Genesis 1:1 lays out the pattern of all reality: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Heaven and earth are not places. Still less is this a scientific description of the cosmos. Heaven and earth are the ultimate realities underlying all experience, and they correspond roughly to meaning and matter.
Earth is the blind, dense, dark, low, opaque, chaotic potential out of which the world emerges. As Genesis 1:2 puts it, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” This is a description of matter (earth) without meaning (heaven).
Heaven is the lucid, light, bright, high, clear, ordered perception of unity that gives form to the chaotic matter of the world. As Genesis 1:2 puts it, “the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” This is a description of the Logos (word, logic) through which all things were made. John 1:3 is quite literal.
The creation narrative in Genesis 1-2 makes a fractal pattern of increasing detail/complexity out of the original heaven-earth structure. The pattern culminates in the creation of man, first as a male/female species whose unity creates the family, and second as a body/soul composite, whose unity creates the individual as a microcosm of the whole cosmos. Here is a list of the pattern as it plays out in Genesis 1-2, with the heavenly component listed first each time and the earthly component listed second:
light/darkness (1:4)
day/night (1:5)
waters above/waters below (1:7)
dry land (earth)/waters (seas) (1:10)
seeds/fruit (vegetation) (1:11)
greater light (sun)/lesser light (moon) (1:16)
birds in sky/fish in sea (1:20)
cattle/creeping things (1:25)
male/female (man as species) (1:26)
dust/breath (man as individual) (2:7)
Matthieu and Jonathon Pageau, whose work this article summarizes, argue that all of Scripture—not just the creation narrative—can be read as a continual elaboration, variation, and recapitulation of the heaven/earth pattern. Furthermore, they argue that this is the pattern of reality itself, and that the Bible actually offers us a precise description of the deepest level of reality—a truth beyond the scientific/material truth we’ve been conditioned in modernity to take as the only thing “real.”
The following examples might clear things up.
Imagine you want to build a house, and you’ve drafted a blueprint. You have no land, no materials (plywood, concrete, hardware, tools, etc.), and no experience in construction. You have the heavenly component (the idea or blueprint) without the earthly component (the materials, the experience, etc.), and so no creation is possible.
Imagine in a different scenario you have land, and an abundance of plywood, concrete, hardware, tools, and building experience. But you have no blueprint or pattern for a house. You have the earthly component but you lack the heavenly, and so no creation is possible.
The creation of a house involves the union of heaven (blueprint) and earth (matter), and the house emerges as something called a symbol. The Greek root of the word symbol means “union/joining.” Now we start to understand what it means to read Scripture, stories, and even reality symbolically.
Here is another example.
You have an idea for a story. You want to write a story about this theme: love always triumphs over violence. You have a blueprint or an idea (the heavenly component). You have no characters, no setting, no events, no plot, etc. You lack the earthly component—the examples, the specific events, and the concrete details that would give your idea embodiment. The idea is good, but it cannot be accessed unless it descends from heaven into earth and becomes incarnate in characters and events. If it remains in the heavens, it remains alone because it is too simple. It must descend into particularity and examples and “die” in order to be understood and communicated.
Imagine on the other hand that you have a long narrative of characters doing different things in different places at different times in different situations. But you have no theme or idea to unify the events. Therefore, in one scene you have a man brushing his teeth and stubbing his toe on the way out of the bathroom; in another you have a woman dropping her car keys in the Walmart parking lot because she is unlocking the door while holding a writhing two-year old; in another you have a husband wife facing the most difficult and meaningful choice of their lives. There is no story because there is no union between meaning (heaven) and matter (events).
Now come back to the creation of mankind in the image of God, male and female. Man corresponds to the heavens and woman corresponds to the earth. The family is a microcosm of creation, just as the individual, soul and body, is a microcosm. In marriage, heaven (husband) and earth (wife) come together in the symbol (child). We see clearly and profoundly in a good marriage the image of the Creator, who joined heaven and earth in the beginning. In marriage, a father gives up his identity, empties himself, and descends into matter in order to give life and purpose to his family. Incidentally, the word “matter” comes from the same root as “mother” and “matrix.” And a mother in marriage offers up her own body to build up and nourish the bodies of her children, and to support her husband. And the whole thing is a microcosm or miniature of the cosmos, and an ecstasy of love.
Author Bio: Shea Whitmore earned his BA in Classics from Hillsdale College, where he also played four years for the Charger football program. He completed an MA in Theology through Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2023. He currently teaches 7th-9th grade Latin at a Classical charter school in east-central Florida. He and his wife have been married for six years and have three young sons.