The functional view understands the functions to be decreed by God to serve the purposes of humanity, who has been made in his image. The main elements lacking in the “before” picture are therefore humanity in God’s image and God’s presence in his cosmic temple. Without those two ingredients the cosmos would be considered nonfunctional and therefore nonexistent. The material phase nonetheless could have been under development for long eras and could in that case correspond with the descriptions of the prehistoric ages as science has uncovered them for us. There would be no reason to think that
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