The Creation of the World

The book of Genesis is an account meant to convey essential and timeless truths about the origin of creation, the goodness of God’s work, and the root cause of evil and death. It is written from the perspective of an observer placed upon the earth and speaks the language of theology and doxology rather than that of a modern scientific chronicle:

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form and void. Then God successively brought forth: on the first day, light; on the second, the firmament, or visible heaven; on the third, the gathering of the waters, the dry land, and its vegetation; on the fourth, the sun, moon, and stars were made to appear; on the fifth, the fish and the birds; on the sixth, the land animals, and last of all, man (Gen 1).

On the seventh day God rested from all his works; hence the seventh day is called the Sabbath, which in Hebrew means “rest” (Gen 2:2–3; see Q012, Q492). The Sabbath is the seal of the first creation, which culminated in Adam and Eve; and the Church beholds its fulfillment in the rest of Christ in the tomb on Great and Holy Saturday “the blessed Sabbath, the day of rest, on which the Only-Begotten Son of God rested from all his works” (Vespers of Holy Saturday), which inaugurates the new creation.

Regarding the duration of the “days” of creation, various opinions have been held by the Fathers and by theologians, from St Basil’s Hexaemeron to Blessed Augustine’s reflections on instantaneous creation, and no dogmatic position exists on this point. What the Church confesses as dogma is that the one God freely created all things, visible and invisible, out of nothing, through his Word and in his Spirit, and that all he made was “very good” (Gen 1:31; 2Ma 7:28; see Q012, Q431).