Slaying Leviathan Cosmic Warfare And The Preservation And Restoration Of Creation

Original creation or restoration? Even more fundamental, however, is that one can make a fairly solid case for reading Genesis 1 that avoids this arbitrary normativity, for it does not conflict with the Bible’s creation-conflict tradition, nor does it require dismissing the creation-conflict tradition as purely mythological. According to this view, the author of Genesis 1 is not attempting to give the exhaustive and definitive account of creation. Rather, the author is providing an account that is supplemental to other warfare accounts. More specifically, while the scriptural conflict-creation accounts parallel (and polemicize against) the other conflict-creation accounts of their day in speaking of God’s conflict with an evil anticreational force, the Genesis 1 account parallels (and polemicizes against) these other accounts in terms of God’s creation of this world after his battle with his cosmic foes, and out of the remains of the battle.

Stated differently, both ancient and modern exegetes have argued with some plausibility that the account in Genesis 1 is not so much an account of creation as it is an account of God’s restoration of a world that had through a previous conflict become formless, futile, empty (tohû wabohû) and engulfed by chaos (t^ehôm)—the world of Genesis 1:2, in other words. According to this view, sometimes called “the restitution theory” or “the gap theory,” but which I prefer to call “the restoration theory,” the cosmos that had been created in verse 1 had become embattled, corrupted, judged and brought to the nearly destroyed state we find it in verse 2.40 The rest of the chapter then describes God’s creation of this present cosmos out of the formless and empty chaos of the previously ravaged one.

While this interpretation has never enjoyed anything close to a majority opinion, it has found impressive ancient as well as modern exponents.41 Despite some ongoing difficulties,42 a number of things can be said in its favor. I will briefly mention six.

First, as already stated, this reading of the Genesis 1 creation account most easily harmonizes with all the conflict-creation accounts in Scripture, a consideration that has to carry weight for all who affirm the plenary inspiration of Scripture. If this reading is correct, Genesis 1:2 can be understood as describing the desecrated creation immediately after God’s battle with and judgment of evil cosmic forces—the same battle described in mythological language in other biblical and nonbiblical creation accounts. The author’s emphasis on the sovereignty of God over the (now largely depersonalized) cosmic forces can thus be understood as one way of emphasizing Yahweh’s victory over opposing gods, in the same fashion as Enuma Elish emphasizes Marduk’s victory over Tiamat in describing his fashioning the world out of her and her cohorts in six days.43

On this reading, the Genesis 1 account, beginning with verse 2, presupposes the battle and starts with the fashioning of this world out of the battlefield; in Enuma Elish this is Tiamat’s body; in the Genesis account it is the impersonal abyss (t^ehôm) covering the wasteland earth (tohû wabohû). Levenson, though by no means holding to anything like the restoration theory, is among the few scholars who have acknowledged this point. He argues that the Genesis account “begins near the point when the Babylonian poem ends its action, with the primordial waters neutralized and the victorious and unchallengeable deity about to undertake the work of cosmogony.”44

Other Old Testament scholars have recognized this aspect of the Genesis 1 account and have concluded that there must have been an earlier version of the Genesis 1 account containing a battle scene similar to that of Enuma Elish. This section, they speculate, has been lopped off for theological or redactional reasons in the received version.45 The naturalness of reading Genesis 1:2 as a “postbattle” summary, when read against the background of Enuma Elish, lends plausibility to this theory.

For our purposes, however, the speculation seems irrelevant. Whether or not a prior version of Genesis 1 possessed a battle scene, the author/redactor certainly seems to have known of the earlier creation-conflict accounts. The author also assumes that his readers know about the “abyss,” the “waters,” the “formless and void” earth, as well as about other “gods” (significantly enough, also not mentioned in this creation account) with whom God consults before making humans (Gen 1:26).

It seems reasonable, then, to read the author not as offering an account that corrects the earlier creation-conflict accounts but as presenting an account that supplements them. He is starting where they leave off, and he is doing so to stress just how victorious Yahweh was over his enemies by emphasizing just how easily he fashions this creation—with the mere word of his mouth!—out of the mess left over from his battle with Leviathan (or Rahab or Tiamat), the battle that all his readers are familiar with.

To this end, the Genesis 1 author does not even give Tiamat or any of the other defeated gods the dignity of a personality (though echoes of it can perhaps still be heard). He simply describes the war-torn “world” as tohû wabohû, covered by t^ehôm, and then proceeds to proclaim Yahweh’s ease in carving this present ordered creation out of this battle-raged chaos. Such a view allows us to give full due to the significant influence of the creation-conflict accounts of Israel’s neighbors while also (and far more importantly) harmonizing Genesis 1 with the other conflict-creation accounts in Scripture. I do not see any other reading that can claim this.

Moreover, and somewhat ironically, this interpretation at once allows for the most culturally relevant reading and the most literal reading of Genesis 1 as well as all the other scriptural creation-conflict accounts. This certainly has to count further in its favor both from a scholarly perspective committed to reading Scripture in its original cultural context and from an evangelical faith perspective committed to affirming the infallibility of Scripture.46

Second, reading Genesis 1 in the light of Scripture’s creation-conflict material, and thus as describing a re-creation rather than original creation, helps explain several otherwise puzzling features of this account. For example, this reading provides a context in which we can perhaps begin to understand the unusual command given by Yahweh to humanity to “subdue” (kabaš) the earth (Gen 1:28). This term usually suggests the suppression, the conquering or the enslavement of hostile forces (Num 32:22, 29; Josh 18:1).47 If what we have in Genesis 1 is a pure and pristine creation of all things ex nihilo, this command is odd. If all is exactly as God intended, what is there to conquer?

If, however, what we have in Genesis 1 is a creation that is good, but that is, following Enuma Elish and other primitive accounts, fashioned out of a battle-torn chaotic abyss and that, as such, must continually be controlled (as in the nonbiblical creation-conflict material), then this command begins to make sense. Humans in this case are charged with carrying on God’s creational work of bringing order to chaos. For just this reason, we are said to be in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-28). As we shall see in what follows, we are in this view corulers with God over the earth and cowarriors with God against the forces of chaos for the earth. God’s plan for human beings and the earth shall be accomplished when all anticreation forces are vanquished and his kingdom is set up on the earth with him and his human subjects enthroned (Rev 5:10).

This reading also makes the best sense of the Lord’s command to Adam to guard Eden (Gen 2:15).48 The command is a bit puzzling unless the author was assuming that there were at the time forces which the garden needed protection against. When the tempting serpent appears in the next chapter, we perhaps get a clearer idea of what it was that Adam was supposed to beware of. But the sudden and unexplained presence of Satan (according to the traditional interpretation) in the garden is likewise difficult to account for on the supposition that Genesis 1 is providing anything like an exhaustive account of the original creation.49

According to the restoration view, however, neither the commands to subdue the earth and protect the garden nor the sudden appearance of Satan is puzzling. In this view the earth (this present earth) is birthed, as it were, in an infected incubator. It is fashioned in a warfare context. It is itself altogether good, but it is made and preserved over and against forces that are perpetually hostile to it, just as the other creation-conflict passages of Scripture suggest.

In this view, moreover, humans are made in the image of God and placed on the earth precisely so that they might gradually vanquish this chaos and establish—or better, reestablish—God’s all-good plan for it. As God’s earthly agents, we are “to effect the conquest of an evil being who had penetrated into creation.”50 Or, as Erich Sauer puts it, our “appointed vocation in Paradise consisted in the winning back of the earth for God . . . [and] to restore the whole earth to an abode of the presence and revelation of God.”51 The otherwise puzzling features of the Genesis narrative fit perfectly with this perspective.

This reading also makes sense of the unexplained and unexpected use of the first-person plural in Genesis 1:26. The standard Jewish interpretation—and it still remains the best (see chapter five)—is that the Lord is here consulting with angels prior to creating what is to be the pinnacle of his creation (or re-creation). That the narrative up to this point had not mentioned the creation of angels suggests that it simply presupposes their preexistence—which is enough to demonstrate that we are not here dealing with an exhaustive account of creation ex nihilo. According to the restoration view, such beings, usually termed “gods” as we shall see in the next chapter, were present eons before this creation was ever brought about. Indeed, it was Yahweh’s battle against a rebellious faction of these “gods” that brought the creation to the dismal condition described in Genesis 1:2. It is, then, not surprising that Yahweh consults with them, as he apparently does with some frequency (see Gen 3:22; 11:7; 1 Kings 22:20; Is 6:1-8; cf. Jer 23:18; Ps 82:1; 89:7), when he comes to the climaxing act of his warfare against anticreational forces: the creation of humans to subdue the earth.

Third, this view is consistent with linguistic evidence. For example, Genesis 1:2 can be translated, “Now [or ‘But’] the earth became [or ‘had become,’ hay^e?ah] formless and empty.”52 The terms “formless” and “empty” are usually pejorative in Scripture, denoting something gone wrong, laid waste or judged.53 In the only other cases in Scripture where the terms are combined as they are in Genesis 1:2, they refer explicitly to a desperate state of being that results from God’s judgment (Jer 4:23; Is 34:11).54

It is, then, easy to read the second verse of the Genesis account as referring to a judged and largely destroyed earth—“a chaos that . . . resembled the morning after a battle.”55 It is the kind of wasteland Jeremiah warns will result again after God’s eschatological judgment (Jer 4:21-24; see also Is 24:10). Conversely, it would seem odd if the author was suggesting that God originally created the earth in these wasted, futile and chaotic conditions, and even more odd if he believed this but did not bother to tell his readers.

As the text stands, the formless and futile chaos of verse 2, together with the “deep,” are the only things in this chapter that the author does not say God created or fashioned. Other passages of Scripture seem to go yet further and suggest that this state of being is something God explicitly did not and would not create (see esp. Is 45:18).56 What is more, with the exception of the creation of animals and humans (vv. 21, 26-27), the passage does not use the word “create” (bara’) but “make” (‘asâh), which means to fashion out of preexisting material—again suggesting that we are dealing not with an original creation but with a re-creation.57

Fourth, this reading of Genesis 1 provides the most flexible, and perhaps the most fruitful, paradigm within which the Bible’s creation accounts can be unqualifiedly affirmed without any possibility of running into problems with modern scientific theories concerning the antiquity of the earth. This theory postulates a prehumanoid world of indefinite duration, about which we know nothing more than that it somehow became a battlefield between good and evil and was consequently made into a total wasteland.

This very indefiniteness allows for a remarkably wide range of possible ways of squaring biblical theology with contemporary scientific theories, though unfortunately these ways have hardly begun to be explored, owing to the traditional normativity of Genesis 1 as the definitive creation account. Indeed, though it lies outside the purview of this work, a case can be made that the supposition of a worldwide instantaneous catastrophe alone accounts for much of the geological and paleontological evidence discovered.58

Further, and perhaps most important for the purposes of this project, this understanding provides us with one plausible way of beginning to make sense of what appears to be millions of years of prehumanoid suffering on the earth. It provides a context in which we can perhaps begin to take seriously and develop C. S. Lewis’s speculation that the earth might have become demonized long before humans ever arrived on it.59 It begins to provide some biblical context in which we can perhaps make sense of the fact that most of the fossils we find in the paleontological record are of animals that do not now exist. Long before humans ever came on the scene—or fell—nature was already “red with tooth and claw.”

Fifth, this approach to Genesis 1 allows us to construe an ultimate warfare canvas against which we can begin to make some sense out of cosmic evil. This reading, if accepted, begins to make sense of the fact that both Scripture and our own experience tell us that the whole cosmos is, at a most profound level, corrupted. I take this to be the most fundamental point of the earlier discussed creation-conflict material. Despite valiant attempts to the contrary, there is simply no way to approach an explanation for this cosmic catastrophe by appealing to puny human wills. Our fall cannot explain the cosmic fall, but the fall of cosmic wills can help explain our fall, and with it, the fall of the world we were put in charge of. It is, as C. S. Lewis noted, significant in this regard that the Bible talks much more about “powers of darkness” than it does about the human fall, a point that ought to (but thus far has not) factor significantly in our explanations for why there is evil. This reading of Genesis 1 confirms this observation and thus encourages a more cosmic approach to the problem of evil.60

Sixth, and finally, the understanding that Genesis 1 is about restoring a world that had been ruined by hostile forces is consistent with the otherwise puzzling cosmic dimension of the Bible’s portrayal of humanity’s role on the earth and of Christ’s role as savior.

Immediately after declaring that we have been made in “the image of God,” the Lord tells humans to “subdue” and “have dominion” over the whole of creation (Gen 1:26-30). “I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth,” the Lord says, and everything else, plant and animal, that is upon it (1:29-30). As Sauer notes, “These words plainly declare the vocation of the human race to rule.”61 We were made in “the image of God” precisely because we are created for the purpose of reigning with God over the earth.62

This theme, in a variety of ways, runs throughout the biblical narrative. For example, after the psalmist declares that Yahweh rules “the raging of the sea” and that he “crushed Rahab like a carcass” (Ps 89:9-10), he records the Lord’s promise to his earthly servant: “I will set his hand on the sea, and his right hand on the rivers” (v. 25). As Levenson notes, this text portrays a sort of diarchy, as do a number of other psalms. God rules, but his desire is to rule through his earthly coregents.63

For this reason, as Sauer again notes, the redemption of the earth is intrinsically connected with the redemption of humanity. Indeed, the whole creation, according to Paul, “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19). For this reason also the redemption of the cosmos is intrinsically connected to defeating the evil force that now holds humanity, and thus the whole earth, in bondage (see chapters nine and ten below).

Humanity as the restorative viceroy over the earth. The restoration theory provides an ultimate background against which the themes of human coregency with God over creation and the liberation of the earth and humanity from evil forces can be rendered most coherent and plausible, and through which their unity can be seen. For according to this reading, the creation of humans and their placement in the garden can be seen as God’s means of completing his “conquest of an evil being who had penetrated into creation,” as the great Old Testament scholar Franz Delitzsch put it.64

As a little seed of yeast leavens a whole lump of dough (Lk 13:21; 1 Cor 5:6), so too, we might suppose, God planned on using humans, beginning in Eden, to restore his lordship over the earth by themselves establishing their dominion over the earth, a dominion that would, in every respect, be under the authority of the Lord.65 Or, as suggested earlier, the creation (in Genesis 1) was birthed in an infected incubator, and humanity was given leadership over this earth as the means of killing the infection.

Sauer expresses this view in these terms:

Man’s appointed vocation in Paradise consisted in the winning back of the earth for God, and this again was based upon the sovereignty of God over man and the sovereignty of man over the creation. . . .

Man’s calling was to “destroy the works of the devil” and to renew the earth, thus transforming it into an abode of light and life. . . . The first man . . . received the task, beginning from Paradise, to restore the whole earth to an abode of the presence and revelation of God. His service as ruler consisted in bringing the whole of creation through his mediation into relation with the glory of God and in making the “fullness of him that filleth all in all” accessible to it.66

For this reason, when humans voluntarily rebelled against God’s sovereignty, the whole of creation once again suffered. God had, as the ancient Israelites would say, “shut up Yamm behind closed doors” in order to re-create the world and turn it over to a new viceroy. According to the restoration view, this is what Genesis 1 is all about. But since God’s supremacy is of a moral character, it must be freely chosen.67 Hence the key that could either unleash Yamm once again upon the earth or keep him at bay was placed into the hands of the new viceroy.

When humanity rejected Yahweh’s lordship, we accepted (by unleashing) a new “god of this world.” We compromised our assigned task to have dominion over the world and thus subjected ourselves and all of nature once again to the destructive influence of the forces that oppose God. The guardians of the world, and therefore the world itself, were thus taken hostage by an illegitimate hostile power. Satan now seizes “control of the entire world” and becomes “the prince of this age” and “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (1 Jn 5:19; Jn 12:31; Eph 2:2; cf. 6:12). Through Christ, however, the key has been given back to those originally intended as landlords, and we are once again commissioned to shut up Yamm on the Lord’s authority (Mt 16:17-19; see part two).

This reacquired demonic lordship has already led to a partial return to the judged state of affairs in Genesis 1:2, when the Lord allowed the chaotic waters to burst upon the earth with the flood (Gen 6—8). The intended viceroys of the earth had become so corrupt that they apparently cohabited with sinister angelic beings (6:1-4), and the Lord was grieved to the point of wishing he had never created humanity (6:5-6). Hence he allowed the “deep” (1:2) once again to cover the earth, as he sought to start over the project of recovering the earth for his glory.

Moreover, according to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the earth shall at some point be brought one more time under this sort of judgment and returned to a state of tohû wabohû (Jer 4:23; Is 34:11), the very state it was in, according to the restoration theory, prior to this present creation. The “dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan,” who has been locked up in “the bottomless pit,” shall “be released from his prison” (Rev 20:1-2, 7). However, as in the Genesis 1 account, the Lord shall vanquish his foe and re-create “a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1).

In this final form, however, the hostile powers shall be permanently defeated and locked up. In the eschaton, “the sea was no more” (Rev 21:1). Satan, death, the beast, t^ehôm, all rebels and even Hades itself shall be cast into the lake of fire (20:13-15). Hence Scripture assures us that there shall be no more threat to the creation in this its third restoration.

God’s kingdom shall be established on earth, and his children shall be its rulers as he originally intended. Humanity’s prehistoric failure as guardians did not cause the Creator to abandon us in his plan to restore and reclaim the embattled world of Genesis 1:2. To the contrary, and quite remarkably, the Lord’s goal throughout has been to reestablish his lordship upon the earth through the viceregency of humans, and to ultimately vanquish his cosmic foes in the process.

Now, however, and even more remarkably, this goal was to be achieved by the Lord himself freeing humanity—and thus creation—from the dominion of Satan, and to do so by becoming a human himself. This little plot of land in the cosmos apparently became a sort of “Normandy beach” on which creation’s D-Day was waged. As we shall later see, Jesus’ incarnation, his teaching, his healing and deliverance ministry, and especially his death and resurrection are all about vanquishing Leviathan (Satan) and restoring the reign of God on earth over against the illegitimate tyranny of Satan. He will do so by rescuing humans from Satan’s domain and restoring them as God’s viceroys on the earth.68

The restoration theory is part of a cosmic warfare background against which the cosmic dimension of humanity’s purpose, the cosmic dimension of nightmarish evil, and the cosmic purpose of Christ’s coming, death and resurrection begin to make sense. It completes the pattern of creation to chaos to restoration that runs throughout the biblical narrative and thereby brings a thematic unity to the Bible it would otherwise lack. From start to finish, this inspired literary collection is about God restoring his creation through humanity (and by himself becoming a human) and destroying his cosmic opponents in the process.

This reading of Genesis 1 has the fringe benefit of fitting with any estimation of the earth’s age that science might arrive at. It also has the advantage of making the most sense (Custance would argue the only possible sense) out of all the linguistic evidence. Moreover, it fits best with Scripture’s later teaching regarding the fall of Satan and his angels, and makes sense out of otherwise puzzling features of the Genesis narrative (e.g., “subduing” the earth, “guarding” the garden, the unexplained sinister serpent, the presence of angels). It also allows for the most literal reading of the creation-conflict accounts in Scripture. Perhaps most significantly, it at once squares Genesis 1 with these other creation accounts in the Bible, while also allowing for the most use of nonbiblical creation accounts, especially Enuma Elish, in understanding this creation account.

A good deal can be said in favor of the restoration theory. However, I am by no means claiming that this handling of the creation-conflict stories in Scripture is the only way to handle them. Nor would I want to invest too much weight in such a speculative matter. While the case for the restoration view is defensible and compelling, the evidence is nevertheless admittedly tentative and controversial and should not be raised to the level of a doctrine.

Nor would I want the credibility of the warfare worldview to depend on this tentative theory alone. The Bible’s warfare understanding of evil remains intact even if the restoration understanding of Genesis 1 is rejected and the creation-conflict passages of Scripture are taken to be completely mythological (viz., lacking a temporal reference to an actual primordial battle). Still, if this reading of Genesis 1 is accepted as persuasive, it cannot help but further enhance our appreciation for the warfare worldview of the Bible.