God-breathed (part one)

As noted other posts, many Christians interpret the phrase "all Scripture is God-breathed" to mean the entire Bible is infallible on a literal level. Thus, a "God-breath" was perfectly received and understood by the Biblical author.

I, of course, do not share that view. For the reasons explained below, I don't think this perspective is a teaching of the Bible.

Rather, God invariably begins with starting materials which are raised to something far better. Yet, the limitations of the starting material are never overlooked. Instead, they are incorporated and made something more beautiful. 

This is a repeated pattern throughout the Bible and confirmed by nature. This pattern is so strong that I think it is a central teaching of the Bible, and perhaps overlooked by the Sola Scripture crowd. Yet, it is central unifying aspect of the Holy Spirit and Jesus.

So, let's dive into what I'm talking about.

"Now the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the water." (Genesis 1:2-3, NIV).

This is the familiar quote. Creation (or recreation) has not begun. God does not begin from nothing, but uses a primordial earth. This is described as "formless", "empty", and "darkness was over the surface of the deep." The only recognizable attribute is "water."

From there, Creation (or recreation) begins in verse 4 with "let there be light". It is this light that is called "good" and is then separated from darkness to make day and night. Note, God does not explicitly call any other prior attributes - formless, empty, darkness, or water - as evil, or bad. Perhaps they are inferred as such in a perpetual and infinite state if that is all that existed.

Regardless, darkness is made to cooperate with light to make the daily cycle, which most certainly is good,

The same happens with water in verse 6. Water is separated by a vault to form lower sea and the upper echelon water. Sky is in between as "God called this vault 'sky'".

Note, the ancients likely believed that water encircled the earth, as the sky was blue and rain came from it, which the Bible calls the windows of heaven.

Regardless, the primordial waters are not inherently evil, but become building blocks of something greater and better. The planet earth is forming.

In fact, God seas a greater potential within the depths of the chaotic waters. This happens on day 3, where God gathers all the waters to one place to make land. (v. 10). This, too, is called good.

God is constructing something beautiful out of something chaotic, formless, and likely ugly to look at. But each time, the primordial building blocks are utilized, they are not discarded. They are transformed.

Let's shift to natural history and we can see other similar patterns.

Fifteen billion years ago, matter, as we know it, did not exist. Instead, the primary element in the cosmos was hydrogen. They combined together, a process that released countless fires around the universe. In these fires, the hydrogen atoms merged with others, and more, and yet more.

Their nuclei clumped together and formed every element of the periodic table. This process today we call 'nuclear fusion' and it still occurs today, in our sun and every star in the night sky.

We are literally all stardust. I'm sure God gets a kick out that. As we look at the sun or night stars, and see their beauty, God saw us in stellar fires of the ancient cosmos.

God called forth matter from the heart of the sun. God assembled all that is from these stars. God did not leave these very, very large clumps of hydrogen alone. But God saw the potential in their re-organization and just it all on fire.

For billions of earths.

Roughly one billion years ago, life, we know it, did not exist on earth. Instead, the precursors of like, unattached organic molecules floated in a primordial ooze that covered the earth. You can say that life was formless, empty, and water covered the deep.

Somehow, I don't know, maybe God used electric sparks, but they formed larger and larger molecules. Eventually, enough of them formed a porto-cellular organelle, perhaps a DNA molecule or maybe a photosynthetic piece of chlorophyll. These eventually combined with other cellular organelles to create the first full cell. These in turn cooperated with others to form multi-cellular organisms.

But at each level, the full potential of the prior building blocks are valued and incorporated into something larger, more complex, and beautiful.

God does not forget the starting materials, but shows their potential. The "fingerprints" of this process remains today. For instance, every mitochondria in your body has its own DNA set. A likely product of evolutionary cooperation where mitochondria were once independent organisms that joined a cell a which needed it.

The same happened with chloroplasts and their incorporation into plants and photosynthetic bacteria.

Many Christians balk at evolution. I see the fingerprint of God. It is a beautiful story. One retold in the Bible itself.

(to be continued)