Third Day Theology

 "And God saw that it was good (the third day)" Genesis 1:12.

"He was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures". 1 Corinthians 15:4.

The longer I go on in this life, the more I realise just how deep the waters are when it comes to the opening three chapters of the Bible - pretty well everything is there. That doesn't mean that it's all really easy to unpack; there are some pretty sophisticated things in play when it comes to what the text is expressing with regards to our reality, so it's really important to pay attention to what's being said.

Take this little nugget from the late Robert Farrar Capon on the third day of creation's major event - the coming of plants: "On the third day you have the first real good whiff of the scent of good and evil because you have death introduced as the mechanism of life. Everything eats everything else. Seeds must die in order to become plants".

It's interesting to consider how this major theme is then continued into Eden itself with the material reality of the two central trees - and which of these comes to dominate our present realm in respects to what is deemed the 'natural' state of affairs.

This is when the Gospel nature of creation also becomes unmissably explicit, but what struck me recently was that this pattern was kneaded into creation from the very beginning, hence, the 'good' of light being brought out by the work of the Word and the Spirit on the "emptiness' and darkness of the void on the face of the deep. 

Then take into account how the Lord speaks of Himself to Job forging what was necessary (in respect to the seas and the darkness) to ensure such powers were bound to allow the radiance of His might to be expressed in the sheer splendour and strength of what was forged (Job 38).

What becomes clear in these passages is how the Lord Himself journeys through the void and chaos of the primal materials to employ His Word to bring about the structural manifestation of order and majesty in this realm - He 'broods' upon the waters so that they are bound and then fashioned into something useful and productive - elemental to the splendours that will derive from their being separated and ordered.

The marvel that is being wrought in the earth, tasted in the glimpses given in Eden, is made so by a Redemptive expression in all that is enacted upon it by the Lord.

Ours is a God who takes the very raw materials that we would deem of no value or use and forges them by the miraculous splendour of His vibrant nature into what is good, to facilitate a day when they shall be refined to a beauty that genuinely, continually, conveys and exudes the Majesty of their founder and perfecter.

From the chaos and the dust, we evidence the coming of heaven upon our world.