Problem: Light can't have been created before the sun and the stars
Verses: Genesis 1:3, 1:16; Status: Weak

Genesis tells us that, on the first day of creation, God created light. This is Genesis 1:3:

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (ESV)

Yet the sun and the other stars were created later, on the fourth day. This is Genesis 1:16:

And God made the two great lights - the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night - and the stars. (ESV)

This is often commented upon. It's fairly easy to solve this problem if you accept the scientific account of cosmology, whereby there was certainly light (photons) before our own sun, and probably before the first stars. (I don't know quite enough about physics to say with certainty that there were photons before there were stars, though it seems reasonable, given that nuclear fusion is not the only thing that produces light.)

Even though infallibilists reject much of science, it's still open for them to say that there were sources of light before the sun and the other stars. (God himself could be such a source, for example.)

errancy.org - index

See also