Once Upon a... Beginning
An exploration of Genesis 1-3 and John 1
“No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that ‘in the beginning God made Heaven and Earth.’”
We all remember the experience: You are sitting there, late at night, staring at the computer screen having written, deleted, re-written, then deleted the beginning of that first paragraph. Or, you are gazing at a piece of notebook paper, 20 other pieces crumpled and scattered on the floor or spilling out of the waste basket. You’ve been given a writing assignment. You think of 100 things to say, but ordering them, shaping them, finding that one thing, finding that first thing–that’s the predicament! And then, all of a sudden, it happens…that first sentence…that beautiful sentence…that one phrase that will pique the curiosity of your reader, the sentence that will divulge enough of the plot without revealing too much. The thought that will give birth to the story and keep the pages turning toward a fitting conclusion.
Scripture begins with such a thought. A small sentence with a grand vision. A potent and substantive claim inspiring centuries of devotional reflection, academic discourse, and even white-hot controversy: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”
One small prepositional phrase, “In the beginning,” announces the genesis of life. God then appears, rightfully, as the subject of the first sentence of the Bible. The verb, created (bara), is used here and 50 other times in Scripture, each time with Deity as the subject–thus, reserving this special act of creating (bara) for God alone, an action that is not the summoning of mere material, but the bestowal of function, of purpose, of destiny! The sentence concludes with a sweeping direct object, “the heavens and the earth,” that is both material (earth) and supernatural (the heavens)—asserting that God is the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the entire cosmos. There is not one maverick molecule—no, not even one!
Much ink has been spilled on what we might make of a beginning like this one. Is it myth, history, fact, fiction, poetry, prose, metaphor, analogy, narrative and/or story? I appreciate Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann’s, perspective on this question: “Let us stay with ‘story’, a story rooted within our space and time, but a story which catches us up into itself, and confronts us with the truth about ourselves. This is not to say that what is depicted in these chapters did not happen. To be sure, in the story of humankind’s relationship with the Creator, beauty is turned to brokenness, unity to diversity, fellowship to banishment, and life becomes overshadowed by death. But we may not only say that it happened. We must also say that it happens. We are part of the story. We are there in the Garden, and the Word is addressed to us.”
Consequently, the title of this teaching series is “Once upon a…beginning.” There is not another work of literature and there may not be another section of the Bible that offers as grand a depiction of who God is, who we are, why we were created in the first place, and how to best make sense of the story that we find ourselves in. The timeless truths of Genesis 1-3 unfold as a story (“Once upon a…”) rooting both our origin (“beginning”) and destiny (“the heavens and the earth”).
The Theme and the Threads of Genesis 1-3 and John 1
I once asked a good friend who is an Old Testament professor, “What is Genesis 1-3 all about? Is there a theme?” Pausing, musing, then reflecting as only a professor might, he contemplatively offered, “Relationship…”
In Genesis 1-3, relationship gets worked out in myriad ways—relationship with the cosmos, with God, with others; relationship to evil, to rest, and to work. When we turn the pages of Scripture to John’s Gospel, we find a book that intentionally begins with the same words, “In the beginning…,” and then proceeds to demonstrate how Jesus becomes the author of a new creation (or re-creation). In John 1 we again see the theme of relationship in operation: relationship between creation and re-creation, between the church and world, between grace and truth.
Genesis 1-3 and John 1, and all of Scripture for that matter, should be read in light of a couple of larger, narrative threads that form this story, inform our theology, and shape our lives. The three threads: (1) Creation, (2) Fall (or “break of relationship”), and (3) Restoration. Thus, the Christian story, like every good story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. God created everything, we messed it all up, and God is in the process of repairing it. The chart below provides a helpful framework for Genesis 1-3 and John 1:
Relationship | Scripture | Creation | Fall (or “break”) | Restoration | Communion Focus |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Cosmos | Genesis 1:1-26; 3:1-5 | Beauty | Brokenness | Renewal | Renewal |
God | Genesis 2:4-17; 3:1-5, 14-15, 21-24 | Intimacy | Enmity | Reconciliation | Forgiveness |
Each Other | 2:18-25; 3:1-5, 6-13 | Connection | Disconnection | Reconnection | Reconciliation |
Evil | 3:1-24 | Possible | Pervasive | Eradicated | Justice |
Rest | 2:1-3; 3:1-5, 16-20 | Integrated | Disintegrated | Reintegrated | Foretaste |
Work | 1:26-31; 2:1-3; 3:1-5, 16-20 | Cultivators | Consumers | Collaborators | Commission |
Creation and Re-Creation | John 1:1-5 | Light | Darkness | Light of Life | Illumination |
Church and World | John 1:9-13 | Blessed | Cursed | Blessed to be Blessing | Blessing |
Grace and Truth | John 1:14-18 | Imminent | Incarnation | Intimacy | Intimacy |
Table of Contents
Relationship with the Cosmos
(How do you show up in the world?)
Genesis 1:1-26; 3:1-5
“Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.”
“The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”
Creation
Beauty. Without a God who creates the cosmos, is there any ground upon which to call it beautiful? Human history has swung the pendulum from a disparaging view of the material (in contrast to the spiritual) to the bleak view that the material is all that we have. Walter Brueggemann articulates this well: “These chapters embody a peculiar and perceptive intellectual tradition. This intellectual tradition has discerned that all other philosophical and political questions (i.e., issues of meaning and power) are subordinated to this fundamental issue of the relation of the creator and creation…. On the one hand, they break with the ‘mythological’ perception of reality which assumes that all the real action is with the gods and creation in and of itself has no significant value. On the other hand, they resist the ‘scientific’ view of creation which assumes that the world contains its own mysteries and can be understood in terms of itself without any transcendent referent.” In other words, Genesis 1 holds that a good God has created a beautiful cosmos.
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Brokenness. But we have smeared and stained God’s masterpiece. We wanted out from underneath God’s governorship, and when we walked away, we took the world with us, and ever since, it has been unraveling and winding down (“entropy”). Chesterton’s insight articulates our longing for renewal in the midst of a broken-down world: “Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If only we could get round in front…”
Restoration
Renewal. God’s plan for “getting around to the front” involves a re-design more glorious than the first! The cross of Christ has cosmic implications beyond mere humans, and God spares no expense in re-creation. We see this clue imbedded in Genesis 1-3, as theologian Claus Westermann points out, “The simple fact that the first page of the Bible speaks about heaven and earth, the sun, the moon and stars, about plants and trees, about birds, fish and animals, is a certain sign that God whom we acknowledge in the Creed as the Father of Jesus Christ, is concerned with all of these creatures, and not merely with humans.”
Relationship with God
Genesis 2:4-17; 3:1-5, 14-15, 21-24
“Human beings are not God. We shall find several times in these eleven chapters how human beings graspingly attempt to cross the boundaries between earth and heaven; they try to make themselves as gods. And each time the result is chaos. For heaven is not to be grasped at, not to be owned, not to be controlled. Heaven is received as a gift of love, to be listened to, and welcomed. It is in the One Mediator that heaven comes to earth. In him we can be lifted to the ‘heavenly places’. But that is of grace, not of right. Genesis 1 reminded us of the separation of the heavens and the earth. And for human beings to retain their humanity, they need to respect their God-given boundaries, and not grasp at that which belongs to God.”
Creation
Intimacy. God is mentioned some 35 times in as many verses in Genesis 1. This passage, this book really, is all about God! And God has existed in an eternal, trinitarian relationship perhaps best described as intimate (Latin’s intimus or “the inmost”). In Genesis 1-3 we see the raw materials (the spirit hovering as “a mother bird flutter over her young,” the plural pronouns describing Deity), the hints that the New Testament picks up in order to reveal God as a Triune God (see John 1 and Hebrews 1:1-4). Out of this inter-trinitarian intimacy, our God relates intimately with us, walking with us in the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). We were designed to experience freedom in our intimacy with God.
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Enmity. In the middle of the garden were two trees. They were not magical, but sacramental. In other words, they were physical pointers to a spiritual reality. And the two trees juxtaposed life (and wisdom) with forbidden knowledge. Derek Kidner writes, “At the centre, in the midst of the Garden, is the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In order for the tree to be at the center, man himself cannot be at the centre. So here, the freedom of human life is limited by one prohibition (2:17), which reminds the man that the freedom for his life, and therefore the conditions for his life, are given him by God…. As it stood, prohibited, it presented the alternative to discipleship: to be self-made, wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator (cf. 3:6). Even more instructive is the outcome of the experiment; see on 3:7. In all this the tree plays its part in the opportunity it offers, rather than the qualities it possesses; like a door whose name announces only what lies beyond it.” We traded in our intimacy with God for freedom from God, and the rest of the story is, as they say, history. This history involves humanity looking everywhere and to anyone for that freedom and intimacy that we lost and that only God can restore.
Restoration
Reconciliation. But God—the two most precious words in Scripture when placed beside one another. But God made a new covenant with his people—he cut a deal—the Hebrew term for covenant literally means “to cut”. God cut animals up and made garments for Adam and Eve when they realized they were naked, hiding their guilt and covering their shame. And Christians see Jesus as the Messiah who was “cut down” on our behalf—the one who created the animals was sacrificed as an animal, that God would keep covenant and remain in love with his people even when his people shunned and shirked his love. In Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth he writes, “God caused [Jesus] who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might put on the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Relationship with Each Other
Genesis 2:18-25; 3:1-5, 6-13
“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still [just] a feeling…. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.... But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - [true] love as distinct from ‘being in love’ - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God...”
Creation
Connection. In the Garden of Eden, God creates and says, “It is good…it is good…it is good,” and then He creates man and says, “It is NOT good for man to be alone.” We are created as relational beings—longing for relationship—built for community. And so, as the story unfolds, God parades a bunch of animals in front of Adam—this one? this one? this one? Adam thinks to himself: too furry, too feathery, too trunky. And then, God creates Eve and Adam says, “She’s okay.” No, actually he bursts forth with a poem celebrating her beauty, and we have the very first marriage—a deep connection forged in covenant commitment.
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Disconnection. But as Adam and Eve swallowed the forbidden fruit, everything changed. The connection with God was lost, and they looked at each other, and for the very first time, felt ashamed. Adam and Eve were once so others-focused that they didn’t even bother noticing their own nakedness. They were completely lacking in self-consciousness. But after this moment, cracks and fissures entered into the relationship—there was blame, bitterness, contempt, deceit. Trust broke apart that day, and suspicion and agitation began to grow up as the weeds in the cracks.
Restoration
Reconnection. Through Christ’s work of grace, and the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” we are given the capacity to reconnect deeply with one another. Through forgiveness (forgiving just as God forgave us), bitterness melts, contempt dissolves, and anger dissipates.
Relationship with Evil
Genesis 3:1-24
“Death, which we may rightly see as a natural and harmless feature of the original landscape, now assumes the unwelcome guise of the executioner, coming grimly to prevent the poison spreading too far. God’s anxiety that Adam might now take fruit from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever in his fallen state (Gen. 3:22) leads to God’s equal anxiety that arrogant humankind would be able to plot ever greater and greater folly (Genesis 11:6). Judgment in the present time is a matter of stopping evil in its tracks before it gets too far.”
“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”
Creation
Possible. Where did evil come from? Well, assuming one believes in evil, it seems a mystery! Christians are wise to say that this is one spot on the theological map that we do not have very much topography. Does this undermine Christianity? No. Try every other alternative narrative for evil: “Evil is an illusion.” “Evil is unconquerable.” Nothing much works. Christianity says that God gave us free will, made us good, and we sinned. The possible has now become pervasive…
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Pervasive. Evil intrudes. It has vandalized the cosmos. It is everywhere! The modern project of progress seems to always stumble over evil. Evil in individuals. Evil in institutions. Evil in cultures and societies. Evil in countries. The more we learn and know, the more evil is found. How do we deal with its prevalence?
Restoration
Eradicated. Theologian John A.T. Robinson offered this solution to the problem of evil and I cannot improve upon it: “The only way evil ever wins victories is by making a man retort by evil, reflect it, pay it back, and thus afford it a new lease on life. Over one who persistently absorbs it and refuses to give it out, it is powerless. It is in this way that…Christ deals with the forces of evil—going on and on, triumphantly absorbing their attack by untiring obedience, till eventually there is nothing more they can do.”
Relationship with Rest
Genesis 2:1-3; 3:1-5, 16-20
What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall—field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn.
“The Sabbath was made for man, and man was not made for the Sabbath.”
“The incredible shoddiness in personal relationships that characterizes our culture is more than anything else a consequence of sins against time—for intimacy requires time, affection requires time.…And the outrageous adolescence in religion that is the scandal of our churches is, more than anything else, a consequence of sins against time—for maturity requires time, worship requires time.”
Creation
Integrated. God blessed the Seventh Day and Hallowed it. Adam’s first day on the planet was a day of rest! Before Adam lifted a finger he leisurely twiddled his thumbs. The act of Sabbath rest was a regular rhythm to be integrated into the weekly workings of the world.
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Disintegrated. The human project has experimented on several occasions with the notion that we could survive without Sabbath Rest. The French Revolutionaries at the end of the 18th century in 1792, abolished the monarchy and introduced the republic and a new Republican calendar, complete with a 10-day week. Then in 1805, Napoleon restored the 7-day week because 10 days of work in a row was considered cumbersome and nearly unattainable. The Marxist Revolution in Russia turned Sunday into a working day, but Stalin, as people buckled under the burden, restored Sunday as a day of rest. Do not miss this irony—Stalin, noting how inhumane life without Sabbath Rest could be—restored it!
Restoration
Reintegrated. The New Testament book of Hebrews speaks of an eternal Sabbath Rest for the people of God. The creation wove this rest into the fabric, and Jesus’ work of New Creation grants us the opportunity to experience deep rest again, rest that prepares us for eternal rest.
Relationship with Work
Genesis 1:26-31; 2:1-3; 3:1-5, 16-20
One man long ago, before the days of mechanization, came to a stone quarry, and there he asked the first man hewing stone, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m hewing stone.” Then he went to a second man and queried, “What are you doing?” And he said, “Well, I’m making 100 quid per week.” Finally, he went to a third man and said, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I am building a Cathedral!”
“A Cockney gardener at the East End of London had a glorious garden, and the vicar came to visit. And the vicar is waxing eloquently as vicars are apt to do while walking through this herbaceous garden. ‘Isn’t God great? Isn’t he grand? Aren’t his works beautiful?’ And the gardener was getting more and more frustrated because he was getting less and less of the credit for the beauty of the garden, and so, finally, he blurted out: “Vicar, you should have seen this here garden when God had it to himself!”
Creation
Cultivators. Work did not happen after we ate the fruit! It was God’s design that we would participate in his creation by cultivating it. We take the raw materials that God created and we use them to make something beautiful. We do this with people, we do it with software, we do it with food, we do it with legal briefs, we do it with medication, and we even do it with operations strategy!
Fall (or “break of relationship”)
Consumers. Because we lost our sense of status and security when we lost our free and intimate relationship with God, we now often endeavor to create only to procure status or security. All that is left of life is to consume it. “If you are a consumer, press 3,” I’ve heard as a phone prompt. “Consumer buying is down,” we read on the scrolling headlines beneath the “news” we regularly consume. Our entire economy runs on a consumption assumption; if I consume more, I’ll be happier.
Restoration
Collaborators. Christ has re-created us and called us into the mission of becoming God’s collaborators again. We are given skills and passions by God with which to collaborate with God in his kingdom-building work. The communion table is a beautiful picture of this collaboration. While ancient peoples often presented grains and grapes as a sacrifice to the gods, our God has blessed our bread and wine (the cultivation of grain and grapes) by having it symbolize his sacrifice for us. We cultivate and collaborate with the Creator. After all, creation begins in a garden, but will end in a city.
A Look at the Prologue to the Gospel of John
John 1:1-18
“One feels on holy ground when entering the Prologue to [John’s] Gospel. Here we have the overture to the symphony of the whole gospel, the preface to the greatest story ever told, the introduction to history’s central fact, the foreword to the Last Word, and the preamble to the realities most trusted by the worldwide Church.”
“The solution [to] the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.”
We will cap our exploration of Genesis 1-3 with three weeks in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. We will investigate what John has to say about the relationship between Creation and Re-Creation (John 1:1-5), the Church and the World (John 1:9-13), and Grace and Truth (John 1:14-18).
Relationship between Creation and Re-Creation (John 1:1-5)
The majestic prologue of John’s Gospel announces Jesus cosmic existence, being with God from the beginning (at Creation), and then coming to Earth as the incarnated God in Man. Bereshith (In the Beginning) became Israel’s name for this First Book of Moses, “Genesis.” But whereas the first book of Hebrew Scripture began, early enough, with a divine doing (“In the beginning God made . . .”), the Fourth Gospel dares to begin with a divine being (“In the beginning was . . .”). John presumes to go behind and beyond creation to what and to Whom preceded it. Who does John think he is? (Or of whom does he think he is writing?) It is audacious enough to believe that one can say what happened “in the beginning”; but to claim to know what was already there in the beginning is surely supernatural at best or unnatural at worst.
“In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God.” The early Church struggled for centuries to get this sentence exactly right. For there is only one God—the central teaching of Hebrew Scripture. But this God, the Church learned incrementally—first incipiently from Jesus, then inspirationally from the Holy Spirit in conference and prayer together over the first several centuries—exists as three Persons in perfect unity (in perfect comm-unity)—as the one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The presence of the second person of the Trinity, God’s Son incarnating as Jesus, the Christ, was the necessary birthing of a New Creation right in the midst of the old one. The mystery of the divine Incarnation in a real human being ranks up there with the mysteries of “the death of God” in the Crucifixion and with the “Resurrection from the dead” wonder of Easter Sunday morning.
Relationship between Church and World (John 1:9-13)
The Word (logos), Christ himself, is God’s revelation (“Light”) and salvation (“Life”). And yet, only those with the eyes to see would indeed see the light of life. These sons and daughters of God would comprise the church and would carry on the legacy of living out the power of the Crucifixion (“the darkness did not put it out”) and the hope of the Resurrection (“this Light shines on in the darkness”).
Many worldly efforts to stamp out the Light of Jesus Christ have come and gone. G.K. Chesterton once said that if one studies church history carefully, there are about five different times when it looks as if the Church has gone to the dogs but that, in the end, all five times it was the dogs who died.
Relationship between Grace and Truth (John 1:14-18)
This Jesus came full of “grace and truth” (John 1:14). And his summons is to come to him. As scholar Dale Bruner puts it so eloquently and powerfully: “Come into union with the Word who made you, and you will come to Life!” It is grace that saves us into the knowledge of the truth of God in Christ.
“You Were Made for This,” the motto of the powerful worldwide youth mission, Young Life, is exactly the meaning of creation and re-creation by the Word. We have not only been rescued by Jesus Christ in the middle of history, we and all creation were made by him from the beginning of history, and we shall all return to him at the end of history.
Excursus on Faith and Science
“Now we are no longer primitive. Now the whole world seems not holy…We as a people have moved from pantheism to pan-atheism…It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind used to cry, and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few. Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink oink. But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms. I call these noises silence. It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water, and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song and dance, the show we drove from town…What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello?”
“Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is…a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science…Science is powerless to answer questions such as ‘Why did the universe come into being?’ ‘What is the meaning of human existence?’ ‘What happens after we die?’”
“[Some scientists] suggest that the very practice of science requires that one reject the idea (e.g.) of God raising someone from the dead….Of course the argument from—If X were true, it would be inconvenient for science; therefore X is false—is at best moderately compelling. We aren’t just given that the Lord has arranged the universe for the comfort and convenience of the National Academy of Science. To think otherwise is to be like the drunk who insisted on looking for his lost car keys only under the streetlight on the grounds that the light was better there. In fact, it would go the drunk one better: it would insist that because the keys would be hard to find in the dark, they must be under the light.”
“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
For hundreds of years, people have argued for a particular type of relationship between Faith and Science. Some see the two as in conflict (contradictory), others in concert (concord, congruous), still more as in contrast (Stephen Jay Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria), one from the other.
John Walton, an Old Testament professor at Wheaton College and author of The Lost World of Genesis One, adopts the third view. He contends that many people wrongly think of the accounts of origin in Faith and Science much like a pie. What gets deemed “natural” goes to the science slices and what gets deemed “supernatural” goes to the God slices. As science grows in its capacity, the God-piece becomes more and more a tiny sliver. But, instead of this metaphor, he urges us to think about Science and Faith as a layer cake. The lower layer contains the entire realm of scientific investigation. It is subject to scientific observation, investigation, and explanation.
He writes, “In contrast, the top layer represents the work of God. It covers the entire bottom layer because everything that science discovers is another step in understanding how God has worked or continues to work through the material world and its naturalistic processes. In this way, the bottom layer might be identified as the layer of secondary natural causation while the top layer is identified as ultimate divine causation.”
Through other means of inductive and deductive knowledge (revelation, inspiration, illumination, Holy Spirit, conscience, intuition, cognitive rationality, emotional intelligence, experience of things like goodness, beauty, truth, justice, etc.), theists contend that (1) God exists as the (2) ultimate cause of creation and (3) that God has a purpose for this creation. These beliefs are taken as a priori (embraced as properly basic beliefs without the need for empirical evidence).
It is on this point that many skeptics of faith and religion take great umbrage. Scientist Richard Dawkins has become a self-proclaimed spokesperson for many. He writes, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.”
Yet, while many like Dawkins eschew blind faith and parade their own honest doubt (one never hears of honest faith and blind doubt, though both are every bit as prevalent), they fail to recognize that much in the realm of “science” is taken on faith as well. Science accepts all sorts of other “truths”—like, for instance, that (1) human beings even exist in reality, or (2) that our minds are even capable of grasping true reality, or (3) that other minds beyond our own actually exist, or (4) that nature (or the material) is ordered enough to even be measurable thereby making scientific experiments both repeatable and believable.
Adopting Walton’s layer cake, we can place both Science and Faith in their proper place. Science will never be able to prove that God exists as the ultimate cause of the cosmos, nor will it ever be able to prove or disprove purpose (though it could deduce rationally that purpose is the best logical explanation for something). The foundation of science must always be methodological naturalism (exploring the material and physical), but should never be metaphysical naturalism (only the material and physical can exist). Likewise, Faith (and Religion), must also respect its own boundaries and limitations. With respect to Science and Origin, it cannot and should not speak on matters of the “How” and the “What”, but only on the “Who” (God) and the “Why” (purpose).
In this light, we would do well to heed the words of St. Augustine, penned in the fifth century: “In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.”
What does this have to do with Genesis?
“It is a fundamental misunderstanding of Genesis to expect it to answer questions generated by a modern worldview, such as whether the days were literal or figurative, or whether the days of creation can be lined up with modern science, or whether the flood was local or universal. The question that Genesis is prepared to answer is whether Yahweh, the God of Israel, is worthy of worship. And that point is made not by allowing ancient Israelites to catch a glimpse of a spherical earth or a heliocentric universe. It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance.”
"The Bible-versus-science debate has, most regrettably, sidetracked readers of Genesis 1. Instead of reading the chapter as a triumphant affirmation of the power and wisdom of God and the wonder of His creation, we have been too often bogged down in attempting to squeeze Scripture into the mold of the latest scientific hypothesis or distorting scientific facts to fit a particular interpretation. When allowed to speak for itself, Genesis 1 looks beyond such minutiae."
“Genesis 1 and 2 tell us WHO without giving many answers about HOW ... The message of these two chapters is this: ‘You have seen the sea? The sky? Sun, moon, and stars? You have watched the birds and the fish? You have observed the landscape, the vegetation, the animals, the insects, all the big and little things together? You have marveled at the wonderful complexity of human beings, with all their powers and skills? Fantastic, isn't it! Well now, meet the one who is behind it all!’ ... Genesis shows us the Creator rather than the creation and teaches us knowledge of God the Father rather than physical science.”
"Now these two books about creation (nature and the Bible) complement one another, but they cannot and should not be harmonized … Let each book speak its own language and be appropriately exegeted and exposited, and let each in its own way bring praise to the Creator, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Today, whenever Genesis or Creation is mentioned, it is nearly impossible to turn-off the white noise of our cultural moment: Does this mean you are a creationist? Are you saying you don’t believe in evolution? Isn’t the Bible shot through with errors if it cannot even get the beginning right?
But, in the effort to silence the noise, it is important to see Genesis both for what it intends to be and for what it is not. Simply put, Genesis intends to be an ancient cosmology. We can best understand this when we attempt to enter into the literature of the ancient world. Authors of the ancient world are writing in an effort to understand the cosmos (their world)–its origin, its function, its purpose. In this light, modern science could be considered a modern cosmology. It is our best attempt to understand our world. And, as we know well, our understanding gets revised as new information is available to us (e.g., the shift from a geocentric to heliocentric model of the solar system).
As an ancient cosmology, Genesis does not attempt to describe cosmology in modern terms (science) or to address our modern questions (about evolution or the age of the earth). God never revealed some sort of scientific knowledge to Israel that was beyond their cultural moment. If we try to read Genesis as a modern cosmology, then we are trying to make the text say something that it never said.
Instead, reading and studying Genesis as an ancient cosmology is saying that there is only one true God, and that this God is both loving and powerful and that the cosmos that this God created was forged out of that love and power. It is much unlike other ancient cosmologies that are polytheistic, full of vengeful and lustful gods, whose dirty by-product is a cosmos forged through war or sex.
The early verses of Genesis are not the postulates of a Science book or even the propositions of an Ethics manual. Instead, they are the lines of a song! Think about the implications of this—our Scriptures begin with a song! It is a song about God, a song about you, a song about a broken world, but also a song about a Savior that has come to make it new. Once upon a…Beginning…