Blog Fourteen, November 7, 2025
Earth is a dynamic body with separate but highly interactive spheres. Each sphere is a system, a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. Environmental scientists speak of the “four spheres of Earth”:
• The Atmosphere, which is the air above Earth’s surface.
• The Geosphere (The Dry Land) consists of Earth’s crust, mantle, and core. Its surface is further differentiated into the lithosphere (rock), the continents, and ocean basins.
• The Hydrosphere, the water component of Earth. Nearly 71% of our planet’s surface is covered with water, about 97% of the waters are salt water (oceans, seas).
• The Biosphere (where life exists) reaches to the other spheres. It includes all life and is found from the ocean floor upward for several kilometers into the atmosphere.
Paul and Barnabas, when they addressed the citizens of Lystra who were trying to deify them, saluted instead their “living God” who made the four domains of Creation: “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (Acts 14:15, ESV, emphasis added).
These four domains created in Genesis 1 are the same four that are recognized today as the synergetic components of the Earth system. Significantly, the Earth’s spheres are interactive and integrated seamlessly. Created by a Triune God who is perfectly seamless, Scripture divides the natural realm into the same segments as today’s science community.
Each of the spheres is organized into components:
The Atmosphere into the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere
The Geosphere into the crust, mantle, and core
The Hydrosphere (Oceans) into sunlight zone (epipelagic), twilight zone (mesopelagic), midnight zone (bathypelagic), abyssal zone (abyssopelagic), and hadal zone (trenches)
The Biosphere is organized in five levels: biomes, ecosystems, communities, populations, and organisms
However, there is one domain where they all meet – the top layer of Earth’s crust, a region we call the soil. The dry land is where man lives, where we find firm footing, where we grow crops and harvest food, where we maintain equilibrium and walk. The soil is a conglomeration of the spheres:
Ground up rock from the Geosphere
Organic material from decayed plants and animals, as well as myriad organisms from the Biosphere
Water from the Hydrosphere
Gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen from the Atmosphere
All of these components are essential to soil function. No other entity in Creation has such a requisite blend of key components from the four spheres. All are required for man’s activities and survival; absence of any of these components in the soil does not serve us well. Soil is the powerhouse component of man’s habitat.
Not coincidentally, man was made from dust, according to Scripture. All of the 20-30 elements essential to life, found in the human body, are found in soil. Soil, created by God for man’s benefit, was the perfect starting material for the human body.
D. E.