In the beginning ...

Wenceslas Hollar: Chaos

Here is how the very beginning is presented in the Bible:

₁ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ₂ Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. (Genesis 1:1-2 NET) 

So what do we learn from these often neglected verses? That however "without shape and empty" [the Hebrew words are tohu and bohu], and before God started putting some order into it by creating light and separating light from darkness, what was there was NOT some pre-existing chaotic "stuff" that God found there (as we read in Plato), BUT the very first step of God's creation.

Only starting with the creation of light, creation is subdivided in "days" and the result of each "day" is called "good".

Has creation retained some of that original aspect, "without shape and empty"? I believe it has. It shows, in particular, in the lack of order of natural catastrophes (which are NOT the result of the "original sin"). Why did God create the universe "without shape and empty" in the first place? Why these aspects are still present? Essentially because if everything was in perfect order, even freedom would be impossible.

Genesis 1:1-2, we may say, suggests that "God left significant work 'unfinished'". While we often perceive this as apparent "incompleteness" of creation as "indifference of nature", even "cruelty of nature", even, occasionally, catastrophes, I contend that God chose this way "for a good cause": freedom.

Is this too high a price for freedom? All I can say is that, without freedom, we would be robots, or, to use another image, mere actors constrained by an unchangeable script.

Other posts about Creation and Freedom:

• Catastrophic Stairway to Freedom
• Then whence cometh evil?