Let There Be Meaning: A Relational Reading of Genesis

Let There Be Meaning: A Relational Reading of Genesis

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

—Genesis 1:3

The opening chapter of Genesis is not a treatise on physics, nor a historical record. It is a myth — in the most powerful sense: a ritual of meaning-making, a collective construal of the cosmos as patterned, ordered, and full of significance.

In a relational cosmology, meaning is not pre-written but co-instantiated — brought into being in the act of construal by a meaner. “Creation,” then, is not the making of things from nothing, but the actualisation of potential as meaning. Genesis captures this in the most potent relational metaphor available to a linguistic species: speech.

“And God said…”

With each utterance, a new dimension of potential is constrained — not imposed upon a formless world, but drawn forth from it. “Let there be light” is not the invention of photons, but the construal of a world in which light — as opposed to darkness — becomes a meaningful distinction.

The poetic structure of Genesis is deeply patterned: a rhythm of saying, separating, naming, and seeing. These are not acts of omnipotent manufacturing, but of symbolic construal — the very work of a meaner.

Genesis Action	Relational Reading
God said	An instance of construal: a move from potential to actual meaning.
God divided	Differentiation within potential: marking contrast, establishing structure.
God called	Naming as meaning-making: giving form to experience.
God saw that it was good	Valuation of meaning: coherence, resonance, pattern.

Genesis does not begin with something — it begins with potential: “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” In relational terms, this is pure potential, unactualised. The Spirit moving upon the waters is not a being in motion, but the stirrings of construal, poised to make meaning from chaos.

Creation unfolds not in one moment, but in a sequence of construals. Each day is not a span of time but a phase of meaning-making. And what is the seventh day, if not the moment when the meaner steps back from the construal — no longer creating, but dwelling within the meaning they have brought forth?

Importantly, this construal is not done by an external deity pulling levers. In a relational cosmology, the figure of God functions mythically — as the archetypal meaner, the symbol of the construal process itself. Just as myth speaks of gods walking the earth to express the felt presence of the divine in experience, Genesis speaks of a speaking God to capture the mystery of meaning emerging from silence.

This is why Genesis has endured — not as science, but as sacred poetics: it enacts the miracle of actualisation. In the beginning is the Word — not because language caused the universe, but because the universe is construed in the act of saying.

Let there be meaning. And there is.