Intro
This is our second sermon the World Reframed series. We’ve said that the lens through which our culture sees the world is smudged and broken, and we’re advocating Genesis 1-3 in particular as a lens through which to see the world more clearly on a whole bunch of issues and questions.
When I say that we are to use Genesis 1-3 as a lens, though, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a process involved: the work of translation. For example, if I said to you, “hoy, cuando predico, yo quiero no tener pelos en mi lengua y tiro la casa por la ventana ayudarte a entender.” A few of you are thinking, “that might be the worst Spanish I’ve ever heard”. Most of you are thinking, “I have no idea what you just said. Is that the gift of tongues? Is that even allowed?” To communicate what I’ve said, of course, we need to understand what the Spanish words mean and then figure out what the equivalent English words are. If we do that, I can tell you that I said, “today, when I preach, I don’t want to have any hairs on my tongue and I’m going to throw the house through the window to help you understand.” Better? Everybody clear? No, of course not. Because translation isn’t just a matter of finding equivalent words. I used Spanish idioms, terms and ideas, and we have to enter into the Spanish world and figure out what those concepts are trying to communicate. Then we can find English phrases and ideas that communicate something similar. To not have hairs on the tongue is a way of saying that someone is a straight-talker. They’re not beating around the bush. To throw the house through the window is to spare no expense, to do whatever it takes. So what I really said was that today, when I preach, I want to tell it to you straight and do whatever I can to help you understand. It’s a worthwhile thing to say, but it takes some work to make the translation.
That’s what we always have to do when translating, and it’s a basic principle of biblical interpretation. We need to enter into the world of the biblical authors and understand not just the words but the ideas and concepts- we need to understand the message they intended to communicate in order to communicate that in our world and language today. This is where we understand the authority and inspiration of the Bible to be. Not in the words themselves- otherwise, we should all be working much harder to learn Greek and Hebrew, because without that we couldn’t actually hear God’s word. But Christians believe that the authority of the Bible is found in the message that it is trying to communicate, and that it might use various images and words and structures common to that time to do it.
This is especially important when we come to the question of the day: science. A lot of people, both inside and outside the church, think that there is a conflict between the Bible and science. That these two things do not work together, that you have to choose one or the other. Who’s seen Nacho Libre? Not the segue you were expecting, was it? It’s a pretty silly movie about Jack Black as a cook at a Catholic monastery who is a professional wrestler on the side and recruits a man named Steven as his partner. They’re not very good, they lose lots, and Jack Black thinks they’re losing because Steven believes in science, whereas he believes in God, and if Steven could believe in God instead of science, they’d do better.
Science and the Bible, popularly seen as opponents in the ring. And the battleground here has often been Genesis 1 and 2. What we need to do this morning is the work of translating. What does Genesis 1 and 2 actually teach? What’s the message that it intends to convey? I’m convinced that there’s a way here to see that, no matter what Jack Black says, science and faith are not in opposition to each other. Instead, each is a revelation given to us by God about Himself. It’s time to reframe science. We’re going to look at what Genesis intends to teach, we’re going to look at what science intends to teach (and what it can’t), and then we’ll talk about where this all leads us.
1. What Genesis intends to teach
It seems to me that Genesis 1 and 2 is not trying to give us a scientific account of the creation of the world or a blow-by-blow historical account. I don’t believe that’s the intent or the message here. I think if it is, we run into a number of issues. One is that ho we understand as history is not at all how people in the ancient world understood it. We have a genre called history, we have certain expectations about what that genre looks like. That’s not a genre the ancients were aware of. That’s not to say they didn’t write about events that took place, just that the expectations and conventions of that kind of writing were very different. Second, we run into problems scientifically. As I understand it, the evidence we have overwhelmingly points in the direction of the earth, and the universe as a whole, being much, much older than 10,000 years. It seems to require significant mental gymnastics to reconcile these things with the belief that Genesis 1 is giving a historical account, in the modern sense. But third, and maybe most importantly for some of us, we run into textual problems.
There are textual issues if Genesis 1 and 2 are straightforward chronological history, and these have been pointed out by many people before- basically nothing I’m saying today is original to me, so if you’re upset with me, just remember, you’re not really upset with me. How’s that for deflection? In Day 1, God creates light, and he calls this period of light day, and there’s night. In Day 4, God creates the sun. How did we have a day, three days in fact, without the sun? Where’s the light coming from without the sun? The ancients understood that light came from the sun, so what’s going on here? In Day 3, we see vegetation emerging on the land. Again, this is before the sun has emerged. Given what we know about natural processes, how can we have vegetation before the sun?
There are also chronological questions between Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, again, vegetation appears before humans come on the scene. In Genesis 2, we read that there was no vegetation because nobody was there to work the ground, so God created humans first. In Genesis 1, animals are made before humans: on Day 5 and the first part of Day 6. In Genesis 2, however- and this is a translation issue, so I’ll give you the NASB which is much closer to the original- God forms the animals after the humans.
And then there’s the point that the words that Genesis 1 uses and the images it uses for creation itself are not in any way technical scientific language, but taken straight from the dominant worldview of the time. Genesis 1:6 talks about God separating the waters and installing a “vault” to keep them separate. This is the Hebrew word raqia, which almost certainly means a fixed dome. This is consistent with an ancient view of the world that said that the world was flat, built on subterranean pillars, with a solid dome in the sky and waters above that. Other passages in the Bible, like Psalm 104, use the same kind of language. Again, this is very different from how we know the world to work. So what do we do with that?
Again, all of this tells me that Genesis 1 is not trying to do science or history as we understand it. It tells me that the how and the when are not what the author is trying to communicate, that this is not where the authority of the text lies. As one evangelical OT scholar points out, “the ancient Israelites could not have understood exactly how God actually did his creation work even if he told them” (Richard Averbeck, Reading Genesis 1-2, 32). Another says that ”though the text has much revelation to offer about the nature of God and his character and work, there is not a single incidence of new information being offered by God to the Israelites about the regular operation of the world” (John Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, 21) That’s not what God, through human authors, means to communicate to us in Scripture. So what is He trying to tell us in Genesis 1?
The key verse, as I understand it, is verse 2. “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”. This forms the context for everything that happens afterwards, this whole creation account emerges from the context of verse 2. In that sense, there’s already creation that’s taken place, there’s already stuff. But what’s the problem? The problem is that it’s formless and empty. You want to learn some Hebrew this morning? I took a Genesis class in Bible college when I was 18 and these words are probably the only thing I remember from that whole class. That’s how memorable these words are. You ready? Tohu wabohu. That’s fun. I want you to say it with me. Tohu wabohu. Those are the words for formless and empty. The picture is that creation is this desolate wasteland. And what God does in the rest of Genesis 1 is fix that problem.
Genesis 1 has this fairly clear and neat symmetry to it. The first three days are days of forming and the second three days are corresponding days of filling. Forming and filling, fixing the problems of formlessness and voidness in verse 2. Let’s walk it through. On Day 1, God makes light, and this period of light is called day. He’s creating the form, the structure of light and time. On Day 4, God creates the sun and the moon and the stars. He’s filling the form He created on Day 1. On Day 2, God separates the waters above and below. That’s the form, that’s the structure. On Day 5, God fills that form with birds above and fish below. On Day 3, God creates the dry land and puts vegetation there. On Day 6, God creates animals that live on the dry ground and will eat the food that He’s put there. He’s filling the form. By the way, it’s been pointed out that the first three days are about time, weather, and agriculture- the crucial elements of life necessary for human life and flourishing. They’re the same things mentioned in Genesis 8. After the famous flood, God promises that “as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest (Day 3, agriculture), cold and heat (Day 2, weather), summer and winter, day and night (Day 1, time) will never cease”. These are the forms necessary for life to exist on earth.
So what does this structure tell us? It tells us the why of God’s creation. The structure of this chapter says that God wants to give order to creation, so that it becomes a place hospitable to life, and human life in particular. All these structures in Genesis 1 lead to the climax of creation on Day 6, which is the creation of humans. God has made the world, He has ordered and structured it in such a way that it promotes life and flourishing. That’s what we talked about last week, that God is a God of blessing who makes things good. And what that means is not that it is perfect and pristine, but like I just said, structured and ordered for life and flourishing. God creates in order to bless His creation, and humans in particular, with life.
Bringing last week and this week together, then, Genesis 1 is about the who and why of creation. Last week, we looked at how the gods were perceived in the ancient world, how there were many of them. They competed with one another and creation came out of that competition. Genesis 1 tells us that there is one God, that He is Creator, He creates not by slaying other gods but by the power of His will, it tells us that He is a God who is present in His creation but separate from it and that He is a God who blesses. That’s the who. Today we’ve seen that Genesis 1 is also about the why. God creates a structured cosmos in order to fill it with life and bless His image-bearers. Again, Genesis 1 is not about the when and the how. Those are not the questions it is interested in answering. Everything about the structure and content of the passage indicates that, in my view. Instead, it is about the who and why.
And this is consistent with the Bible’s claims for itself more generally. What does the Bible as a whole want to teach us? The most comprehensive claim for this is probably 2 Timothy 3, where Paul reminds Timothy about the:
“Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:15-17
What are the Scriptures for? To teach us about salvation- which is about God and what He’s done- and to equip us for righteousness- which is about how we are to live in response. It’s about the who and the why.
2. What Science Intends to Teach
Let’s talk now about science and what it intends to teach. Actually, let’s begin with what it can’t teach. It’s been said that science is the study of what is, but cannot speak to what ought to be. Science cannot talk about purpose, about identity, about the source of creation, about those kinds of bigger picture things. It can talk about what is and even what was but can’t talk about what ought to be. And there are some scientists who are sworn atheists and at the same time recognize this fact.
Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most influential atheists of last century and an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. Here’s what he said: “science simply cannot, by its legitimate methods, adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it. We simply cannot comment on it as scientists” (quoted in Mark Clark, The Problem of God, 39). That strikes me as very true. Science can’t comment on God’s involvement in nature. There are limits to what it can say and what it can’t.
However, that hasn’t stopped others from crossing way over that line. A couple of examples. Here’s a quote from Steven Weinberg, a Nobel winner in physics: “it is almost irresistible (although false) for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes…it is very hard to realize that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe” (quoted in Christian Smith, Atheist Overreach, 92). Think about the claims being made there. Humans have no special relation to the universe: that’s a statement about identity and purpose. Is that verifiable through science? Human life is just a farcical outcome of a chain of accidents. Is that something science can prove? Is that a result of experiments and empirical evidence? The universe is overwhelmingly hostile. Again, what science makes that definitive conclusion? And there are many others who try to make claims like this on the basis of science. People have noted how badly Richard Dawkins, probably the most famous and influential atheist of this century, stumbles whenever he adventures from his field of biology and tries to talk theology. That doesn’t stop him from trying, but he’s crossing this line.
Here’s another example, more real life. Mark Clark, a pastor down in Surrey, wrote a book defending the truth of Christian faith, and he has a chapter about faith and science. He tells a story about a woman who was a nurse at a hospital. At this hospital, doctors had repeatedly emphasized that it was a purely secular place, that religious faith and values were not to be expressed, that it was a place devoted to science and evidence and so on. One day, this nurse heard one of these doctors discussing with other doctors about what they should do about a man on life support. This doctor then made this comment: “at least we know if we take him off life support, he won’t be suffering anymore.” And everyone else nodded along, as if saying, “yes, that is true. We all know that.” But wait! How? How do they know that? How do they know that he won’t be suffering? Is that something that science has proven? If anything, there are people who have died, medically, and experienced suffering afterwards, and came back to tell about it. You can believe their accounts or not, but the point is that the statement that he won’t be suffering anymore is not a secular, objective, scientific statement. That’s a faith statement! (Mark Clark, The Problem of God, 30-31).
There’s this way of thinking that says that science covers the whole realm of truth, that only what you can verify scientifically is real and true. It’s called scientism. Not science, scientism. Or scientific imperialism- think about the bad guys in Star Wars, the imperial empire. Same idea. And it’s what Wienberg and those doctors think: that science can cover the breadth of truth. In Christian Smith’s book Atheist Overreach, he shows quite clearly how wrong this is. He points out that the belief that only what is verifiable by science is true is a belief that cannot itself be verified scientifically. It’s an assumption, a faith position, that can’t be proven. And by this unprovable statement you say that only what is provable is true. Smith points out that this is like calling someone on the phone to tell them that you can’t talk to them because your phone isn’t working. Do you get what he means? Scientism is internally self-defeating, it’s contradictory, it cuts off the branch that it is sitting on.
And this is what is opposed to Christian faith. It’s not science, it’s scientism. It’s not evolution, it’s evolutionism. The biological theory of evolution, whether you believe it or not, talks about how things came into being. Again, that’s not a question that Genesis is trying to answer and I don’t believe it’s a threat to Christian faith. Evolutionism is a worldview that says that evolution explains everything, that things are random and chance and that there is no purpose or ultimate meaning in life. That’s not science, it’s scientism, and it is absolutely opposed to Christian faith.
See, in the history of Christian belief, people would speak about two books of God’s revelation. One book was the Bible, the Scriptures. The other was creation itself. Both were seen as indispensable sources of knowledge about the world and its Creator. They were seen as complementary, not in opposition to one another. And the Bible itself speaks of this, maybe most clearly in Romans 1: “for since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (1:20). Two books.
But what has happened in the last century or two is that these two books have been ripped apart. So you’ve got Christians on this one side who say that all they need is the book of Scripture, that the other book has nothing to say that the Bible doesn’t already say, and they just kind of disregard it. And then you’ve got people on the other side who say that this book, represented by science, covers everything, there’s no need for anything else, the other book has nothing to say to them. And in this, everyone is impoverished. And this is what needs to happen in order to reframe science. The two books need to be understood as complementary, not as competition.
Because here’s the other thing. A really good argument can be made, and has been made by a bunch of people, that modern science as we know it owes its existence to Christian faith. That’s right. The roots of modern science, at least to a large extent, are in Christian faith. I mean, think about it. If God were to be identified with the world, if the divine and the natural world were one and the same, as it is in much Eastern thinking, you’re probably not eager to poke and probe nature. You’re probably not doing experiments on it. And if the world has no order or structure to it, science just isn’t going to work, period. A system where an intelligent being created the world as a separate entity from Himself, has made it ordered and structured and invited humans to make the most of it- that’s the kind of worldview that leads to what we know of as modern science. And historically, this is what we find. Just so you know I’m not totally making this up, here’s Alvin Plantinga, world-renowned philosopher:
“The thing we presently call Modern Science was actually conceived and born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism.”
Alvin Plantinga, quoted in Mark Clark, The Problem of God, 28
And let’s talk briefly about the structure and order thing again, which is the same thing we saw in Genesis 1. It’s a live issue in science where these natural laws (the laws of physics) even come from. I quoted Alexander Vilenkin last week, whose theory is that the universe popped into existence from nothing. He says that he has no idea where these laws of physics came from, that science doesn’t have an answer for it, although it assumes the dependability of these so-called laws. One final quote, here’s physicist John Polkinghorne:
“Physics explores a universe that is shot through with signs of mind. Thus the laws of physics seem to point beyond themselves, calling for an explanation of why they have this rational character.”
John Polkinghorne, quoted in William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, God is Great, God is Good, 67
All of this points to the theme of the morning: the complementarity of science and biblical faith. We don’t wed ourselves to any scientific theory, we pledge our allegiance to God and believe that He has revealed Himself to us in Scripture. However, science is also not our opponent. Instead, it is a partner in revealing God’s world to us. The Bible answers the who and the why, the what ought to be, and science answers the how and the when, the what is. Reframing science means that we don’t see it as an enemy or as the all-encompassing answer to everything. Instead, we see it as one crucial piece of God’s self-revelation to us, His creation.
Conclusion
But let’s get back to Genesis 1. And I’m getting to the end here, don’t worry. We’re on the last leg. An important question, I think, is what God wants us to do about the message He communicates in Genesis 1. Usually, when you communicate something, you are hoping for a response. This past week was our ninth wedding anniversary.If on our anniversary I did something really nice for my wife and said to her, “Carolyn, I love you so much”, the message I’m communicating is pretty clear. But I am also hoping for a certain kind of response. I’m hoping she might say “I love you too”. If she slaps me across the face and tells me she doesn’t want to talk to me for the rest of the day, I’m going to feel like my communication didn’t get across clearly, you know?
So what does God want us to do about Genesis 1? I’m certain He doesn’t want it to become a battleground. I think, actually, He wants it to lead us into worship. That’s because in Psalm 104, the Psalm I’ve referenced today and that some of your community groups went through this past week, we have over 30 verses extolling God for creation. It’s all these statements about God’s care for His creation, for the way He’s made it. And this is how the Psalm both begins and ends: “praise the Lord, oh my soul. Praise the Lord”. Coming face to face with God’s creation, whether in Genesis 1 or in science, is meant to lead us to worship and praise. If it does anything else, we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
I know a lot of this has been pretty heady stuff and some of you might be feeling like you just need to come up for air. So I’ll finish with a story. When I was 18 years old, I was in my first year at Steinbach Bible College. Every fall, the whole college would go on a weekend retreat to a place in eastern Manitoba called Red Rock Bible Camp, right in the Canadian Shield. I know some of you hear the word Manitoba and beauty is the last thing that comes to mind, but eastern Manitoba really is something else. One of the nights there, we’re all singing these worship songs in the lodge, and I was experiencing new life in that season. Being in this community, hearing biblical teaching, I was just coming alive, it was so good. And as we were singing, I had this urge, this internal nudge, to go outside. So I leave the lodge, and I’m walking along in the woods.
It was this cool September evening- not cold, just cool, and I remember the wind rustling through the trees and sending shivers down my spine. It was like the world had come alive and God’s presence in that place was so thick. It was so thick, actually, that I felt- more clearly than ever before or after- that I could have looked beside me and seen Jesus right there. It was incredible. And I walked down to the lake, and sat on a rock there. The skies were clear, full of stars, and the moon was shining down on the lake, illuminating an island in the middle of it. And I remember having the sense, somehow, in a way I can’t quite describe, that God was saying to me “I’ve got you. I’m watching over you. I’m going to do good things in you here.” And I went to bed the night with this incredible two-fold feeling. On the one hand, I felt humbled by the majesty and greatness of God, and my own smallness. Being in creation in this way, experiencing His presence in it, helped me see in a fresh way how awesome God is. But then on the other hand, I had this overpowering sense of God’s love for me, that He would speak to me and reveal Himself to me, that He would come in the person of Jesus and die so that people like me could be reconciled to Him. It was this humility and gratitude and worship that God made known to me through His creation.
And my prayer this morning is that you would be led to worship as well. That the awesomeness of what He has made and why He has made it, that the revelation of Scripture and creation itself, would together lead you to that place of worship. That you would know His greatness and majesty as well as His love and desire for you to walk with Him, which He has made possible through the work of Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection.
*Biblical insights mainly gleaned from three commentaries: Bruce Waltke (Genesis, 2001), John Walton (NIV Application Commentary, 2001), and Victor Hamilton (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1990), as well as Iain Provan (Seriously Dangerous Religion, 2014)
