Means the Same Thing

I remember approaching a theology professor in my Biblical Backgrounds class one day after we were talking about Genesis. I asked her how she thought we should read Genesis in relation to modern science. She told me that we shouldn't and I was a little bit confused. She told me that the biblical text was not written to address modern questions about science and that we should not try to read it in that way. After doing some thinking and reading, I saw how wise she was in that regard. Since then, I have heard many other wise men and women of God say exactly that. One of the best things I have learned from my hermeneutics classes is to read the Bible as the Bible and to identify where I am foisting my own cultural assumptions and questions on texts that really were not addressing those questions in the first place.

Recently, in a Sunday school class, there was a good debate about how exactly we should read Genesis 1. There were, of course, those who insisted on a type of young-earth creationism as the only reading one should consider, and then there were those (myself included) who said that there are many possible ways to read the text, the "literal 24-hour position" being one of them.

Starting from the early days of Christianity (I am not too familiar with Jewish readings from earlier periods), there have been questions raised about how to read the creation stories in the book of Genesis. Augustine believed that the days of Genesis were not days in the ordinary sense due to factors such as the sun not showing up until the fourth day. The poetic nature of both Genesis 1 and 2 have caused many theologians to have differing views of what exactly the author (perhaps Moses?) intended for his audience to consider. The advent of modern science raised more questions. After all, ever since Archbishop Ussher "calculated" the age of the earth in the sixteenth century based on biblical genealogies, the fact that geology and cosmology seems to indicate a very old earth has caused Christians to re-examine some of their previously held assumptions. The result has been a plethora of readings of Genesis 1 and 2. Again, the poetic nature of these passages makes many of these readings possible.

While Christians may disagree, as they have from the beginning, on how exactly these passages should be read, the various readings have one thing in common. Whether one adopts a "young-earth literalist" perspective or a "theistic evolutionary" perspective, these positions have been articulated and developed by Christians who are concerned to uphold the integrity of the scriptural witness. I can list many dedicated theologians who love God and are one hundred percent orthodox Christians who hold to many of these views. Perhaps some readings are better than others (the "gap-theory" way of reading the text continues to puzzle me), but all positions have their weaknesses as well. How does the theistic evolutionist square away the seemingly brutal process of natural selection with a loving God? How does a literalist reconcile the contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2 (in Genesis 1, humans are created on the sixth day after everything else; in Genesis two, humans are created before plants and animals, and even the weather.)

Perhaps that is why the author, guided by the Spirit of God wrote it using such poetic imagery. The text is bad at answering our questions about nature or cosmology, but it is excellent at answering our questions about God, ourselves, and our relationship to God. The text polemicized against the pagan religions of the ancient near east which worshiped the sun, moon, stars, and other facets of nature. Many people believed humans were created as the result of angry gods in conflict with each other; humans were to be slaves of the gods in some cases. Genesis tells the world that is not the case. Yahweh created all things, including the stuff you pagans worship. Humans are the result of a loving act of creation. We are designed to partner with Yahweh in taking care of his good earth and to have perfect relationship to him and each other. These theological truths are true today. Science changes over time, but this message about God stays the same. Whether one believes in a gap-theory, literal 24 hour creation, day age creation, historical creationism, theistic evolution, creation as pictorial representation, etc., the meaning of the text is the same. Perhaps that is why none of the creeds specify a specific method of creation as orthodox other than that "I believe in God Almighty maker of heaven and earth and Jesus Christ his only begotten son, our Lord."