How could light exist before the sun?

Question 60059.

The first thing God makes in Genesis is created light, and He makes it on day one, which is three whole days before He hangs the sun in the sky. Sceptics point at that and say the author did not understand basic astronomy. Christians sometimes shuffle their feet and change the subject.

I would rather do neither. The sequence is not a mistake and it is not an embarrassment. It is one of the most deliberate things in the chapter, and once you see why, you will not want it any other way.

Light does not depend on the sun

Start with the plainest observation. Light is not the sun. The sun is one source of light among a great many, and a fairly modest one at that. Stars, lightning, fire, chemical reactions, the glow of decaying matter on a forest floor, all of these produce light with no help from our local star.

So the statement that light existed before the sun is not a scientific impossibility. It is a claim about a source we do not have on hand to examine, which is a different thing entirely from a contradiction.

If the God who says Let there be light can make anything at all, the question of whether He can make photons before He makes a star answers itself.

What kind of created light was it?

The Hebrew word is or, plain ordinary light. On day four the text uses a different word for the light-bearers, the lamps set in the expanse, which is a word used elsewhere for the lamps in the tabernacle.

That distinction is worth pausing over. Day one gives us light itself. Day four gives us the fixtures that carry and govern it. A man may light his house before he installs the lamps, and nobody accuses him of muddling his sequence.

So the created light of day one is presented as light without a permanent housing, temporary in that sense, and entirely sufficient to establish evening and morning.

Why God made created light first

Here is where the theology gets good. Every ancient culture around Israel worshipped the sun. Egypt had Ra, Mesopotamia had Shamash, and the sun was routinely treated as the source of life, order and light itself.

Genesis takes that assumption and dismantles it in the opening paragraph. Light comes first, and it comes from God, and it comes without any assistance from the sun whatsoever. By the time the sun turns up on day four it has been demoted from deity to lamp, an object God makes and hangs and assigns a job.

The created light of day one is therefore not a puzzle to be explained away. It is a theological hammer blow against sun worship, delivered before the sun has even been introduced.

The pattern of forming and filling

Read the six days as two sets of three and the structure jumps out. Days one to three form realms. Light and darkness, sky and sea, land and vegetation. Days four to six fill those realms. Sun, moon and stars, birds and fish, animals and man.

Day one and day four belong together. God makes the realm of light, then He fills it with light-bearers. The order is not chronological clumsiness, it is literary architecture, and the writer plainly knew what he was doing.

Whatever view you take of the length of the days, and I know good men differ, that structure is there in the text and it is intentional.

Does this mean Genesis is not historical?

No, and I want to be careful here. Recognising literary structure in a passage does not turn it into poetry or myth. A well-ordered account can be a true account. My preaching notes have a structure and the events I describe still happened.

Jesus treated Genesis as history. He spoke of the beginning of creation, of Adam and Eve as real people, of Noah and a real flood. Paul builds the whole argument of Romans 5 on Adam being as historical as Jesus.

So I take the account as describing real events in a real sequence, told with care and shape. The presence of design in the telling is evidence of an author, not of fiction.

What about the source of the light?

Scripture does not tell us, and I am content to leave that gap open rather than fill it with speculation. Some have suggested the light of God’s own presence, pointing to the city that has no need of sun or moon because the glory of God gives it light.

That is a suggestive parallel and I find it attractive, but I would not preach it as certainty. What I will say is that the book of Revelation ends with light that does not come from the sun, which means Scripture opens and closes with exactly that arrangement.

The sun turns out to be an interim measure. It was not there at the beginning and it will not be needed at the end.

Answering the objection in conversation

When somebody raises this at the door or over coffee, resist the urge to launch into a lecture on Hebrew cosmology. Ask them what they think the objection proves. Usually they have not thought that far.

Then make the two simple points. Light does not require the sun. And the order in Genesis is making a deliberate statement about who deserves worship. Most people have never heard the second point and it lands rather well.

For related ground, see what I have written on how creation reveals God and on whether science can contradict the Bible.

How the church has read created light

This is not a new question dreamed up by modern sceptics. Basil of Caesarea preached on the created light of day one in the fourth century and argued that God made light independently of any body that carries it. Augustine wrestled with it too and reached for an interpretation more figurative than most of us would want.

Calvin, whose theological system I do not share, made the sensible observation that God did not need the sun and moon to give light and that He put them there afterwards so that we would not attribute to them a power that belongs to Him alone.

So the point I am pressing about created light and idolatry is not novel. It is what careful readers have seen in the passage for a very long time.

What if the light was the glory of God?

Let me lay out the suggestion fairly, since many good teachers hold it. When God appears in Scripture He appears in light. The pillar of fire led Israel by night. The face of Moses shone after he had been in the presence. The transfigured Jesus was radiant.

On this reading the created light of Genesis 1:3 is not created at all in the strict sense but a manifestation of the uncreated glory, withdrawn once the lamps were hung. It is an attractive thought and it connects the opening of the Bible to its close, where the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light.

My hesitation is that the text says God said let there be light, which is the language of creation used throughout the chapter. I would not build doctrine on the alternative, though I would not quarrel with a brother who found it persuasive.

Created light and the God who speaks

Do not miss what the verse is doing before it tells you anything about physics. It tells you that God speaks and reality obeys. There is no struggle, no raw material to be wrestled into shape, no rival deity to be defeated first.

Paul makes exactly this connection when he writes that God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts. The created light of the first day becomes his picture of conversion, which means the doctrine in Genesis 1:3 is not a spare part. It is load-bearing.

That is why I care about getting this verse right. Mishandle the created light of day one and you have blunted the illustration Paul uses for the new birth.

So, now what?

If you have been quietly worried that Genesis 1 is scientifically naive, I hope this settles it. The chapter is doing something far more interesting than an amateur attempt at astronomy. It is telling you that the thing pagans worshipped is a lamp God made on a Thursday.

There is also something here for your own walk. God spoke and there was light before there was any natural means of producing it. He is not limited to the channels you can see. If you are waiting on Him in a situation where all the obvious sources of help have failed, that is not a hopeless position.

Have you ever noticed that the God who begins with light also ends with it? Where in your life are you assuming the sun has to rise before anything can change?

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

Genesis 1:3, ESV