The Lost World of Genesis One-Session 18

Resulting Theology in This View of Genesis 1 Is Stronger, Not Weaker

Having discussed what effect this interpretation of Genesis 1 has on thinking about science, we now ought to consider what effect it has on our thinking about theology. What threats might it pose or what strength or clarity might it offer?

The changes that this interpretation might suggest do nothing to weaken the picture of God. Even if the account in Genesis 1 is taken as an account of functional origins, it would not therefore imply that God is not responsible for material origins. The biblical view is that whatever exists from any perspective is the work of God. So this view does not reduce what God has done, it only suggests a change of focus concerning what aspect of God’s work is represented in Genesis 1.

In the same fashion the suggestion that some of God’s work of creation may have taken place over a long period of time rather than instantaneously does not reduce God’s power. God can create any way he sees fit, and it is no less an act of his sovereign power if he chooses to do it over extended billions of years. It is still accomplished by his word. Some would see the great span of time as further indication of God’s majesty. If nothing is taken away from God’s works and his sovereignty is not reduced, then there is no theological threat regarding God’s person or deeds.

On the other side of the equation, there is much to be gained theologically from this interpretation of Genesis 1. In fact we will find that a more vital and robust theology of God as Creator emerges when we adopt this interpretation and its implications. Some of these have been pointed out in previous chapters, but here they will be gathered together for consideration.

God’s Role in Everything

Our scientific worldview has gradually worked God out of the practical ways in which we think about our world. When science can offer explanation for so much of what we see and experience, it is easy for our awareness of God’s role to drift to the periphery. It is not that we believe any less that he is active, it is just that we are not as conscious of his role. The result is a practical (if not philosophical) deism in which God is removed from the arena of operations.

In contrast, when God’s work is fully integrated with our scientific worldview and science is seen to give definition to what God is doing and how he is doing it, we regain a more biblical perspective of the work—a perspective that is theologically healthier.

Creator Role Ongoing

If God’s work of creation is considered only a historical act that took place in the past, it is easy to imagine how people might not think in terms of God being active today. We have lost the view that nature does not operate independently from God. He is still creating with each baby that is born, with each plant that grows, with each cell that divides, with each nebula that forms. We might find it easy to look at some majestic view like a glorious sunset or the grandeur of the mountains and ponder the magnificence of God’s handiwork. But this sense needs to extend beyond the “wow” moments to encompass all of our experience of his world. We have the same problem when we only recognize God in some incredible occurrence in our lives and forget that he provides for us, cares for us and protects us moment by moment, day after day. God did not just create at some time in the past; he is the Creator—past, present and future.

God’s Control of Functions

Although we are acutely aware of the physical world around us, we live in a world of functions. Materialism sees the functions of our world as the consequence of structures, that is, that objects or phenomena in our world function the way that they do because of their physical structures. In the biblical way of thinking, the objects and phenomena in the world function the way they do because of God’s creative purposes. This gets back to the issue of teleology that we have discussed in previous chapters. Materialism has no room for purpose, and so the operative equation concerns only structures and the resulting functions. The biblical way of thinking counters materialism when it insists that the most important part of the equation is God’s purposes.

Our world tends to subordinate the functional to the material. That is why ever since the Enlightenment (at least) we have generally believed that it is most important for us to think of creation in terms of the material. Our world has taught us to give priority to the material. In the view that we have presented of Genesis 1, the material is subordinate to the functional. The Bible considers it much more important to say that God has made everything work rather than being content to say that God made the physical stuff. The purpose, the teleology (which is the most important part), is located and observed in the functional, not the material.

To think about the contrast between the material and the functional, and the illusionary nature of the material world, consider the following statements of one of the characters in Orson Scott Card’s novel Prentice Alvin:

“Everything’s mostly empty. That anvil, it looks solid, don’t it? But I tell you it’s mostly empty. Just little bits of ironstuff, hanging a certain distance from each other, all patterned there. But most of the anvil is the empty space between. Don’t you see? Those bits are acting just like the atoms I’m talking about. So let’s say the anvil is like a mountain, only when you get real close you see it’s made of gravel. And then when you pick up the gravel, it crumbles in your hand, and you see it’s made of dust. And if you could pick up a single fleck of dust you’d see that it was just like the mountain, made of even tinier gravel all over again.”

“You’re saying that what we see as solid objects are really nothing but illusion. Little nothings making tiny spheres that are put together to make your bits, and pieces made from bits, and the anvil made from pieces—”

“Everything is made out of living atoms, all obeying the commands that God gave them. And just following those commands, why, some of them get turned into light and heat, and some of them become iron, and some water, and some air, and some of them our own skin and bones. All those things are real—and so those atoms are real.”

Sacred Space

Once we turn our thinking away from “natural world” to “cosmic temple” our perspective about the world around us is revolutionized. It is difficult to think of the “natural world” as sacred (because we just designated it “natural”). When the cosmos is viewed in secular terms, it is hard to persuade people to respect it unless they can be convinced that it is in their own best interests to do so. If it is secular, it is easy to think of it only as a resource to be exploited. We even refer to “natural resources.”

But when we adopt the biblical perspective of the cosmic temple, it is no longer possible to look at the world (or space) in secular terms. It is not ours to exploit. We do not have natural resources, we have sacred resources. Obviously this view is far removed from a view that sees nature as divine: As sacred space the cosmos is his place. It is therefore not his person. The cosmos is his place, and our privileged place in it is his gift to us. The blessing he granted was that he gave us the permission and the ability to subdue and rule. We are stewards.

At the same time we recognize that the most important feature of sacred space is found in what it is by definition: the place of God’s presence. The cosmic-temple idea recognizes that God is here and that all of this is his. It is this theology that becomes the basis for our respect of our world and the ecological sensitivity that we ought to nurture.

Sabbath

The fourth commandment directs people to observe the sabbath based on God’s rest in Genesis 1. Throughout human history interpreters of Scripture have struggled to work out the implications of this directive. What constitutes rest? What activities are ruled out? Part of the difficulty is that the Bible offers little detail as it tends more toward vague generalizations. Furthermore most of the statements are negative (what one should not do) rather than positive (approved or even mandated activities).

Given the view of Genesis 1 presented in this book, we get a new way to think about the sabbath. If God’s rest on the seventh day involved him taking up his presence in his cosmic temple which has been ordered and made functional so that he is now ready to run the cosmos, our sabbath rest can be seen in a different light. Obviously, God is not asking us to imitate his sabbath rest by taking the functional controls. I would suggest that instead he is asking us to recognize that he is at the controls, not us. When we “rest” on the sabbath, we recognize him as the author of order and the one who brings rest (stability) to our lives and world. We take our hands off the controls of our lives and acknowledge him as the one who is in control. Most importantly this calls on us to step back from our workaday world—those means by which we try to provide for ourselves and gain control of our circumstances. Sabbath is for recognizing that it is God who provides for us and who is the master of our lives and our world. We are not imitating him in sabbath observance, we are acknowledging him in tangible ways.

If we have to be reminded or coerced to observe it, it ceases to serve its function. Sabbath isn’t the sort of thing that should have to be regulated by rules. It is the way that we acknowledge that God is on the throne, that this world is his world, that our time is his gift to us. It is “big picture time.” And the big picture is not me, my family, my country, my world, or even the history of my world. The big picture is God. If the sabbath has its total focus in recognition of God, it would detract considerably if he had to tell us what to do. Be creative! Do whatever will reflect your love, appreciation, respect and awe of the God of all the cosmos. (This is the thrust of Is 58:13–14.) Worship is a great idea, but it can’t be mechanical, and it may only be the beginning. It is up to the individual to determine his or her personal response to give the honor that is due. The more gratitude we feel toward God and the more we desire to honor him, the more the ceremonies will mean and the more we will seek out ways to observe the sabbath. All of this derives from a renewed understanding of the sabbath that proceeds from our interpretation of Genesis 1.

Order

Any reader of the Bible can see that wisdom is a worthy pursuit and that as an attribute of God he grants it to humans who, being in his image, are able to achieve it to some degree. What is less transparent, and often the topic of discussion, is exactly what constitutes wisdom. A theory I find very attractive for the way it suits the wide variety of data is that wisdom entails finding inherent order and conforming oneself to that order. One understands authority, society, family, relationships, ethics and etiquette all in relationship to an understanding of order.

Interpreters of Wisdom literature have consistently noticed how prominent a topic creation is in that literature. The connection of wisdom with order offers an explanation for that prominence. God’s creative work has established order in the cosmos just as he has established order in society and all other areas. Science has observed that order and given us an appreciation of how deeply order penetrates.

In the interpretation of Genesis 1 that has been proposed here, we understand that one of the main emphases of the account of creation is the order that God brings to the cosmos in his wisdom. The temple was seen as being at the center of the ordered world as God established and preserved order in the world from the temple.

When we are troubled by the disorder that we encounter in this world, it is important to understand that the disorder and brokenness of this world are the result of human sin and the Fall. The theological commitment we draw from Genesis 1 is that God is the author of order. We respond by understanding how he has ordered the world: materially, functionally and spiritually.

Human Role

The description of humankind and the statement of blessing in Genesis 1 can now be understood perhaps a little more clearly as related to human functions. When God grants the privilege that people may be fruitful and multiply, he gives us the function of populating the world without limitation. When God creates people in his image it indicates, perhaps among other things, that we are to function as his stewards over creation. When God gives the mandate to subdue and rule, he is assigning a task and providing the wherewithal to accomplish that task. Through Genesis 1 we come to understand that God has given us a privileged role in the functioning of his cosmic temple. He has tailored the world to our needs, not to his (for he has no needs). It is his place, but it is designed for us and we are in relationship with him.

This view is different from both the ancient Near East and different from modern materialism. In the ancient Near East people were created as slaves to the gods. The world was created by the gods for the gods, and people met the needs of the gods. In the Bible God has no needs, and his cosmic temple has been created for people whom he desires to be in relationship with him. In modern materialism people are nothing but physical forms having no function other than to survive. The theology of Genesis 1 is crucial to a right understanding of our identity and our place in the world.

Theological Implications of “It Was Good”

Finally, interpreters have often offered a variety of opinions of the meaning of the repeated statement in Genesis 1 that “it was good.” Some have drawn far-reaching implications from their interpretation. We have already discussed in chapter four the idea that “good” is a reference to being functional, not a matter of moral goodness. This is an important distinction because it does not suggest that we ought to look for moral goodness in the way that the cosmos operates. When we think of “good” in connection to being functional rather than moral, we don’t have to explain how predation can be part of a morally good world. As God indicated to Job, even though the world is God’s place and functions under his control, that does not mean that the cosmos is a reflection of God’s attributes (Job 38). The cosmos declares God’s glory, and his existence can be deduced in the observation of the world, but those truths do not indicate that his attributes are consistently worked out in what we call the “natural world.” Gravity is not just; rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike, even where no one lives (Job 38:25–27); the created world is not “fair.” If it were going to be consistently fair and just, there would be no room for sin at all. Given that it is a sinful world, God’s condescending grace reigns.

The theological issues presented in this list should be recognized as mirroring the theological interests about creation found in the rest of the Bible. As the reader of the Bible looks through Psalms, Wisdom literature, prophets and on into the New Testament, one finds these same sorts of theological affirmations to be the focus. The Bible gives little attention to material origins, though of course God did that too. Consequently even if the reader is not inclined to adopt the proposed interpretation of Genesis 1, his or her theology could still be greatly enhanced by the observations offered here by embracing a renewed and informed commitment to God’s intimate involvement in the operation of the cosmos from its incipience and into eternity. We all need to strengthen our theology of creation and Creator whatever our view of the Genesis account of origins. Even though it is natural for us to defend our exegesis, it is arguably even more important to defend our theology. I have attempted to demonstrate that exegesis of the original meaning of Genesis 1 gives us no cause to argue with the idea of the physical world coming about by a slow process. But we do need to defend at all costs an accurate view of the nature of God and his role in our world.

So what affirmations does the proposed interpretation of Genesis 1 expect of us?

1. The world operates by Yahweh’s design and under his supervision to accomplish his purposes.

2. The cosmos is his temple.

3. Everything in the cosmos was given its role and function by God.

4. Everything in the cosmos functions on behalf of people who are in his image.[1]

[1] Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (pp. 141–150). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.