Creation, light first, then sun?

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vince2paul

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Last night, a non-Catholic friend asked me, how did God created the light on the first day and sun on the fourth day. So what was the source of the first light?

It was a group discussion, one of my catholic friend explained to her “God had to create the definition first, so that people know what is light.” I personally think his answer is wrong.
I told her, I didn’t know the right answer, but since God is God, He can do anything He wants, He even created the earth from nothing.

But I’m very curious about it.
Please help.
Thanks. 😃
 
Genesis 1 is not a scientific or even historical tex, in the sense that it is not an accurate report of what took place. The greatness of Genesis 1 is to bel a proclamation and celebration of faith, saying that only God is God and everything else comes from him. Pay attention to the repetitions, which sound like refrains, and that the works of the first three days are developed in the last three days. The writer used used a pattern of writing to convey his message, God’s message. God speaks, and by his word things exist. The sun was considered god among the Egyptians, but the text refers to it only as “great light”: “God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars” (Gn 1:16); and it makes it very clear that the sun is not god at all. God alone is Light and the source of light. God alone is Life and the source of life, and nothing else can take his place.
 
vince2paul said:
Last night, a non-Catholic friend asked me, how did God created the light on the first day and sun on the fourth day. So what was the source of the first light?

It was a group discussion, one of my catholic friend explained to her “God had to create the definition first, so that people know what is light.” I personally think his answer is wrong.
I told her, I didn’t know the right answer, but since God is God, He can do anything He wants, He even created the earth from nothing.

But I’m very curious about it.
Please help.
Thanks. 😃
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Actually it makes total sense, the Sun in the grand scheme of the Universe came much later than the actual creation.

From modern Physics we estimate the age of the Universe to be around 13.77 Billion years old, our Sun in comparison is quite young 😃 at ONLY about 4.5 Billion years old.
So the Universe was 9.27 Billion years old when our sun was born.
 
I probably ought to review the cosmological writings before I post this, but I believe that according to the Big Bang theorists, in the early years of the universe, when the universe would have become “transparent,” there was light from the residual radiation, without the existence of stars. The expansion of the universe has “stretched” that radiation so that it is now the background microwave noise that is all around us.

Someone who is smarter than I am, feel free to correct me.
 
As already stated, The creation story in genesis is not a scientific document and should not be taken that way. The reason it was written that way was to refute/combat the current belief of the babylonian creation story that was prevalent at the time. The point is not so much HOW God created the world, but that He was the one who created it.
 
The point is not so much HOW God created the world, but that He was the one who created it.
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…and that HE could do both. We live in a well thought-out exile. Eden must’ve been awesome, and Heaven only moreso.

LAUS DEO!!!
 
I like how Dr. Hahn explains it. The Creation account in Genesis is very ordered. In the first three days, God creates the realms: time (day and night), space (sky and sea) and life (land and vegetation). Then the next three days he creates the “rulers” of those realms – in the same order. So day four corresponds to day one, day five to day two, and day six to day three.

As others have said, Genesis 1 is not a science textbook. It need not be interpreted as such.

Of course, that said, I’m sure the Big Bang produced quite a light. And that was billions of years before the formation of our sun. 🙂
 
My take, based on the big bang & evolutionary theory…

When the bang happened, there was a lot of light/energy (day 1). As objects began to solidify, they cast shadows, thus making day and night. Since our solar system is relatively young, it formed later (days 2 & 3) As time went on, the sun and moon formed. Also, light began arriving from distant starts (day 4).

Even the order of creation of living things seems to follow the evolutionary theory - God created plants first (day 3-perhaps algae or something similar that didn’t need the light from the sun yet like the stuff that grows deep under the ocean, since the sun didn’t “light” for another day), animal life in the oceans, then birds (day 5), land animals and man (day 6), with man being the last created.

So, I’m with Genesis being a very simplified narrative of how the universe and Earth was actually created, given the knowledge and vocabulary of the ancient writers to understand. And, even though it didn’t occur in 6 24-hour time periods, if it were given to the writer in separate visions, each vision might have been interpreted as being a “day”.
 
It seems to me that the Bible is correct in placing the creation of light or daylight before the creation of the sun. After all, doesn’t daylight start to appear well before the rising sun is visible and doesn’t it linger well after the sun has set?
 
And sun is important… why?? Flips on a lightswitch, a flashlight, a bioluminescent jellyfish…

Why not God as the source of light? Isn’t that in the Bible, anyways, that he is the source of light?
 
SighGuy said:
And sun is important… why?? Flips on a lightswitch, a flashlight, a bioluminescent jellyfish…

Why not God as the source of light? Isn’t that in the Bible, anyways, that he is the source of light?
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SighGuy has it exactly right. God himself was the light. It’s all over the Bible.

And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 22:5)

Notice that the separation of light from darkness appears right at the beginning of the Bible and that St. John makes a statement about light again right at the end of the Bible. Light is at the beginning and end of the Bible. This is a literary technique called bookending which John was very fond of. St. John bookends things both within his Gospel and within his writings from the rest of the Bible. John bookends Mary within his Gospel, placing her at the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry. He bookends the charcoal fire mentioning it twice. We are supposed to notice these things. The Charcoal fire appears when Peter denies Jesus and again when Peter professes his love for Jesus.

John bookends the light at the beginning of the Bible with his own instance of light at the end of the Bible. We are supposed to notice it because we are supposed to understand not just individual verses but understand all the Scriptures as unified whole.

Scripture tells a story. Genesis is “Once upon a time” and Revelation is “They all lived happily ever after.” God himself was the light at the beginning of time and God himself will be the light at the end of time. Christ has already started the restoration of God himself as “light of the world.”

*In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)

**As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. ** (John 9:5)

I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.(John 12:46)*

John mentions light twenty two times in his Gospel.

-Tim-
 
There is a classic interpretation that when God said, “let there be light,” in that moment the angels and the heavenly host were created in their original goodness as intended by God. And God looked on it “and saw that it was good.”

It is just an interpretation but it seems to seek deeper meanings than just the creation of light.
 
The Church Fathers gave various suggestions, what I recall is it could very well have been a light provided temporarily by God, something similar that God provided for the Israelites with the pillar of fire that led them. A temporary light source sounds quite resonable to me.
 
Timothysis said:
There is a classic interpretation that when God said, “let there be light,” in that moment the angels and the heavenly host were created in their original goodness as intended by God. And God looked on it “and saw that it was good.”

It is just an interpretation but it seems to seek deeper meanings than just the creation of light.
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St. Mary of Agreda says the same in her revelations.🙂
 
Timothysis said:
There is a classic interpretation that when God said, “let there be light,” in that moment the angels and the heavenly host were created in their original goodness as intended by God. And God looked on it “and saw that it was good.”

It is just an interpretation but it seems to seek deeper meanings than just the creation of light.
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I understand, and it’s interesting to think about. But do we even need it? If, indeed, actual light preceded the sun in time, and it seems so, then why resort to symbolic understandings of it?
 
1 Jn 1:5. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I understand, and it’s interesting to think about. But do we even need it? If, indeed, actual light preceded the sun in time, and it seems so, then why resort to symbolic understandings of it?
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Well, because Genesis is not a scientific treatise and is trying to explain things in a manner we can understand. Since I don’t take a literal explanation of these events, I find that those interpretations that convey a deeper meaning appeal to me. After all, there had to be a time when God created the heavenly host, wasn’t there? And I can see the creation of light being the light of the angels who serve and adore God. I like it. 🙂
 
Timothysis said:
Well, because Genesis is not a scientific treatise and is trying to explain things in a manner we can understand. Since I don’t take a literal explanation of these events, I find that those interpretations that convey a deeper meaning appeal to me. After all, there had to be a time when God created the heavenly host, wasn’t there? And I can see the creation of light being the light of the angels who serve and adore God. I like it. 🙂
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I’m not opposed to your way of thinking about these things. But the more I see of scientific (and archaeological) developments, the more I am persuaded that there’s more literalness to scripture than we sometimes think. And increased literalness does not particularly contradict you way of thinking.

I am given to my own suppositions and speculations, after all. For example, i have sometimes wondered whether angels (being servitors in ways we don’t really understand) are personifications of complexes of principles. So, for example, some angel might be “in charge” of atomic action universe-wide, drawing the principles of their existence and action directly from the Mind of God. Perhaps at some point in time, God decreed that some complex of such principles have “personhood”. Kind of a neat thought. Reminds one just a bit of St. Francis’ vision of the massive creature in the night sky.

If so, and given that angels’ nature and their actions are the same thing, might we be physically unable to so much as hear an angel’s true name and live? If its name is the totality of innumerable equations and they all entered our minds as a unity, could we no more live through that than we could through a load of sand being shot at us from the mouth of a cannon at close range?
 
Ridgerunner said:
I’m not opposed to your way of thinking about these things. But the more I see of scientific (and archaeological) developments, the more I am persuaded that there’s more literalness to scripture than we sometimes think. And increased literalness does not particularly contradict you way of thinking.

I am given to my own suppositions and speculations, after all. For example, i have sometimes wondered whether angels (being servitors in ways we don’t really understand) are personifications of complexes of principles. So, for example, some angel might be “in charge” of atomic action universe-wide, drawing the principles of their existence and action directly from the Mind of God. Perhaps at some point in time, God decreed that some complex of such principles have “personhood”. Kind of a neat thought. Reminds one just a bit of St. Francis’ vision of the massive creature in the night sky.

If so, and given that angels’ nature and their actions are the same thing, might we be physically unable to so much as hear an angel’s true name and live? If its name is the totality of innumerable equations and they all entered our minds as a unity, could we no more live through that than we could through a load of sand being shot at us from the mouth of a cannon at close range?
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Stop trying to blow my mind! 🙂
 
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