:

In the beginning, God created the skies and the land. But the land was formless and useless, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And a wind from God was blowing over the face of the waters.

There are several opportunities in these verses for us to read modern assumptions into them, including modern Christian assumptions. But if we want to hear them as their first audiences did, we will have to take off our modern glasses and try to get into the ancient Israelite view of the world.

For example, most Bibles read, “God created the heavens and the earth.” It is natural that most readers probably picture a sphere like our contemporary view of the earth. When we hear the word heavens, we may not think of the skies but of the universe or even of the place where God and the angels are located.

We thus have to adjust our thinking to realize that Hebrew did not have a separate word for “sky” and “heaven” as a place where God is. I have translated with the word sky to remind us that the ancient Israelites had a far, far smaller sense of the world than we do today. The word shamayim for “skies” was simply that which is above us.

The word for “sky” in Hebrew is “dual,” which means that it refers to two things. In English, we have singular for one thing (e.g., a book) and plural for multiple things (e.g., books – we often add an s to the end to do this). Hebrew had another number it could use for its nouns, although rarely used. The “dual” in Hebrew referred to two things. For example, because Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, the word for Egypt in Hebrew is always dual (mitzrayim).

The fact that Hebrew thinks of the sky as dual probably reflects the view of the sky we hear about later in Genesis 1. God divides the waters from the waters and puts a space, a dome, a “firmament” in between them (Gen. 1:6-8). There are thus two parts to the sky – the upper part and the lower part. Perhaps for the same reason, the word for “water” in Hebrew is also typically dual (mayim – notice how similarly the word for sky and water are in Hebrew).

Similarly, they did not yet think of the earth as a sphere in the times of ancient Israel. “Land” is a better translation if we want to picture what they would have pictured when they heard the Hebrew word ‘arets. We will see dry land appear in Genesis 1:9. This is not a globe but the relatively flat earth that emerges as you come ashore from an ocean or a lake.

A “wind from God” is another phrase where we as Christians might immediately think of the Holy Spirit if we read a translation that has “the spirit of God” here. It is probably not wrong theologically to hear overtones of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we can apply the verse that way as Christians. But in terms of the original meaning of the verse, it is anachronistic. Ancient Jews did not yet have as developed a sense of God’s Spirit as the New Testament has – or frankly later Christian theology. The Old Testament does have a sense of God’s spirit (e.g., Psalm 139:7), but it is not yet used in a personal way.

The New Revised Standard Version is an example of a version that translates this part of 1:2 with “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” [27] They translate it this way because other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation stories talk about a violent wind from one god blowing against a water goddess (e.g., the Enuma Elish). [28] It is a reminder that the word ru’ah in Hebrew could mean things like breath and wind. In other words, using the word spirit easily can lead us to read many concepts into the verse that were not there originally.

These are just some of the ways that our assumptions can easily lead us to see Genesis 1:1-2 as a mirror of what we already believe. To hear what these verses actually meant, we have to take off our cultural glasses and put on Ancient Near Eastern Israelite/Jewish glasses. [29] Only then will we begin to hear the words in terms of how their first audiences heard them.

4.3.2 The Function of Genesis 1:1
Should we see Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter? Or is it the first moment in the sequence of creation – Day 0, if you would?

On the one hand, some see Genesis 1:1 as God getting his raw materials ready. He creates the materials he is going to use in creation in 1:1 -- the skies and the earth. Then in 1:3 he begins to cook with the ingredients and organize them. 

You might remember the gap theory. God creates an orderly universe in verse 1. But then Satan fell and everything became chaos in verse 2. In the gap theory, God then begins to re-create the world in verse 3. This would be one version of an interpretation that sees Genesis 1:1 as the creation before the creation, if you would. A whole sequence of creation and recreation has taken place before verse 3.

There is little contextual evidence for this gap theory. That is to say, if this is what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying, the verses do not leave us many clues. Isaiah 45:18 may very well allude to Genesis 1:2 when it says that God did not create (bara') the earth to be chaos (tohu). [30] However, the verse most likely refers to the direction and end result of creation rather than its initial state. It is saying that God never intended for the cosmos to end up as chaos. Rather, God created order out of chaos.

John Walton sees Genesis 1:1 as the heading of 1:1-2:3, an introduction to the rest of the chapter. In this way, it functions much like the statements "These are the generations of..." that start eleven later sections of Genesis (e.g., 2:4). [31] He proposes that it is far more likely that the author of Genesis had twelve of these sections -- with Genesis 1:1 starting the series off -- than that there were only eleven of them. Twelve is a special number in Genesis, the number of the sons of Jacob and thus the tribes of Israel.

Another argument for Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter comes from the way 2:1 seems to close this introduction. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created" at the beginning of the chapter. Then 2:1 says, "The skies and the land were finished" at the end. This kind of literary structure is called an "inclusio," where a block of text is put in a kind of parenthesis by similar words at its beginning and end. Here are the similar words: "At the beginning, God created the skies and the land... [read on and I'll tell you how]." Then we have "And the skies and the land were finished" at the end when the creating is done. 

On the whole, then, Genesis 1:1 does not seem to be the creation before the creation. It does not seem to be Day 0 or the creation of the matter that God will then mould in the rest of the chapter. Rather, it seems to be a general statement of the whole chapter. What is Genesis 1 about? Genesis 1 is about God creating the skies and the land. Keep reading and you will find out how he did it.

4.3.3 Creation Out of Nothing?
If Genesis 1:1 is an overview, then we face another question. Where did the waters of Genesis 1:2 come from? Genesis 1:1 already does not mention the waters. If it were the creation of material before the creation, one might suppose that the creation of the waters was implied in it. But if Genesis 1:1 is an overview of the chapter, then the chaotic waters of 1:2 are never created.

Given all the other ancient creation stories, it would not be surprising. All the creation stories of the Ancient Near East begin with water. In the Enuma Elish, the goddess that Marduk fights is Tiamat, a sea water goddess. The Egyptians had Nun, god of the primeval waters. In the Greek Theogony by Hesiod (500s BCE), the creation begins with -- you guessed it -- water. Aristotle distinguished the first Greek philosopher Thales (also 500s BCE) as different because he looked for a natural substance as the basis for the world rather than gods. But guess what substance he proposed as the most basic element of the world? You guessed it. Water.

So the cultural surroundings of Genesis would make it easy for us to think that it too saw water as an eternal given. God would have been meeting the Israelites where they were in their categories and speaking to them from there. [32] 

There are some grammatical features to Genesis 1:1 that are relevant to discuss. The very first word, bereshith, is curious in that it often has a sense of "first of" (e.g., Exod. 23:19). Building on this dynamic, the 1985 translation of the Jewish Publication Society rendered Genesis 1:1 to say, "When God began to create the heaven and earth... God said 'Let there be light.'" The sense it gave was that 1:1 was not a sentence but the setting for what follows. When God began (in the beginning of God creating) -- and the waters were unformed -- he started by saying "Let there be light."

This move seems a little strained (and unnecessary). The word can just mean "first." And the waters of 1:2 seem to be there waiting to be ordered one way or another. Further, as we have argued, 1:1 makes more sense as an overview of the whole chapter.

Another question is the meaning of bara', which means to create. It is not a frequently used word in the Old Testament, and it is always used with God as the subject -- "God created." Some have wanted to read a special meaning in here as in creation out of nothing. However, this meaning is not clear. It simply seems to be a word for making but that specifically refers to God making something.

What then is the meaning of 1:2. At the beginning of creation, there are two entities: God and the useless, non-functioning, chaotic, primordial waters. There is nothing but darkness. But a wind from God blew over the waters. This is the way things are when God decides to start to order the cosmos.

We have already discussed the origins of the doctrine of creation out of nothing in the previous chapter. We have framed it as a consensus of Christian (and Jewish) faith, and implied it is correct as a theological belief. However, we also made it clear that it likely reflects a "development of doctrine." That is to say, it is a belief that probably was not articulated in biblical times. It is not that the Bible opposes the belief -- not at all. It is simply not a thought that anyone had yet had.

Our exegesis of Genesis 1:1-2 supports this sense of development. At the time of the Old Testament, it was more or less assumed that everything had emerged from chaotic, primeval waters. That was not the point of revelation about creation. The point was that the God of Israel -- and he alone, almighty -- was the one who brought order to the cosmos.

[27] So also the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translation.

[28] E.g., Claus Westermann translates it as “wind” in Genesis 1–11 (Fortress, 1990).

[29] The distinction between Israelite and Jewish largely has to do with the Babylonian captivity of 586-538BCE. Since the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 722BCE, only the southern kingdom of Judah was left to go into captivity in 586BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed. Although “Israel” can still be used after this point, it is common to increasingly refer to those who returned as Judahites or Jews after the exile. Accordingly, if Genesis 1 was written after the exile, we might refer to its first audience as Judahites or Jews.

[30] Or it could be the other way around, Isaiah 45 may have helped inspire Genesis 1:2.

[31] Walton, Lost World, 43-45.

[32] It seems like any in depth understanding of Scripture will need to see somewhat of a "flow" of revelation as the understanding gets more precise the further we go in the river. 

4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1

The previous post started this chapter on "Interpreting Genesis 1."
_____________________________
4.2.1 The Nature of Genre
We ended the previous section by saying that the interpretation of Genesis 1 in the end depends largely on the genre of the chapter. Genre is the type of literature something is. The same words might make us laugh or cry depending on whether they are situated in a comedy or a tragedy. For example, the words "He fell off the roof" might be funny in one movie but tragic in another. Accordingly, it is difficult to know whether to read the days of Genesis 1 literally or figuratively until we have first considered what kind of text Genesis 1 was intended to be. 

Here we reach an important principle in reading the Bible in general. Many Christians affirm that the Bible is God's word for us -- a conviction Christians have held throughout the centuries. Yet this conviction can sometimes lead us to assume that reading the words in modern English automatically reveals what they meant in their original setting.

But the words of Scripture were not first written to us. They were written in other languages long before English even existed. The meanings of the words made sense to the people for whom these books were first written -- ancient Israelites, Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and so forth. Even in our own families today, the way our parents or grandparents use words can differ from how the children or grandchildren use them, and in this case, we are only a few decades different in age. Imagine how different the meanings and connotations of words likely were two or three thousand years ago in entirely different languages!

If we want to know the original meaning of Genesis 1, then, we have to get in a time machine and try to determine how the ancient Israelites would have heard these words. It should not be too surprising that, when God inspired these words for ancient Israel, he inspired them in their language and in categories that they could understand. What a self-centered assumption it would be if we thought that the default meaning of Scripture is how it strikes me thousands of years later -- especially when the Bible tells us repeatedly that it was written to them!

Thus, the question of genre is in the first place a historical one. How did God inspire the author of Genesis to write for ancient Israel in such a way that they would hear what he wanted them to hear? What kind of text did ancient Israel understand Genesis 1 to be?

4.2.2 An Introduction
It should not be too controversial to claim that Genesis 1:1-2:3 is some kind of introduction. In fact, some would consider it to be an introduction to the first five books of the Bible, often called the "Pentateuch" or "five scrolls." As we will see, even though Genesis 2 continues the theme of creation from Genesis 1, it has a quite different flavor from Genesis 1. Many even consider them to be two different creation accounts for reasons we will explore in chapter 8.

A key observation is that Genesis is largely structured around the expression, "these are the generations (toledoth) of." [9] However, these do not begin in Genesis 1. They begin in Genesis 2 with the story of the man and the woman. It is thus easy to argue that Genesis 1:1-2:3 is at least a kind of introduction to the book of Genesis.

Many scholars would go further and consider Genesis 1 to be an introduction to all five books of the Pentateuch -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Here we get into some debated territory as well in terms of who the author of Genesis was and when it was written. The traditional view since ancient times is of course that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. However, Genesis never mentions Moses and in fact the Pentateuch uniformly refers to Moses in the third person -- he did this, he did that, he went up on a mountain and died. Inductively speaking, most of the Pentateuch is about Moses but is not worded as if it is by Moses. [10]

Nevertheless, the New Testament, including the words of Jesus, seem to assume that Moses is the source of the Pentateuch. On the one hand, if we read the New Testament carefully, most instances actually refer to the words Moses says in the Pentateuch rather than the Pentateuch as a whole. There are no places where Jesus directly attributes a passage in Genesis to Moses. Yes, the New Testament can refer to the "Law of Moses" in a way that probably included Genesis (e.g., Luke 24:44). However, the way we refer to a collection is not necessarily a claim about every word in it. "The Law of Moses" is a fitting title for the Pentateuch because its primary contents are the laws of Moses.

A further consideration is the fact that revelation from God would seem to be "incarnated." That is to say, God reveals truth to us in ways we can understand. When you are studying physics, you can take physics with algebra or you can take physics with calculus. Both are correct but one is much more precise and detailed. Presumably when God speaks, he wants to be understood. 

Just as we alter our language when we are speaking to a child, God surely "translated" his revelation into categories the original audiences would understand. He does not worry about Paul's "three story universe" of things above the earth, things on the earth, and things under the earth (Phil. 2:10). He did not worry that Paul apparently thought there were three levels of sky as you went up, with God in the highest layer (2 Cor. 12:2). Paul's "cosmology" was not the point of these passages. It was the "envelope" in which the letter of revelation came. It was the "flesh" the message took on (thus "incarnated" as in John 1:14).

What we are saying is that the fact that the New Testament seems to assume Mosaic authorship may have been the "clothing" New Testament revelation came in rather than the point of the revelation per se. It may have been the envelope rather than the contents.

We should mention one final possible distinction between how we think about authorship and how the ancients did. For the last five hundred years, since the rise of printing, we have mostly lived in a literary culture. We tend to think of authorship primarily in terms of the person who actually puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). Yet in the oral cultures of the ancient world, authorship was much more about the primary source of information rather than the scribe. In recent times, we still have the notion of a "ghost writer" who drafts material for the person whose name appears on the book. [11]

The point is that there would have been far less of a distinction in the ancient mind between Moses as the primary source of Pentateuchal material and Moses as the literal author as we tend to think of one.

The reason for this background discussion is to note that many if not most scholars believe that the Pentateuch has incorporated many sources, both oral and perhaps written, in the process of its composition. The most influential theory of this sort was of course the documentary hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen in 1878. [12] However, he was synthesizing observations that went back a century earlier, and of course his theories have been significantly modified and discussed in the last hundred and fifty years. [13]

One feature of those discussions that has remained is a sense that Genesis 1 was one of the last pieces of the Pentateuch to be written. In this theory, it would date to the late exilic or early post-exilic period (late 500s or 400s). Its origins are sometmies supposed to be "priestly" in nature. [14] In any approach of this nature, Genesis 1 certainly served as an introduction to the Pentateuch, and we would not be surprise to find it resonating with various elements in the Law.

Whether one goes with Mosaic authorship or modern compositional theories, then, Genesis 1 is arguably an introduction to what follows. The scope of the introduction is debated. Does it only introduce the first eleven chapters. Does it introduce the whole book of Genesis? Or is it an introduction to the entire Pentateuch? Probably most Genesis experts would say the whole Pentateuch.

4.2.3 Ancient Cosmology
If Genesis 1 is an introduction, into what category or categories would an ancient Israelite have placed it? It certainly has a narrative format, but it also has a clear structure with its seven days. Would an ancient Israelite have thought of it as history, cosmology, liturgy, epic, or yet some another category?What we are really asking is what other texts -- oral or written -- would they have compared it to? 

Here, the Enuma Elish immediately comes to mind, the Babylonian creation story. Most scholars date its composition to the second millennium BCE, before the time of David. However, even then, it drew on older Mesopotamian traditions. At that same time, similar traditions were circulating in Egypt, Canaan, and an important city known as Ugarit. The Enuma Elish may not have circulated widely in Israel before the exile, but Israelites would have been familiar with similar texts. The exiles from Judah in the mid-500s BCE almost certainly would have encountered it in Babylon. [15]

Most find it highly instructive to bring the creation story in Genesis 1 into dialog with the Enuma Elish because of the clear contrasts. For example, where the Enuma Elish pictures creation as a battle between multiple gods, there is only one God in Genesis 1. [16] He fights no one. Rather, he speaks, and it is done. Such an exclusive sense of God as Creator was unprecedented in the ancient world. It would have been striking to any audience of Genesis 1 from that day. 

Genesis 1 gives us God as unparalleled -- the other gods might as well not even exist. Similarly, the power of God over the creation is absolute. The primordial waters of Genesis 1:2 cannot resist his will. He tells them to separate and they do without any resistance (1:6-7). By contrast, in the Enuma Elish, order comes when Marduk defeats the salt water god Tiamat and, as in Genesis, divides her waters and distributes them throughout the creation.

The creation of Genesis 1 also structures the world for Israel, revealing an Israelite "cosmology." A cosmology is a sense of the universe and the way it works. Genesis 1 sees the creation of an orderly world that started out as tohu wavohu, chaotic and useless. The cosmology of Genesis 1 is a mirror of Israel's worldview. It reflects the regular rhythm of Sabbath. Plants and animals are created "according to their kinds" (1:12, 19, 24-25), hints at the worldview of Leviticus with its food laws.

Interestingly, the apostle Paul in the New Testament did not consider the Jewish Sabbath to be binding on Gentile believers (Rom. 14:5; cf. Col. 2:16). It seems likely that both Paul and Mark did not consider the Jewish food laws to be binding on Gentile believers either (cf. Rom. 14:14; Col. 2:21; Mark 7:19). Paul and Mark thus implicitly treat the worldview of Genesis 1 as an expression of Jewish identity rather than as a universal blueprint.

This is an important question for the interpretation of Genesis 1. Should we take it as an expression of Israelite theology or a historical, quasi-scientific exposition? If it primarily functioned for Israel to have a different picture of Yahweh than the peoples around them while introducing the Pentateuch at the same time, then probably its purpose had more to do with theology than science or history.

John Walton has argued that we should read Genesis 1 as an expression of ancient cosmology. [17] He suggests it has always been wrongheaded to try to translate it into a later cosmology such as ours. "If God aligned revelation with one particular science, it would have been unintelligible to people who lived prior to the time of that science, and it would be obsolete to those who live after that time." [18] So, he claims, God aligns the cosmology of Genesis 1 with the cosmology of Israel at the time of writing. That is, God expresses revealed truths by "incarnating" it in Israel's "language." He gives revelation the flesh of Israel's ancient cosmology.

What did cosmologies as a genre do in the ancient world? Walton writes, "Creation constituted bringing order to the cosmos from an originally non-functional condition." [19] And so, it would seem, Genesis 1 expresses the all-power of the one God who calls into existence things that didn't exist (Rom. 4:17).

4.2.4 A Yearly Liturgy?
For the last several decades, a number of Genesis scholars have speculated that Genesis 1 might be even more than an expression of ancient cosmology. Although it would be difficult to prove, they have made a compelling case that Genesis 1 might have been read and performed every year at the temple as a liturgy. [20] A liturgy is a ceremony of worship to a deity. If you go to church on Sunday, the service you attend basically consists of a liturgy of worship to God with songs, prayers, sermons, and more.

Someone might first think, "Where did that come from? There are no obvious clues in the text that would signal that interpretation to us in our world." However, John Walton and a number of others have argued that this meaning would have been obvious to an ancient Jew in their world, not least because of a worship event that took place every New Year at the temple where this text was "performed" every year. As Scripture, this text is for us, but it was not written first to us.

Several clues make this a compelling case. For one, the Enuma Elish itself was read every year at a festival in Babylon (the Akitu festival) where  god Marduk was "reinstalled" in his temple, understood to be the universe. [21] Walton argues that the idea that God is building his cosmic temple in Genesis 1 would have been obvious to an ancient audience. [22] For example, the number seven appears pervasively in relation to temples both in the Bible and in its surounding cultures (cf. 1 Kings 8:65). [23] In Exodus 40:2, the Tent of Meeting is erected on New Year (cf. also Lev. 23 and Num. 29).

Here is the picture that Walton and others suggest. Every year as a new year began, Israel would have had a festival in which Yahweh was re-installed in his cosmic temple. [24] In the ancient world, earthly temples were often considered to be models that represented the much larger temple of the cosmos (cf. Heb. 8:2, 5). This would have been a 7 day festival, and the days of Genesis would have related to literal 24 hour days within the festival. [25]

The climax of the festival was then when Yahweh finished the building of his temple and then he moved in on day 7. The Sabbath is Yahweh resting from his work of fighting back chaos, ordering his temple, and then taking up his place within in. [26] Now that he is installed again, he will rule over the cosmos for another year. He takes his seat in the temple he has just built.

In the light of the ancient world and clues in the text, this case seems compelling even if it is perhaps not proven. It certainly changes the way we understand Genesis 1. It comes to be about much different things that our current scientific debates. It truly becomes "independent" of modern science in relation to creation. Genesis 1 becomes a yearly temple liturgy that takes place over 7 literal 24 hour days. This position is not proven, but it is a very reasonable suggestion.

[9] Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2.

[10] By "inductively," we mean based on what the text itself says rather than traditions about the text.

[11] Celebrities especially tend to have individuals who do most of the writing for the books that appear under their name. They of course sign off on the material but may be more or less engaged in the actual process of writing.

[12] Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. by J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies. (A. & C. Black, 1885).

[13] For the current state of the discussion, see Joel S. Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale University, 2012).

[14] E.g., Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress, 2009).

[15] Cf. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (University of Chicago, 1951); Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (Catholic Biblical Association, 1994).

[16] The word for a god in Hebrew is el. Interestingly, the form used throughout Genesis 1 is plural: elohim. So it would most naturally refer to gods, plural. However, when it is used for Israel’s God, elohim consistently takes verbs and adjectives that are singular. Scholars debate why. Some see it as a “plural of majesty.” Others think it might reflect an earlier period in Israel’s history when a sense of plural gods was still common before the exclusive worship of Yahweh took hold.

[17] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 14-21.

[18] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 15. See also Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton, 1988)

[19] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 33.

[20] E.g., Moshe Weinfeld, "Sabbath, Temple, and the Enthronement of the Lord -- The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1-2:3," in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l'honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, A. Caquot and M. Delcor, eds. Alter Orient and Altes Testament 212 (Butzon & Bercker, 1981), 502-12.

[21] E.g., Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 89.

[22] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 86.

[23] E.g., Jon Levenson, "The Temple and the World," Journal of Religion 64 (1984): 288-89.

[24] Cf. Judges 21:19. The Feast of Trumpets, while not on the first day of the year, has become Rosh Hashanah in Judaism, the Jewish new year.

[25] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 90.

[26] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 71-76.

Science and Scripture -- Differing Views of Genesis 1

Tuesday would normally be my science and Scripture day, so I thought I would put a pulse in. This would be the beginning of chapter 4: "Interpreting Genesis 1."
____________________________
4.1 Differing Views
At first glance, the meaning of Genesis 1 might seem rather straightforward. However, given the tension between science and faith these last 150 years, a multitude of attempts have been made to harmonize Genesis 1 with contemporary science. These interpretations fall into three broad categories. First, there are interpretations that take the days of Genesis 1 as literal 24 hour days and read the chapter as a straightforward historical account. Then there are those approaches that see the days somewhat figuratively even though broadly sequential. Finally, there are views that interpret Genesis 1 as a more theological or liturgical presentation.

4.1.1 Literal Approaches
Within each of these options, we find several other suggestions. For example, the "literal" interpretation of Genesis 1 takes the "days" of the chapter as literal 24 hour days. You thus have young earth creationists like Ken Ham who would argue that the world was created 6000-10,000 years ago. [1] Indeed, Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 seem to take the days of Genesis 1 as normal 24 hour days.

Yet there are some interesting variations on this approach both on the Scripture and the science side. For example, on the science side, there are those who have argued that the earth is young but that it has apparent age. The notion is that God created the universe and Earth to look old even though they are not. Someone might say that God created the light from the stars already here rather than having to travel all that distance from the start. In this way of thinking, all the inferences scientists have made about the age of the Earth and the universe are correct -- it is just that God made it look that way from the beginning. However, the days of Genesis remain literal 24 hour days.

A common response is that God comes off as a trickster or deceiver in this scenario. [2] However, this response seems somewhat debatable. If God made light from distant stars already here, he presumably did it for our benefit. He did not say, "The universe is really old." God did not tell you a lie. You simply would have drawn a wrong conclusion on your own. The universe never asked you to guess its age.  

Nevertheless, it would be a little puzzling why God would make meteorites look like uranium had been deteriorating for 4.5 billion years. It is puzzling why he would plant less complex fossils on lower geological layers and more complex ones on higher ones. It would not be lying on God's part, since he never directly told us what these things meant. It would just be puzzling.

On the Scripture side, there are some very clever interpretations that take the days of Genesis 1 literally yet find a way for the Earth and universe still to be quite old. For example, the gap theory supposes that there may have been a large period of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Isaiah 45:18 is sometimes invoked, a verse that says God did not create the world "formless and void" (tohu), a word used in Genesis 1:2. So, if God did not make the world tohu, yet the world in Genesis 1:2 was tohu, then the argument is that something must have happened between the initial creation in 1:1 and the disorder of 1:2, something like the fall of Satan.

In the early days of evolution, many Christians used the gap theory to try to harmonize the discoveries of science that seemed to point to an old earth with a literal reading of Genesis 1. This view was very prevalent even into the 1950s. For example, the very conservative C. I. Scofield, known for his Scofield King James reference Bible, took this view. This interpretation allowed someone to suppose that dinosaurs and other aspects of geology took place during a period of millions of years between the first two verses of Genesis. 

A similar view is the intermittent day view. This view takes the days of creation as literal 24 hour days, but proposes that there could have been long periods of time between each day. The days become, as it were, the lead off hitters for long periods of time that may have lasted millions of years. Similarly, some have considered the first two verses of Genesis as "Day 0." This could allow for billions of years of development prior to God's specific work on the Earth starting in verse 3.

4.1.2 Symbolic Approaches
In the early church and some parts of Judaism, allegorical readings of Genesis 1 were very common. Philo was a Jew from Alexandria who lived about the same time as Jesus. He did not believe that Genesis 1 gave us a historical account of creation because divine creation for God would have been instantaneous. Instead, the days of creation were a logical explanation of what God created at once. [3]

Similarly, the Christian Origen, writing about 200CE, argued that Genesis 1 could not be literal. How, for example, could there be light before the Sun, moon, or the stars? The deeper meaning of Genesis 1, he supposed, was about Christ (light), the church (firmament), and spiritual growth.

Augustine (354-430CE) similarly did not think that Genesis 1 could be pinned down to a literal meaning. Like Philo, he believed that God created the world instantaneously. The days were figurative, a teaching device. They might symbolize six stages to the Christian life, for example. 

In general, medieval interpretation of the Bible saw various layers of meaning to the text, the so called fourfold sense of Scripture. Yes, there was the "literal" interpretation, the apparent surface meaning. But there was also often an allegorical meaning thought to be hidden in the text. There was a "moral" to the text. And sometimes there was thought to be an "anagogical" meaning that pointed to final realities like heaven or the end of history.

In more recent times, the day-age theory is an example of an approach to the days of Genesis that does not take them as literal 24 hour periods but possibly as representing long periods of time. Reference is often made to Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8, which say that a 1000 years is like a day for God. What if, this approach suggests, each day of Genesis represents millions of years?

The day-age theory, along with the gap theory and intermittent day theories, are often approaches taken by old earth creationists. These are individuals who do not believe in what is called "macro-evolution" but who accept the scientific evidence for an "old" earth and universe. Such individuals reject the notion that complex life developed from simpler forms purely through a process of natural selection. However, they accept the consensus of the scientific community in relation to findings in geology, astronomy, and physics that point to an earth that is around 4.5 billion years old and a universe that is about 13.8 billion years old.

As we look back through history, non-literal or figurative readings of Genesis 1 were fairly common prior to the modern era. It is a reminder that the interpretations that seem obvious to us in any period of time are usually more than what the text actually says. In each time and place, we inherit a paradigm that seems clear but is as much a product of our culture and environment as the text itself.

4.1.3 Literary-Theological Approaches
Most of the views we have expressed thus far are usually classified as concordist views. That is to say, they harmonize a somewhat historical or quasi-scientific reading of the Genesis text with science in some way. They can sometimes come across as finding ingenious, less obvious ways to make the text and modern science align.

In the end, the original meaning of Genesis 1 is a matter of its genre -- what type of literature it was meant to be. Most modern scholars of Genesis would critique the approaches above as imposing later or modern frameworks on the text. In other words, they fail to let the text speak in the way it was originally intended to speak.

In the mid-1900s, a less historical approach arose that was sometimes called the framework hypothesis. [6] The idea was that Genesis 1 provided a more poetic, theological framework for thinking about God and the creation rather than a literal, scientific, or historical one. However, perhaps it would be clearer to call this a literary-theological approach to the text.

For example, John Walton would categorize the genre of Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, perhaps even as liturgy. [7] As ancient cosmology, it was presenting the Israelite view of the world without giving us a scientific view of the world. The key aspects of it were about the nature of God and the creation, not the specifics of how the creation unfolded historically. If it were a liturgy, Walton wonders if Israel might have re-enacted God coming to sit on his throne in a cosmic temple each year. [8]

Viewing it in this way removes any need for us to harmonize the details of Genesis 1 with modern science. In effect, they become somewhat independent of each other. Genesis 1 comes to be about who God is and how Israel was meant to view the creation. Science is then asking completely different questions. We will explore the genre of Genesis 1 in the next section.

[1] Ken Ham, The Lie: Unravelling the Myth: Evolution/Millions of Years (Master, 1987).

[2] E.g., Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution (Harper, 1999), 77-80. So also Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free, 2007), 177-79.

[3] See Philo's work, On the Creation.

[4] Origen, On First Principles, Book 4.

[5] Augustine, Confessions, Book 11; Literal Meaning of Genesis.  

[6] For example, Nicholaas Ridderbos, Is There a Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science? (Pathway, 1957).

[7] John Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1 (InterVarsity, 2009), 14-20.

[8] Lost World, 86-91.

3.7 The State of the Question

This is the conclusion to chapter 3, "Creation and the Big Bang." Any publishers interested yet?

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies
3.3 An Inflationary Cosmology
3.4 Ex Nihilo Creation
3.5 The Cosmological Argument
3.6 The Fine Tuning Argument

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3

_____________________________
3.7 The State of the Question
In this chapter, we have explored how the prevailing theories of the universe's origins fit "hand in glove" with the notion of a Creator and an Intelligent Designer. The Big Bang theory implies that the universe had a beginning. This fact leads naturally to the question of why the universe began and what its cause or causes were. The naturalists of the twentieth century were keenly aware of this dynamic, and it arguably fueled their resistance to the Big Bang theory.

Our increasing awareness of the universe's fine tuning has significantly amplified this argument. Even non-theists recognize the extreme improbability of the universe's balance such that the conditions for life are even remotely possible. [1] By far the most intuitive explanation for the universe's order is an Intelligent Designer. The argument would not specify much about such a Designer -- for example, it would not necessarily say anything about that Designer's moral character or awareness of happenings within the universe. Nevertheless, the case for a Creator based on the beginning and order of the universe seems eminently reasonable. 

What then are the non-theistic alternatives? In his 1988 Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking suggested that perhaps the earliest quantum universe was a "no boundary" state to which our normal rules of cause and effect did not apply. He uses the example of the North Pole. You do not ask what is north of the North Pole because of the curvature of the Earth. Maybe, he suggests, the earliest universe was like that such that it does not make sense to ask why it began. [2] He and James Hartle called this the "no boundary proposal" in the early 1980s. [3]

Although they developed the math, much of this proposal sounds like a "what if." Over the decades, Hawking also leaned into the idea that this no boundary state might generate multiple universes -- the multiverse concept. He then invokes the anthropic principle. It is unlikely that most of these universes would be functional. However, he would say, the fact that we are having this conversation implies that we were the lucky ones.

In our fine-tuning section, we mentioned these suggestions. Our universe is amazingly balanced just right not only for the universe to be functional but for life to possibly exist on planets in certain key locations. Various versions of the multiverse proposal propose that the vast majority of universes are non-functional. They rise and go nowhere because they are not finely tuned as ours is. 

Perhaps they have too dense of matter and no galaxies form, or they do not have enough density to form. Maybe they have too many or too few dimensions. Some did not have an asymmetry between matter and antimatter or in the distribution of energy in the earliest universe. The ratios of their forces were not balanced to form atoms, or the resonances of their atoms were not balanced to form heavier atoms.

We are only here, this line of thought suggests, because we happen to live in the Goldilocks universe that was finely tuned. We are the one in a nearly infinite number of failed universes. And that is why you can read this book.

From an intuitive standpoint, these proposals seem less than satisfying. In itself, that would not mean they are wrong. Just maybe the rules of the early universe were different? Just maybe we are the lucky universe among a nearly infinite number of failed ones? Or the idea that there is an Intelligent Designer who created a universe that was "just right"? 

The last option currently seems most reasonable.

[1] Another example would be Stephen Weinberg in The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (Basic, 1993).

[2] Hawking, History of Time, 137.

[3] James B. Hartle and Stephen W. Hawking, “Wave Function of the Universe,” Physical Review D 28 (1983): 2960–2975.

3.5 The Cosmological Argument

The sections of this chapter before this section:

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies
3.3 An Inflationary Cosmology
3.4 Ex Nihilo Creation

_____________________________
3.5.1 Ancient and Medieval Versions
In the chapter so far, we have noted that both secular cosmology and Christian theology suggest that the universe had a beginning. We have also seen how many naturalistic scientists of the twentieth century resisted the idea of a "Big Bang" because of traditional arguments for God as Creator. In this section, we turn to the long-standing Christian tradition known as the cosmological argument, which maintains that belief in a Creator is a deeply reasonable conclusion based on the universe having a beginning.

Perhaps the first articulation of the cosmological argument did not even come from a Christian or Jew but from the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the late 300s BCE. Aristotle noted that things in motion have been moved by something else. He thus imagined things being moved now being moved by something before them. But he didn't think this sequence of one thing pushing another could go back infinitely, so he suggested there must have been a "Prime Mover." This first mover moved everything else but was unmoved itself. [1] However, he did not see this mover as a person.

In the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas would take this line of thought and Christianize it. [2] God, he argued, was this first mover. He had several other arguments for the existence of God. Probably the one of most interest to us is his argument from "efficient causes." As we observe the world around us, everything that happens has a cause. And those events had a cause. But this sequence cannot go back infinitely, he supposed. Therefore, there must have been a first Cause, which is God.

He had three more. One was an argument from contingency. Everything around us is not necessary. The Earth is not necessary. The Milky Way galaxy is not necessary. However, if everything were contingent, at some point nothing would exist. But then nothing could exist now. Surely there must be at least one Necessary entity to ground existence. And this, he argued, is God. He had two other arguments about degrees of perfection and the order of nature.

These kinds of arguments are variations on what is called the cosmological argument or the argument from cause. You might liken it to the line of the song from the Sound of Music -- "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could." And, therefore, there must be a God, a Creator.

The chief objection to such arguments is the question of why the progression cannot go back forever. In the 1700s, David Hume (1711-76) made such an objection. Just because it does not match our common sense, he argued, does not disprove that it could be so. [3]

3.5.2 Contemporary Versions
We have already seen in this chapter that the Big Bang theory answers this question of infinite regression. This is some of the reason that so many scientists of the twentieth century resisted it. As Georges Lemaître rightly observed, the idea of a beginning in cosmology directly supports the cosmological argument.

We might note some of the modern efforts to address the question of infinite regression from a philosophical and even mathematical perspective. The key figure here is William Lane Craig, who revived a medieval Islamic argument for the existence of God called the Kalaam argument. [4] A simple version of his argument goes like this:

Textbox: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Sometimes you will hear a popular response of, "Then where did God come from?" However, God does not fit within this logic because he does not have a cause. The first premise is that "whatever begins to exist has a cause." But God is not in this category.

Here is another way to put it. The argument is an argument about this universe. Everything that happens in this universe has a cause. And the universe itself as a whole would seem to need a Cause. However, God is not this universe. God is prior to and distinct from this universe. He is therefore outside this argument. We do not know if he needs a cause from this argument. Therefore, this attempt at rebuttal confuses God with the creation and is a non sequitur -- something that does not follow from the logic. 

Craig has also argued that an actual infinite does not exist in this universe. This is an intriguing concept that is attractive in many ways. Craig himself has argued for this idea by invoking the absurdity of a parable known as "Hilbert's Hotel." In this parable, there is a hotel with infinite rooms that are full. But when a new guest arrives, the clerk can simply move the person in room 1 to room 2 -- along with all other subsequent rooms -- and there is now a vacancy. In fact, by moving all the people in odd rooms to even rooms, there is now an infinite vacancy. Craig suggests that, while this seems mathematically possible, it makes little sense in the real universe.

Whatever one thinks of Craig's argument, the universe does not seem to be infinite, and the current thinking is that it had a beginning. In chapter 5, we will explore the quantum realm and realize that infinite does not exist on the quantum level either. The world cannot be divided infinitely small in space either. So it would seem that Craig is correct. While infinite may exist in mathematics, it does not seem to be a real entity in the physical universe.

3.5.3 The Attributes of God
It seems fitting to end this discussion of the cosmological argument with some possible inferences we can draw about the nature of a Creator based on cause. From a standpoint of faith, let us move beyond a mere scientific argument to one that includes faith that God created the universe out of nothing. The issue of creation would seem to be one in which science and faith are potentially in continuity. Science does not tell us what triggered the creation. Scripture may or may not specify the how of creation. The two might easily be in continuity with each other, overlapping but distinct in the questions they address.

Accordingly, let us assume by faith that the universe was created by God out of nothing. Let us assume by faith that God created not only the matter of the universe but space itself. Let us assume that God designed it thoroughly, determining what the laws of the universe would be. This is a quite different situation from a cook coming up with a new recipe using existing ingredients. The cook did not invent the ingredients or their chemical makeup. The cook did not invent the laws of chemistry that govern how those molecules will interact with each other.

No, creation ex nihilo is not something that we have any experience with. God creates the very rules and laws of this universe. Perhaps God creates the logic of this universe. What God might create in some other universe might be completely incomprehensible to us because we have no point of reference to understand it. We are exploring the concept of true and thoroughgoing creation out of nothing.

What might this imply about God? First, if God truly creates the universe out of nothing, then he must surely have as much power as he creates or more. That is to say, he must surely be omnipotent or all-powerful in relation to the creation. You cannot lift 200 pounds if you are not 200 pounds strong. By inference, therefore, God must be at least "universe-strong."

Some pose non-sensical questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that he cannot move it?" This is a game with words, the fallacy of equivocation where the same word is used with different meanings. God can lift any rock he creates because he is all-powerful. Because he is all-powerful, it is not possible that he would create a rock he could not lift. The wording makes it sound like this means he is less powerful, but that is a mere trick of wording. God can lift any rock.

A second implication is that God must surely have exhaustive knowledge of the universe he has created. Again, he is not like a cook in the kitchen. He is designing everything. God must therefore be omniscient in relation to the workings of the universe -- every possible aspect of the creation. If everything in the universe is determined, he must also know every actual dimension of the universe as well. In chapter 6, we will argue that God can know every actual aspect of the universe without determining it as well.

It can take some processing for us to begin to fathom the depths of such omniscience. Presumably, God knows all our possible experiences -- he created their possibility. God learns nothing. Emotions in God must then surely be personifications -- images to help us understand God that are not literally applicable to him. For example, anger implies reaction, but if God knows everything, then he does not react in the same way that we react as humans.

As creator of everything, God must also be the creator of the possibility of evil. We will discuss in chapter 5 the theological benefits of seeing God as permitting evil to happen rather than him being the direct cause. Nevertheless, omniscience would seem to imply that God thoroughly knows what evil is because he created its possibility.

On some of these matters, we may find out in the kingdom of God that our feeble reasonings missed the mark. After all, we are discussing the infinite and that which is beyond our comprehension. Our finite and fallen state suggests that we should approach all these questions with great humility, for we are but dust.

[1] Aristotle talks about the Prime Mover in several places, Metaphysics 1071b12–22, 1072a19–30, 1074b33–1075a11 and Physics, VIII.5–6.

[2] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I.2.3.

[3] Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

[4] William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Macmillan , 1979).

3.3 An Inflationary Cosmology

Previous posts in this chapter:

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies

3.4 Ex Nihilo Creation
3.5 The Cosmological Argument
3.6 The Fine Tuning Argument 
3.7 The State of the Question
_______________________________

3.3 In 1981, Alan Guth published a landmark paper hypothesizing that several problems in cosmology might be explained if the early universe underwent a rapid inflation in fractions of a second from a tiny, hot, dense state into a much larger size, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. [1] For one, there was the "horizon problem." This was the fact that the universe appears somewhat uniform in all directions even though it is not old enough for its parts otherwise to have ever been in contact with each other. Similarly, the universe is generally "flat," a condition that would not likely have been the case without some special circumstance such as the expansion Guth proposed.

Finally, "grand unified theories" had proposed that the fundamental forces of nature were all related to each other in the early universe. However, such theories imply the existence of monopoles, lone charges that might exist without their opposing charge. This phenomenon has never been observed. Guth proposed that they might have been so widely distributed by a rapid expansion of the early universe as to be undetected. 

In the decades that have followed, a general consensus has emerged in terms of the timeline and sequence of the universe's early expansion. Later in the chapter, we will explore how the events that unfolded seemed to be "just right" for the universe to form in a way that would eventually allow for stars and planets such as ours. If we did not live in a "Goldilocks universe," none of us would be here today.

As in the image above, the universe is currently thought to have begun in an incredibly hot, dense singularity. Then, something pulls the trigger. It begins to expand rapidly. Three minutes later, we will have atomic nuclei. [2]

The Planck Epoch
In the time from beginning to nuclei, the universe will undergo several rapid "epochs." It starts in the Planck epoch. This is the time immediately after the Big Bang when the laws of physics as we now know them break down. The universe is arguably the smallest possible space, 10^-35 meters, a quantum of space, and the smallest quantum of time passes, around 10^-43 seconds. This is the starting line.

The Grand Unification Epoch
Then gravity distinguishes itself from the other fundamental forces. This is the "Grand Unification Epoch." In the next fraction of a second, from 10^-43 to 10^-36 seconds, the other fundamental forces are still combined. Only gravity has become an independent force.

The Inflationary Epoch
Now comes the inflation. In the period from 10^-36 to 10^-32 seconds, the universe goes from a subatomic size of 10^-26 meters to about the size of a marble of 1cm. This is the period that Guth predicted, explaining the horizon problem, the flatness of the universe, and the lack of detecting monopoles.

The Electroweak Epoch
From 10^-32 to 10^-12 seconds, the strong nuclear force -- which eventually will hold the nuclei of atoms together -- distinguishes itself from the still combined other forces, called the "electroweak" force. The sphere of space that will become the universe is about 300 light seconds in size or a little more than half the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The Quark Epoch
This epoch begins with the electroweak force dividing into the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force. We now have all four of the fundamental forces of nature. In this period from 10^-12 to 10^-6 seconds, we also see quarks and gluons dominate. In the Standard Model of Particle physics, quarks are some of the most fundamental of particles, thought to be the component parts of protons, neutrons, and a host of other subatomic particles. In this period, they are too hot to glue together yet, but make up a quark-gluon plasma. By the end of the epoch, the universe is about the size of our solar system.

The Hadron Epoch
Early in this period from 10^-6 to one second, matter and antimatter annihilate each other following Einstein's famous equation, E = mc². There is slightly more matter than antimatter, allowing the universe as we know it to continue to unfold. Quarks begin to fuse together to form some of the particles we learned about in high school -- protons and neutrons. The universe is now a second old, and it is now several light years across. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, going at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second.

The Lepton Epoch
The next epoch begins as the universe cools enough for neutrinos to be liberated from matter. From about one to 10 seconds, the universe will expand to be a few million kilometers across. Particles like electrons and neutrinos dominate.  

The Nucleosynthesis Epoch
From 10 seconds to about 3 minutes, the universe has cooled enough for protons and neutrons to fuse together to form nuclei. It is still too hot for electrons to orbit, but the nuclei of hydrogen, helium, as well as some deuterium and lithium to form. [4] The universe is now several light minutes across.

The Photon Epoch
Up to this point, it seems like there is little that might conflict between science and faith. In the standard timeline, the universe is only 3 minutes old. However, the current model now supposes a period of some 380,000 years in which the universe exists in a plasma of photons (light particles), electrons, and nuclei. The soup is initially too hot to form atoms, but it is cooling. By the end of this period, the universe is thought to be about 84 millions light years in diameter.

From about 280,000 years on, the universe is getting cool enough for atoms to begin to "recombine." This will gradually happen all over the universe, reaching the peak of recombination at the end of this epoch.

At the end of ths period, the universe cools enough for photons to be released. This is thought to be the basis for the cosmic microwave background that was discovered in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson. If one is sympathetic to the idea that the days of Genesis 1 could have been epochs, then it is fascinating that the event of Day 1 is the creation of light (Gen. 1:3). According to the current inflationary model, in the 380,000th year, the universe said, "Let there be light."

The Dark Ages
The universe grows dark. The frequency of the light from the cosmic photon release gets stretched as the universe expands and red-shifts everywhere. It goes into the infrared part of the spectrum, the stuff of night goggles. According to the prevailing model, the next 150 million years are a time when gravity slowly pulls hydrogen and helium together into clumps. The expansion was uneven, so there are concentrations of matter where galaxies can form. The dark ages end as the first stars ignite, and there is a cosmic dawn.

If you would like to take Genesis metaphorically, you might see this slow separation and gathering of hydrogen across the universe as analogous to the separation of the waters in Genesis 1:6-8. Now the sky appears.

Galaxy Formation
In the prevailing model, the next 300 million years or so see the formation of huge stars that burn out quickly. The first galaxies begin to form. In the current theory, the oldest observable galaxy is MoM-z14, thought to date to about 300 million years after the Big Bang. 

Reionization Period
In the current model, at the same time galaxies are forming until about a billion years after the Big Bang, the newly formed stars and quasars begin to detach hydrogen nuclei from their electrons. It is called re-ionization because you'll remember that they had been separated in the early universe. Bubbles of ionized hydrogen gas merged with each other, leaving the transparent universe we see today when we look up to the skies.

Generations of Stars
For the next 8 billion years or so -- at least in the current model -- the first generation of stars burn out and go supernova. Some become black holes. Others crunch helium together to begin to form heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. According to the prevailing theory, the elements that will soon become the fundamental elements of life are being created in the burning out, collapsing, and re-formation of stars.

Our Solar System
Again, in the current model, our solar system forms about 4.5 billion years ago, about 9 billion years into the existence of the universe. Our Sun is thought to be a third generation star, meaning that a first star burned out and exploded. Then a second star formed with heavier elements in the mix. It burned out and exploded, creating all the elements we now know. Then that material coalesed around our Sun, Sol, with at least eight planets in tow.

The main feature of this model that could present a potential conflict with faith is the timeline. Those who take Genesis 1 to teach a full creation in six 24 hour days will object to a universe that is 13.5 billion years old. However, there are also interpretations of Genesis 1 that see no conflict here.

We will discuss various interpretations and science strategies in the next chapter. Apart from the timeline, nothing in this sequence seems intrinsically unbiblical or contrary to faith. Indeed, one could suppose that God himself was orchestrating these developments, as we will argue in the later section in this chapter on the Fine-Tuning argument.

[1] Alan H. Guth, “Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems,” Physical Review D 23, no. 2 (1981): 347–356. He published a more popular version of his argument that same year as The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Basic, 1981).

[2] See Stephen Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (Basic, 1993).

[3] Deuterium is hydrogen with a neutron in the nucleus. Normally hydrogen has no neutrons. Lithium has three protons and four neutrons in its nucleus.

3.6 The Fine-Tuning Argument

Here's the next 

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies
3.3 An Inflationary Cosmology
3.4 Ex Nihilo Creation
3.5 The Cosmological Argument

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3

_____________________________ 
One of the most compelling arguments for an Intelligent Designer is the fine tuning argument. 

3.6.1 The Argument from Design
In addition to the cosmological argument, the idea that the order of the world points toward an intelligent Creator goes back to ancient times. [1] This "argument from design" or "teleological argument" found its classic expression in the late 1700s with William Paley (1743-1805), an English minister who argued that the complexity of organs like the eye pointed directly to the existence of God as its designer. [2] If you found a watch, he argued, you would not think that it happened to come into existence by chance. You would assume that there was a watchmaker.

However, the argument from design came into question after the theory of evolution began to gain prominence. Contrary to Paley's argument, Darwin's theory argued that complex organisms like humans evolved on their own from simpler ones. In the theory of evolution, the eye evolved into its current form over millions of years entirely by nature "selecting" those versions of a developing eye that gave an advantage to prior organisms. The notion seems to violate our intuitions, but the scientific community would quickly adopt this perspective. As the twentieth century progressed, the teleological argument seemed to have fallen upon hard times.

Enter the fine-tuning argument. The fine tuning argument is the recognition that the stable existence of the universe as a whole is dependent on a significant number of minute, extremely balanced factors. The astoundingly narrow nature of these parameters is such that even non-theists recognize their extreme improbability. [3] We live in a Goldilocks universe that happens to be "just right."

To account for such "fine tuning," non-theists often resort to the notion of a multiverse. [4] In this context, the multiverse concept suggests that our universe is just one of countless universes that are regularly coming into existence. The overwhelming majority of those universes -- this theory supposes -- are failed universes. They are born defunct and non-functioning. We just happen, the sentiment goes, to be in one of very few lucky ones that is sustainable. 

But then we wouldn't be having this conversation if we weren't, the notion continues. It's called the anthropic principle. [5] Our existence is extremely improbable. But we are here, so we must just be impossibly lucky. 

3.6.2 A Goldilocks Universe
Earlier in the chapter, we presented the current theories regarding the early inflationary period of the universe. If we follow the path of the universe's inflation, we can see at every turn the ways in which our universe is thinly balanced. The precision necessary not only for us to be here but for the universe as a whole to exist in such a stable form is truly astounding.

We begin with the three dimensions that are intuitively apparent to us -- up/down, right/left, forward/backward. What would happen if there were more or fewer dimensions to a universe? It is doubtful that such universes could form stars, planets, atoms, or other stable structures. The inverse-square law that governs gravity and electromagnetism depends on a three-dimensional framework. With more or fewer dimensions, forces would not balance in ways that permit stable orbits or atoms. [5] 

As minute fractions of a second passed, the fundamental forces of nature began to differentiate: gravity, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, and eventually the weak nuclear force. First gravity becomes distinguishable from the other forces. The strong nuclear force becomes differentiated from the electromagnetic force. In the atom, we see these forces balanced on the narrowest of margins. 

The strong nuclear force holds protons together despite the fact that their similar charges repel each other electromagnetically. Yet the nuclear force is too weak at a distance to affect electrons outside the nucleus of the atom. The opposite charges of the nucleus and electrons holds the two in place, but quantum mechanics keeps them from collapsing into the nucleus. If any of these forces were any stronger or weaker, atoms couldn't form. 

The fraction of mass that converts to energy in nuclear reactions is just right for stars to be able to form and exist stably. If it were a greater number, stars would burn out too quickly for planets and life to form. If it were less, stars would not form in the first place.

Even during inflation, quantum fluctuations left slight wrinkles in density, which later became the seeds of galaxies. The map of the cosmic microwave background pictured earlier reflects an unevenness in the distribution of the universe's density. If it had distributed completely evenly, without any "wrinkles," then galaxies would have never formed. Remarkably, the asymmetry of the universe is just right for us to have a universe that works the way we need it to work for us to be here.

A similar asymmetry of the early universe was the fact that there was slightly more matter than antimatter at the key moment. If the two had been entirely balanced, they would have annihilated into a universe that was pure energy in keeping with Einstein's formula E = mc^2. But the slightly greater amount of matter meant that a sufficient portion of matter survived this early moment of annihilation. 

Another finely tuned feature was the overall density of matter in the early universe. If matter had been denser, the universe might not have expanded in the way it has in order to form habitable galaxies. It all would have crunched back into itself. Yet if it had been less dense, it might have expanded too fast for galaxies and solar systems to form.

We might finally mention more conditions under which atoms were formed. We have already mentioned the finely tuned balance of forces in the atom. Assuming that the early universe initially was almost entirely made up of hydrogen -- the simplest atom -- the process by which heavier elements were then formed depends on a razor thin balance.

In particular, the amount of mass converted to energy when hydrogen fuses into helium -- the first step toward there being any other elements -- is finely tuned. If it were greater, all the hydrogen of the universe would have fused into helium. Stars would burn out too quickly, and we would have no water. If it were less, we would have no helium and, by extension, no oxygen or carbon. In addition, the formation of carbon from three helium atoms only can take place because of some very specific "resonances" that exist in these nuclei. 

Like all the other features we have mentioned, the balance is "just right" for these heavier atoms to form that are necessary for life.

The fine tuning of the universe is quite remarkable. It seems to be inexplicable from a standpoint of our universe alone, although in the final section we will mention some attempts at a naturalistic explanation. At the same time, the hypothesis of an Intelligent Designer would provide an eminently reasonable explanation. While perhaps not provable, belief in a Creator based on the fine tuning argument is very reasonable.

[1] E.g., Plato, Timaeus 28a-29a.

[2] William Paley, Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802).

[3] E.g., Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Back Bay, 2005).

[4] Another example would be Martin Rees in Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe (Basic, 2001).

[5] E.g., Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988). “We see the universe the way it is because we exist.”

[6] So Rees, Six Numbers. The paragraphs that follow are largely drawn from his observations.

3.4 Ex Nihilo and God (Science and Scripture)

So much to write, so little time. To avoid oversaturation, let me skip forward in the chapter. Previous writings in this series have included:

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
_____________________________
Einstein's general theory of relativity and Guth's inflationary universe both potentially prompt reflection on the concept of ex nihilo creation, creation "out of nothing."

3.5.1 Anachronistic Readings
First, a little background on the doctrine. One dynamic of our interpretation of Scripture is that we inadvertantly read our assumptions into the words of the Bible. For example, we will see in the next chapter that Genesis 1:1-2 probably did not originally picture creation out of nothing. It simply wasn't a perspective that existed at the time. [1]

Similarly, when we read Romans 4:17, which says that God calls into being things that do not exist, we are prone to hear creation out of nothing. However, the paradigms of people at the time did not likely hear such comments in the way we do. For example, when I make a pancake out of various ingredients, I am "calling into existence" something that did not exist before.

In the past, some have seen 2 Maccabees 7:28 as the first instance of creation out of nothing (early 100s BCE). The verse speaks of God not using existing materials to make the skies and the land. However, many currently think it is anachronistic to hear ex nihilo creation here. It seems to fit the time of writing better to think the author is saying God did not use materials as they appear to us but rather formless hyle, as in Wisdom 11:17 (first century BCE or CE).

Hebrews 11:3 would arguably fit in this same category as well: "that which is seen has come to exist not from things that appear." As in 2 Maccabees 7:28, the verse was not likely a denial of God's complete use of any material at all but an affirmation that he did not create the world out of materials as they currently appear (phenomena). We arguably see ex nihilo creation in these passages because it is our existing paradigm, but it arguably was not a paradigm that yet existed at the time.

3.5.2 Gnostic Controversies
Most scholars currently hold that the doctrine of creation out of nothing developed as a Jewish and Christian doctrine during the Gnostic controversies of the 100s CE. [2] Prior to those debates, it was not uncommon for Christian thinking to be dualistic. For example, the Gospel of John says, "That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Despite efforts to reinterpret such comments differently, John seems to assume a metaphysical dualism of some sort. [3]

To be fair, the kind of stark dualism that we find in Descartes in the 1600s did not yet exist either. As Dale Martin has demonstrated, the ancients still saw the heavens as material even if much thinner material than that of our bodies. [4] For example, Aristotle saw the material of the skies as a fifth element, ether, from which we get the word ethereal. [5] The key distinction was more between the corporeal and embodied versus the disembodied spiritual. It was not so much between material and immaterial.

Nevertheless, it is common to confuse any dualisms in the New Testament with the Gnostic dualism of the second century. However, Platonic dualism is not the same as Gnostic dualism. The dualisms prior to the second century CE saw the embodied world as inferior to the disembodied heavenly realm ("the spirit is willing; the flesh is weak" -- Mark 14:38). However, they did not see the embodied world as intrinsically evil. Plato saw the body as the "prison of the soul," a negative connotation. [6] But he did not see the body as evil.

Gnosticism took that next step. Building on the common assumption that God created the cosmos out of underlying, eternal material (hyle), they saw this material substratum as a basis for the existence of evil. In the mid-second century CE, the Christian Marcion went so far as to suggest that a "Demiurge" was the creator of the Old Testament, an evil god different from the Father of Jesus.

In response to this Gnostic dualism, both Judaism and Christianity increasingly asserted that God had not only organized the material of the world -- the previous view -- but that God had created the underlying material of the heavens and earth itself out of nothing. We find this development as early as Theophilus of Antioch around 177CE. [7] As the Nicene Creed would clarify in 381 CE, God is the maker of everything "seen and unseen."

3.5.3 Creator of Emptiness
For two millennia, you could argue that the doctrine of ex nihilo still carried certain cosmological assumptions  of which its proponents were not aware. Namely, I suggest that Jews and Christians throughout the centuries often understood creation out of nothing to be the placement of matter into emptiness. They may not have seen this emptiness as vast. More likely, they saw the imagined space into which God placed material as extremely small compared to our sense of the universe's vastness today. 

Speculation was limited about what might be beyond the earth, the starry firmament above, and whatever underworld might be beneath us. The “edges” of the cosmos were often thought to be bounded by the primordial waters of Genesis 1:7. Even after the heliocentric debates of the 1500s and 1600s, it is doubtful that someone like Isaac Newton envisioned the universe on anything like its modern scale, though by his day the stars were increasingly seen as distant suns scattered through a much larger cosmos than the biblical authors might have imagined.

Einstein's theory of relativity and developments thereafter have given us a sense that space itself can curve and expand. These insights may prompt still further developments in our understanding of creation ex nihilo. It should now be clear that a robust sense of creation out of nothing should not only include the matter within the universe, but the space in which that matter exists. Moving well beyond anything the biblical authors or Christians of the first two millennia envisaged, we should now see creation as the creation of both space and matter.

I alluded earlier in this chapter to the distinction between zero and the empty set. Zero still suggests a framework of numbers. However, the empty set is the set that contains no numbers, not even zero. Let me suggest that, in a post-relativity, inflationary universe framework, creation out of nothing is creation out of empty set rather than creation out of zero. God creates both matter and the space that matter occupies. God created energy, antimatter, and any quantum fields that may anchor space. God created the singularity that expanded into our current universe.

It is difficult for our human minds to imagine what non-space emptiness might be, a nothing beyond both vacuum and emptiness. Yet it would seem that this is the "non-state" of the universe prior to creation. A clear implication is that God created the rules for the universe out of nothing as well. We cannot assume that any prior rules of logic or metaphysics existed that we could fathom. We should suspect that even notions we have of the Trinity and such are analogies rather than literal.

We are speaking of true incomprehensibility, that of which we cannot speak. A via negativa on a level we cannot fathom. [8]

[1] In John Walton's book, The Lost World of Genesis 1 (InterVarsity, 2009), he argues that ex nihilo creation simply isn't addressed in Genesis 1. The point of Genesis is that the creation was "non-functional" before God created. In his view, the question of the materials God used simply wasn't the question they were asking (see especially Propositions 1-4).

[2] For a comprehensive treatment of the doctrine's development, see Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of "Creation Out of Nothing" in Early Christian Thought (T & T Clark, 1994). 

[3] Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Baker Academic, 2008). So also N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), 440-47.

[4] Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (Yale University, 1999).

[5] Aristotle, De caelo 1.268b–269a, 1.3.270b

[6] E.g., Plato, Phaedo 82e. In Cratylus 400c, he calls the body the tomb of the soul (soma sema).

[7] Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum 2.4.

[8] The notion of a "negative way" or via negativa suggests that we can only say what God's reality is not rather than what it is.

________________________________
3.3 An Expanding Universe (inflationary cosmology)

3.5 The Cosmological Argument
3.6 The Fine Tuning Argument

3.2 Three Cosmologies

Previous writings here on the blog have included:

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
______________________________

3.2 Three Cosmologies
As the vastness of the universe became more and more apparent over the course of the twentieth century, three primary theories emerged to account for its origins and ongoing nature. At the middle of the century, the favorite was the so-called steady state theory, championed to great effect by individuals like Fred Hoyle. A small minority thought the math of general relativity might point to a beginning of the universe with something like a "big bang." The name "big bang theory" was actually given to this approach in ridicule. However, after it became clear that this was the most likely beginning to the universe, some suggested an ongoing oscillating big bang so as to avoid the need to invoke something like a Creator. [1]

textbox: Three Models:
steady state theory -- the universe has no beginning and matter is constantly being created as space expands
big bang theory -- the universe began at a point in the past in a dense hot state that has been expanding and cooling ever since 
oscillating big bang theory -- the universe begins, expands, contracts, expands again endlessly

3.2.1 Steady State Theory
After Einstein introduced the general theory of relativity, it was not long before individuals like Alexander Friedmann (1922) and Georges Lemaître (1927) recognized that the theory could point to a beginning to the universe followed by cosmic expansion. Einstein himself did not find this possibility appealing. He preferred a static universe that neither expanded nor contracted but that more or less stayed the same for all time. To counteract gravity and keep the universe static, he introduced a "cosmological constant" to his equations.

However, in 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding -- everywhere. As a light-emitting object moves away, the frequency of the waves gets elongated (like the Doppler effect when a siren is moving away from you). The result is what's called a "red shift." Galaxies all appeared to be moving away from one another, as though space itself were stretching. 

So, despite Einstein's attempt with the cosmological constant, the scientific community now had to come to grips with a universe that wasn't static at all. [2] In fact, it might very well have had a beginning. Georges Lemaître had seen this theoretical possibility of the math in 1927. He was both a scientist and a Belgian Roman Catholic priest. He saw this evidence as support for the idea of God as a Creator.

Enter Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle in 1948. Finding the possibility of a "Big Bang" at the beginning distasteful, they proposed a "steady state theory." The idea was that as the universe expanded, the average density of the universe stayed the same by creating matter to fill the gaps. They proposed that about every billion years, one hydrogen atom came into being for every cubic meter in the universe. They suggested that matter is continuously being created and thus that there did not need to be a beginning (or a Creator). Thus, the universe had no beginning or end in time.

Hoyle was known for his charismatic personality. In fact, he was the one who coined the expression "big bang" for the idea of a beginning. He regularly appeared on the radio and made it easy for the public to believe that his preferred cosmological option was the best of the alternatives.

3.2.2 The Big Bang Theory
As early as 1922, Alexander Friedmann recognized that Einstein's relativity equations could be interpreted to suggest a beginning to the universe in a very dense state. Friedmann's life unfortunately was cut short in Russia by typhoid, but seven years later the Belgian scientist Georges Lemaître independently came to the same conclusion.

With the confirmation of the universe's expansion in 1929, the possibility that the universe began with a "big bang" became even more plausible. Although the expression was originally one of derision, the name stuck. Nevertheless, this option remained unpopular among naturalists until the mid-1960s. Naturalism insists on explaining all the phenomenon of the world without recourse to the existence of the supernatural or spiritual. Many naturalists resisted the idea of a cosmic beginning, since a universe with no beginning seemed to remove the need for any first cause or Creator.

Nevertheless, events that unfolded in 1965 finally settled the debate. Early, in the 1940s, scientists like George Gamow had suggested that if the universe did begin in a hot, dense, fiery state, then the leftover radiation from that fireball should be detectable still today. As space stretched, the leftover radiation would stretch into the microwave frequencies and would form a sort of cosmic microwave background (CMB) everywhere in the universe, with a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero.

It was by accident in 1965 that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson stumbled upon this very background
radiation. They were working on a radio telescope for Bell Labs, but wherever they pointed the telescope in the sky, it was picking up a faint microwave hiss. They tried everything to eliminate possible noise sources, even cleaning out pigeon droppings inside the antenna. But the signal remained.

When Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles at nearby Princeton University heard about the situation, they immediately suspected that Penzias and Wilson had come upon the very "afterglow of creation" that for which they were planning to test. This puzzling signal was exactly what Gamow and others had predicted if the universe had begun with a "big bang." Hoyle and others were unable to account for it with their steady state theory, and the big bang theory became the primary theory for the universe's origin.

As we will see in the section on the inflationary universe, the current thinking is that the cosmic microwave background comes from around 380,000 years after the beginning, when the universe cooled enough for photons to be released universe wide. "Let there be light," you might say. If the universe were infinitely old, the background radiation would have already dissipated. The CMB is thus strong evidence that the universe had a beginning.

3.2.3 The Oscillating Big Bang
Naturalism insists on explaining the phenomena of the world without recourse to the supernatural or spiritual. However, the Big Bang theory suggested that the universe had a beginning, which raised the question of why the universe began. Theists were all too ready with an answer -- a Creator. This left the naturalist to ask what other explanation there might be.

One option came to be known as the "oscillating" big bang. As early as the 1930s, Richard Tolman had explored the possibility of "cyclic" universes. In the late 1900s, the theory revived of a universe that was in a constant process of rapid expansion, then contracting into a crunch, then expanding again in an endless, eternal cycle. In this way, the universe would have no beginning or ending. It would just be one endless cycle of expansion and contraction -- bang and crunch, bang and crunch for all eternity.

The main problem with the theory was entropy, the tendency of systems to increase in disorder and to lose heat. Each recycled universe would thus have less usable energy than the previous one. The result is basically a countdown to a universe without order -- not an infinitely repeatable cycle. Further, by the early twenty-first century, it was clear that there was not enough matter in the universe for its gravity to pull it back into a crunch. Indeed, the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Its destiny could actually be a cosmic "rip" rather than a cosmic "crunch."

[1] Einstein preferred a static model in the early twentieth century, with the universe always being more or less as it is today.

[2] Einstein later called the constant a blunder, although it did turn out to be part of the equation.