popular myths of evangelicals: "creation" = "creationism"
For other posts in this series, see here.
In my experiences within fundagelicalism, here's the way I've often heard this expressed: "A biblical doctrine of creation is essential to a Christian worldview," someone will say, or "A biblical doctrine of creation is crucial to a proper understanding of the gospel." So far so good. But then this is immediately followed up with something like, "So when people deny a literal, six 24-hour day creation, they are undermining a Christian worldview (or undermining the gospel)."
But just hold on a minute.
There's a missing step in the logic, an assumption which is not self-evidently true: that a "biblical doctrine of creation" is necessarily equivalent to a "literal, six 24-hour day creation." However, a "literal, six 24-hour day creation" is one particular reading of one particular text of Scripture, and a "biblical doctrine" of anything 1) is not based upon any one text but upon the whole witness of Scripture in its unity and diversity, and 2) grapples seriously with alternative readings of any particular text (especially, for evangelicals, with alternative evangelical readings of any particular text).
As for the second of these, any evangelical interpreter of Genesis 1 must take seriously the fact that other evangelicals - evangelical in both faith and life - read the text differently. All evangelical scholars see inspiration as God's work through the human authors of Scripture, through the literary styles and genres of the biblical writings, and many evangelical scholars then see Genesis 1 as highly poetic in style and, one might say, "anti-mythic" in function (providing an alternative "origins narrative" to pagan "origins narratives"). In other words, these evangelical scholars believe that Genesis 1 is to be taken seriously in shaping the worldview of the people of God - it speaks normatively to the "who" and the "why" of creation - but it is not to be taken "literally" in terms of describing the "when" and the "how" of creation.
When one works through the rest of the biblical witness - the first of my comments above on developing a "biblical doctrine" - one sees these same ideas emphasized: biblical teaching on creation is not focused on the "when" and the "how" but on the "who" and the "why." As for the "who," the key emphasis consistently repeated throughout Scripture is that "God did it," that the one true and living, holy and transcendent God, who reveals himself to his people as Yahweh and makes himself immanent ultimately in Jesus Christ - this God made everything that exists apart from himself. The other key "who" emphasis, also consistently repeated throughout Scripture, is the concept of the imago Dei, that humanity has been made by God in his image, as his royal representatives on the earth, reflecting his likeness as a child reflects the likeness of his or her parents. Related to this, the biblical "why" emphasis is expressed primarily in terms of God's glory: humanity has been made uniquely to bring glory to God in bearing his image, but all creation exists to bring glory to God in its very existence and its breathtaking diversity.
These, then, are the key building blocks of a "biblical doctrine of creation," and these, then, are important foundations of a Christian worldview and the gospel - quite apart from what one may believe about the "when" (young/old) and the "how" (fiat/evolution) of it all.
In my experiences within fundagelicalism, here's the way I've often heard this expressed: "A biblical doctrine of creation is essential to a Christian worldview," someone will say, or "A biblical doctrine of creation is crucial to a proper understanding of the gospel." So far so good. But then this is immediately followed up with something like, "So when people deny a literal, six 24-hour day creation, they are undermining a Christian worldview (or undermining the gospel)."
But just hold on a minute.
There's a missing step in the logic, an assumption which is not self-evidently true: that a "biblical doctrine of creation" is necessarily equivalent to a "literal, six 24-hour day creation." However, a "literal, six 24-hour day creation" is one particular reading of one particular text of Scripture, and a "biblical doctrine" of anything 1) is not based upon any one text but upon the whole witness of Scripture in its unity and diversity, and 2) grapples seriously with alternative readings of any particular text (especially, for evangelicals, with alternative evangelical readings of any particular text).As for the second of these, any evangelical interpreter of Genesis 1 must take seriously the fact that other evangelicals - evangelical in both faith and life - read the text differently. All evangelical scholars see inspiration as God's work through the human authors of Scripture, through the literary styles and genres of the biblical writings, and many evangelical scholars then see Genesis 1 as highly poetic in style and, one might say, "anti-mythic" in function (providing an alternative "origins narrative" to pagan "origins narratives"). In other words, these evangelical scholars believe that Genesis 1 is to be taken seriously in shaping the worldview of the people of God - it speaks normatively to the "who" and the "why" of creation - but it is not to be taken "literally" in terms of describing the "when" and the "how" of creation.
When one works through the rest of the biblical witness - the first of my comments above on developing a "biblical doctrine" - one sees these same ideas emphasized: biblical teaching on creation is not focused on the "when" and the "how" but on the "who" and the "why." As for the "who," the key emphasis consistently repeated throughout Scripture is that "God did it," that the one true and living, holy and transcendent God, who reveals himself to his people as Yahweh and makes himself immanent ultimately in Jesus Christ - this God made everything that exists apart from himself. The other key "who" emphasis, also consistently repeated throughout Scripture, is the concept of the imago Dei, that humanity has been made by God in his image, as his royal representatives on the earth, reflecting his likeness as a child reflects the likeness of his or her parents. Related to this, the biblical "why" emphasis is expressed primarily in terms of God's glory: humanity has been made uniquely to bring glory to God in bearing his image, but all creation exists to bring glory to God in its very existence and its breathtaking diversity.These, then, are the key building blocks of a "biblical doctrine of creation," and these, then, are important foundations of a Christian worldview and the gospel - quite apart from what one may believe about the "when" (young/old) and the "how" (fiat/evolution) of it all.
Labels: evangelicals and evangelicalism, theology
posted by Michael Pahl at
9/17/2007
8 Comments:
Of course the "who" and the "why" of creation is more important than the "when" and the "how", but there is no longer any reason to believe that the Bible was being poetic regarding the "when" and "how".
Evangelical Christians in the middle of last century were pro-science - indeed science developed because of Christianity - so when the idea of an ancient earth and evolution came along, the obvious solution was to twist the plain interpretation of scripture to accommodate these ideas.
This was partly because we assumed "good faith" and objectivity on the part of scientists and partly because we didn't want to be seen as unreasonable and unthinking.
Due to the good "detective work" by young earth creationist scientists, both the "flakey" science and the anti-religious bias of old-earth and evolutionist scientists has been well and truly exposed.
I recommend www.answersingenesis.org and www.crev.info for those who want to keep up with the play.
By
Ross Nixon, at 2:55 PM
You said:
there is no longer any reason to believe that the Bible was being poetic regarding the "when" and "how"
Then you expand on this by appealing to science.
That seems very odd to me. My point was that, quite apart from the science of it all, there are aspects of the text itself that have caused evangelical interpreters (and other Christian and Jewish interpreters, both past and present) to discern "poetic" elements in the Genesis 1 creation narrative. Science doesn't determine the literary nature of the text; the literary nature of the text stands quite apart from whatever science may say - and good exegesis gets at the telos of a text through the literary nature of the text.
By
Michael Pahl, at 3:17 PM
Michael, I find it interesting and disconcerting that so much stock is put on science, referring to interpretation of observations, in looking at the biblical picture of creation in Genesis. This is a mistake, I think, of Creation Science and others.
We need to hold science with a grain of salt; let science be science. And we need to let scripture be scripture, which in the case of Genesis 1, I think is clearly getting to the point you elaborate here.
By
Ted M. Gossard, at 5:29 PM
Someone going by "bobxxxx" attempted to leave a comment which I rejected - not because of the basic idea of his comment, which I'm very much in sympathy with, but because of the tone of his comment, which I found to be disrespectful toward another commenter.
By
Michael Pahl, at 5:29 PM
Those who don't take Genesis as meaning creation in six ordinary days about 6,000 years ago almost invariably see the rock strata as a record of millions of years of history. But that would mean death (fossils) for millions of years, yet Genesis teaches that death is a result of Adam's sin. If death is not a result of sin, then why do we need salvation, and why does God promise to restore things to how they once were originally?
The genre of a text is determined by its grammatical structure, not by how people feel about its contents. Genesis is written with the grammatical structure of historical narrative. Thus it is history, not poetry, regardless of whether or not we choose to believe the history that it relates.
See articles on this theme at http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/3003 That website also has complete archives of Creation magazine. The AiG website in the first comment above has only an incomplete archive of Creation magazine.
By
Maningo, at 12:45 AM
Thanks for the note, Maningo, but I'd have to disagree on a couple points. First, genre is not merely determined by "grammatical structure," however widely one might define that. Rather, a whole range of considerations from vocabulary to syntax to style to structure to specific motifs to broader content all go into discerning a distinctive literary genre. If one went merely on "grammatical structure," one might wrongly conclude, for example, that a rather straightforward fairy tale should be taken as historical narrative and that the opening phrase "Once upon a time" refers to a literal time in history. Or, as another biblical example, if one went simply by "grammatical structure" one might wrongly conclude that Jesus' parables are actual accounts of things that happened - and, ironically, by focusing on the supposed "historicity" of the parables one could actually miss the point of them.
Which leads to my second point of disagreement. I think you have done exactly that in your understanding of "death" in the Genesis 2-3 narrative - by focusing on "death" as physical death in the context of some old earth/young earth debate which is completely foreign to the narrative you risk misunderstanding the point. "Death" is introduced in Gen 2:17 as the comprehensive consequence of disobeying God the Creator, and it becomes quite clear that this "death" is not merely physical death in itself, but a whole complex of "accursedness" which involves broken relationship (with fellow humans and with God), oppression, suffering, subjugation, futility, and of course physical death. All of this, and not merely physical death, is what the narrative describes comprehensively as "death." You can have all the physical death in the world without having broken relationships and oppression/subjugation - relational ideas which are only possible for human beings created in the image of God.
By
Michael Pahl, at 9:23 AM
Yes, historical narrative can contain marker phrases to indicate parable or fairy tale. Genesis contains no such marker phrases.
Physical death is not "foreign to the narrative". God said "till you return to the ground" and "to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19), thus emphasising physical biological death.
The idea that death existed prior to Adam would contradict the fact that death is an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) and that God declared everything He created to be 'very good' (Genesis 1:31). It would also make a nonsense of the Christian's hope in a future restoration (Isaiah 65:25; Revelation 21:4)
By
Maningo, at 8:35 PM
Maningo, I would respectfully submit that your understanding of literary genre is confused. Also, you have badly misread my previous comment. I did not say physical death was foreign to the narrative of Gen 1-3, but rather that the "old earth/young earth debate" is foreign to the narrative. In fact, I go on to say that the whole complex of "accursedness" in Gen 3 which is comprehensively described as "death" in Gen 2:17 of course includes physical death. And then your other biblical references don't in any way negate what I said; if anything, they support a more comprehensive relational/spiritual/physical understanding of "death" as the consequence of sin and thus a more comprehensive understanding of what salvation and restoration in Christ is really all about.
In any case, this discussion is off track from the point of my original post, which is not to argue for a particular reading of Gen 1-2 but rather to say that there is a broader spectrum of evangelical interpretation of these chapters that must be acknowledged, and that regardless of how one answers the "how" and the "when" of creation it is in fact the "who" and the "why" which Scripture itself focuses on.
By
Michael Pahl, at 8:57 PM
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