This notion of firmament being “space” is both Modernistic and absurd. Clearly the Church Fathers unanimously believed that it was an actual substance, with some mentions of debates regarding what it was made of. So I am surprised to see cassini promoting the idea. He’s such a literalist about how the sun rising means that it moves and can’t be a matter of perspective and yet the firmament is space? Even Sungenis sees this, coming up with a theory about infinitely-dense matter. While that’s a stretch, he tacitly admits that the Fathers clearly did not believe that it was empty space. For them, it was something solid that keeps literal waters from inundating the earth. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.
‘Day 1: In the beginning God created Heaven, and Earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.
Day 2; And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day. God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
My reasoning arose from considering the Big Bang theory that has replaced the supernatural creation of all by God as recorded in Genesis. This 'Bang' they say caused the evolution of atoms that went on to evolve into the Earth, sun, moon, planets and stars. Never once have I heard or read of the space into which their big Bang matter supposedly spread. In other words they assume the space of the universe was there already, something that just exists. I have never had the chance to challenge them on this point. As far as I am concerned what we call space has to be created as well as the Earth etc.
Genesis Creation account above shows that God first created Heaven and Earth. This Heaven must be the space into which the Earth was placed. Moses then tells us of the deep and the waters that could be the Earth was covered with water as it was after Noah's Flood.
Next, was there a Heaven in which God occupied in eternity or did He create that Heaven with the Earth to accommodate the souls and bodies that would gain Heaven. Our Lady went body and soul to this heaven. So the Heaven created with the Earth could be the 'space' heaven and the Heaven we all aspire to. These two meanings are not alone, as the creation of light also had two meanings, the angels and the physical light that arises from electromagnetism, the same light that allows us to see things.
Then we get to the firmament that Moses said was 'made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters.'
Moses then tells us
God called the firmament Heaven, the same heaven, described in the first line of Genesis, the place where God now dwells and what we also refer to as the space of the universe heaven.'God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven (firmament) be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. That sounds like what happened after the Flood of Noah. As we all know God often reveals something to happen in the future. The 3 days Christ the child went missing, the three day Jonah spent in the whale and the three days before the resurrection.
So, this 'firmament occupies space. It could be the separation of oxygen above the Earth that is separated from the space outside the Earth that has no oxygen.
Then there is the ether. The concept of aether, which incidentally is an anagram for Earth, has been accepted since the time of Aristotle and Plato at least; was once known as quintessence, meaning the fifth element; and was also acknowledged by the Fathers of the Church and indeed entered their discussions on the interpretation of the ‘firmament’ of the heavens as described in Genesis. Aether, better known now as ether, was considered omnipresent throughout all space, and even the Earth’s atmosphere. Ether was, and if the truth be known, still is, a medium through which all the properties of electromagnetic (the light created by God in the beginning) signals pass, maybe even faster than the speed of light. Ether was understood as the medium through which all the light-waves from the sun would propagate to nourish and illuminate the Earth. Exactly what ether is remained hidden to science throughout the ages, only that it must exist for certain things to happen.
The firmament then has to accommodate the separation above the Earth into the sky called heaven by Moses, no matter what may be in it, be it ether, vacuum, air or whatever. What it definitely it is not is something solid or birds could not fly through it..
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