G’day everyone - lots of good questions on God as creator from Sunday. Here’s some thoughts…
How do we read Genesis 1? Is it 7 literal days or 7 non specific time periods? Some people read Genesis 1 and say ‘it says seven days so it must have been 7 literal days’ (creationist view). So the earth would be thousands not billions of years old. But Genesis 1:1 ‘in the beginning’ seems to be deliberately avoiding any claim about how old the universe is. Other people want to argue that it should be read more poetically. For them the 7 days represent the fullness and completeness of God’s work. So in the Bible the number 7 often functions as a symbol of fullness and completeness (see Genesis 4:15, Leviticus 4:6, Joshua 6:4, Psalm 12:6, Ezekiel 39-40, Daniel 4:16, Daniel 9, and 55 times in the book of Revelation). So the 7 days of creation would simply represent that God’s creative work was full and complete. However, we might ask whether the number 7 only took on such symbolic power because God made the universe in 7 days? Did the symbolism emerged from the reality of a 7 day creation and is not an indication that Genesis should be read that way? Again Creationists might argue that when God gives the law to Israel at Mount Sinai he institutes the Sabbath because he created in six days and rested on the seventh. Again Genesis 1 points out there was ‘morning and evening’ on each of the 7 days. So our week is 7 days of 24 hours not 7 unspecified periods of time. So the creationist position would argue that we need to stop giving ground to science (which changes its theories every few generations anyway) and read the Bible on its own terms, trusting God not our minds.
However, there are more questions we still need to ask. For example, the order of Genesis 1 doesn’t fit how we know the world works. How can we explain the creation of the Sun on day 4 the day after the plants. Are we saying the earth and plants were formed before the Sun was created? Again Genesis 2:4-7 has humans made before the plants on the earth. We would have to be absolutely certain that Genesis 1 really does require that we have a literal 7 day creation before we reject hundreds of years of scientific research by 1,000s of scientist.
So without dismissing the creationist view, I lean toward a more poetic reading of Genesis 1-2. First thing I need to say is that by poetic I don’t mean untrue or fictional. Poetry can use symbolic language and structure to point to concrete reality (the Psalms and Proverbs do it all the time). There are many different styles of writing (genres) in the Bible. So we shouldn’t read Paul’s letters like a gospel or Revelation like a literal foretelling of history. So what is Genesis 1 pointing to;
(1) pattern = God speaks & commands then it happens. This sets the scene for the rest of history where God is connected to his world by his Word.
(2) Order = Days 1-3 he separates then days 4-6 he fills the creation. He gives everything its place and name in his creation.
(3) Good = the repeated ‘it was good’ points to the reality that the creation fits the purpose God intended for it.
As Nathan Sewell helpfully pointed out on his feedback card Genesis 1 seems to be more concerned with ‘who’ created the universe rather than ‘how’. Think about it if Genesis was written for modern science, to answer the questions of modern science – it would have made no sense to anyone for 1,000s of years until science caught up and then today it would be useless and replaced by a good science textbook. No the bigger questions from Genesis are – Who are we? What is our purpose in this world? Where do we find our identity?
We can go round and round on this question. It’s important that we don’t let it forces us into a corner, where we exclude people because they’re a literal creationist or take a more poetic view.
So where do the dinosaurs fit in to all this? Again we need to be careful not to try to make Genesis say more than it does. They simply are not on the horizon in Genesis. Not because we don’t believe they existed or because Genesis didn’t know about them. The book is simply not interested in this small mechanical issues compared with the creator God and his plan for humanity. There was a good discussion on dinosaurs on the 645 Facebook group site under ‘Dinosaurs, Raptors etc’.
So if God wants us to thrive why did creates knowing that we would commit a sin? Good probing question. It’s probably helpful to remember that God has bigger plans than we often realise. So Deuteronomy 29:29 says “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law”. So God reveals to us what we need to know to have eternal life and live to please him. But there are ‘secret things’ that are not revealed to us. Not because they are impossible contradictions in God but simply because they are not necessary for us to know.
However, we do get little hints of something bigger. In 1 Peter 1:17-20 we read that the Lamb Jesus was chosen before the creation of the world but only revealed in these time for our sake. So sin entering the world was not a surprise to God. Nor did God have to quickly come up with plan B ‘send Jesus’ to fix the problem. Jesus was prepared as the lamb to be slain before all that but it was only revealed to us later. So a reader of the OT before Jesus might have asked ‘what is God going to do to fix the mess in the world?’. We don’t ask that question in the same way because we have seen God’s complete and eternal solution in Jesus.
So perhaps it’s the same with this question above – when we get to heaven it will all be clear or even forgotten as unimportant in the joy of seeing God face to face. This is the reality we see in the book of Revelation, where the people of God give him all glory. This comes at the end of a history which has seen God's patience, grace, love and justice rescue and shape a people devoted to him. The glory of God is magnified by bringing us to that point - from the depths of sin to heaven more so than perhaps if we went straight from Genesis 1-2 into heaven.
Perhaps we want to say 'but then everything is about God' - Yes. And before we say 'is that fair' we need to read Romans 9-11. There Paul grapples with God's faithfulness in the face of Israel's rejection of Jesus - Is God unable to keep his promises? Is God unreliable or unfair? The answer 'the clay doesn't talk back to the potter'. That means we need to remember our place. God is Lord and Creator and has plans bigger and more glorious than our minds can often get a grip on. We also struggle with always assuming that life is about us. Remember Genesis 1:1 'in the beginning God' not you or me. So it's good for us to wrestle and ask big questions but we must always do that humbly remembering that God ways are beyond our tracing out.
James
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