Q. First I will like to say that discovering this site has been very refreshing to my faith, big thanks to you and your team on this good work.
Over the past months I have been reading through my Bible from Genesis all the way down to Revelation, which i have not done in a while. I realized that some of the questions i had as a young believer when doing the same still had not been answered. While these questions do not challenge my faith as they once used to, I still feel a deep intellectual curiosity and I do feel there is something to be gained, even spiritually, from knowing more. So here are the first few couple things I would like to get more insight into:
(1) When was darkness created ? In Gen. 1:1-4 we see darkness mentioned in v. 2, before the creation of light, and again in v. 4, when God separates the light (day) he had created from the darkness. God was and is before all things, including darkness. So what exactly is darkness, and at what point did it come into being? To merely say it is the absence of light does not satisfy me at all.
(2) How was there light before the sun was created? In Genesis 1 we see light created on the first day and the sun and stars created later on the fourth day. To me, even from a purely observational point of view, it seems much too obvious an experiential fact to miss that the sun gives out the light we see. IMO one does not need science to come to this conclusion, just seeing. Perhaps there is a different way of understanding light as it is seen in Genesis 1 that i am not aware of.
(3) In Gen. 1:6-8 we see the sky (vault) created to separate the waters into two. Consequently in verse 9 we see the “waters below” gathered to form the “seas.” Presently, based on scientific discovery, we know that what we have above the sky is “outer space.” So what became of the “waters above”? Are the waters above outer space? (Verse 2 gives a picture of darkness and water existing together, which to me supports this view.) If so, why would the waters above (outer space) and the waters below (seas) differ so much in make when logically they should not. Also, is it possible that darkness and water are somehow equated to each other? And in another line of thinking, did the waters above become “clouds,” since clouds are kind of floating water bodies?
A. Thank you very much for your appreciative words. I’m glad that this blog is an encouragement to your faith. I commend you for reading all the way through the Bible again, and for asking questions about it. I agree with you that there is much to be gained by asking questions and learning from them, even when we do not feel that our very faith is at stake in the answer. I call this blog Good Question on the premise that “there’s no such thing as a bad question.”
In terms of the specific matters you asked about, several other readers of this blog have asked about similar things. So let me start by referring you to the thoughts I have shared in response to them. If you find that these posts address many of your concerns, but not all of them, you can always ask a follow-up question in the comment section of those posts or this one.
Regarding question (1), however, I actually do not have a separate post about darkness on this blog. That is because, simply stated, I do think that darkness simply is the absence of light in the Genesis account. It is not a positive entity that came into existence at one point.
But regarding question (2), please see this post: How was there light on the first day of creation when the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day?
And regarding question (3), please see this post: Does the creation account in Genesis begin with matter (in the form of water) already existing?
In that post you will also find a link to a chapter about the Genesis creation account in an online version of the book Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation that I co-authored with Dr. Stephen J. Godfrey, the curator of paleontology at a museum here in the United States. I think that this chapter will offer some broad answers to your questions, including some thoughts about question (1). In fact, you might find the whole book to be of interest. It begins here.
Keep reading the Bible, and keep thinking about it and pursuing the questions that raises!
Good Question 