So I've been studying up on angels and have been confronted with an idea familiar, no doubt, to many here. I'm referring to the "gap" position.

It's the position that seeks to defend the notion that God created all things in Genesis 1:1, but somewhere in the eons of time between 1:1 and 1:2, Lucifer rebelled against God bringing judgment upon he and the cosmos (Hence void and darkness and sea/waters). Thus, Genesis chapters 1-2 are really God's recreating the world, restoring a paradise whereby man was to expand that garden/temple across throughout the world.

What's up with this position? Do you think it is correct? Why or why not?

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Austin Brown
Deacon in New Life Alliance Church (C&MA), Logansport, Indiana
Student: Whitefield Theological Seminary, M.Div program

It is utter eisogesis of the text.

Here's a good thread on it: Lucifer's Fall

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Dad
Christ Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCGA
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It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

In Genesis Chapter 1, verse 2 says that the earth was "formless and void" which must not be seen as something evil or the product of some catastrophic event. Rather, it points us to the beauty and majesty of God's creative activity which in relation to those two adjectives (formless and void or empty) can be described as forming and filling the foundation that God had established.

Forming (Giving form to what was formerly formless):
v. 4 - "God separated the light from the darkness" (Day 1)
v. 7 - "God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse" (Day 2)
v. 9 - "Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear" (Day 3)

The way I understand this concept of forming is that it describes God, the Creator, like a potter who is forming the clay which is yet unformed.

Filling (Filling that which was formerly empty):
v. 14 - "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night"
v. 16 - "God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also."
v. 17 - "God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"(Day 4)
v. 20 - "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures,"
"let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens" (Day 5)
v. 11 - "Let the earth sprout vegetation" (Day 3)
v. 24 - "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind" (Day 6)

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Joel de Leon
Member (man under care)
Christ Presbyterian Church, OPC
Salt Lake City, UT

The Cleansed Leper

The main problem with the Gap theory (now universally rejected among scholars today) is the translation problem. They have to make the verb "to be" in verse 2 somehow mean "become" or "became." This is not the normal meaning of the simple "hayah" in Hebrew. Plus, the reference of "earth" in verse 2 refers back to "earth" in verse 1. The two main tenable positions are that verse 1 is a summary which is fleshed out in the rest of the chapter; or that verse 1 describes the initial creative act of God, which is described in verse 2 as progressing from that initial point of formlessness. The difficulty with the summary position is the connection of "earth" to "earth in vv 1 and 2. The difficulty with the "initial" position is that the phrase "heavens and the earth" usually describes the orderly, finished cosmos. For my own part, however, given the fact that it is describing the beginning of all things, I prefer the initial description.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
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It seems to me that there is a fair bit of reading into the text. I mean really, can we deduce a heavenly war and an initially pristine earth/cosmos that fell into darkness and corruption, almost soley on the basis of Genesis 1:2?

But let me leave "gap" theology out of the picture for a moment. What seems difficult to reconstruct is the timing of Lucifer's fall. I leaves very little time. Very little, if they fell sometime between day seven and God's telling Adam to "guard" the garden, which presupposes that the fall had already taken place.

So what about this: What if we say that the early chapters of Genesis were written with an interest on the earth and the affairs of man. In Genesis 1:1 we are told plainly that God created everything. Sometime after creating the basic stuff of creation, God molded it and created further details. But as is often the case with historical accounts, certain details and even chronological elements are ignored in light of the main purpose. In this case, the main concern is man and the earth.

Therefore, isn't it possible that God created everything, the basic stuff, along with the angels, and waited a while before creating the rest? That there is indeed a gap between 1:1 and 1:2, but since it isn't the prupose to highlight what the angels were up to, it isn't covered?

How long? Dunno. Doesn't really matter, I suppose. But this would provide that space of time for a fall, or at least provide more time for the angelic realm to contemplate Lucifer's claims (which would take time) and debate the issue.

Of course, when I say "time," I have no idea how time functions in their dimension.

So maybe the time issue is resolved by noting that time doesn't function in quite the same way?