The Big Bang of God (Genesis 1:1-5)

For a while now, there's been a division between science’s explanation of the universe’s beginnings and the Christian explanation. It's been Big Bang vs. Genesis, with scientists claiming a blowout victory. Along the way to that victory, religion often has been ridiculed as myth and superstition.

I'm not here to prove scientists wrong. I love science and scientists, after all. But I’d like to suggest that Genesis 1 is not ridiculous or completely insignificant. Genesis 1, in fact, gives a profound, albeit poetic, description of the universe’s beginnings.

And that's what I want to look at a bit today, at the Bible's profound, poetic description of the universe's beginnings.

According to the Big Bang theory, there are five essential variables in the beginning. In layman's terms, these five variables are 1.) infinite space; 2.) a singularity, a kind of super-subatomic seed that somehow contains all the “stuff of the universe”; 3.) a super dense and hot fluid called quark-gluon plasma - QGP; 4.) a potent energy source, which scientists are still deciphering and hypothesizing about; 5.) the first light in the wake of the sudden, explosive expansion known as the big bang; and 5.) a process of forces separating amid the sudden, humongous expansion.

Well, if we read Genesis 1:1-5 using a great deal of poetic creativity, we can see these essential variables at work. I'm not saying it is an exact match or that Genesis is giving us science. But the poetry of Genesis 1 gets very close.

Let’s go through the five verses. Verse 1:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth…

Before all beginnings is Elohim-God. Elohim is an interesting name for God. It has come to be singular to us, but it is infused with a plurality. Hence, in parts of Genesis 1, Elohim self-refers as Us. Elohim, to borrow from arithmetic, is Plurality-in-One.

Anyway, infinity marks God, that’s essential to Christian theology. Can we say God amounts to the infinite space that existed before the universe’s beginnings? Why not? After all, from infinite God comes all things, as the Bible more than once reminds us. From the infinite existence of Elohim, the Plurality-in-One, comes all things. Or, from infinite space, the universe develops.

On to the first part of verse 2.

² the earth was void and unformed,

The Hebrew word – erets - translated “earth” here is a bit more complicated than it’s translation implies. That the word is more complex is a good thing.  After all, did God create only the earth? What about the universe as a whole? Of course, God created Mars, too.

In other verses in the Old Testament, erets is translated “land” or even “ground.” We can thus expand it to mean not just the earth but other planets and material bodies. We can also contract it to mean the singularity from which the earth and the universe come to be.

Now, using our poetic creativity and imagination, in Genesis 1 we can interpret erets as the ground of singularity from which comes the universe. Erets is the universe’s seed of singularity.

That seed of singularity began with Elohim. Elohim is Plurality-in-One, after all. 

What's more, the seed of singularity itself, we might see it as Elohim's creative thought of the universe. The seed of singularity begins inside God as a thought of creativity.

Also clear is this: Before creation, that seed of singularity was void of form, formless.

Let’s continue with Genesis 1, verse 2b

…darkness covered the face of the deep,

The dark and deep nicely describes pre-big bang reality. First of all, there’s no light yet. Darkness abides outside of God. 

There is depth as well. Infinite space goes deep by nature.

To get back to that singularity point, that seed of singularity, we’d have to go deep and down into the dark past to get to it. 

So, Genesis 1, verse 2’s talk of darkness and deepness are poetic ways that hint at the reality before the big bang of creation.

Okay, let’s move on. Verse 2c

 …while the wind of God swept over the face of the waters.

A unique form of fluid marked the earliest beginnings of the universe. Remember that dense and hot fluid, QGP? Calling QGP “waters” is not literally true. But the idea of fluidity associated with water connects it to that hot and dense fluid marking creation. And scientists now tell us QCP flows like water. So, the poet who wrote about the face of waters is not too far off.

As for the wind of God, here we get to the central Christian claim that God is essential to the universe’s coming into being. Without a potent energy source, the quote on quote singularity seed along with the quote on quote QCP waters would have gone nowhere. There needed to be a creative, energetic spark that ignited the big bang of creation and it’s subsequent expanse.

Well, the wind of God, or the energy of God, more than fits that bill. The wind of God is the potent energy source that sparks the big bang’s explosive and creative expansion.

Let’s go to verse 3 and 4:

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 

At some point in the universe’s earliest moments, from the energy-infused singularity seed and QCP waters, light arises.  

Then, according to scientists, the separation of forces and energies ensued.

Well, in Genesis we have talk of separation, too. First, there is the separation of light and darkness, etc. This creative separation of original elements is the common denominator.

Back to that word “wind.” Wind is the same word for Spirit. As the gospel of John reminds us, God is Spirit. God is the creative wind. God is the most potent and creative of energies! God is in the creative explosions of life.

Anyway, let me sum up this meditation. That explosion of creativity that happened in the beginning (and still happens), it happened in God and moved outward! And the expansive creativity of God led to the universe unfolding up to this very moment and onward.

In other words, the big bang can easily be seen as the creativity of God at work!

So, that author of Genesis, that poet saw more than many faith-ridiculing scientists give him credit for. Yes, the poet used poetry and tapped into spirituality. But that poetry, using metaphor and imagery, includes the essentials at the beginning of it all – singularity, space, fluid, energy, and separation of the primordial elements. And that spirituality, which fostered the poet’s insights, was based in an experience of and a meditation upon the real world around him.

I for one am awestruck at the creative insight of the poet that wrote Genesis 1. In a burst of mystical creativity, the poet experienced divine creativity in God. The poet experienced God’s creative spirit, the God who inspired this immense universe into being! That poet saw God, the author of the universe, and wrote the poem we know as Genesis 1.