The Lost World of Genesis One-Session 10

The Seven Days of Genesis 1 Do Not Concern Material Origins

Previous chapters proposed that Genesis 1 is not an account of material origins but an account of functional origins, specifically focusing on the functioning of the cosmos as God’s temple. In the last chapter we identified the seven days of creation as literal twenty-four-hour days associated with the inauguration of the cosmic temple—its actual creation, accomplished by proclaiming its functions, installing its functionaries, and, most importantly, becoming the place of God’s residence.

One of the most common questions about this view comes from those who are struggling with the worldview shift from material orientation to functional orientation (a difficult jump for all of us). In a last effort to cling to a material perspective, they ask,

why can’t it be both?

It is easy to see the functional orientation of the account, but does the material aspect have to be eliminated altogether?

In answer to this question, if we say that the text includes a material element alongside the functional, this view has to be demonstrated, not just retained because it is the perspective most familiar to us. The comfort of our traditional worldview is an insufficient basis for such a conclusion. We must be led by the text. A material interest cannot be assumed by default, it must be demonstrated, and we must ask ourselves why we are so interested in seeing the account in material terms. In previous chapters I have proposed the following:

• The nature of the governing verb (bārāʾ, “create”) is functional.

• The context is functional (it starts with a nonfunctional world in Gen 1:2 and comes back to a functional description of creation after the flood in Gen 8:22).

• The cultural context is functional (ancient Near Eastern literature).

• The theology is functional (cosmic temple).

These provide some significant evidences of the functional perspective.

If we turn our attention to the possible evidences for the material interests of the account we find significant obstacles:

• Of the seven days, three have no statement of creation of any material component (days 1, 3 and 7).

• Day two has a potentially material component (the firmament, rāqî ʿa), but no one believes there is actually something material there—no solid construction holds back the upper waters. If the account is material as well as functional we then find ourselves with the problem of trying to explain the material creation of something that does not exist. The word rāqî ʿa had a meaning to Israelites as referring to a very specific object in their cosmic geography. If this were a legitimate material account, then we would be obliged to find something solid up there (not just change the word to mean something else as concordists tend to do). In the functional approach, this component of Old World science addresses the function of weather, described in terms that they would understand.

• Days four and six have material components, but the text explicitly deals with them only on the functional level (celestial bodies for signs, seasons, days and years; human beings in God’s image, male and female, with the task to subdue and rule).

• This leaves only day five in discussion, where functions are mentioned (e.g., let them swarm) and the verb bārāʾ is again used. As a result, it is difficult to sustain a case that the account is interested in material origins if one does not already come with that presupposition.

If the seven days refer to the seven days of cosmic temple inauguration, days that concern origins of functions not material, then the seven days and Genesis 1 as a whole have nothing to contribute to the discussion of the age of the earth. This is not a conclusion designed to accommodate science—it was drawn from an analysis and interpretation of the biblical text of Genesis in its ancient environment. The point is not that the biblical text therefore supports an old earth, but simply that there is no biblical position on the age of the earth. If it were to turn out that the earth is young, so be it. But most people who seek to defend a young-earth view do so because they believe that the Bible obligates them to such a defense. I admire the fact that believers are willing to take unpopular positions and investigate all sorts of alternatives in an attempt to defend the reputation of the biblical text. But if the biblical text does not demand a young earth there would be little impetus or evidence to offer such a suggestion.

If there is no biblical information concerning the age of the material cosmos, then, as people who take the Bible seriously, we have nothing to defend on that count and can consider the options that science has to offer. Some scientific theories may end up being correct and others may be replaced by new thinking. We need not defend the reigning paradigm in science about the age of the earth if we have scientific reservations, but we are under no compulsion to stand against a scientific view of an old earth because of what the Bible teaches.

One of the sad statistics of the last 150 years is that increasing numbers of young people who were raised in the environment of a biblical faith began to pursue education and careers in the sciences and found themselves conflicted as they tried to sort out the claims of science and the claims of the faith they had been taught. It seems to many that they have to make a choice: either believe the Bible and hold to a young earth, or abandon the Bible because of the persuasiveness of the case for an old earth. The good news is that we do not have to make such a choice. The Bible does not call for a young earth. Biblical faith need not be abandoned if one concludes from the scientific evidence that the earth is old.

At this point a very clear statement must be made:

Viewing Genesis 1 as an account of functional origins of the cosmos as temple does not in any way suggest or imply that God was uninvolved in material origins—it only contends that Genesis 1 is not that story.

To the author and audience of Genesis, material origins were simply not a priority. To that audience, however, it would likewise have been unthinkable that God was somehow uninvolved in the material origins of creation. Hence there wouldn’t have been any need to stress a material creation account with God depicted as centrally involved in material aspects of creation. We can understand this issue of focused interests through any number of analogies from our own world as we indicated in chapter two with the examples of a company and a computer. Many situations in our experience interest us on the functional level while they generate no curiosity at all about the material aspect.

Our affirmation of God’s creation of the material cosmos is supported by theological logic as well as by occasional New Testament references. By New Testament times there was already a growing interest in material aspects and so also a greater likelihood that texts would address material questions. Speaking of Christ, Paul affirms, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers of rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16–17). This statement can certainly be understood to include both the material and the functional. Hebrews 1:2 is less explicit as it affirms that the Son is appointed the heir of all things and that through him God made the “universe.” Here it must be noted that the word translated “universe” is aiōnas, not kosmos—thus more aptly referring to the ages of history than to the material world (the same in Heb 11:3).

The theological point is that whatever exists, be it material or functional, God made it. But from there our task as interpreters is to evaluate individual texts to see what aspect of God’s creation they discuss.

Finally we need to address the question of what actually happens in the seven days. What would a comparison of the “before” and “after” pictures look like? What would an observer see if able to observe the process of these seven days? On these we can only speculate, but I will try to explore the implications of this view.

The functional view understands the functions to be decreed by God to serve the purposes of humanity, who has been made in his image. The main elements lacking in the “before” picture are therefore humanity in God’s image and God’s presence in his cosmic temple. Without those two ingredients the cosmos would be considered nonfunctional and therefore nonexistent. The material phase nonetheless could have been under development for long eras and could in that case correspond with the descriptions of the prehistoric ages as science has uncovered them for us. There would be no reason to think that the sun had not been shining, plants had not been growing, or animals had not been present. These were like the rehearsals leading up to a performance of a play. The rehearsals are preparatory and necessary, but they are not the play. They find their meaning only when the audience is present. It is then that the play exists, and it is for them that the play exists.

In the “after” picture the cosmos is now not only the handiwork of God (since he was responsible for the material phase all along, whenever it took place), but it also becomes God’s residence—the place he has chosen and prepared for his presence to rest. People have been granted the image of God and now serve him as vice regents in the world that has been made for them. Again it is instructive to invoke the analogy of the temple before and after its inauguration. After priests have been installed and God has entered, it is finally a fully functioning temple—it exists only by virtue of those aspects.

What would a college be without students? Without administration and faculty? Without courses? We could talk about the origins of the college when it first opened its doors, enrolled students for the first time, hired faculty, designed courses and offered them and so on. In another sense this process is reenacted year by year as students return (or are newly enrolled), faculty again inhabit their offices, courses are offered. Anyone in academics knows the difference between the empty feel of campus during the summer compared to the energy of a new semester beginning.

Before the college existed, there would have been a material “construction” phase. What a mess! Partially built buildings, construction equipment, torn up ground and so forth. This is all part of a campus taking shape—but it is only preliminary to a college existing, because a college is more than a campus.

What would the observer have seen in these seven days of Genesis 1? At one level this could simply be dismissed as the wrong question. It continues to focus on the eyewitness account of material acts. But perhaps we can indulge our imagination for a moment as we return to the analogy of the college.

The main thing that happens is that students arrive. But even that would not necessarily mean much if faculty did not begin offering courses. In the light of those two events, however, everything else that was there all along takes on energy and meaning. The course schedule brings order to time. Time had been there all along, but the course schedule gives time a meaning to the college and the students. Even the course schedule had been there a long time (designed months earlier with students registering), but it has no existence until the semester begins. Dorms had existed filled with furniture. But now students inhabit the dorms and the furniture begins to serve its function.

The observer in Genesis 1 would see day by day that everything was ready to do for people what it had been designed to do. It would be like taking a campus tour just before students were ready to arrive to see all the preparations that had been made and how everything had been designed, organized and constructed to serve students. If Genesis 1 served as a liturgy to reenact (annually?) the inauguration of the cosmic temple, we also find a parallel in the college analogy as year by year students arrive and courses begin to bring life and meaning to the campus.

Death

Some might object that if the material phase had been carried out for long ages prior to the seven days of Genesis, there would be a problem about death. Romans 5:12 states unequivocally, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” Interpreters have inferred from this verse that there was no death at any level prior to the Fall, the entrance of sin. But we should notice that the verse does not say that. Paul is talking about how death came to people—why all of humanity is subject to death. Just because death came to us because of sin, does not mean that death did not exist at any level prior to the Fall.

Not only does the verse not make a claim for death in general, everything we know logically repudiates the absence of death at any level prior to the Fall. Day three describes the process by which plants grow. The cycle of sprouting leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds is one that involves death at every stage. This system only functions with death as part of it. Likewise with animals: we need not even broach the topic of predatory meat eaters to see that the food chain involves death. A caterpillar eating a leaf brings death. A bird eating the caterpillar brings death. Fish eating insects brings death. If animals and insects did not die, they would overwhelm their environment and the ecology would suffer. Furthermore, if we move to the cellular level death is inevitable. Human skin has an outer layer of epidermis—dead cells—and we know that Adam had skin (Gen 2:23).

All of this indicates clearly that death did exist in the pre-Fall world—even though humans were not subject to it. But there is more. Human resistance to death was not the result of immortal bodies. The text indicates that we are formed from the dust of the earth, a statement of our mortality (for dust we are and to dust we shall return, cf. Gen 3:19). No, the reason we were not subject to death was because an antidote had been provided to our natural mortality through the mechanism of the tree of life in the garden. When God specified the punishment for disobedience, he said that when they ate, they would be doomed to death (the meaning of the Hebrew phrase in Gen 2:17). That punishment was carried out by banishing them from the garden and blocking access to the tree of life (Gen 3:23–24). Without access to the tree of life, humans were doomed to the natural mortality of their bodies and were therefore doomed to die. And so it was that death came through sin.[1]

[1] Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (pp. 92–100). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.