The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. | Deuteronomy 29:29
A lot of Christians have not spent a lot of time on anti-geological theories because the creation narrative has been framed by its relationship to science. When we start from the idea that it is going to relate to empirical evidence, this is what we look for, and this is what we see. There is a great benefit to stepping back and seeing the layers of symbolism present. In his book Through New Eyes, James Jordan helps to present some of these. He begins by pointing out how coming to the text with scientific lenses causes us to miss out:
From time to time in the history of the church, the interpretation of Genesis 1 has been obscured by a tendency to read it in terms of current science. Bringing a scientific worldview to Genesis 1 has resulted in two errors. One is to take the chapter literally, but try to interpret what is says through scientific categories…the opposite tendency, since Genesis 1 does not always seem to square with the scientific (and philosophical) understanding of the world, is to read it allegorically….Genesis 1 is written in terms of visual appearances, not scientific analysis.
It would be an error to turn Genesis into nothing but allegory; this is not what these views do. Instead, they see a literal description of visual appearances. It is neither strictly literal nor completely analogous. God is revealing divine things in descriptions we can understand.
Before we get into the weeds here, a few things to know about non-harmonizing views of Genesis 1. First, they grow from the belief that the main point of the text is not to give us a scientific explanation or origin. They believe that the literary purpose (which can be found by looking at the literary structure) is to provide information to orient us to God. It is grounded to the Creator/creature distinction, in which the Creator is giving information to define this relationship.
The second thing to realize with these views is that the timing of creation is not nearly as important as it was for the views we saw in the last blog. People who hold to these can be young or old earth, and a number of them believe that God created everything in a moment, and all of the days are just a way for Him to organize and communicate all that He did in that moment.
There are a number of anti-geological theories, but the 2 most clearly articulated ones are the Framework and Analogical views. Like the harmonizing views, I am only going to give a cursory description, which is a bit harder with these.
FRAMEWORK VIEW
As the name states, the Framework view believes that Genesis 1 is setting up a structure for us to understand everything else that comes after.
The specific framework that it sets up are two triads: days 1-3 and 4-6. In the first three days we see the creation of kingdoms (light, atmosphere, and land) and on the final three days we see the populating of these kingdoms (sun, sea/sky animals, land-dwellers).
God sets out these environments and fills them in such a way to give an origin story that pushes back against the pagan beliefs, but also one that takes power from the pagan gods. This both describes the relationship between the created world and those that live in it; it also shows that everything that we see and experience is created. There is no reason to worship or give divine credit to anything other than God, because they all come from Him.
The greatest weakness of this view is it focuses on what this narrative meant to the original audience, without recognizing its divine significance.
ANALOGICAL VIEW
The best way to understand this view is that it is about the work of God rather than the time it is done in. The days of creation are organized around God’s work days which are analogous to human work days; though to God a day is like a thousand years. These are not necessarily in chronological order or contiguous (or they may overlap). The point is to focus on God’s work day and what He did to create. The days are looked at by what God did, not primarily how He did it.
This view also focuses a lot on the work/rest balance of God, believing that just as people work during the day and rest at night, we should see God not working continually, but in this same pattern. The seventh day is an ongoing day, as God continues, to the day, to rest from the act of creation.
The whole description of creation is set up to declare God’s divine truth to a non-divine people. He communicates His literal creation to us in an analogous way, so that we can understand things too great for us, as Job declared in Job 42:3. The strength of this view is that it simplifies the text down to what God is setting up for the people He created.
The biggest problem with the Analogical view is that it can begin to read the text too broad, losing some of the details that should be wrestled with.
Both of these views are derived from careful study of the text rather than interaction with the current science. They both create a more theological approach to the text that fits it into the Biblical narrative rather than the cultural one. Both do a good job of revealing truths about our creative God and the ways that He has chosen to communicate His nature to us.