In Genesis where is the part God created the Outerspace?

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On the first verse he created Heaven and Earth.
Next “Let there be light”.
Or… God created space before Heaven and Earth.
Or maybe God created Heaven and Earth and then he created the Big bang “Let there be light”?
I’m not being Agnostic, I just found it on “Catholic Talk Show” they were talking about the Big Bang and this made me so curious.
 
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I believe Genesis respected the cosmological science of the day.

In that framework the earth is at the centre of the cosmos and God’s heaven (the Empyrean) was literally at the farthrest spherical margins of the cosmos. ie beyond the orbital sphere of the most distant planet (Saturn I believe) observable to the naked eye (they had no telescopes back then).

Therefore what we now call “space” was created on the first day I would think.
 
I’m not sure what you mean by outspace but the creation of the heavens in verse 1 is what people call space today. It’s where God put the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day just as we see it. The Big Bang is not specifically mentioned because it may have never happened. It’s a modern man-made mythological creation story.
 
And they had no idea of galaxies but I wonder if anyone at all pondered life out there.
 
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Some Church Fathers, such as Saint Augustine, believed that by “Heaven” it was meant all immaterial things and by “Earth” it meant all physical reality (including space).

An alternative reading would make “Earth” the earth and the Heavens refer to all of space.

So there.
 
The Big Bang model was first formulated by Monsignor Lemaitre… though he originally called it the Cosmic Egg hypothesis. No, Catholics aren’t obliged to accept it (though it remains the prevailing scientific view), but it was first proposed by a Catholic priest!

To the OP, Job 9:8 speaks of God “stretching out” the heavens… I like to see this as a poetic reference to the Big Bang and the ever expanding universe ;).
 
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In the beginning of Genesis He didn’t create ‘heaven’, He created ‘the heavens’, as in ‘outer space’.
 
Wesrock said:
Some Church Fathers, such as Saint Augustine, believed that by “Heaven” it was meant all immaterial things and by “Earth” it meant all physical reality (including space).
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This is an interesting topic for post enlightenment thinkers.

It is clear theologians even up until Aquinas had no problem locating heaven as beyond the orbit of the farthermost planets. That means heaven was in some fashion locatable in the same “dimension” as earth which no Catholic would accept now.
So “Caelum” could quite literally mean both “sky” (air-space above the earth) and also heaven (the same direction as sky but just a bit further on, space-space).

How could they be so simplistic or even contradictory and believe God’s spiritual abode in heaven was physically locatable and in the same space continuum as earth?

It would seem the contradiction can be resolved if we realise that the ancients held that beyond the orbit of the moon there was a sort of magical transition/phantom zone. Beyond this zone only the Greek element “ether” existed…a sort of etherial/spiritual matter.

Ether was perfect, eternal, incorruptible and often translucent and if not translucent then made of light it seems. What we call planets were considered incorruptible gods (the moon wasnt as it had dents visible to the human eye). Being perfect the planets must move in circles. Christians changed this a bit saying the planets and their motion were manifestations of angelic intelligence/influence. Hence Satan fell from these lesser heavens to the air beneath the moon (but above men) where he rules until the 2nd coming.

But with modern science such innocence was shattered. The other planets are just as pock marked as the moon. They are therefore corruptible. Nor do they move in perfect circles but rather ellipses.
So heaven is not really “out there” in space contiguous with earth. Modern Science (contrary to ancient science) can no longer prove the eternal truths of religion.

We live in a much more doubtful, cold universe and possibly alone.
Religion may be true - but now it is much more airy fairy and unprovable compared to the psychological security possessed by our pre-enlightenment forbears to whom nature and the cosmos clearly proved the existence of heaven and God.
 
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I’m curious as to why you quoted the first part of my post about Augustine instead of the second part, which would work much better. Augustine wrote. “but to that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth, is but earth: yea both these great bodies, may not absurdly be called earth, to that unknown heaven,” meaning he took the “Earth” in Gn 1:1 to include all of the “upper spheres” of the heavens, the planets, and so on, and by “Heaven” in that same verse he distinguished as the Heaven of Heavens, which he writes, “For verily that heaven of heavens which Thou createdst in the Beginning, is some intellectual creature, which, although no ways coeternal unto Thee, the Trinity, yet partaketh of Thy eternity, and doth through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of Thyself, strongly restrain its own changeableness; and without any fall since its first creation, cleaving close unto Thee” and later “this is what I conceive, that because of the Heaven of heavens,—that intellectual Heaven, whose Intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face,” meaning he did not interpret Heaven as meaning a place or an ether or an upper sphere, but something intellectual, not localizable, and inferring the creation of the angels as being what was meant (again, not as if it’s a place as we commonly understand it).
 
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Wesrock said:
I’m curious as to why you quoted the first part of my post about Augustine instead of the second part, which would work much better.
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Thanks for the extra quote, interesting.
Wesrock said:
“but to that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth, is but earth
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Yes that likely refers to the spheres between the moon and the uncreated furthermost Empyreum which was not created where God dwells.
The earthy heaven refers to the sky between the moon and the earth.
Wesrock said:
meaning he took the “Earth” in Gn 1:1 to include all of the “upper spheres” of the heavens, the planets, and so on, and by “Heaven” in that same verse he distinguished as the Heaven of Heavens
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I dont believe so. The two great bodies he calls “earth” appear to be the planet earth and the skies beneath the orbit of the moon.
Between the moon and the Empyrean he labels “heaven of heavens” where the inferior heaven means the earthy heaven (ie the sky).
It is in the superior heaven that he locates “intelligences” and rightly so because that is what the ancients believed. Here the Platonic gods dwelt made of the etherial element and either were or controlled the motion and light of the planets. Christians of course made this the realm of angels.
You may be right that the intelligences were not made of ether but merely moved the planets that were made of ether.
I believe it is a moot point and due to mythologising is meant to be vague. Regardless the intelligences were regarded at least as bound to a specific planet in some fashion almost like a soul to a body or a hypostasis. Christians turned that concept into an “office” of the lower orders of angels. That is a governance duty over both the planets and man. The fallen angels retain a governance over the Air as the NT states. That is a fitting demotion to the earthy heaven…a pale substitue for the etherial heaven they fell from.
The Seraphs, the highest order of angels must of course dwell at the limit of the farthrest heaven of heavens which borders the vast and infinite and uncreated Empyrean where God dwells. Hence they have nothing at all to do with the elemental planets either earthy or etherial and with their backs to earth and sky face God directly worshipping Him day and night.
 
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“We live in a much more doubtful, cold universe and possibly alone.” Do we? That was a statement regarding worldview. God did create outer space.
 
Sophie111 said:
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Wesrock:
I’m curious as to why you quoted the first part of my post about Augustine instead of the second part, which would work much better.
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Thanks for the extra quote, interesting.
Wesrock said:
“but to that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth, is but earth
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I dont believe so. The two great bodies he calls “earth” appear to be the planet earth and the skies beneath the orbit of the moon.
Between the moon and the Empyrean he labels “heaven of heavens” where the inferior heaven means the earthy heaven (ie the sky).
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Why don’t you believe so? Have you read all of the Confessions?
 
The point is that this localised space no longer locates the angels and God as ancient science thought was readily proved by nature and took for granted.

Our God is now in a more remote dimension and the light of stars and planets are no longer the welcoming daily signs of angels looking over us. The pantheon was never there.
 
I am simply taking the text you provided at face value and on ambiguous points making judgements that would be consistent with my understanding of ancient cosmology (which I studied in my ancient philosophy degree) that Augustine is fairly clearly cogniscant of and himself evolving/extending.
I have not closely read Augustine in this specialised way before…though yes I have read his Confessions three times in my life.

Do you think I have over stretched his text?
I thought it was a fairer face value interpretation even without applying my own studies myself.
 
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Your use of the word “pantheon” is unclear. Jesus’ disciples did watch Him ascend into Heaven and angels appeared to them.
 
edwest said:
Jesus’ disciples did watch Him ascend into Heaven…
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Of course, but it seems he did not take off like a space ship and physically travel to the other side of Saturn.
Heaven is no longer considered to reside there.
 
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I disagree. God, being God, did it in this way because He will return in this way.
 
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