Evening came and morning came: the first day.
An incredible trick in absence of the sun, which doesn’t make its appearance until verse fourteen (along with moon and stars). As discussed before, it’s a clear sign to the reader that some elements of these stories aren’t meant to be taken literally!
It’s puzzling that some Christians cling to a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. It’s a problematic stance for at least two reasons. Firstly, the stories themselves don’t support a literal interpretation. Secondly, it’s based on the assumption that where there’s conflict, the science must be wrong.
Yet this seems curiously compartmentalised. Of course, God is fundamentally the author of the Genesis creation stories, but He’s also author of the actual universe. In other words, He’s written a single story in two narratives. One narrative (and perhaps the more obvious) unfolds as our natural history and the second as our spiritual history. The former focuses on the many whats and the latter on the big why. The former relies on physical evidence for the telling and the latter upon revelation. Revelation’s rightful domain is in the communication of truths that could never be elicited from an examination of the physical evidence alone.
By definition, then, there can’t be any fundamental contradiction between the two narratives even if the story plates collide as we continue deepening our knowledge. Problems only appear when either encroaches on the other’s sovereignty. Reflections on God’s existence patently lie beyond the scope of scientific enquiry: the domain of science is nature, God is supernatural. Science (not the Bible) clearly takes precedence when extrapolating the characteristics of the natural order. Discounting credible scientific evidence because it doesn’t fit with something mythic in the Bible is tantamount to denying that God is the author of both narratives.
Even if it hasn’t always been a comfortable journey, Christian understanding has been greatly enriched by scientific insight. The central scientific narrative regarding the origins and nature of our universe presents no essential problems for interpreting the Genesis creation stories. If anything it helps, since it sharpens appreciation of which elements are figurative and so serves to deepen theological understanding.
Once properly correlated, focusing upon the scientific narrative in tandem with Genesis can even help reframe our spiritual vision…
A Question of Time
There’s surely spiritual significance in the universe being twelve to thirteen billion years old rather than about six thousand years old. It’s an eye-watering recalibration and certainly redefines how we might interpret the word soon in the Bible.
The Psalmists were already onto it...
Lord…
To your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night.
Make us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart. (Ps 89/90:12,4)
Now try it again, subbing a thousand for a billion. Wisdom indeed! That of perspective.
It also makes clearer sense of this passage:
In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Heb 1:1-2)
The last days can sound a touch apocalyptic yet following the celebrated twenty-four hour clock analogy, modern humans haven’t just arrived on earth at the eleventh hour but more like at 23:59.59, ie with one second to go! And if it’s a question of visualising recorded human history in twenty-four hours then Jesus appears a mere quarter of an hour before the end. It turns out there’s a sizeable difference between being spiritually prepared for the end of the world and actually expecting it today shortly after one’s post-prandial nap.
So, is it really a problem that God didn’t literally take a week to create the universe but that it came into being in an instant? The Big Bang provokes important spiritual questions about the text: why is it presented as a week, then? What’s with the seven-day cycles? How do we rightly understand and organise time? What’s the correct proportional relationship between work and leisure (5/2, 6/1, 4/3 days)? What constitutes appropriate rest? What is a Holy Day? What makes it so?
To be explored in a later post
A Question of Significance
The Psalmists deliver again…
When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and stars which you arranged,
what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him? (Ps 8:3-4)
The night sky does have a way of making us feel small. Appropriately small. But science reveals another breathtaking recalibration. It turns out these little lights aren’t mere ornamental illuminations, but other suns. And there are something like three-hundred billion in our galaxy alone. And something like one billion trillion observable stars in the known universe. And we learn that, far from being the physical centre of anything, earth is simply one planet among many others orbiting this lonesome star we call the sun.
This time the science can leave us feeling bereft and cosmically insignificant, explored with great humour by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s. Earth is due to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace expressway. The brilliant insouciant message of the rapidly departing dolphins says it all: So long, and thanks for all the fish.
But once more it’s a question of perspective. Given such vast scale, we now have greater appreciation of the mind-blowing mathematical improbability of this fragile life-laden planet ever existing. The various conditions are so unlikely that some scientists posit the fanciful existence of multiverses in an attempt to square the (we’re still not that special) circle. If you need visual confirmation of earth’s peculiarity, follow the Psalmists’ lead and look up at the utterly lifeless moon. It isn’t that far away. Relatively speaking.
And there’s more. We’ve discovered that so many things come from stardust or are related to it, including us, and how likely it is that all life on earth has a common origin. For some reason, spheres and the golden ratio seem to be the uncanny order of shape and beauty and, well, order. And at the heart of it all swirls the incomprehensible anomaly of human consciousness and reflexive intelligence.
Back to our Psalmists:
What is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than the angels,
and you have crowned him with glory and honour. (Ps 8:4-5)
Yes, dolphins are incredibly bright. But they didn’t write that Psalm.
Image: Greg Rakozy, Unsplash
I love your phrase: "a single story in two narratives" and your words on "the big bang"! The psalmist do deliver, as I well know not only from the Bible, but also from the Dead Sea Scrolls, where I use one of the psalms in my novel launching on 2-24-26!
I like your attitude towards Biblical literalists. They miss the poetry, which seems kind of miserable.