A Critical Evaluation of the Use

A Critical Evaluation of the Use of Genesis 1 in the Creation-Evolution Debate

I. The Creation-Evolution Debate

Anyone who browses through the section on Creation-Evolution in any Seminary library or browse through the Internet and surf through websites involved with this issue, cannot but be amazed at the number of books and articles dealing with this subject. Not only amazed by the huge volumes written but the way the articles are written. Each while expounding the author’s view will also systematically tear down the opponent’s and at the same time implying those who do not agree with them to be narrowed minded, uncritical, and sometimes stupid. A recent 1997 book on the subject was titled, “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds”[1]- a definitely uncharitable way to view those who believe in Darwinism.

Despite massive educational efforts- including a pitch for evolution on every public television program that deals with nature – the state of public opinion hasn’t changed much in the last thirty years. Polls show that under 10 percent of the American public believes in the official scientific orthodoxy, which is that humans (and other living things) were created by a materialistic evolutionary process in which God played no part. The remaining 90 percent are more or less evenly divided between biblical creationists and theistic evolutionists (who think evolution was God-guided). Why won’t the people believe what the evolutionary scientists tell them since has discovered?[2]

The issue often boils down to an emotive appeal to belong to one camp – one that is God and Bible believing creationism or to an atheist humanistic evolution. And center to the whole controversy is the interpretation of Gen 1:1-2:3 and Gen 2:4-3:24. Gen 1:1 to 3:24 deals with what is commonly known as the ‘creation story’. It is the bone of contention where pitched battles are being fought. All parties in the battle use this chapter as a basis for their thought systems. For the purpose of this paper, we shall limit our discussion to Gen 1:1-2:3.

II. Approaches to Genesis 1:1 – 2:3

“Genesis” is a transliteration of the Greek title of the first book of the bible and also of the Pentateuch. In Greek it means ‘origin, source, race, family history, creation’. Genesis is well studied. Wenham notes, “Genesis, as anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Old Testament scholarship knows, is central to every theory of pentateuchal criticism”.[3] After three thousand years of scholarship, things can get a bit confusing. And as the technique of Old Testament evolves from source to literary criticism, our understanding of Genesis changes.

Out of this mass of ideas, Blocher manages to summaries the approaches to Genesis 1:1-2:3 into 4 main groups: (i) Reconstruction Theory, (ii) Concordist Interpretation, (iii) Literal Interpretation and (iv) Literary Interpretation.[4] There are other approaches such as ‘Day of Divine Fiat’ which states that the days of creation is not the actual days in which God did the actual work but days in which God issued his creative commands or fiat.[5]

The reconstruction theory or the ‘gap’ theory considers that the six days mentioned are not days of creation. Instead they are days of reconstruction after God destroyed the earth in the time (gap) between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. Supporters of this theory link the fall of Satan to this destruction of the earth. The ‘darkness’ and the ‘sea’ mentioned in Gen 1:2 are the symbol of evil as elsewhere in the bible, darkness and sea are always linked to evil.

This theory is interesting because it allows one to fit geology and fossil records and the evidence of an old earth into the gap and the time of subsequent reconstruction.

In particular the hypothesis raises two insurmountable difficulties. The translation ‘And the earth became’ takes inadmissible liberties with the Hebrew grammar. The only admissible translation is ‘And [or better, Now] the earth was…,’ by analogy with constructions that are totally similar to Jonah 3:3 (‘Now Nineveh was…’) and nearer home, Genesis 3:1(‘Now the snake was..’). Only in defiance of philology may the pseudo-translation ‘the earth became’ act as the basis of the theory. Further, the theory requires that the verb ‘make’, even in 2:2f. and in Exodus 20:11, be given the meaning ‘remake’. There is no justification for such violence to the language. Hebrew offers the means of expressing the notion of remaking and repairing, but the text does not show the slightest trace of it. The verdict on the whole theory must be ‘quite impossible’.[6]

The main basis for this approach is that the word yôm, day does not only mean a 24 hours period. It can also be used to mean an indefinite or a long period of time.[7] Hence, if each day is a long period of time, geological layering, the fossil record and the evidence for an old earth can fit easily into this approach. The seventh day did not conclude with the formula ‘there was evening and there was morning’ indicating that it is still continuing. If the seventh days can extend over thousands of years, there is no reason why the previous six days could not cover millions of years.

Blocher’s comments are firstly, that ‘the metaphorical use of a word like ‘day’ is a function of style which must not be confused with the presence of a broad meaning amongst the usual meaning of the word’[8]. The numbering of the days and the mention of evenings and mornings will suggest a normal 24 hours day. Secondly, in the creation order mentioned, trees (Day 3) precede marine organisms (Day 5) and birds (Day 5) precede insects (Day 6). Most scientists think it should be the other way. And thirdly, the sun, moon and stars are created one day (Day 4) after the earth and trees (Day 3) were created.

Theistic Evolutionists believe that God created the universe and then leave the universe to evolve on its own, occasionally stepping in to supercede the natural process.

Progressive Creationists believe that God is actively involved in the creation process, allowing slow progress with mass extinction and rapid advances.

This literal approach enjoys the support of the majority throughout church history including the Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. It interpreted the creation record as history to be taken in the normal sense of the narrative and in its chronological order.

We need therefore to recognize that the Biblical “days” of creation were real days, such as we know them today, and cannot be equated with the “ages” of the so-called historical geology. This should not trouble us scientifically, since we have already seen that science, as such, is utterly incapable of telling us anything about creation. Science deals only with the present processes, with reproducible experiments, and present processes are not processes of creation. We prefer, therefore, simply to let God’s Word speak for itself concerning what happened in the creation period. [9](Italics his)

Creationism takes this literal approach in its concept of a young earth and that the flood will explain the geological and fossil records.

Proponent of this approach finds support on Exodus 20:11 (the Sabbath commandment), Matthew 19:4 (Jesus’ comment on the man and the woman) and 2 Peter 3:5 (the reminder that the earth was formed out of water).

The last two passages referred to (Mt 19 and 2 Pet) have nothing to do with the debate. It is not at all obvious that they imply a literal reading, particularly in the case of Jesus’ reference, and in any case they at no point refer the days and to the ‘week’ whose meaning we are trying to determine. There remains the Exodus verse, which might appear to be evidence of considerable weight. Indeed the language of the decalogue can scarcely pass for figurative language, and the reason given for the divine commandment seems to found the institution of the sabbath on the week of creation……In the repetition of the sabbath law, using the same argument, the same book (Ex 31:17) makes bold use of figurative language when it says that on the seventh day God 'was refreshed’. This free use of clear anthropomorphism suggests that the presentation of the divine work as a week of work was also, following Renckens, understood as such. Exodus 23:12 states the commandment without adding anything. The second version of the Decalogue (Dt 5:12-15) replaces the reference to creation with the memory of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, a memory which should move the Israelites to compassion for their servants. This justification of the sabbath does not contradict that of Exodus 20, but the fact that it could replace it warns us against the temptation to forge too close a link between the work of the Creator and the weekly rhythm of human life….When everything is taken into account, we consider that Exodus 20:11 demands, for the validity of its argument, only this: the development of creation ought to be able to act as an archetype for the work of mankind followed by his rest; the possibility remains that the days may be an anthropomorphic figure. The debate is still open.[10]

In this approach, the creation story is itself a work of creation, an artistic arrangement which is not to be taken literally. The author[11] wants to stress the system and order that have been built into creation. He does it by the following literary devices:

(1) announcement of the commandment, “And God said” ( 10 times; vv.3,6,9,11,14,20,24,26,28,29)

(3) fulfillment formula, e.g.”And it was so” (7 times; vv.3,7,9,11,15,24,30)

(4) execution or description of the act, e.g. “And God made” (7 times; vv. 4,7,12,16,21,25,27)

(5) approval formula “God saw that it was good” ( 7 times; vv. 4,10,12,18,21,25,27)

(6) subsequent divine word, either of naming or blessing ( 7 times; vv5[2 times],8,10[2 times],22,28)

The chapter is written with a number of Hebrew words in multiples of 7. 1:1 consists of 7 words, 1:2 of 14 (7x2) words, 2;1-3 of 35 (7x5) words. “God” is mentioned 35 times, “earth” 21 times, “heaven/firmament” 21 times, while the phrases “and it was so” and “God saw that it was good” occur 7 times.[14]

Ten times it was written, “God said”. The verb “to make” appears 10 times and so does the formula “according to its/their kind”.

Wenham credited Cassuto, Beauchamp and Steck for listing a concentric structure of functions:[15]

These features showed that the author is not too interested in the exact chronological order of creation. Blocher notes that the author “wishes to bring out certain themes and provide a theology of the Sabbath. The text is composed as the author meditates on the finished work so that we may understand how the creation is related to God and what its significance for mankind”.[16] Another support for this approach is by John Sailhamer.[17]

III. Genesis in Space and Time

How does a Christian living at the close of the Twentieth Century think of Genesis chapter one? One could not just brush aside the data of the scientific discoveries of the last decade. One must not fall into the trap of fidelism i.e. the idea that religious statements belong to the realm of faith while scientific statements to the realm of reason. Blocher writing in Scientific hypotheses and the beginning of Genesis correctly pinpointed the areas of dissention into the measurement of time; the question of transformation and the place of the man of which Genesis speaks of, in the schemes of prehistorical anthropology.[18]

According to current scientific theories, the universe began in a Big Bang[19] expansion 15 billion years ago. Stephen Hawking’s No Boundary Proposal predicts a Universe that starts out in a very smooth and ordered way.[20] John Houghton thinks circumstances points to a creation and a Creator for “it was necessary for the Big Bang to begin extremely uniformly and yet with sufficient local variations for the formation of galaxies to be possible. The whole sequence has occurred with extremely high precision and exact timing.”[21]

Three hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, matter and radiation separate and cosmic background radiation first appears. Five billion years after the Big Bang, the Milky Way galaxy evolves. Ten billion years after the Big Bang, the Solar System forms.

Earth was formed about 4.59 billion years ago. Initially the earth has a heavier and thicker atmosphere and will not support life. Apparently, the greater a planet’s distance from the sun, the heavier and thicker is its atmosphere. About 4.25 billion years ago, a body about the size of Mars (nine times the mass of the moon and one-ninth the mass of earth) collided with the earth. Most was absorbed into the earth’s core. The blast was strong enough to blast away almost the earth’s entire original atmosphere into outer space. The shell and other debris eventually coalesce to form the moon. This event delivered earth from its life-suffocating atmosphere and allows sunlight to reach the surface of the planet, increased the mass and density of earth to retain water vapor and slowed the earth’s rotation and tilt. The net result is that life can survive on earth.[22]

In summary, this amazing collision, for which we have an abundance of circumstantial evidence, appears to have been perfectly timed and designed to transform Earth from a “formless and empty” place into a site where life could survive and thrive. In fact, the number of conditions that must be fine tuned-and the degree of fine tuning need for each of these conditions-for life to possibly survive in this single event argues powerfully on its own for a divine Creator.[23]

In this brief outline of the history of time[24], those who subscribe to the reconstruction theory, the concordist interpretation and the literary interpretation will have no problem with the billion of years involved. Those who subscribe to the literal interpretation will have a serious problem for to them the whole act of creation was completed in 144 hours.

The 1995 official Position Statement of the National Association of Biology Teachers in the United States of America defined evolution as “an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environment.”[25] By definition, it excludes God as a creator and hence will not be acceptable to all Christians.

Evolution as a theory has many problems, which is as yet unresolved. It originates from Darwinism, which support the thesis ‘ the survival of the fittest’. Neo-Darwinism, its modern equivalent describes evolution of life

from the formation of amino acids in the primeval sea of early earth to the great varieties of flora and fauna that exist on earth today. The intermediate species should be present in the fossil records as one species evolves into another. But that is the problem. There is no intermediate species or ‘missing-links’ in all the fossil records. Francis Hitching, an evolutionist writes, “But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places”. (Italic author’s).[26] And there is thousands of record available. New species of plants and animals appear suddenly, completely formed.

The second major difficulty evolution has is to duplicate the origin of life. It is a long way from formation of amino acids[27] to complex proteins, let alone the supercomplex plants and animals. Michael Behe, a biochemist in examining the complexity at the molecular level of the cell concludes that it cannot be formed except by design.[28]

The third difficult is that no new species has been discovered. Variations and adaptations have been noted. The change of color of the moth in an industrial area, the bird’s beak and the many sizes, color and shape of the domestic dogs which arose in the last hundred years. Yet dogs remain dogs.

And finally the mechanism of evolution. It is often assume that mutation at the genetic level is what causes the changes in a species. Yet it has been noted that mutations are often detrimental to the organisms and they do not survived. Most fetuses with mutated genes died in the early stages of pregnancy.

God as Creator of all species, continuing creating new species and finally ceasing to create on the last day makes sense to all the four approaches to Genesis while evolution will not. The difference is that while the reconstructive theory and concordist interpretation accept catastrophes (meteor strikes, earthquakes, flood, climatic changes etc) that causes massive upheaval of the earth and extinction of certain species, the literal approach do not allow for death to occur before the Fall. The literary approach is silent on this matter.

Paleoanthropologists are frustrated by the existence of two extensive gaps in the fossil records. The first gap, know as the hominoid gap extends from 32 to 22 million years ago. This gap is when evolutionist suspected the ancestors of apes and humans are splitting off from monkeys. The second gap, known as the hominid gap extends from 14 to 4.5 million years ago. It is the time where ancestors of the australopithecine and human groups are alleged to split from the ancestors of the African apes, especially the chimpanzees.[29] These gaps in the fossil record are significant because it means that the alleged splitting into the various groups is still speculative.

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neandertal man) – 150 years ago, Neandertal reconstructions were very stooped and very much like an ‘ape-man’. It is now admitted that the stoop posture may be due to disease and that the Neandertal may be just a variation of humankind.

Ramapithecus – widely regarded as the ancestor of humans, it is now realised that it is an extinct type of orang utan.

Eoanthropus (Piltdown man) – a hoax based on a human skullcap and an orang utan’s jaw. It was widely publicized as the missing link for 40 years.

Hesperopithecus (Nebraska man) based on a single tooth of a type of pig now only living in Parquet.

Australopithecus africanus – this was once promoted as a missing link. It is no longer considered to be on line from apes to human. It is very ape-like.

Sinathropus ( Peking man) was once presented as an ape-man but has now reclassified as Homo erectus.

Australopithropus afarensis – popularly known as the fossil ‘Lucy’. Similar to the pygmy chimpanzee.

Homo habilis – there is growing consensus that this include bits and pieces of other types and it may have never existed.

Homo erectus – many remains of this type have been found around the world. They are smaller that the average human today with a smaller brain size. However, the brain size is within range of people today and studies of the middle ear have shown that Homo erectus was just like humans.

The missing links are still missing and it is possible that they cannot be found because they simply do not exist.

Blocher concludes, “ When exactly and in what way mankind became mankind-the-image-of-God seem to be questions for which at the moment we have far too little evidence to make any statement. It may be better simply to note that modern man is psychologically and culturally (i.e. scientifically) a creature of an entirely different order from the other creatures that now exists on earth.”[31]

IV. Reflection on Genesis 1

Those who subscribe to the reconstruction theory and concordist interpretation will have no problem accommodating the scientific data just presented. The subscribers of the literal interpretation will reject these scientific data while those who subscribes to the literary interpretation stands aloft from all the arguments.

It is tempting to accept the literary interpretation and then wonder what the fuss is all about. This then begs the question. If the events are to be significant, they must presume to have happened. But did they?

The author of Genesis 1 draws his picture by faith. Most scholars accept that the main intention of the author in writing Genesis 1 is to emphasis the theology of the Sabbath. Others suggest that the point of the whole exercise is the Promised Land while others want to reveal a God who creates and creates in an orderly fashion. In drawing his picture, the author will seek to include some elements and exclude others in order to put his views forward. It is significant that there are similarities in the creation account and other Far Eastern creation myths. How do we know the author is drawing a true picture?

The next observation is that to accept that Genesis 1 is an excellent piece of literary work and to interprete it as such, what is there to prevent us to interprete the rest of Genesis in a similar fashion? Could the flood be a literary invention? Could the patriarchal narratives be a literary invention too? Is there proof that Abram existed?

So how is a Christian at the beginning of the Twenty First Century to think of Genesis 1? Does one have to hold to only one approach? Could we not approach Genesis 1 from different angles?

From the text, a literary interpretation makes sense, both in the hermeneutics and the flow of the narrative. Yet this literary masterpiece may be describing progressive creationism – the flow of creation by God in time and space. Hence a modern Christian may adopt a concordist-literary approach. This will allow an easy reading of Genesis 1 while accepting the scientific data. Hence there will be no conflict for the scientific minded modern Christian to approach Genesis One

One of the problems of Christians is that we are schizophrenics. We live in two separate compartments at the same time. One side of us accept the literal teachings of the Old Testament while the other side has a scientific worldview with its materialistic, humanistic approach. We understand the tension in our compartmentalisation but fail to resolve it; because to resolve it is too costly. Can we accept that science is false and yet live in a technology intensive society as we do now? Can we throw away all the scientific data of astronomy, geology, sociology and taxonomy because it does not fit with Genesis 1? I believe not. As a student of theology and of science, I believe that there is no need to live in compartmentalised lives. Both in theology and science we are looking at different facet of the same truth. Some of the conflict arises from the language we use. The language of theology and the language of science are different and we need to be sure that we are both referring to the same concept when we use the same word. We need to recognise the genre of the Biblical theological studies as we need to know the difference between hypothesis, theory and law in scientific studies. As I have attempted to highlight in this article, we may be looking at the same truth but in different ways. Hence we can regard with awe the Creator of the universes by understanding and appreciating His creation and also being impressed by the literary talent of the inspired writer of Genesis one.

Bibliography

Blocher, Henri, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England:InterVarsity Press, 1984)

Gish, Duane T., Creation Scientists Answer their Critics (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1993)

Hamilton, Victor P., The Books of Genesis Chapter 1-7 NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,1990)

Hitching, Francis, The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong (London: Pan, 1982)

McEvoy, J.P. & Zarate, Oscar, Stephen Hawking for Beginners (Trumpington, Cambridge:Icon Books, 1995)

Morris, Henry M., The Beginning of the World: A Scientific Study of Genesis 1-11 (Green Forest AR: Master ,1977)

Johnson, Phillip E., Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity, 1997)

Ross, Hugh, The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress,1998)

Wolf, Herbert, An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch (Chicago:Moody,1991)

[1] Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity, 1997) Certain chapter titles in Duane T, Gish, Creation Scientists Answer their Critics (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1993) are not too polite: ‘ Kitcher Abuses Science’ and ‘ Eldredge and His Monkey Business. Kitcher is Professor of Philosophy at University of Vermont. Eldredge is Curator of American Museum of Natural History.

[2] Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity, 1997) pp10

[3] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 WBC (Waco,TX: Word, 1987) p. xxvi

[4] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p. 39-59

[5] Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution (London : SPCK, 1985) p. 167-172

[6] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p.42-43

[7] Wolf summarises the meaning of ‘day’ as (1) the Twenty-Four-Hour Day Theory; (2) The Day-Age Theory (each day represent an indefinite period of time.); (3) the Intermittent-Day Theory; (4) the Framework Theory and (5) the Revelatory-Day Theory (God revealed the creation account to Moses in a vision that lasted 6 literal days). Herbert Wolf, An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch (Chicago:Moody,1991) p. 84-88. Bonhoeffer’s approach is different. He considers the day as ‘the first finished work of God’ and that it has a ‘mythological quantity’. To him, it does not matter if it is millions of years or a single day. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall/ Temptation (New York: Macmillan, 1959) p. 27-28

[8] Ibid., p. 44-45

[9] Henry M. Morris, The Beginning of the World: A Scientific Study of Genesis 1-11 (Green Forest AR: Master ,1977) p.25

[10] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p. 47-48

[11] The general consensus amongst scholars is that “Genesis was the net result of the compilation of three distinct literary sources (1) a Yahwistic or Jahwistic (J) source; (2) an Elohistic (E) source; (3) behind these two a Priestly (P) source, which was first tagged as the Grundschrift, the common pool or the primary source, for J and E”. Victor P. Hamilton, The Books of Genesis Chapter 1-7 NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990) p.13. In this discussion, he shall be referred to as ‘the author’.

[12] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 WBC (Waco,TX: Word, 1987) p. 7

[13] Ibid., p. 6

[14] Ibid., p. 6

[15] Ibid., p. 22

[16] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p. 50

[17] John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbounded (Sister, OR: Multnomah, 1996)

[18] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p. 213-231

[19] Three models for the creation of the universe as been proposed: (1) an oscillating universe; (2) a steady state universe and (3) the Standard Model which describes the processes of the Big Bang. The Standard Model is now the accepted model because of evidence of the Doppler effect showing and expanding universe and the isotropic cosmic radiation at 3.5°K resulting from the explosion. Gerald L. Schroeder, Genesis and the Big Bang (New York: Bantam, 1990 ) p.70-83

[20] J.P. McEvoy & Oscar Zarate, Stephen Hawking for Beginners (Trumpington, Cambridge: Icon Books, 1995) p.162

[21] John Houghton, Does God Play Dice? (Leicester : InterVarsity, 1988) p. 38

[22] Hugh Ross, The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1998) p.31-32. In a section titled Moon Miracle, Ross credited this collision with the resultant formation of the moon as the key event that makes earth habitable.

[23] Ibid., p. 33

[24] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988)

[25] Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity, 1997) p. 15

[26] Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong (London: Pan, 1982) p. 19

[27] Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Sidney Fox were two of the first scientists who tried to prove that life could arise spontaneously. They designed an apparatus where they passed electric sparks through a mixture of methane, ammonia and water vapour. Some atoms did combine to form amino acids. These amino acids are ‘right –handed’. All known life uses amino acids, which are exclusively ‘left-handed’.

[28] Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York; Touchstone,1996,1998)

[29] Marvin L. Lubenow, Is There Fossil Evidence of ‘Missing Links’ between Humans and Apes?

http://www.christiananswer.net/q-aig/aig-c029.html

[30] Paul S. Taylor, Who’s Who & What’s What in the World of “Missing Links”?

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c008.html

[31] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984) p. 230