emergence of plant life (v. 12), the placement of the heavenly bodies (v. 18), and the creation of marine and aerial life (v. 21) and of earthbound creatures (v. 25). The whole is summarized in verse 31: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” The judgment that all these things were “good” is of course a statement of purpose. It suggests that creation serves aesthetic ends at least.15 But aesthetics alone is an insufficient basis on which to build the eternal, divine objective. To