"Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible − the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark − convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth; its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned Christian clergy from many different traditions believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth." − The Clergy Letter Project, signed by 10,000 clergy 1/25/2006
Recently, the men's fellowship group (third Tuesdays at 6 p.m.) engaged the contentious debate of Intelligent Design (Creationism revisited) vs. evolutionary science. It was a fascinating conversation as always but it got me thinking about what's lost in such a narrow view of scripture; which is that the debate asks the same old question: "which is the 'true' story of the origin of life? The biblical story contained in the Book of Genesis or a 'scientific theory?' choose!"
I would argue that the bible does not seek to address the question of "how the world came to be" (technique) but rather seeks to indicate "why" (artistry). Science, on the other hand, is rightly consumed with questions of how but is silent in the face of why. Religion, profoundly, is concerned with meaning and purpose and it communicates profound truth by the use of myth.
Myth is not the same as fairy tale. Myths are rather stories which reveal nothing as mundane as demonstrable facts (the aim of science) but rather reveal insightful truth. One author says it this way: "myths announce what has always been and will always be true of the world." Native Americans often say it this way: "just because it didn't happen that way, doesn't mean it's not true."
Genesis: The Book of Genesis is divided into two parts. Chapters 1-11 are highly symbolic and universal. Chapters 12 on are a more individualistic story and more "historical": it is the story of ancient tribal origin (Israel).
"Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water."
The story of creation is the story of God bringing beauty and order out of chaos and disorder. These initial chapters tell of the original condition of the created world as being one of harmony and unity (shalom or "wholeness") which is broken and shattered by conflict. This conflict is between human and God, between man and woman, human and the natural order (the serpent), country dwellers (the farmer Cain) and city dwellers (the herdsman Abel), God fearers and God disdainers (the Flood) and finally between nations (the Tower of Babel).
With this increasing conflict, the world slips back into chaos and disorder. And yet, God is revealed as a God who continually creates and seeks to repair and correct the world. And so the calling of Israel to be God's agents − the call of Abram and continuing with the covenants with the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-Israel); Moses the Liberator; David the King and the renewal of the covenant by Ezra after the Babylonian Exile − the whole story of Israel is the story of a people given a mandate by a loving, creative God to, by Torah faithfulness and justice, lead all peoples back to the Garden.
In Genesis is revealed the central truth about God. God has a purpose for creation. Creation was not random or careless or accidental. It does not exist for its own end as a manufactured thing (Intelligently Designed) but is a "created partner" with whom God continues to be in relationship to bring about his purposes and will. And what is that purpose and will? That the world be a place of beauty (and God saw that it was good − an aesthetic rather than moral judgment) and a place of unity (shalom).
And while these intentions of God for God's creation are eternal, they are not coercively implemented. God respects and loves his creation and takes its freedom seriously. And this results in a tension (not resolved in Genesis 1-11) between God's call to faithful obedience and human arrogance and self-assertion. As creatures, we are stridently disobedient, proud and alienated and God's yearning for us to return is expressed in God's faithfulness, patience and anguish. As Walter Brueggemann has said: "God invites but does not compel, hopes but does not require."
The first story: There are, in fact, two creation stories: Genesis 1:1-2:4 and Genesis 2:4-3:24.
The first story actually developed later, most probably during the 6th century B.C. at the time of the Exile. It was likely written to negate the claims of Babylonian religion and asserts that the God of Israel is still God and the Lord of life, even to those in the despair of exile and who feel abandoned.
It is a theological assertion that even in the chaos of our human experience (e.g. exile); we can be claimed by God for God's purpose. But it is interesting to note that in this story, humankind is created last. God has a relationship with the rest of creation (animals and plants etc.) and that they too are valued creatures in a "faithful relationship" with God the Creator. God's first blessing is not upon humankind, but upon the creatures.
When humanity is created (verse 26-27), humanity is a single entity, male and female. Neither is the full image of God without the other. Both are equal and are given a dignity as co-creators with God. ("Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth"). They are created in the "image of God" which is less a physical resemblance but rather to impart a spiritual power to humans of thought, communication (God talks directly with humans) and self transcendence. Humanity is given power and mastery (verses 29-30) but this dominion was not to exploit or abuse but to care for and tend as God's co-agents. The vocation of humanity was to secure the well-being of the creatures that they might be fully the creatures God intended in his creation.
In a real sense, Israel's' prohibition against (graven) images of God is contradicted in verse 27. The only creature who reveals the reality of God is humanity in its fullness (all people − both genders, believers and non-believers, all races and colors, young and old alike).
On the seventh day, God rests from his labors. Space does not permit us a full exploration of the significance of the Sabbath, but only two brief comments will be made. One, God's Sabbath rest reminds us that the world is in God's providential care and it will not fall apart if we stop our "productive" efforts. It is a gift from God. Two, Sabbath is a statement about human equality in that all people − rich and poor, needy and greedy − are called to rest. As such, Sabbath is a foretaste of what the world is intended to be if God's purposes for creation were lived into.
The first creation story, a "priestly document", emphasizes the transcendent nature of God.
The second story: The second creation story (Genesis 2:4-3:24) reverses the order of the first story and begins with the creation of a "clay creature" Adam (from the Hebrew adamah or ground). Whereas humankind has a co-agency with God in the first story, Adam here is a creature wholly dependent on God as God's servant (is provided a garden). Following man's creation, plants and animals are raised up from the earth and finally Eve (from chavvah or living; Eve is the mother of all living things) is created out of Adam's flesh. She is thus the completion of creation and far from being subservient to Adam; she is the crown of creation because she is made not as the other creatures, including Adam, from dust but rather from human material.
(Hebrew patriarchal culture would evolve the fairy tale of "Lilith" to resolve these conflicts in scripture. Lilith, Adam's first wife in 1:27, was seen as demanding complete equality with Adam and had to be replaced with a more compliant Eve.)
The humans, placed in a Garden provided for them by God's gracious act, discover two trees. We are not told why these trees are there. The Tree of Life may represent the mystery of life the creatures are to guard and nurture. The Tree of Knowledge is simply there and it is prohibited. It is a boundary.
This boundary will be violated. This narrative device of a serpent is no more than that: a device to move the story forward. The snake is neither a phallic symbol nor is it Satan. Nor is this a story about human sexuality. It is a story that asks if there are not boundaries before which humankind must bow even if we, as humans, desire to know more, control more and do more. To what extent may we order human life autonomously without reference to limits or prohibitions? (Think of atomic weapons for example). I quote from Brueggeman at length: This story is, rather, the anguished discernment that there is something about life which remains hidden and inscrutable and which will not be trampled upon by human power or knowledge. There are secrets about the human heart and the human community which must be honored, bowed before, and not exposed. That is because the gift of life in the human heart and in the human community is a matter retained by God for himself. It has not been put at the disposal of human ingenuity and human imagination. So what is urged, if not knowledge? Ignorance? No, not ignorance, but trust." − From Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching Genesis
Genesis asserts that human freedom to enjoy and explore life and our God given vocation to manage creation are set within a context of God's prohibitions and that violating those prohibitions leads to alienation and death. We are ultimately called upon to trust God in the face of ultimate mystery.
In the end, humans are expelled from the garden. A violation of trust and a willfulness deserving death, leads rather to expulsion and shame. But even in this, God's fruitfulness is revealed. In verse 3:21, God provides clothing for them. God does for them what they can not do for themselves in taking away their shame.
Whereas the first creation story emphasizes God's transcendence, this story stresses, from the "prophetic traditions", God's immanence.
These two stories −and those which follow them through chapter 11 − reveal Israel's reshaping of the creation stories of other cultures, principally Babylonian and Assyrian myths. In so doing, Israel sought to tell the story of a God, the God of Israel, who gives creation order and purpose and who sustains it in a relationship of call and yearning.
Far beyond the misguided aims of "creation science"/intelligent design; Genesis' myths are told to reveal God and humankind's place in the universe. They are stories more deserving of complex and ongoing examination than simplistic and final exams.
Recommended for further study: Genesis: A Living Conversation by Bill Moyers, Doubleday 1997
Copyright © 2006 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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