Scot has handled most of the discussion on John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, but I am going to jump in with a post on his next two propositions (16 and 17).
The first ten or eleven propositions in this book lay out a powerful approach to the understanding of Genesis One in the context of the original cultures. The literal approach - assuming a material science and history behind the authorial intent of the text - may in fact distort our understanding of the message of the text. The remaining propositions deal with the implications or consequences of this approach to Genesis One.
The two propositions we will discuss today build on this background and assert that Scientific explanations of origins can be unobjectionable (Proposition 16) and that the Theology of Genesis One in this view is stronger not weaker (Proposition 17). I will start with the second - which I find to be one of the key points in Walton's book.
The creeds state "We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." This belief is common to all Christians - but does this rely on Genesis 1? Is the theology of God as creator strengthened or weakened when we look at Genesis 1 in terms of function?
Emphasis on Function leads to a stronger theology, a better understanding of God. The view that the focused intent of the
author of Genesis One dealt with function and purpose, not material
creation, provides a strong view of God - and an important corrective
for our world today. The reductionist materialism of much of our world.
makes function and purpose either secondary or meaningless. But the
view of Genesis one presented by Walton emphasizes the ongoing role of
God in everything. God did not create and stop. Functions are not
consequences of material structures - but manifestations of God
ordained purpose. Among other things this view of the creation
narrative in Genesis one establishes the natural world as sacred space,
the temple of God.
Emphasis on Function leads to a better understanding of the role of humans. This view also helps as we consider the unique position and role of humans within God's creation.
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 his (for he has no needs). It is his place, but it is designed for us and we are in relationship with him. (p. 149)
This contrasts with the ANE view that people were created as slaves to the Gods. In our world it contrasts with the material view that "people are nothing but physical forms having no function other than to survive." (p. 149).
Genesis One establishes the foundation for our understanding of who we are and our place and function within the world.
But how did God create and how did we come to be? This question leads us back to proposition 16 in Walton's book. Walton points out that:
...if the bible does not offer an account of material origins we are free to consider contemporary explanations of origins on their own merits, as long as God is seen as ultimately responsible. (p. 132)
As a Christian active in the sciences this is how I see the role of science: Science is engaged in the task of understanding the what and how of the world, of God's creation. We go where the evidence leads and evaluate on the basis of our best understanding. Science is also engaged in the task of stewardship over creation - we are not to merely observe and understand, but also to use the knowledge gained from a study of God's creation.
So what about Evolution? Walton deals with several different issues here.
First - some will suggest that the process of evolution, with natural selection and survival of the fittest is inconsistent with the nature of God. Survival of the fittest is "cruel" and psuedogenes are "wasteful" and chromosomal aberrations - well why didn't God simply fix it? In response to such questions Walton points to the book of Job. We cannot stand in judgment of God's wisdom and we cannot expect to understand it all. We can look at God's creation and ask what and how - but the final why may well exceed our understanding.
Second - to separate natural and supernatural is to impose a false dichotomy on creation.
What we identify as natural laws only take on their law-like quality because God acts so consistently in the operation of the cosmos. He has made the cosmos intelligible and has given us minds that can penetrate some of its mysteries. (p. 134).
Here Walton considers Psalm 139:13 as an example: For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. An understanding of genetics and embryology does not undermine this view - God is responsible. He is responsible for the whole; not just for the parts of the process that remain a mystery.
Third - The age of the earth and the time required for evolution is not a problem once we realize that Genesis 1 deals with function rather than material origins and that God can create by process. "One need not conclude that divine fiat implies instantaneous fulfillment." (p. 138)
Fourth - What about Genesis 2-3 and Romans 5? Here Walton and I part company somewhat, although we agree on some key points.
These considerations are secondary in the interpretation of Genesis One - which must be taken on its own terms. (At least I think we agree on this.)
God is the creator of human beings and this must be taken seriously.
The image of God and the act of sinful disobedience are important biblical and theological realities that must be taken seriously.
All humans are one people, one species, one family, with one history as created in the image of God.
All discussions of the issues are problematic on some level. There is no simple neat solution. Of course there are many theological questions for which we have no simple neat solutions (problem of evil anyone?).
However Walton takes the genealogies of Genesis, repeated in Chronicles and Luke, far more literally than I am inclined to - and thus takes the existence of Adam and Eve as historical individuals as taught by the text. On theological grounds he also holds to a substantive discontinuity between the processes of biological evolution that led to early primates and hominids and the creation of the historical Adam and Eve.
I also believe that there is a discontinuity - but not in biological evolution, rather in some fashion difficult to identify and connected with the concept of "image of God." Science tells us something of when and how and what. Science does not describe why, and image of God is front and center in our understanding of why; why humans exist - for what purpose. Identification of an historical Adam and Eve is problematic and the genealogies are irrelevant. At the very least we must go back about 200,000 years to place Adam and Eve in history. The science is fairly conclusive (within an error range) on when modern humans appeared. This precludes any possibility that the genealogies are historically meaningful. But the theological issues in Romans 5 are also in need of consideration.
To put it bluntly, I don't think that a historical Adam is the point of Romans 5 - rather
the point of Romans 5 is the interpretation of the atoning work of the
one and only Christ in the face of our sinful disobedience as God's
people. Scripture tells us that this sinful disobedience is
inescapable, and extends back to the very beginning. Inescapable that
is, except through the work of God in Christ. Adam is the periphery of
the story, not the center, and his importance is as a type not so much as an individual.
Conclusions - Where do we go now? Walton's contribution to the question of ancient cosmology and the origins debate is a significant. This is a powerful book written for the church and providing profoundly important insight into the meaning of Genesis 1.
Now we need a similar fresh look at Genesis 2-3 to understand the intent of the original author within the context of the ANE culture.
What do you think? Does Walton's analysis of Genesis One enhance your understanding of God as Creator and the relative roles of science and faith in our understanding of the world?
f you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.
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dopderbeck (#27) -
You've said something that got me to thinking. Wasn't Augustine's formulation of Original Sin driven fairly directly by the accusation of gnosticism leveled by Pelagius?
My understanding is that Augustine believed humans to be "created good" as outlined in Genesis, but also believed that the baptism of infants was efficacious. But if humans were created good, yet baptism of infants accomplishes something, how does this square? Augustine proposed that some "substance" changed when Adam and Eve sinned, and that this substance was passed on to their progeny similar to a spotted dog having spotted offspring. This substance is what Augustine called "original sin". In this way, Augustine was able to counter Pelagius' argument that original sin was gnostic, since God created matter "good" (contra the gnostics), but yet the baptism of infants accomplished something salvific (i.e, the washing away of the stain of Adam's sin and contra Pelagius).
In any case, I see Augustine's realist position relying on not only infant baptism, but also the need to counter the charge of gnosticism. If those two items are no longer a concern (and I would argue they are not), then Augustine's proposal begins to sound a little silly (to me at least).
Bottom line - how sure are we that Augustine's theology was not highly contextually driven and that context no longer applies to our theological needs? How useful is Augustine apart from his context?
RJS (#28) -- why? What's troubling about it in general? To me, it is troubling that Augustine emphasized concupiscence and thereby developed a distorted view of human sexuality. But the core insight -- that human beings are corrupt at the root of our humanness -- I think is correct and Biblical. It's also prominent in Athanasius.
BJR (#29) -- good points. I'm honestly not enough of an Augustine scholar to know all the ins and outs of how and why he developed his precise views. I think you're correct that Augustine's views on infant Baptism as well as on the authority and role of the institutional Church in the order of salvation ties in to his views on original sin.
So, I agree that it is fair to point out, not only to "low church" evangelicals but also to anyone in the Reformed camp, that all of us today who aren't very strict Roman Catholics engage in selective appropriation of Augustine. If Augustine were alive today, he'd lump all of us non-Catholics together with the Donatists and urge that we be persecuted. So, I'm not by any means suggesting Augustine is infallible.
Nevertheless, there is an important thread stretching from the Apostle Paul to Athanasius to Augustine to Anselm to Calvin and Luther that seems to me very, very hard to ignore. Of course, this is one of the key points at which evangelicals tend to part company with Barth and neo-Orthodoxy.
The neo-Orthodox view makes evangelicals uncomfortable, and I think rightly so. Unfortunately, evangelicals have tended to think about this in a very wooden and literalistic way that cannot be sustained in light of scientific knowledge. But I personally have come to reject the dichotomy in which one's view of the historicity of the fall must be either neo-Orthdox or fundamentalistic. Even the term "historicity" seems to me to carry too much baggage. An event can be "historical" without being narrated in "literal" terms. In my view, we evangelicals need to start thinking about the fall as a "historical" event that is narrated in scripture in mytho-poetic terms.
Given all this, I have no problem affirming that there was a "real person," "Adam," who "fell" and in whose fall we all participate, and I no longer feel overly compelled to explain exactly how this mystery integrates with the scientific story of human evolution, nor do I feel compelled to argue against the scientific story. Both narratives are true according to their own narrative criteria, and I'm confident that if we had God's-eye knowledge of how these different levels of explanation interact we'd be completely satisfied that nothing God has revealed to us through special or general revelation is misleading or deceptive.
dopderbeck,
It isn't troubling that we are corrupt at the root of our humanness.
What is troubling is the idea of a physical change in nature attached to an original corruption. This, I think, is unbiblical.
RJS -- I'm not so sure that Augustinian realism requires a "physical" change. True, Augustine and the other Fathers and the Reformers probably thought the fall wrought some physical changes in the human person. But Augustine's (and Athanasius' and Calvin's) thought is much more nuanced and subtle than the contemporary YEC or OEC line on this. So long as we suggest that there is some ontological participation of subsequent humanity "in Adam," I think we retain the core of Augustinian realism. I'm not sure it matters what that ontological participation involves -- whether it's the immaterial "soul," some other "spiritual" aspect of our being, or something else outside the realm of the physical sciences. After all, becoming a "new creation in Christ" doesn't involve any evident biological changes (prior to the resurrection of course). (I'm also not averse to the idea that perhaps there is a subtle associated change in brain chemistry that is then propogated through the "human" species...?)
The key concept, I think, is that human ontology, human "being," is corrupted "in Adam" and restored / redeemed / completed "in Christ." It's more than just that the Adam story tells the same story that everyone ends up living. It's also that there is an ontological corruption in human nature that is resolvable only through participation "in Christ." To me, Biblical theology and the Tradition strongly support an approach that is ontological as well as exemplary.
dopderbeck said: "In my view, we evangelicals need to start thinking about the fall as a "historical" event that is narrated in scripture in mytho-poetic terms."
I think that this is a great way of putting it. The problem with presenting it this way to your average YEC, however, is that he or she refuses to consider that something can be both "mytho-poetic" and "true." In other words, true equals literal. Mytho-poetic equals false. Those are the terms that your average Christian thinks in. Those are the terms that your average person thinks in.
And even if you accept that the creation account and the fall describe historical truths in a mytho-poetic fashion, when does it end? When, in Genesis, does mytho-poetic history end and, for lack of a better term, actual history begin? It would seem to me that at least up through chapter 11 would follow suit with mytho-poetic history. But what about the Patriarchs? Is the rest of Genesis mytho-poetic as well? What about the rest of the Pentateuch? Judges? Kings, Chronicles, the Prophets? How far does it go?
Those are the questions that this whole discussion brings to mind, and they can be somewhat troubling to someone who has always simply trusted that the Creation account was literally true.
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