Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science

by John C. Lennox

universe is not the ultimate reality. God is. It is important, of course, not to confuse the fact of creation with the manner or the timing of creation. I mention this because it sometimes happens that failure to sort out problems connected with the manner and timing of creation stops people believing in the fact that creation occurred. An illustration from science can help us grasp the issue here. Stephen Hawking says that space-time began in a singularity, where the laws of physics break down. The moment of creation, therefore, poses an immense problem for science. But this does not stop most scientists believing that there was a beginning. The important thing for these scientists is that there is scientific evidence for a beginning, even though science cannot comprehend the nature of that beginning.4 We should bear this attitude in mind when we come to Genesis. Genesis 1:1 anticipates the fuller revelation given to us by John at the beginning of his Gospel in the New Testament: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1 —3). The word translated “made” means “came to be.” God is eternal and uncreated; he did not come to be; he always was. The universe, on the other hand, did “come to be.” It was not always there — another strong confirmation, by the way, of ex nihilo creation. The Genesis account, though...

8 The Nobel Prize—winning physicist Arno Penzias comments on these remarkable findings: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the right conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying, one might say ‘supernatural,’ plan.”