Why are we feeding on Genesis? Why do we believe it? And how do we answer the questions that we’re asked about it?
Well: we are Jesus’ followers, and so we believe in the truth of the Bible like our Master did! Jesus Himself emphasized (if the gospels can be trusted in the very slightest!) the reliability and final authority of Scripture – ethics, and prophecy, but history too. As His followers, therefore, we affirm that what Scripture says, God says. And we follow our Master in His evident view of the old testament’s reliability. In Matthew 19, for example, there’s a fascinating passage where He quotes the words of the author of these early chapters of Genesis, but says that this is God speaking; in other words, what Scripture says, God says!
On the other hand, it’s what Scripture says, and not what we misinterpret it to say, that God is saying. Genesis isn’t a scientific textbook, so although what it does tell us is absolutely reliable, it doesn’t speak conclusively to some scientific and historical questions we might find intriguing: like, To what extent did God make use of evolution in creation? And Adam (which means ‘the Man’) and Eve (which means `the Mother’): did other humanoids exist before their creation, similar yet lacking God’s gift of that invisible ‘spirit’ which marks truly human life? Genesis may give us hints, and what it says is true; but it simply doesn’t tell us clearly about some of these things. So equally godly people interpret these hints in different ways, and sometimes they’ll be right and sometimes they’ll be wrong. It’s what the Bible says that is true; sometimes our interpretations may be mistaken.
So then: People ask us, Hasn’t science disproved Genesis? What do we say? Well, if that were so, it’s surprising that so many leading scientists, including recent Nobel Prizewinners, believe in the God of the Bible! (See, for example, The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief by Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project, and more recently Acting Science Advisor to President Biden.) Also, science continually grows and learns. If history continues, our science will seem as limited to the 23rd century as the 18th century’s does to us. All we can have are provisional understandings.
But in fact the famous science/faith clash is a myth. We Christians rejoice in the scientific enterprise as a glorious gift from God – and in fact modern science owes much of its origins to early scientists who believed deeply that God was a God of order who reveals Himself, and so His works could be studied in faith that they would reveal the comprehensible laws of a divine Lawgiver. As a historical fact, it’s no coincidence that the rise of science in Britain was driven by keen God-believers like Newton and Boyle; and when the Royal Society arose in 1660, the majority of its members were (to quote Bragg) `hard-reading Bible men`. They spoke of God having given two books, Bible and nature; science for them was a sacred attempt to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Philosopher of science Stanley Jaki points out that science was “stillborn” in other great civilizations outside Europe, not because they didn’t have the ideas, but because of worldviews that didn’t foster scientific development. Faith in a Law-maker God is a major reason why modern science arose in a Bible-based cultural context, as against, say, the culture of ancient China, which was highly inventive but grounded in a very different worldview. (See R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, and Melvyn Bragg (not a Christian as we understand the term!), The Book of Books.)
`But doesn’t Genesis say the world was made 6000 years ago?’ No, it certainly doesn’t! That infamous 4004BC date was worked out by a 17th century archbishop who added up the years in Genesis 5 and 11 but didn’t understand how the biblical genealogies work, listing the ancestors who seemed most significant to that writer, and including or omitting ones that other writers might value differently. (The archbishop wouldn’t have made that mistake if he’d studied Matthew 1 more carefully.)
(It’s for the same reason, by the way, that we can’t date the flood from what Genesis tells us. And let’s note too that the Bible doesn’t say unambiguously how local or regional it was [compare the way Luke 2:1 speaks of the whole world, when Luke knows full well he’s referring only to the Roman world]. The flood may have been very early indeed. A recent BBC programme described how current genetic science suggests that at one very early point in its history much of our human race was nearly wiped out, reduced down to a very small number of individuals, and it’s possible that this was the same event as Genesis 7 describes.)
But doesn’t Genesis insist that the world was made in a week? No, it certainly doesn’t. It structures its history around six ‘days’ of creation, but it isn’t concerned to spell out what it means by `day` either. There are plenty of biblical Christians who see Genesis 1 as essentially poetic (Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God compares it to the way Judges 5 is written; see also Roger Forster’s excellent Reason, Science and Faith). And even if (like myself) you don’t go with the `poetry` theory, we can’t deny that Genesis leaves a question-mark over its meaning for `days`. The word `day` is clearly used in different ways in these first chapters, and the `great light’ of the sun, marking day and night, isn’t part of the story till halfway through chapter 1 (the fourth `day’, 1:14-18). So there are different possibilities. We can read these `days’ as 24-hour periods; or, as elsewhere in the Bible (eg 2 Corinthians 6:2, 2 Peter 3:8, or the wonderful Psalm 90:2-4), far longer ones, lasting thousands or even millions of years (and which may also overlap). It can be like when we say, `We live in the day of the smartphone`, or, `Back in Lenin’s day things were very different.` (The one snag with that, for me, is the way Genesis says `There was evening, and there was morning – the first day.`)
But in fact the Hebrew original, unlike our English Bibles, describes these days as `day one’, `day two’, etc; or, ‘a first day’, ‘a second day’. So if this issue is getting in our way, we may recall that the text offers the option of five enormous gaps of millions of years of process, each of which follows and precedes a `day’ of God’s intervening initiative, God’s special creative action in which He `spoke in’ the vital new genetic information for the next phase of the planet’s history. (See John Lennox’s brilliant book Seven Days that Divide the World, which may well be the key book on Genesis and origins for the next few years.)
Let me say I have no doubt at all that God could have created the world in an ordinary week. But the Bible doesn’t say he did, and the science indicates that he didn’t. So there’s no contradiction here; we are free to follow the scientific evidence where it leads.
`Well, surely you don’t believe in Adam and Eve?’ But how does one go about `believing in Adam and Eve’? The word `Adam’ is simply the Hebrew for ‘Man’, and ‘Eve’, as Genesis states, comes from ‘Mother of all the living’ (3:20). So ‘believing in Adam and Eve’ simply means believing that at some point in history there came a first‑ever couple who could be described as truly human; which is obviously true – there obviously was an Adam, and an Eve. Logically, they’re called `The Man’ and `The Mother of All the Living’. What Genesis then offers is the information that God placed them in a `garden`, a perfect environment (it doesn’t state whether the whole world was perfect or already corrupted by Satan; the military `subdue` in 1:28 may suggest the latter); but that our race’s history was then shaped, and our world ruined, by our losing this perfection in a fundamental crisis caused by the disobedience of this couple, demanding to run their lives their own way and `be like God` themselves – a crucial gospel issue we all need to hear (3:5). Science can have nothing to say either for or against either piece of information.
`But how can you believe in Genesis now we know about evolution?` This too is a huge red herring. As followers of Jesus we take what the Bible says as 150% reliable. But what it implies about whether, or to what extent, our brilliant God used evolution to create His masterpieces of life on this planet, is an issue over which biblical Christians feel free to differ. There are three key positions:
Theistic evolution: the position that God used macro-evolution as he created the world. See the website of biologos.org, and those of the main bodies for Christians who are professional scientists in Britain and America, Christians in Science www.cis.org.uk, and the American Scientific Affiliation www.asa3.org; also the Faraday Institute https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/. A key book here is Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose?
At the opposite end of the spectrum is young-earth creationism, which is strongly anti-evolution but also opposes itself to the generally-accepted scientific view of the age of the earth. See Biblical Creation Society http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/; Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org/; Institute for Creation Research www.icr.org . Key figures are Ken Ham, John Peet.
A third position is old-earth creationism, also sceptical about the majority view on evolution, but not about the age of the earth: see Reasons to Believe www.reasons.org, Old Earth Ministries http://www.oldearth.org/, and the work of eg Hugh Ross.
Then also the highly significant `intelligent design` movement does not commit as such to any of these positions! It is systematically misunderstood in the media, but explores the possibility that the universe’s origins etc point towards an intelligent designer. Several branches of science now have well-defined procedures for distinguishing designed activity from chance phenomena, eg the study of artificial intelligence; forensic science; archaeology; and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. All these fields need criteria for separating chance activity from what is intelligently designed. By such criteria, ID theorists argue, various factors, particularly the issue of information-origin and the high level of `irreducible complexity’ in the universe, reveal clear evidence of design. See Access Research Network www.arn.org, Discovery Institute www.discovery.org, and the books of William Dembski (Cambridge University Press).
(It’s also fascinating how atheist Stephen Hawking’s book The Grand Design says that `Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained and raises the natural question of why it is that way… The discovery relatively recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many of the laws of nature could lead at least some of us back to the old idea that this grand design is the work of some grand designer.` Instead, he goes for a highly speculative multiverse explanation, where there are a vast number of universes, everything that can happen will happen eventually, and so one with this utterly remarkable combination has to happen sometime. Obviously this belief in a multiverse is entirely a matter of faith, but (unlike with God) without a shred of evidence!)
See also http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/commission_on_creation.html#Commission%20on%20Creation for a detailed description of each of these positions, and http://www.cis.org.uk/resources/articles-talks-and-links/creation/creationism-links/ for a helpful collection of links to them and their mutual debates.
Lastly, then, here are three simple points for us to make in conversation about all this:
First, it’s important to distinguish between what the Bible actually says (which is what God says), and what we as humans understand – or misunderstand – it to say. In this area of evolution (as in many others) there is need for us to be humble, and room for different points of view among equally biblically-minded Christians as we seek together to `love the Lord with all our mind’. Evolution is an issue over which Christians feel free to differ. But many – especially professional scientists (eg members of Christians in Science in Britain, or of the American Scientific Affiliation) clearly have no difficulties believing both in the Bible and in evolutionary theory. Therefore, it certainly hasn’t been proven that the two are irreconcilable.
Others rightly observe that evolutionary theory is far from finally ‘proven’. (Scientific theories never are, of course.) Some huge and fascinating problems do remain unsettled; see for example Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial (also see Stephen Jay Gould’s extended review in the July 1992 Scientific American, and Johnson’s response in subsequent editions); also John Lennox’s God’s Undertaker. It’s evident that a number of evolutionary theorists have affirmed Darwinian orthodoxy quite consciously because they are determined, almost desperate, not to believe in God; but if you don’t have a problem with God, then the turmoil generated by these challenges becomes intriguing, and the issues can be explored without fear!
Just in passing – even if evolution is true, it’s staggering that all the wonder and glory we see can have developed from so incredibly little. Those of us who do believe in evolution should perhaps be on our knees in worship when we think of it! A particularly interesting issue is the possibility that evolutionary theory, to work, may even necessitate intelligent design underlying it. One internationally renowned atheistic cosmologist has described the evolutionary process as so problematic, and the chance against random processes producing the complexity of life so high, that it becomes necessary to postulate a controlling intelligence watching over it to make it work (cf Evolution from Space, by Sir Frederick Hoyle, a while ago Britain’s most respected cosmologist, and Chandra Wickramasinghe); ie, evolutionary theory, far from ‘disproving creation’, actually implies belief in a higher, guiding intelligence. More recently, the famous philosopher Anthony Flew, one of the most renowned atheists of recent decades, said in the Times that investigation of DNA `has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved… I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature.’ (See also his final and impressive book There Is A God.) Thus the idea that evolution rules out believing in a Creator is a total red herring; indeed, it may even point in the opposite direction.
That’s enough, except for just one story! Some people say that the world and all the wondrous life it contains came into being totally by chance, you just need to allow for enough time and chance; so that if (for example) you gave a group of monkeys enough typewriters and enough time, then by sheer chance they would eventually type out the plays of Shakespeare. Well, somebody actually tried this (in Plymouth as I recall), and the monkeys crapped on the typewriters and destroyed them. If all you’ve got in the universe is time and chance, you end up with more and more disorder and chaos (with some living systems it may possibly be different); less creation, less beauty, less order, not more. Creation needs God!
So then: there’s diversity among Bible Christians; but nothing in contemporary science can be proven to contradict what Genesis actually says (something indeed very remarkable in so ancient a book). The problems are illusory. We have every reason to believe Jesus was right, and that what Scripture says, God says; every reason to trust these profound ancient records. Let’s reread them! God spoke, and His Word created all the wonder of the universe; and the Bible is His Word. Let’s trust it, read it daily, obey it!
(For more of these resources please click on https://petelowmanresources.com/category/bible-introductions-1/genesis/ )
