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Understanding the nature of God’s creation

Regular contributor James Knight follows up his previous article about evolution with a further biblical examples to support his argument.

In a recent NN article, I talked about the undeniable evidence for evolution over billions of years, and I did so to encourage Christians to come together and love the truth and elegance of evolution.
 
In this follow-up, I’d like to pay attention to what is perhaps the main reason that some Christians are creationist - taking the Bible too literally in the places when other interpretations are more accurate and enriching. Some of the most powerful truths the Bible conveys are far beyond the mere literal interpretations of the creationists. The Bible verses are not always literal, but they are always true, and that is the key distinction.
 
One of the most powerful methods of storytelling is through metaphors and analogies. Let me suggest how we can manage our reading of the Old Testament and conceptually demarcate our history from our non-history - a suggestion that points to a few truths that are bound to seem utterly strange to a post-Enlightenment person steeped in the logic of the Greeks and the empiricism of Bacon, Locke, Berkeley and Hume.
 
Part of the understanding required is the understanding that in ancient traditions, particularly oral traditions, the narrative being conveyed is a blend of fact and fiction, where profound truths are disseminated in a way that requires interpretative qualities beyond the headlights of the kind of rigorous historical and scientific analysis we moderns are used to. Given that life itself is so richly analogical, metaphorical and narrative-laden, it is no wonder that we are insistent that a deep understanding of the Bible won't come to anyone who trivialises its dynamic nature and is blind to its analogical, metaphorical and narrative-laden power.
 
Old Testament figures like Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Saul, Job, Jonah, David and Solomon are such an agglomeration of history, myth, legend, analogy, metaphor and theological aetiology that we can't hope to pin them down to simple historical/non-historical analyses. That's not to treat them all the same, of course - there are evidently different extents to which the above applies to Adam, Jonah and Job than, say, David and Solomon.
 
What's clear, though, is that while God 'breathed' His influence onto the writing of scripture over the many centuries of its composition, He allowed His word to be subjected to the limitations of creation, and for the narrative to be absorbed into a blend of the literal and non-literal in order to convey the power of the gospel of grace. These Old Testament stories are so psychologically deep and theologically complex that it's not even possible to justifiably approach them through a simple binary literal or non-literal lens of analysis.
 
The concept of demarcating recorded literal history from symbolic theological expressions would be alien to the man who wrote Genesis 1, and to the New Testament figures too, which is why, when Jesus talks about Adam, He is speaking theologically in a way that the audience of the day would understand. When talking about Adam, Noah, Jacob, Jonah, Abraham, etc Jesus is talking about such deep and profound truths, so far transcendent of actual historical events, that those speaking about them in scripture would be quite aghast at how far many modern people had departed from its tenor in applying banal scientific metrics to the literalism text.
 
It's obvious why we don't need the story of Adam and Eve to be literally true to understand its real meaning of ourselves in relation to God. Literalists insist on reading Genesis 1 to be 6 x 24 hour days, but when we get to Genesis 3, they suddenly stop reading that literally, because if read literally then only the serpent, Adam and Eve receive some consequences for their actions, not the rest of humankind. To see the story of the fall as being about human sin, you have to extend beyond the purely literal. The literal story of two humans and a snake sinning in a garden and everyone else becomes cursed because of it is beyond silly unless we give it its full allegorical due, which is what Paul does in Romans with a figurative truth where they represent all of mankind.
 
Similarly, there is no such thing as a literal tree of the knowledge of good and evil - it makes no sense except as a story conveying deep symbolic metaphysics. But when we see the tree of knowledge and the Fall as allegorical stories about the human capacity for moral agency, and the ability to make choices when measured up against their moral consequences, including the ability to choose God over self, or self over God, we then get to understand what those theological symbols mean. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is meaningless without an already evolved moral awareness and conception of free will in acting on that awareness.
 
It's absolutely absurd to me that anyone could be so misjudged as to think of Genesis as being science - but to compound the point, here are just some of the scriptural errors that emerge when we try to align it with known science. In Genesis 1, the earth is created before the sun, which is the wrong way around scientifically. Light is created on the first day (Genesis 1:3), but the stars that emit light aren't created until the fourth day (Genesis 1:14). These stars on the fourth day are said to be made to let them shine on earth (Genesis 1:15), but yet on day 1, God had already created the light and called the light “day,” and the darkness “night". And if three days had already passed without stars, those days couldn't have been measured if the stars weren't created until the fourth day. This gets even more bizarre when we see that our sun and moon weren't created until day 4 (Genesis 1:16) and yet we'd already had three days of evening and morning before that point in the creation story. Moreover, if we want to be scientifically technical, the moon isn't a lesser light, it merely reflects the sun's light - which means Genesis 1:16 is wrong when it says " God made two great lights" - He actually only made one great light, and one smaller celestial object (the moon) to reflect it.
 
If taken scientifically, the Genesis account actually distorts the truth of the genetic mapping even further; for example, reading Genesis scientifically we would see that fruit trees appear before marine life, which is known to be wrong, and can easily be observed on the genetic map. Reading Genesis scientifically, we have whales and birds created at the same time, but this is also far from accurate, as birds were here millions of years before whales. Reading Genesis scientifically we have insects, spiders, reptiles and amphibians created at the same time as mammals, which is wrong by a factor of several hundred million years. So even if one questions the genetic sequencing I mentioned earlier (and there is absolutely no reason to do so) a scientific Genesis account would actually contradict the genotypic mapping with which creationists say God endowed creatures – it either has God as a master deceiver or as an incompetent Creator who cannot even create a blueprint to match the genotypic order.
 
Furthermore, the ordering of the appearance of phyla is scientifically incorrect with a literal interpretation - fruit and seed bearing plants came after the water was teeming with life. Even dinosaurs are long before seed bearing fruits, yet Genesis says otherwise, showing it is not a scientific account.
 
Moreover, human evolution has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, and given that any so-called speciation that would make proto-humans distinct from humans would have occurred at the population level not at the individual level, the Genesis account that there were two first humans is not scientifically accurate as a literal interpretation. Forming a man out of the dust and breathing life into him through his nostrils is not a scientific reality for making him 'a living being', but it's a powerful spiritual image, conveying how God imparts spiritual extras into human beings that make them over and above the rest of the animal kingdom.
 
Furthermore, a woman cannot literally come from a man's rib. Biblical figures like Adam, Noah and Methuselah cannot live for over 900 years, and Sarah could not conceive Isaac at 90 years old. No human being has ever lived hundreds of years, and no woman could ever become pregnant at 90 years old. There was not one world language at the time of writing (Genesis 11:1) and the whole variety of world languages did not literally suddenly appear in one fait accompli moment by being scattered all over the earth, as conveyed in Genesis 11:8.
 
Let's turn to Noah’s flood as another example; creationists believe that the world really was flooded in its entirety and they believe the Bible says that when the ark, modern reconstruction pictured above, rested on a mountain in the Middle East it contained every human and land animal in the world, and that they were the only survivors on the plant. Even if we put aside the mass of evidence of human evolution throughout the world and the copious amounts of art and artefacts that give evidence of their uninterrupted evolution, the land animals issue, if taken literally, amounts to one of the oddest stories the world has ever seen.
 
For example, a literal interpretation means we have to believe that the voluminous amounts of species indigenous to one part of the world all made their way from the Ark’s resting place, residing in their place of provenance, travelling through conditions under which their phenotype wasn’t built to survive, and avoiding all predation along the way (never mind that many would require other animals for food in a world in which all other life had been destroyed). We are supposed to believe that the kangaroos, koalas, and wombats made their way across Asia through the Indonesian islands and over the east side of the Indian ocean to Australia. We are supposed to believe that the Arctic walruses, polar bears and caribous survived the warmer climate of Europe as they all found their way northwards. We are supposed to believe that anacondas and capybara found their way to South America and the giant tortoise found its way to the Galapagos Islands, all from the Middle East.
 
It's beyond silly to attempt to take this as a literal event in history - and the author of the flood story in the Bible would think it preposterous if he could fast forward in time and see that some Christians had become so detached from the symbolic and metaphysical theology of the story and its concomitant archetype that they were actually considering it as a literal global event.
 
The upshot of all this is, with regard to the Bible, the intention of meaning shouldn’t be confused with science, and it is for the same reason that the intention of meaning of the works of Keats or Tennyson or Blake should not be confused with the works of Newton or Kepler or Maxwell - different expressions are being conveyed through different types of language. On hearing that a wife's love for her husband "Lifts her high above the clouds", only a very foolish man would say 'No it doesn't, because that contradicts Newtonian laws'. Yet some Christians too often fall into the mistake of doing something similar with their Biblical interpretations.
 
The Bible contains everything one needs for having a relationship with God. It won't tell you about the age of the earth or evolution or gravity or electromagnetism because those subjects weren't studied in depth by the men of the day who wrote scripture. Don't put God aside when studying science; rather, look at science as the tool with which we assess the finer details of the beauty of God's 'physical' creation.
 
To read the full version of this article in James’ Philosophical Muser blog, click here.
 
The photo of a modern ark reconstruction is by Elias Null on Unsplash


 


JamesKnight300James Knight is a local government officer based in Norwich, and is a regular columnist for Christian community websites Network Norfolk and Network Ipswich. He also blogs regularly as ‘The Philosophical Muser’, and contributes articles to UK think tanks The Adam Smith Institute and The Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). 


The views carried here are those of the author, not necessarily those of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. 


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James Knight (Guest) 10/07/2022 16:17
>>I think it is of utmost importance whether or not those recorded miracles are literally true ..... largely because of the credibility of the Old Testament and New Testament (because it quotes the OT) if they were not literally true.<<

Hi Nick, I think what the subtext of the above really amounts to is something long the lines of; *I, Nick Nundy, haven't employed the cognitive interpretive power to see those verses as more than just literal, so they must be wholly literal, and it's important to me that everyone agrees with me that they are literal!*

When Jesus says "I am the door", I assume you don't think that means he's made of wood, with a handle, letterbox and hinges. When you read the Parable of the Prodigal Son, I assume you can see its theological power without thinking it's a literal event. Similarly, science and theology are different tools of study of complementary things (if interpreted prudently). If you studied geology, you would be aware that rocks and sedimentary layers are not just a few thousand years old. If you studied genetics, you'd be aware that all living animals did not rest on Ararat and begin to repopulate the earth from that geographical point. If you studied linguistics or philology, you'd be aware that all the earth's languages did not begin at a point in historical when the Tower of Babel story was set. And so on.

It's not that difficult to regard both theological and scientific disciplines as two lenses of the same reality. You just have to drop the agenda and fall in love with the truth.

Nick Nundy (Guest) 15/07/2022 13:19
No James your conclusion of what you assume I am saying i.e. ..... "*I, Nick Nundy, haven't employed the cognitive interpretive power to see those verses as more than just literal, so they must be wholly literal, and it's important to me that everyone agrees with me that they are literal!" ..... is not a fair conclusion because I have given arguments/reasons to back up the points I am making. You have yet to specifically address my arguments. Please give me your reasoning as at why each scripture I have referred to in the New Testament (on 02/07/2022) should be treated as non literal? Feel free to employ cognitive interpretive power to interpret these scriptures as you feel is their true interpretation and thus prove they should definitely not be interpreted as being literal.
James Knight (Guest) 15/07/2022 15:03
Hey Nick, I already gave you three examples.

1) A literal reading of scripture has the earth at only a few thousand years old, but science shows us that rocks and sedimentary layers are not just a few thousand years old.

2) A literal reading of Noah's flood contradicts the scientific reality that all living animals did not rest on Ararat and begin to repopulate the earth from that geographical point.

3) A literal reading of the Babel story suggests that all the earth's languages began at a point in history when God scattered these languages as punishment, which contradicts what we know about the evolution of language.

How would you tackle those three for starters?

Nick Nundy (Guest) 17/07/2022 17:44
Hi James
I don’t want to deal with your immediate above number 1 and 3 points because it is enough time and writing that we are both spending on Noah (number 2) without distracting/deviating to the other two (1 and 3). And you did agree on 04/07/2022 “Ok, let’s stick just with Noah then”. So I will just tackle 2.

I think we have been coming at this from different directions …. Most of your answers are basically saying that the scriptures regarding Noah (and others) cannot be literal because of scientific evidence. It is mainly the (so called) scientific evidence that has been your motivation and justification.
I have come to it from the angle of what does the bible say itself about how it intends for its own passages to be interpreted (literal or not literal)?
I have argued using some evidence from within the bible the account of Noah is to be interpreted as literal…. The words of Jesus and others in the New Testament confirm the records of Noah should be taken as literal. And also I have questioned why the bible would need to write about a literal God performing myth miracles.

We would all have a problem IF it was proved the bible is saying this account is literal and IF science proved “It did not happen”.

The gist of your argument is …. science proves the story of Noah did not literally happen, but don’t worry, because those scriptures (conveniently) are not to be interpreted as literal. BUT you have not provided evidence that Genesis ch 5 – 10 should not be treated as literal. I on the other hand am saying ……. to say Genesis ch 5 – 10 should not be treated as literal is not an option the bible gives us.

Yes we agree NOT every verse in the bible is to be taken “literally”, because there is poetry and parables in the bible.
Clearly the parables of Jesus are not literal events, because they are portrayed as stories Jesus told, it is clear they are not literal historical events, but parables. To say that Jesus parables proves that Genesis ch 5 – 10 is not literal is not proper proof or evidence at all. Normally Jesus parable are about “a man” or “a seed” but when Jesus said “As in the days of Noah….” He was talking about a historical figure and the literal days he was living in.

When Jesus said “I am THE door” that was a wonderful thing. Jesus was saying that He is the door to heaven. The only way for a person to get into heaven is through Jesus. Jesus was being literal in that he really is the door. (not a wooden door). To say … ‘Jesus is not a literal wooden door proves that Genesis ch 5 – 10 is not literal’ is not proper proof or evidence at all.

So I was (and still am) asking you to show evidence (of how the scripture should be interpreted) to prove that the bible intends for Genesis ch 5 – 10 should not be interpreted as being literal.

You have said science proves that Genesis ch 5 – 10 did not literally happen. Just as some people who are scientists might agree with you, some people who are scientists might say science does not prove this …. And/or science cannot be used to prove this. The so called “science” may be assuming that the miracles of Noah and the Ark did not take place.
Every person has to be careful before they can say science “proves” an historical event did or did not happen (because we are no longer able to witness that event) and especially as it may not be taking into consideration the specific historical miracles God has done.

James Knight (Guest) 19/07/2022 17:14
Hi Nick,

Thanks for your reply.

As I’ve already alluded to, I am not starting from the assumption that these early stories need to be taken solely literally, and I don’t think most Christians are either, so I think yours is the position that departs from the norm, and yours is the one that needs justifying, especially as I do believe there may well be historical elements to characters like Noah, so I’m not denying some literal power within the stories.

When Jesus says things like “In the days of Noah”, you think that can only mean Noah is entirely literal. But Jesus knew the audience He was addressing, and what they would have understood these stories to mean in relation to God’s relationship with humankind. I think you are mistakenly bringing your modern interpretation of literal or non-literal onto writings that were interpreted very differently. When Jesus talks about these figures, He’s tapping into a complex phenomenology that includes part historical (because historical people exist and provide the essential properties of the narrative), part archetypical (because these figures in the narrative represent theological truths which represent humankind abstractly and universally), and part mythology and/or allegory (because there is a literary dimension to these figures, both as historical drama, and as theological/spiritual symbolisms).

The science beyond the ‘literal’ claims merely confirms that if they are taken wholly literally there is a conflict. That’s not putting science over scripture, it is using a broad range of understanding to help us make sense of the world through a wide variety of complementary lenses. The Noah’s flood story says God will destroy all life under the heavens. If you take that wholly literally, then you must believe that literally every living land animal on earth today descends from a pair of land species that were in an ark and that rested on Ararat a few thousand years ago. Is that what you are telling us you literally believe? You’re saying, for example, that you think that the only 2 kangaroos in the world at the time hopped off the ark in the Middle East, hopped about 8000 miles down to Australia, and restarted their populations there, leaving no traces of their journey along the way. Is that what you are telling us you believe happened?

James

Nick Nundy (Guest) 29/07/2022 12:26
Hi James
I differ on your interpretation of these New Testament (and Old Testament Genesis ch 5 – 10 and Isaiah 54 v9) passages referring to Noah and how you think the people hearing Jesus would have interpreted what they heard and how the readers would have interpreted the passages in Hebrews and Peter’s letters.

Previously I have referenced these New Testament passages, but now I will quote them as I feel they speak clearly that the flood did actually happen. The verses clearly indicate this is an historical event and so the onus is on you to “prove” these passages are not referring to an historical event (rather than just “explain” it). The onus is not on me, because I am not trying to change (explain away) the meaning of the record of what has been written.

Luke 3 v 36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
(Matthew ch 24 and in context) Matthew ch 24 “36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Hebrews 11 v 7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

1 Peter 3 v 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,

2 Peter 2 v 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;...

Finally to answer your questions, yes I believe there were two kangaroos on the Ark (because of the above scriptures). I don’t know how the kangaroos got to Australia. Perhaps not too long after the flood kangaroos were taken to Australia by people in the same way that many years later other animals (e.g. foxes, cows) were introduced into Australia.

(Guest) 04/08/2022 21:55
From Timothy V Reeves:

As far as I can see James is not dogmatic about the mix of history and metaphor in the flood story. He’s being tentative about the subject. That, of course, doesn’t apply to you Nick does it? Your view is organically joined to the rigid time scale of young earth creationism, a time scale which in turn is organically joined to the teaching context found in young earth culture.

For me young earthism is an epistemic error. Take for example Nick’s claim that past events cannot be witnessed: This is not true: Everything (Repeat, everything) we observe is to a greater or lesser extent a past event. The essence of a past event is that it leaves behind observational evidence. These observations are mediated by signals from the past although the epistemic distances traversed vary considerably. The young earth “science” linked to this discussion is usually of poor quality, hamstrung as it is by a canard that separates “observational science” & “historical science” (See the link below where I discuss this in more detail with a young earthist who was of a similar miscomprehension as Nick).

For me young earthism is also Biblically flawed: As I make clear in that same link young earthism eviscerates the deep meanings of Genesis in favour of a distracting contention about whether or not the Genesis 1 day is 86,400 seconds long. (See again the link below where I discuss this).

In natural languages “Meaning = text + context” where “context” is a complex of resources brought by the reader to the text in order extract meaning from it. In the scriptures Nick quotes his chief contextual resource are his feelings that these passages must be interpreted literally (Viz “I feel they speak clearly…”). These feelings are no doubt derived from the very strict adherence to the teaching environment he is part of.

But even if for the sake of argument we assume that the flood narrative is exclusively metaphorical/allegorical (I’m not saying it is, I’m being exploratory here like James) then because the Biblical text is managed and inspired by Sovereign omniscience then this scuppers any attempt by dogmatic literalists to portray the metaphorical/allegorical as the thin end of the compromising wedge. For as we know, with Christ’s parables, the authority of their lessons is carried without need to get hung up on questions of their literal historicity. Christ provides no framing to his parables which says "The following happened literally"; the story has meaning regardless of framing.

Contemporary young earth literalism by and large has its origins in the literalist surges of the 1960s and it has effectively eviscerated the deeper meanings of the creation and flood accounts in favour of a distracting contention over whether the day of Genesis 1 is literally 86,000 seconds long.

In difficult times when Christianity in the West is being marginalised from the nihilist tendency of mainstream culture the insecure fundamentalist craves absolute certainty in contra-reaction to this nihilism. But if these “certainties” are challenged by other Christians those Christians are then by accused by fundamentalists of quite heinous sins as we have seen from the comment thread of James first post.


Further Links

Re: “historical science” vs “observational science” (Sic) see here:

hxxps:\\drive,google,com/file/d/1KFJrDPNt6gJlBOVID4x50nCUtpLG-kn9/view

To get the link to work replace "xx" with "tt", "\\" with "//" and the commas with "."

See also the link I put at the end of the comment thread on James previous post.



(Guest) 11/08/2022 12:36
From: James Knight

Good comments from Tim - I hope you will give him a justified response.
(Guest) 11/08/2022 13:02
From James Knight

Now for my reply to your last post, Nick (for which, thank you).

I think, given that I agree that Noah, Moses, Abraham, etc, were literally real people (and so much more than literal, of course), I won’t push that part of the discussion any further here. If you’re saying they are literal, and I’m saying they are literal+, then we probably agree enough on the literal qualities to put that part to bed.

However, we can’t say the same about the following, re “yes I believe there were two kangaroos on the Ark (because of the above scriptures). I don’t know how the kangaroos got to Australia. Perhaps not too long after the flood kangaroos were taken to Australia by people in the same way that many years later other animals (e.g. foxes, cows) were introduced into Australia”

This is absurd. Kangaroos have been in Australia for around 15-20 million years, and marsupials generally for about four times as long, as they migrated from South America when the continents were connected. Genetic sequencing of marsupials confirms this. So we know it’s not true that there were only 2 kangaroos in the world on an ark a few thousand years ago, and that people brought them over to Australia after the flood. Your view is quite simply wrong.

(Guest) 04/09/2022 18:52
From Timothy V Reeves

And another one they've got quite simply wrong: Young earthism's biggest faux pas:

hxxps:\\quantumnonlinearity,blogspot,com/2022/08/faulkner-on-young-earthisms-biggest

To get the link to work replace "xx" with "tt", "\\" with "//" and the commas with "." and terminate with ".html"


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