Let them praise the name of the LORD!
For he commanded and they were created.
And he established them forever and ever;
he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. | Psalm 148:5–6
This week we looked at the days of creation. I did it without getting into all of the arguments about length of days and age of the earth. Part of this is because I feel like the focus on these issues has caused people to miss the main purpose and point of the creation narrative. It is not mainly about the creation, but the Creator who made it.
That said, it is helpful to know the various theories/structures that people have in relation to Genesis 1. It is good to be aware that there are a variety of perspectives and that a number of theologians through time have held to. It is about more than literal vs. analogous, young earth vs. old earth, or science vs. the Bible. It is much more about holding tightly to what Scripture is clear about and less tightly to what is obscure. When Christians get this wrong, they create a barrier to belief. This challenge has always been there, as evidenced by Augustine sharing it in his book, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, written in 415AD:
If [non-Christians] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Augustine’s point here is that it is possible for Christians to come to scientific claims from Scripture that end up being proven wrong. This is a warning that has not always been heeded and has been a problem throughout history. It isn’t because the Bible is wrong, but because we have misunderstood what it was communicating. As Theologian Herman Bavinck explains it:
Conflict arises only because both the text of the book of Scripture and the text of the book of nature are often so badly read and poorly misunderstood.
To be fair to the reader, Genesis 1 is not an easy read, as I believe it is a layered text with a number of different meanings simultaneously. In an attempt to fight against what we may see as our cultural battles, we may end up reading into Scripture what we want it to say. We miss all of the other, and often more important, truths it is trying to reveal to us.
The big issue, as Augustine points out, is that the gospel gets lost in a battle over scientific details. I am not saying that these battles should never be fought or that anything that challenges people should be done away with. I am all for allowing the Bible to offend people. I want to make sure that it is Scripture and not our interpretation of it that is doing the offending.
God gives us what we need to know, without bogging us down with the details that tend to lead to conflict. While in modern times, we feel like they are aspects missing, for the majority of human existence, what God provided was more than enough to make sense of the world. Even with all of our scientific advancements, I would argue that Genesis 1 gives us a far more robust description of our origins than all of the geological records and astrological projections can provide. As we look at various models, I want to make sure that we don’t lose the benefit of what God has provided us.
This was the concern that drove a 2004 study from the OPC church on the issue of creation. As they had numerous pastors come up for ordination with different views, they asked the question: which of these ideas fit within the Westminster confession’s statement on creation, which reads:
It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good.
I found their starting point to be a good starting point for this discussion. They started with the affirmations that should be part of any Biblical concept of creation. I will lay out some of the different views over the next few days, but I wanted to start with what we should agree on.
- The one true and living God existed alone in eternity, and beside him there was no matter, energy, space or time.
- The one true and living God according to his sovereign decree, determined to create or make of nothing, the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible.
- That no part of the universe or any creature in it came into being by chance or by any power other than that of the Sovereign God.
- That God created man, male and female after His own image, and as God’s image bearer man possesses an immortal soul. Thus man is distinct from all other earthly creatures even though his body is composed of the elements of his environment.
- That when God created man, it was God’s inbreathing that constituted man a living creature, and thus God did not impress his image upon some pre-existing living creature.
- That the entire human family has descended from the first human pair, and, with the one exception of Christ, this descent has been by ordinary generation.
- That man, when created by God, was holy. Then God entered into a covenant of works with the one man Adam. In the covenant Adam represented his posterity, and thus when he violated the requirement, all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him into an estate of sin.
Beyond these affirmations, much more can be said about the agreement within the Committee. The Committee also finds itself in essential agreement about how Genesis 1 and 2 are to be understood. The narrative must be interpreted literally: we are to find the meaning that the author intended. The narrative must be understood historically: it is not myth, but a record of what happened in space and time. Finally, the narrative contains metaphorical elements: there are figures of speech and literary features within the account that Moses records. The task of the exegete is not to determine whether the text is scientific or historical on the one hand or literary on the other. Instead the exegete must be sensitive to all of these elements in the narrative. In addition, the Committee is in agreement as to the purposes of the creation account. While the account is not given to us to encourage historical or scientific speculation, it does give us an inspired and authoritative account of the history of God’s work of creation that does proscribe certain scientific theories of our origins.
These affirmations should be a part of whatever view of creation we ascribe to.