I have to say up front that this is an extremely brief overview of a topic on which folks could and do write entire volumes! I'm trying to just get you interested so maybe you'll go read those volumes. One blog post simply will not contain all the history you should know, and so I've attempted to select the highlights.
History of the conflict between science and religion
The relationship between scientific study and Christianity has either recently turned sour or has been so for centuries, depending on who (whom?) you ask. We can look at the Catholic Church punishing Galileo for insisting the Earth revolves around the sun (contradicting 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5), analyze the writings of John William Draper back in the 19th century, and look at the outrage against the Theory of Evolution in this century (my next post will be all about that). Or... we can point out that St. Luke was a doctor, the "Father of Genetics" was an Austrian monk, and the "Father of the Big Bang" was a Belgian priest.
I’ve noticed in talking to my students that many come in to my class with the mindset already in place that scientific teachings about origins, geologic time, and evolution of the universe and life in it are quite naturally contrary to Biblical teachings. More disturbing to me was the realization that this mindset is no longer understood to be unique to only some Christian denominations and to this region of the world, but that many of these Christians believe it to be an original, basic tenet of Christianity, equal in its weight to the resurrection of Christ.
This worries me. For one thing, my students think I don’t know the Bible because I accept an ancient age of the Earth. Worse, my students think they must either abandon reason or abandon their faith. In other words, they are presented with a wealth of scientific data for an ancient earth and universe, which they struggle to disregard for the sake of their faith. Admirable, I suppose, but very, very sad.
Genesis
The conflict arising in our classrooms, churches, and within Texas’ State Board of Education [1] ultimately goes back to the book of Genesis. If you are unfamiliar with Genesis, it is the first book of the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah. [2] Translations vary, but most open with the statement “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The story goes on to describe God creating the earth, sun, moon, animals, and humans (only two are mentioned: Adam and Eve), all in a matter of six days, then resting on the seventh. After creation, we learn about the original sin committed by humans when Eve gave in to temptation by Satan, then convinced her husband Adam to give in to the same temptation. As a result, Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden, a utopian paradise where God, man, and animals all lived in harmony, and sin enters the world, bringing with it the pain and suffering still rampant on Earth today. Adam and Eve live out their lives, still with the help of God even outside the Garden, and have three sons mentioned in Genesis: Cain, Abel, and Seth. As adults, Cain kills Abel out of jealousy, marking the first time one man kills another.
Then comes another favorite story: Noah’s Flood. According to the sixth through ninth chapters of Genesis [3], mankind became corrupt, save for Noah and his family. God becomes so angry with the state of mankind that he tells Noah to build a boat (an ark) big enough to save himself, his family, and a male and female of every kind of animal on the Earth. Noah does so, gathers his family and the animals, goes into the ark, and are kept safe while God sends a catastrophic flood that covers the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. All people and animals not in the ark drown in the flood, but because of his righteousness and obedience, Noah and his family are protected. After the floodwaters recede, the ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat, and God puts a rainbow in the sky as a promise to never destroy the earth with water again.
Interpretation
I encounter Christians fairly regularly, especially when I’m teaching historical geology, who tell me that if we believe the Bible is God’s Word, then we’ll take Genesis and its stories literally (at face value). In other words, it’s not meant to be an allegory. It’s not meant to be symbolic. It means exactly what it says with no underlying message (I can envision my high school AP English teachers cringing!)
Sometimes, I ask these folks why they insist on taking Genesis literally, when they don’t take everything Christ himself said literally. For example, in John 6:51-56, Jesus tells a shocked crowd that to gain eternal life, they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Most (not all) Protestant denominations believe that Christ was speaking figuratively here, trying to emphasize a point. In fact, I remember discussions in my childhood Protestant church about how foolish Catholics were for taking that literally. The same might be said about Matthew 18:8-9, when Jesus teaches us that if our hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off and if our eye causes us to sin, we should pluck it out. I don’t see many folks who have done either of these things, at least not out in the free world. Either Christians take that figuratively, or no one else out there struggles with sin like I do!
My point is this: it’s fine to accept that some things are meant to be symbolic, while still accepting the truth behind them. My question is: why recoil at the idea of reading Genesis this way?
If we take Genesis at face value, then there are problems. Science tells us that the Earth initially formed about 4.6 billion years ago and has been changing ever since. Genesis says it formed in its entirety in six days, just before recorded history began. The accepted date with most who accept this is 6,000 years ago. Science teaches us of slow, tedious processes like evolution and plate tectonics. The creation story in Genesis doesn’t allow enough time for those processes. Does accepting the Bible as the Word of God mean that we read all of it literally? And if so, does reading Scripture “literally” mean taking it at face value alone?
Side note:
Before I go any further, can I just talk about the word “literally” for a minute? Because, like, literally no one knows how to use it anymore, right??
Merriam-Webster defines the word “literal” as: 1) involving the ordinary or usual meaning of a word, 2) giving the meaning of each individual word, or 3) completely true and accurate; not exaggerated. [4] The same dictionary defines “literally” as: 1) in a literal sense or manner, or 2) in effect. [5] MW is then gracious enough to explain why the definitions of “literally” seem to conflict:
"Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary."
So, there you go. The millennials aren’t butchering vocabulary that badly, after all.
Origin of Genesis
One could spend most of her lifetime researching and discussing who is thought to have written Genesis. The short answer is: we don’t know. Some Christian and Jewish scholars say it was Moses [6] [7], though he likely referred to records left and stories passed down from his ancestors. [8] Other Jewish scholars disagree with this tradition. [9] The Catholic Church teaches that there were likely multiple authors [11]: “Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation…” (CCC #289).
However Genesis came to us, practicing Christians and Jews will at least agree that it is a book inspired by God, and thus we honor it as part of God’s Word. Back to our original question, though. Should we read Genesis as a literal narrative? And if we don’t, are we breaking with thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition?
Early Interpretations
Turns out, not really. For thousands of years now, it has not been a “given” that Genesis was intended to be a historical or scientific text. One early discussion of Genesis came from Philo, an Alexandrian Jew who lived from about 15-10 BC to 45-50 AD [11]. Justin Marston wrote an interesting paper about the Jewish understandings of Genesis and in it discusses the work of Philo, especially his work On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses and Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis II, III:
“This text provides a good indication of Philo’s exegetical stance. The ‘days’ are symbolic not literal, and Philo does not even believe the passage was intended to give the order of events. Whilst holding the Torah with the utmost regard as being divinely inspired in its author Moses, he believes that the true purpose of the passage is to convey metaphysical truths to the mind of the reader.” [11]
Philo took valuable meaning from the beginning of Genesis, but not in terms of learning exactly how the physical world came to be. Rather, the messages he believed the author(s) of Genesis were trying to convey were:
Philo was no heretic. He did not believe that Genesis was simply a fairy tale, but that it used symbolism to convey a deep truth: “Now these are no mythical fictions, such as poets and sophists delight in, but modes of making ideas visible, bidding us resort to allegorical interpretation guided in our renderings by what lies beneath the surface.” [11]
Marston’s paper really is fascinating; I’ll add a link for it here.
Flash forward 300-400 years, and along comes one of Christianity’s first scholars and theologians. St. Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 and died in 430 [12]. His works continue to be honored by Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike. One of his writings is The Literal Meaning of Genesis, written in the early fifth century. As a synopsis by Jarrett Carty explains, “Augustine’s commentary on Genesis seeks to find the ‘literal’ meaning of creation found in the first two chapters of scripture. What Augustine means by literal, however, is a far departure from the common contemporary meaning... Augustine seeks to find a ‘faithful account of what actually happened’ in the creation of the world. This account, however, is not simply communicated by the plain words of the text—the length of the commentary alone demonstrates this fact—but with a careful probing of the words given in Genesis and with a clear method of interpretation.” [13]
Here is a pdf of Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis. If you want an IN DEPTH study of Genesis, read this! My head was swimming after the first chapter. It really is an incredible study into the true meaning of Genesis, verse by verse. Before he begins his study, though, St. Augustine emphasizes the necessity of recognizing figurative language in scripture:
“In all the sacred books, we should consider the eternal truths that are taught, the facts that are narrated, the future events that are predicted, and the precepts or counsels that are given. In the case of a narrative of events, the question arises as to whether everything must be taken according to the figurative sense only, or whether it must be expounded and defended also as a faithful record of what happened. No Christian will dare say that the narrative must not be taken in a figurative sense. For St. Paul says: ‘Now all these things that happened to them were symbolic.’ And he explains the statement in Genesis, ‘And they shall be two in one flesh,’ as a great mystery in reference to Christ and to the Church.” [14]
At the end of The Literal Meaning of Genesis, with incredible foreshadowing, this fifth century Christian theologian warns Christians against taking up arguments about the natural world with educated non-Christians:
“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?” [14]
AMEN! PREACH, BROTHER! (sorry, lost my head for a moment.)
Modern Interpretations
What happened? If early Jewish and Christian scholars took Genesis as a symbolic story, why do so many people now believe it was meant to be literal?
Obviously, a lot happened between the early days of the church and more recent history. Scores of books already exist on this very topic which I am trying to condense into one blog post. But in the interest of time and your patience, I’ll jump ahead to the 19th century.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection. My next blog post will be about the Theory of Evolution, so I’ll not go into detail of it just yet. His book certainly posed a challenge to reading Genesis literally, but Darwin himself insisted he was not arguing against the existence of God. [15] All the same, as the ideas presented in the book became more widely-known, so did resistance to those ideas. I’ll address most of those arguments in my next post, centered on that very topic, but for now suffice it to say there was plenty of going back and forth for a while. About fifty years later, in 1905-1915, Protestant Christians began a religious and social movement referred to as Fundamentalism. In a series of booklets called The Fundamentals, several authors from various Protestant denominations affirmed conservative Christian beliefs. [16] Interestingly, a literal interpretation of Genesis was not among them. The Fundamentals maintained, for example, that the creation story of Genesis was plausible so long as each “day” correlated not to a 24-hour period, but to a much longer epoch of time. [15]
Many conservative Christians of the early 20th century still accepted that the earth may be ancient (millions of years… we now date it to billions), when George McReady Price published a revolutionary book entitled The Fundamentals of Geology. Price disagreed whole-heartedly with much scientific study, and I’ll talk about his other works in my post about evolution. A Seventh-Day Adventist educator, Price dedicated his life’s work to scientifically defending the visions of founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, prophetess Ellen G. White. White said that in one of her visions, she witnessed the creation of Earth, which happened in one literal week. [17] In The Fundamentals of Geology, Price attempts to defend White’s vision by proposing that the fossil record and Earth’s landforms all offer support to the idea of a recent, rapid creation and disturbance by a worldwide flood. [15][18] This belief system came to be known as Flood Geology, but was not accepted by mainstream fundamentalists until the 1960s. [15][17]
Then comes the flood. In 1961, John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood. Whitcomb was an Old Testament scholar and Morris was a hydraulic engineer. [15] Though neither had formal geology training, they had a field day in their book tearing apart geologic principles for the uninformed reader. Alluding to sedimentary rocks, they said that if one were to stack up the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds for every geologic age, the pile would reach more than 100 miles high, which is clearly not the case (the crust of the Earth ranges from ~3-30 miles thick). [19] Never mind that rarely do beds reach their maximum thickness, and never mind things like erosion and deformation; their ideas stuck and people ran with it. Their work is credited with bringing vast numbers of evangelical Christians to “young-earth creationism”. [15]
Today
The 1960s counter-revolution of evangelical Christians clearly has remained influential. For the past fifty years, Christians have further splintered into groups supporting everything from “intelligent design” to “creationism” to “evolutionary creationism”. What bothers me now, as I mentioned earlier, as that many Christians no longer seem to realize these different factions exist. I spoke to a student just last year who expressed surprise at learning that young-earth creationism became a mainstream belief as recently as the 1960s. He, like many others, had never considered that Christians had ever valued Genesis for its symbolism in addition to its history. Even fewer, of course, know of the likes of St. Augustine and other early church scholars. To give a full thesis on the history of Biblical interpretation would require far more time and space than I have here. I do recommend this article from the Geological Society of America for a better overview than I can offer here:
Geological Society of America article: The Evolution of Creationism
I am also a fan of BioLogos, and they do a wonderful job answering questions about this topic in the "Common Questions" portion of their website. Here are some of their answers regarding Biblical interpretation: BioLogos.org
Back to Genesis
As you have probably gathered from reading this, I do not personally take Genesis to be a literal account of the history of Earth. Yet it is one of my favorite books of the Bible. What, then, do I take from it?
Ok, I’m on like page six of this post, so if you want the detailed account of why I love Genesis, check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Yes, I know you’re probably not Catholic. Just trust me. Read Paragraph 4: The Creator, CCC #279. If you don’t have a CCC, here’s the link. (Here it is in another form, if your internet is slow.)
For a non-detailed account, here is what I take from Genesis. This is also from the CCC, at the end of Paragraph 4 and now that I’m this far into the topic, I think I’ll revisit it in a later post:
In my first post on the topic of science and religion, I tried to shed light on the nature of science and the nature of religion, and how they are not inherently at odds. In this one, I’ve tried to make it clear that there are actually several Christian approaches to understanding the book of Genesis, and to take it only at face value means, in my opinion, losing the more profound truth behind it.
I hope I encourage people to at least consider studying the beautiful book of Genesis for its symbolism. If you can't, please at least accept that some Christians do, and don't accuse us of disrespecting Scripture for doing so. We accept Genesis as being full of truth! We think it is conveyed in great part through its symbolism.
As with so many things, we as Christians contradict ourselves on this matter. Many scoff at the Catholic church for punishing Galileo for teaching that Earth was not fixed and immovable, yet Christians who don't think Genesis 1-3 are meant to be literal are still labelled unbelievers. Trust me, I've gotten that accusation from students, friends, and one mother at a Cub Scout meeting.
Once more, I’d like to offer a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Notice the wording here: “faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason…” Scientific findings are not sought to confirm our faith, but the other way around. Notice also that faith is not to be used to stand up against reason, but to confirm and enlighten it:
Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins… faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.” [Hebrews 11:3] (CCC #286) [10]
[1] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/revisionaries/
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1
[3]https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9
[4] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literal
[5]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
[6] http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/280329/jewish/How-and-When-Was-the-Torah-Written.htm
[7] http://christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c021.html
[8] http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2005/12/26/From-What-Did-Moses-Compose-Genesis.aspx
[9] http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/.premium-1.657492
[10] http://ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/index.html#92
[11] Marston, Justin. Jewish Understandings of Genesis 1-3. S & CB, (2000), 12, 127-150
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
[13] http://thecresset.org/2015/Trinity/Carty_T15.html
[14] The Literal Meaning of Genesis, St. Augustine of Hippo
[15] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/revolution/
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals
[17] http://www.counterbalance.org/history/floodgeo-frame.html
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McCready_Price
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genesis_Flood
History of the conflict between science and religion
The relationship between scientific study and Christianity has either recently turned sour or has been so for centuries, depending on who (whom?) you ask. We can look at the Catholic Church punishing Galileo for insisting the Earth revolves around the sun (contradicting 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5), analyze the writings of John William Draper back in the 19th century, and look at the outrage against the Theory of Evolution in this century (my next post will be all about that). Or... we can point out that St. Luke was a doctor, the "Father of Genetics" was an Austrian monk, and the "Father of the Big Bang" was a Belgian priest.
I’ve noticed in talking to my students that many come in to my class with the mindset already in place that scientific teachings about origins, geologic time, and evolution of the universe and life in it are quite naturally contrary to Biblical teachings. More disturbing to me was the realization that this mindset is no longer understood to be unique to only some Christian denominations and to this region of the world, but that many of these Christians believe it to be an original, basic tenet of Christianity, equal in its weight to the resurrection of Christ.
This worries me. For one thing, my students think I don’t know the Bible because I accept an ancient age of the Earth. Worse, my students think they must either abandon reason or abandon their faith. In other words, they are presented with a wealth of scientific data for an ancient earth and universe, which they struggle to disregard for the sake of their faith. Admirable, I suppose, but very, very sad.
Genesis
The conflict arising in our classrooms, churches, and within Texas’ State Board of Education [1] ultimately goes back to the book of Genesis. If you are unfamiliar with Genesis, it is the first book of the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah. [2] Translations vary, but most open with the statement “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The story goes on to describe God creating the earth, sun, moon, animals, and humans (only two are mentioned: Adam and Eve), all in a matter of six days, then resting on the seventh. After creation, we learn about the original sin committed by humans when Eve gave in to temptation by Satan, then convinced her husband Adam to give in to the same temptation. As a result, Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden, a utopian paradise where God, man, and animals all lived in harmony, and sin enters the world, bringing with it the pain and suffering still rampant on Earth today. Adam and Eve live out their lives, still with the help of God even outside the Garden, and have three sons mentioned in Genesis: Cain, Abel, and Seth. As adults, Cain kills Abel out of jealousy, marking the first time one man kills another.
Then comes another favorite story: Noah’s Flood. According to the sixth through ninth chapters of Genesis [3], mankind became corrupt, save for Noah and his family. God becomes so angry with the state of mankind that he tells Noah to build a boat (an ark) big enough to save himself, his family, and a male and female of every kind of animal on the Earth. Noah does so, gathers his family and the animals, goes into the ark, and are kept safe while God sends a catastrophic flood that covers the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. All people and animals not in the ark drown in the flood, but because of his righteousness and obedience, Noah and his family are protected. After the floodwaters recede, the ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat, and God puts a rainbow in the sky as a promise to never destroy the earth with water again.
Interpretation
I encounter Christians fairly regularly, especially when I’m teaching historical geology, who tell me that if we believe the Bible is God’s Word, then we’ll take Genesis and its stories literally (at face value). In other words, it’s not meant to be an allegory. It’s not meant to be symbolic. It means exactly what it says with no underlying message (I can envision my high school AP English teachers cringing!)
Sometimes, I ask these folks why they insist on taking Genesis literally, when they don’t take everything Christ himself said literally. For example, in John 6:51-56, Jesus tells a shocked crowd that to gain eternal life, they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Most (not all) Protestant denominations believe that Christ was speaking figuratively here, trying to emphasize a point. In fact, I remember discussions in my childhood Protestant church about how foolish Catholics were for taking that literally. The same might be said about Matthew 18:8-9, when Jesus teaches us that if our hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off and if our eye causes us to sin, we should pluck it out. I don’t see many folks who have done either of these things, at least not out in the free world. Either Christians take that figuratively, or no one else out there struggles with sin like I do!
My point is this: it’s fine to accept that some things are meant to be symbolic, while still accepting the truth behind them. My question is: why recoil at the idea of reading Genesis this way?
If we take Genesis at face value, then there are problems. Science tells us that the Earth initially formed about 4.6 billion years ago and has been changing ever since. Genesis says it formed in its entirety in six days, just before recorded history began. The accepted date with most who accept this is 6,000 years ago. Science teaches us of slow, tedious processes like evolution and plate tectonics. The creation story in Genesis doesn’t allow enough time for those processes. Does accepting the Bible as the Word of God mean that we read all of it literally? And if so, does reading Scripture “literally” mean taking it at face value alone?
Side note:
Before I go any further, can I just talk about the word “literally” for a minute? Because, like, literally no one knows how to use it anymore, right??
Merriam-Webster defines the word “literal” as: 1) involving the ordinary or usual meaning of a word, 2) giving the meaning of each individual word, or 3) completely true and accurate; not exaggerated. [4] The same dictionary defines “literally” as: 1) in a literal sense or manner, or 2) in effect. [5] MW is then gracious enough to explain why the definitions of “literally” seem to conflict:
"Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary."
So, there you go. The millennials aren’t butchering vocabulary that badly, after all.
Origin of Genesis
One could spend most of her lifetime researching and discussing who is thought to have written Genesis. The short answer is: we don’t know. Some Christian and Jewish scholars say it was Moses [6] [7], though he likely referred to records left and stories passed down from his ancestors. [8] Other Jewish scholars disagree with this tradition. [9] The Catholic Church teaches that there were likely multiple authors [11]: “Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation…” (CCC #289).
However Genesis came to us, practicing Christians and Jews will at least agree that it is a book inspired by God, and thus we honor it as part of God’s Word. Back to our original question, though. Should we read Genesis as a literal narrative? And if we don’t, are we breaking with thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition?
Early Interpretations
Turns out, not really. For thousands of years now, it has not been a “given” that Genesis was intended to be a historical or scientific text. One early discussion of Genesis came from Philo, an Alexandrian Jew who lived from about 15-10 BC to 45-50 AD [11]. Justin Marston wrote an interesting paper about the Jewish understandings of Genesis and in it discusses the work of Philo, especially his work On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses and Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis II, III:
“This text provides a good indication of Philo’s exegetical stance. The ‘days’ are symbolic not literal, and Philo does not even believe the passage was intended to give the order of events. Whilst holding the Torah with the utmost regard as being divinely inspired in its author Moses, he believes that the true purpose of the passage is to convey metaphysical truths to the mind of the reader.” [11]
Philo took valuable meaning from the beginning of Genesis, but not in terms of learning exactly how the physical world came to be. Rather, the messages he believed the author(s) of Genesis were trying to convey were:
- God is and has been since eternity.
- God is one.
- The world came into being.
- The world too is one as well as its maker.
- God also exercises forethought on the world’s behalf. [11]
Philo was no heretic. He did not believe that Genesis was simply a fairy tale, but that it used symbolism to convey a deep truth: “Now these are no mythical fictions, such as poets and sophists delight in, but modes of making ideas visible, bidding us resort to allegorical interpretation guided in our renderings by what lies beneath the surface.” [11]
Marston’s paper really is fascinating; I’ll add a link for it here.
Flash forward 300-400 years, and along comes one of Christianity’s first scholars and theologians. St. Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 and died in 430 [12]. His works continue to be honored by Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike. One of his writings is The Literal Meaning of Genesis, written in the early fifth century. As a synopsis by Jarrett Carty explains, “Augustine’s commentary on Genesis seeks to find the ‘literal’ meaning of creation found in the first two chapters of scripture. What Augustine means by literal, however, is a far departure from the common contemporary meaning... Augustine seeks to find a ‘faithful account of what actually happened’ in the creation of the world. This account, however, is not simply communicated by the plain words of the text—the length of the commentary alone demonstrates this fact—but with a careful probing of the words given in Genesis and with a clear method of interpretation.” [13]
Here is a pdf of Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis. If you want an IN DEPTH study of Genesis, read this! My head was swimming after the first chapter. It really is an incredible study into the true meaning of Genesis, verse by verse. Before he begins his study, though, St. Augustine emphasizes the necessity of recognizing figurative language in scripture:
“In all the sacred books, we should consider the eternal truths that are taught, the facts that are narrated, the future events that are predicted, and the precepts or counsels that are given. In the case of a narrative of events, the question arises as to whether everything must be taken according to the figurative sense only, or whether it must be expounded and defended also as a faithful record of what happened. No Christian will dare say that the narrative must not be taken in a figurative sense. For St. Paul says: ‘Now all these things that happened to them were symbolic.’ And he explains the statement in Genesis, ‘And they shall be two in one flesh,’ as a great mystery in reference to Christ and to the Church.” [14]
At the end of The Literal Meaning of Genesis, with incredible foreshadowing, this fifth century Christian theologian warns Christians against taking up arguments about the natural world with educated non-Christians:
“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?” [14]
AMEN! PREACH, BROTHER! (sorry, lost my head for a moment.)
Modern Interpretations
What happened? If early Jewish and Christian scholars took Genesis as a symbolic story, why do so many people now believe it was meant to be literal?
Obviously, a lot happened between the early days of the church and more recent history. Scores of books already exist on this very topic which I am trying to condense into one blog post. But in the interest of time and your patience, I’ll jump ahead to the 19th century.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection. My next blog post will be about the Theory of Evolution, so I’ll not go into detail of it just yet. His book certainly posed a challenge to reading Genesis literally, but Darwin himself insisted he was not arguing against the existence of God. [15] All the same, as the ideas presented in the book became more widely-known, so did resistance to those ideas. I’ll address most of those arguments in my next post, centered on that very topic, but for now suffice it to say there was plenty of going back and forth for a while. About fifty years later, in 1905-1915, Protestant Christians began a religious and social movement referred to as Fundamentalism. In a series of booklets called The Fundamentals, several authors from various Protestant denominations affirmed conservative Christian beliefs. [16] Interestingly, a literal interpretation of Genesis was not among them. The Fundamentals maintained, for example, that the creation story of Genesis was plausible so long as each “day” correlated not to a 24-hour period, but to a much longer epoch of time. [15]
Many conservative Christians of the early 20th century still accepted that the earth may be ancient (millions of years… we now date it to billions), when George McReady Price published a revolutionary book entitled The Fundamentals of Geology. Price disagreed whole-heartedly with much scientific study, and I’ll talk about his other works in my post about evolution. A Seventh-Day Adventist educator, Price dedicated his life’s work to scientifically defending the visions of founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, prophetess Ellen G. White. White said that in one of her visions, she witnessed the creation of Earth, which happened in one literal week. [17] In The Fundamentals of Geology, Price attempts to defend White’s vision by proposing that the fossil record and Earth’s landforms all offer support to the idea of a recent, rapid creation and disturbance by a worldwide flood. [15][18] This belief system came to be known as Flood Geology, but was not accepted by mainstream fundamentalists until the 1960s. [15][17]
Then comes the flood. In 1961, John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood. Whitcomb was an Old Testament scholar and Morris was a hydraulic engineer. [15] Though neither had formal geology training, they had a field day in their book tearing apart geologic principles for the uninformed reader. Alluding to sedimentary rocks, they said that if one were to stack up the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds for every geologic age, the pile would reach more than 100 miles high, which is clearly not the case (the crust of the Earth ranges from ~3-30 miles thick). [19] Never mind that rarely do beds reach their maximum thickness, and never mind things like erosion and deformation; their ideas stuck and people ran with it. Their work is credited with bringing vast numbers of evangelical Christians to “young-earth creationism”. [15]
Today
The 1960s counter-revolution of evangelical Christians clearly has remained influential. For the past fifty years, Christians have further splintered into groups supporting everything from “intelligent design” to “creationism” to “evolutionary creationism”. What bothers me now, as I mentioned earlier, as that many Christians no longer seem to realize these different factions exist. I spoke to a student just last year who expressed surprise at learning that young-earth creationism became a mainstream belief as recently as the 1960s. He, like many others, had never considered that Christians had ever valued Genesis for its symbolism in addition to its history. Even fewer, of course, know of the likes of St. Augustine and other early church scholars. To give a full thesis on the history of Biblical interpretation would require far more time and space than I have here. I do recommend this article from the Geological Society of America for a better overview than I can offer here:
Geological Society of America article: The Evolution of Creationism
I am also a fan of BioLogos, and they do a wonderful job answering questions about this topic in the "Common Questions" portion of their website. Here are some of their answers regarding Biblical interpretation: BioLogos.org
Back to Genesis
As you have probably gathered from reading this, I do not personally take Genesis to be a literal account of the history of Earth. Yet it is one of my favorite books of the Bible. What, then, do I take from it?
Ok, I’m on like page six of this post, so if you want the detailed account of why I love Genesis, check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Yes, I know you’re probably not Catholic. Just trust me. Read Paragraph 4: The Creator, CCC #279. If you don’t have a CCC, here’s the link. (Here it is in another form, if your internet is slow.)
For a non-detailed account, here is what I take from Genesis. This is also from the CCC, at the end of Paragraph 4 and now that I’m this far into the topic, I think I’ll revisit it in a later post:
- God loves us so much, His love spilled out into creation. I had a post awhile back about the Trinity and love within the Trinity spilling forth as creation. The story of creation is the first example we have of God’s infinite love.
- The whole Trinity was there from the beginning. Read Genesis 1 and 2 for yourself: God says “Let us make man” and “Let us make a help-mate”. We’re also told that the Spirit of God was brooding over the waters, before creation even began.
- God made the entire universe. There is nothing we see in the natural world He did not make.
- We’re made in God’s image, but not at His level. None of us have His power of creation. We cannot create out of nothing, as He did.
- We are called to share in His glory. The priest at my church explained this beautifully one Sunday when he pointed out that in the creation story, every day has an ending (“… and that was the end of the nth day…”) except for the seventh. The seventh day, the day set aside for rest and rejoicing in God’s creation, has never ended. We forget that sometimes.
- God has upheld the world throughout history, and continues to do so. The fact that we’re deciphering the physical processes He uses doesn’t change that.
- Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. (CCC #323)
- Mankind is broken through our own sin and the suffering that has spread as a result, yet in the end God is in control to deliver us, as He did after Noah’s flood and as He did by sending His Son.
In my first post on the topic of science and religion, I tried to shed light on the nature of science and the nature of religion, and how they are not inherently at odds. In this one, I’ve tried to make it clear that there are actually several Christian approaches to understanding the book of Genesis, and to take it only at face value means, in my opinion, losing the more profound truth behind it.
I hope I encourage people to at least consider studying the beautiful book of Genesis for its symbolism. If you can't, please at least accept that some Christians do, and don't accuse us of disrespecting Scripture for doing so. We accept Genesis as being full of truth! We think it is conveyed in great part through its symbolism.
As with so many things, we as Christians contradict ourselves on this matter. Many scoff at the Catholic church for punishing Galileo for teaching that Earth was not fixed and immovable, yet Christians who don't think Genesis 1-3 are meant to be literal are still labelled unbelievers. Trust me, I've gotten that accusation from students, friends, and one mother at a Cub Scout meeting.
Once more, I’d like to offer a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Notice the wording here: “faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason…” Scientific findings are not sought to confirm our faith, but the other way around. Notice also that faith is not to be used to stand up against reason, but to confirm and enlighten it:
Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins… faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.” [Hebrews 11:3] (CCC #286) [10]
[1] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/revisionaries/
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1
[3]https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9
[4] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literal
[5]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
[6] http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/280329/jewish/How-and-When-Was-the-Torah-Written.htm
[7] http://christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c021.html
[8] http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2005/12/26/From-What-Did-Moses-Compose-Genesis.aspx
[9] http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/.premium-1.657492
[10] http://ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/index.html#92
[11] Marston, Justin. Jewish Understandings of Genesis 1-3. S & CB, (2000), 12, 127-150
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
[13] http://thecresset.org/2015/Trinity/Carty_T15.html
[14] The Literal Meaning of Genesis, St. Augustine of Hippo
[15] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/revolution/
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals
[17] http://www.counterbalance.org/history/floodgeo-frame.html
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McCready_Price
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genesis_Flood