Reading Genesis: Order and Chaos
How should we read the Bible’s book of Genesis? Most of the time, Christians and non-Christians simply talk past each other on this point. If you are unsure about the existence of God, then claiming divine authority for a holy book seems like an illegitimate short-cut, avoiding all the tough questions. If the word “literal” comes up, the conversation is usually over, bar the shouting.
To paraphrase that classic movie The Princess Bride, I would say to both sides that “literal” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
As a literary scholar, I would suggest that to read something “literally” means to read it in the sense in which the original author intended and as the original audience would have understood it. If the author intended to write a metaphor, then the literal reading would be a metaphorical one. For example, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Less Traveled” is not really about a man going for a walk through the woods. Yes, the poem does describe the narrator pausing to reflect on the two paths that “diverged in a yellow wood,” but what the poem is really about is decision-making and self-reflection. By the same token, though, that meaning comes from the actual text itself: we cannot (without mishandling the text) make “The Road Less Traveled” into a poem that unconditionally celebrates individualism and going your own way. (Yes, that’s what most everyone thinks the poem is about, but most people don’t read the poem very carefully. Read it again and think about it.)
The question then becomes, to what extent is a literal reading of a given text actually metaphorical?
When we look at Genesis 1, we should at a minimum note that the author (whether inspired or not) makes certain claims about the nature of the universe. Many Christian readers will want to move immediately into arguing about the level of metaphorical vs. factual content in the details of Genesis, but I would argue that this is an entirely useless and unproductive discussion if we bypass the philosophical claim being set forth in Genesis. Even if we allow for all of the details of Genesis to be metaphorical at some level – yes, all of them! – we still have a worthwhile question to explore.
The book of Genesis articulates a position of creation ex nihilo, from nothing, at the creative will of a First Cause. In and of itself, this is a significant change in position from other ancient creation accounts, which have a god or gods creating the world from chaotic material of some sort that was already present. It is also worth noting that the First Cause described in Genesis is remarkably non-anthropomorphized; in contrast to the other myths of the time (Babylonian, Egyptian, Sumerian) the God in Genesis is described in almost purely philosophical terms, in the role of uncreated Creator.
Fundamentally, then, Genesis offers a philosophical argument for an ordered creation, one based on Logos (order, reason, structure) rather than Chaos (disorder, irrationality). This is a position that can be tested experimentally: the very fact that we can do science, and can expect repeatability when dealing with the physical world, suggests that the Logos-based view is more accurately descriptive of reality. So here we have a point that can be productively discussed among people who share very different views about Christianity.
Is the universe fundamentally orderly, or fundamentally chaotic? The answer to that question produces dramatically different views of how to live in and interact with the material world – and it is a question that is very relevant indeed in our modern culture, no matter what position one takes on the identity and nature of the First Cause.
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2 Responses to “Reading Genesis: Order and Chaos”
Dr Holly Ordway came to Christ through reason, in the pursuit of truth. "In your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 15).
She writes about her journey from atheism to orthodox Christian faith in her book "Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith" (Moody Publishers).
When I converted to Christianity, one of my concerns was never whether Genesis provides a literal description of the formation of the world. However, I know many people for whom this a big sticking point, and they are not able to reconcile issues such as the age of the earth and the fact that Bible says the earth was created in six days. People do seem very concerned with proving that God literally created the world in six days. In Orthodoxy, many of the Church Fathers say that descriptions in Genesis about the creation of the earth are there to show us that the earth was created not how it was created.
When I look at the order of creation, I cannot help but think that there must be a Creator behind everything, and because I am a Christian, I know that Creator is God. However, I am not so sure I would be persuasive in an argument to a nonChristian or someone who does not believe in God. One of the books that helped me sort out some of my ideas after I became a Christian was Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith. Like his other book, The Case for Christ, it is somewhat simplistic in certain areas, but it really helped me gain some understanding of the arguments and issues in this area.
Growing up as a PK (preacher’s kid) there was never a time when I did not believe God created the world in six days. It was not something I questioned. Now I can imagine those “days” as longer than 24 hours, but it doesn’t make any difference to my faith if those were 24 hour or 1000-year days. God spoke trees, birds, fields and fish into existence. Today, however, kids are taught evolution as though it is fact. That bothers me more than the length of days in Gen. 1 and 2. To the question of order, however, I say yes! God is a God of order; A look at OT law is a good way to see the validity of this. God gave his people the 10 commandments and a whole load of case law to explain what it would look like to “not swear false witness against thy neighbor.” The whole purpose of the law was to create an orderly society, a productive, prosperous society with God at its center. In Numbers, God organized his people into tribal and clan units so that each person knew where he would camp and march from the desert to the promised land. I believe our celebration of the Mass reflects order. It’s not just ritual for the sake of ritual: it is a well organized sequence of events each building on the previous one until we hear the bells at the raising of the bread and wine and know God is with us. Bodily.
Order is a good place to discuss Genesis, Holly; sorry I got on another soapbox.
God be with us as we follow his order.