Bernard Burt has asserted in a comment on my last post that Exodus 20:11 is proof that the universe was made in six days, and has obliquely implied that God will make this one of the criteria on which the faithful are judged. To quote another commenter, "I find this response a little worrying. If your belief matters more than the evidence, where do you draw the line?" Bernard's response is pure fideism which declares that reason and faith are mutually exclusive.
Bernard, like all YECs is utterly inconsistent in his literal reading of the creation narratives. Genesis 1 clearly states that God created a solid firmament separating waters above from waters below, in which the sun, moon, and stars are set. The fact that there is no solid firmament above us alone should be enough to tell us that a literal reading of the creation narratives will result in error, a point that CC Walker, second editor of The Christadelphian recognised when he observed that "Moses’ testimony is not so “plain” that it cannot be misinterpreted or misunderstood." [1]
The Earth is considerably older than 6000 years. The oldest rocks found so far come from NW Canada and have been dated to just over 4 billion years old. [2] Zircon grains, which can outlast their parent rocks have been dated to around 4.4 billion years. [3] The geological evidence for an ancient Earth is considerable. As respected geologist G.B. Dalrymple remarked:
"We can be confident that the minimum age for the Earth exceeds 4 Ga - the evidence is abundant and compelling. Rocks exceeding 3.5 Ga in age are found on all the continents, but there are four especially well-studied areas on Earth the Superior region of North America, The Isua-Godthaab area of western Greenland, The Pilbara block in the northern part of Western Australia, and Swaziland in southern Africa, where rocks 3.5 Ga or more in age have been found carefully mapped, thoroughly studied, and dated by more than one radiometric method." [4]
Finally, the absence of any short-lived radionuclides in the crust of the Earth bears powerful witness to the great antiquity of the Earth. Apart from those produced naturally, no radionuclides with half-lives younger than 82 million years are found in nature. [5] If the Earth was 6000 years old, there would not have been enough time for them to have decayed away, making their absence inexplicable. However, given the great age of the Earth, their absence is completely explicable - they have long since decayed away. There is a veritable avalanche of evidence confirming the reality of an ancient Earth, and any interpretation of the creation narratives which argues otherwise is automatically wrong.
Frankly, the most disturbing part of Burt's comment was its implication that one of the criteria for judgement will be a belief in a young Earth:
Jesus said "The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge [you] in the last day". I would rather stand at the judgment seat and say: "Lord, I believed the word which says 'For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is" than say: "Lord, I re-interpreted Ex.20v11 because man said that you didn't do what you declared that you had done". "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye" (Acts 4v19).
The fact is that the creation narratives when interpreted literally contradict each other on more than just the length of creation:
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| Source: Enns P The Evolution of Adam
As OT scholar Peter Enns points out:
These two stories are clearly significantly different, and they cannot be harmonized by saying that the first gives the overview and the second fills in some of the details. The presence of two different creation accounts is troublesome for readers who assume that Genesis 1 and 2 are historical in nature and that the Bible’s first priority is to recount history accurately. Yet the divergence of these stories cannot be reasonably questioned. To stitch them into a seamless whole would dismiss the particular and distinct points of view that the authors were so deliberate in placing there. The differences between the two creation accounts are further complemented by differences seen in other Old Testament passages such as Psalms 77:16–20; 89:5–37; Job 9:4–15; 26:5–14; 38:4–38; and Isaiah 40:12–31; 44:24–28. It does not seem to be a concern of the biblical writers to provide God’s people with a “unified” story of creation. [6]
This alone shows that the hyper-literalism blindly championed by Burt, Taunton and the other fundamentalists in our community is simply the wrong way to read the narratives. By reading them in their ancient Near Eastern context, one quickly recognises that they are not accounts of material origins but detail a functional ontology of creation [7] that also functions as a polemic against ANE creation myths that threatened the orthodoxy of the Judean exiles. [8]
Given that those who champion evolution denialism and YEC in our community are more likely to excommunicate those who do not share this view, [9] Burt connection of a fundamentalist reading of the creation narratives with the Judgement seat of Christ is disturbing, to say the least. When one takes the time to actually look at Matthew 25 in which Jesus explicitly refers to the judgement seat, the criteria for rejection have a completely different emphasis:
This is not to argue that good works alone are the criteria by which Jesus will differentiate between the worthy and the unworthy at the judgement seat. The narrative is making a specific point, rather than giving a shopping list of the theological points which define a true believer. However, given that Burt has explicitly linked the judgement seat with a literal reading of the creation narratives, it is significant that this passage is more concerned with whether the true believer acts like a Christian. For Burt's inference to be true, he needs to show that only a YEC can live a Christ-like life, or that accepting the reality of an ancient evolving universe prevents one from being a follower of Christ.
Exodus 20:11, creation and the Law of Moses
Ex 20:11 has long been regarded by YECs as a 'clobber verse', one that is wheeled out to shut down debate on the subject of origins. The idea of a 'clobber verse' however runs counter to sound exegetical methods which recognise that building doctrines on an isolated passage of scripture is risky at best. This is particularly so here given that the first two chapters of Genesis contradict each other on the length of creation when read literally, while an avalanche of evidence from the natural world flatly rule out any chance of YEC being anything other than a delusion. Against this background, the only possible approach for the intellectually honest exegete is to re-examine Ex 20:11 in context, to see what it really says, as opposed to what the YEC wants it to say.
Without endorsing CC Walker's explanation, it is significant that he recognised both the weight of scientific evidence against recent creation, as well as alternative ways to interpret Ex 20:11
It has been thought that the law of the Sabbath necessitates six literal days in creation; but on second thoughts this does not seem conclusive, since the millennium is a “Sabbath” of a thousand years duration, and “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:9). (Emphasis in original) [10]
Burt simply assumes that a naive literal reading of an English translation of the Hebrew text, taken out of its ancient Near Eastern context is the default exegetical option, and he simply does not get to make that decision. Like all hermeneutical strategies, it must be justified, and given that the scientific evidence (the careful study of God's creation is no more 'man's wisdom' than is the careful study of the Bible) completely rules out recent creation, any reading of Ex 20:11 by necessity needs to take place within the framework of what we know. That alone rules out Burt's YEC and consigns it to the dustbin, where if he was honest, he would leave it.
The first thing that we see when we examine Ex 20:11 in context is that it is not the only explanation for the sabbath. Deuteronomy 5 also gives an aetiology for the Sabbath, and it makes zero mention of creation in six days being the reason for the sanctification of the Sabbath:
In Deut 5, Moses makes no reference to the Sabbath being commissioned to commemorate creation in six literal days. Rather, it was to remind Israel of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Given the existence of two different reasons for the commemoration of the Sabbath, it is more than probable that the compilers of the Pentateuch were more concerned with emphasising the importance of commemorating the Sabbath.
Furthermore, if one pays close attention to the personal pronouns in Ex 20, it becomes apparent that there are three shifts from first person (God speaking) to third person (compiler adding explanatory notes) in verses 7, 11, and 12:
In all three passages, we see a switch from first person to third person, providing commentary on the perils of blasphemy, the reason for the Sabbath day, and the benefits accruing from obeying one's parents. None of these reflect the original words of God, but are additions to the text made by compilers, under inspiration. It is surely worth noting that if God really wanted to declare that the physical creation took place in six literal days 6000 years ago, the text would have reflected an unambiguous first person declaration in both Ex 20 and Deut 5. But we don't see that. Instead, we see a third person commentary in Ex 20:11, and nothing in Deut 5.
This shift from first person to third person is also seen in Deuteronomy 5. In verse six, Moses begins by recalling the words of God: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." In fact, we see in Deut 5 a shift from first person to third person at exactly the same places (warning against blaspheming the name of YHWH, reason for sabbath, and the need to honour parents) providing further evidence that the original words of God did not contain the aetiologies for these three points that Ex 20 and Deut 5 provide:
In fact, given that the aetiology for the Sabbath is reported in Deut 5:15 as coming directly from Moses rather than an anonymous compiler (as is the case in Ex 20:11) one could make a case that the explanation in Deut 5:15 has primacy. Certainly, for those inclined to argue typologically, one could argue that we too were also 'slaves in the land of Egypt' until redeemed by Christ. A similar typological interpretation of Ex 20:11 is difficult at best to achieve.
There is one further reference to creation in six days which occurs in Ex 31:12-18, and the acid test for this argument would be whether we see a shift from first person to third person. We do:
Once again, we see the same shift from first person to third person providing the six day aetiology for the sabbath. We can see that nowhere in the first person narrative do we see a specific declaration from YHWH that the heavens and earth were made in six days. In fact, when we omit the third person comments in Deut 5 and Ex 20, the two narratives are quite similar, arguing against the assumption that Deut 5 and Ex 20 are variant forms of the ten commandments:
The absence of any explanation for the Sabbath in the first person narrative does not mean that the Exodus aetiology is of no value, but it certainly argues against the naive belief stemming from an unsophisticated, motivated, and literal reading of the text that God Himself decreed that the universe was made in six literal days.
Created in six days: Material Ontology or Functional Ontology?
The weight of evidence from the natural world alone is enough to falsify the YEC Burt naively champions, but it is the structure of the six day motif, combined with internal inconsistencies which arise when a literalist hermeneutic is forced on the first chapter which proves devastating to the view which Burt champions.
The fact that days 1-3 and days 4-6 form two triads in parallel detailing the creation of domains, and domain inhabitants has long been appreciated:
The fact that Gen 1:14 states that one of the main functions of the sun and moon was to separate day from night and regulate time not means that prior to day 4 there was no such thing as day and night if we read this as a literal account of origins, thus contradicting the literalist reading of Genesis 1, but points us towards realising that rather than dealing with material origins, we are dealing with an account of functional origins. This is underlined by the bipartite structure of two groups of three days, in which the first three days detail the description of domains, and the second three days the domain inhabitants and their function.
As John Walton persuasively argues, in days 1-3 we see God bringing into existence the three prime functions that would be of importance to any ancient society: time, weather, and agriculture:
Objections to the bipartite structure have focussed on the apparent lack of obvious link between the creation of plant life in day 3 and the creation of humans on day 6. The second creation narrative
suggests an obvious answer, given that ancient Israel was an agrarian society Gen 2:5-7 states:
Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Hebrew scholar Mark Futato notes that what we have here is a statement of two problems, the cause of these problems, and their solution:
Not only do we see a specific link between plants and humans in these words, we also have an allusion to two of the three main functions outlined in Gen 1; weather and agriculture. [13] Far from being a case where the domain-domain inhabitant parallel falls down, it provides the means by which the two creation narratives can be linked, as well as providing a further example of how a creation predicated on functional ontology is arguably more important than mere material origins.
In light of this, given that Ex 20:11 (and Ex 31:17) are not part of the original first person divine narrative but are commentary on it by a later author, it is not unreasonable to argue that an ancient Hebrew, steeped in an ancient Near Eastern worldview which was more interested in functional origins than in material origins, would have seen creation in six days as being the time in which the three main functions critical to their society were called into existence, and the functionaries responsible installed into their domains. Unlike the YEC distortion of the narrative, this view does not conflict with what we know of the age and origin of the Earth as it is predicated on the origin of function. Furthermore, by decoupling questions of material origins from the creation narratives, it relegates the lesser questions of how creation took place to the scientific domain. Genesis has more important questions to answer.
Temple Cosmology and the Sabbath Rest
There is a further element to Genesis and the seven day motif which is completely overlooked by the wooden literalism that Burt and other YECs have forced onto the Genesis narrative, and that is the link between temple and cosmos, and the concept of divine rest. Walton has shown that in the ancient Near East:
...building of temples was described in cosmic terms, that the temples were described as having cosmic functions, that temples were understood as models in miniature of the cosmos and were replete with cosmic symbolism, that cosmic origins were sometimes associated with temple building, that temples were sometimes thought to represent the world, and that deities rested in temples that had been constructed for precisely this purpose. [14]
As Walton notes, Isa 66:1-2 and Psa 132:7-8, 13-14 unambiguously link temple, cosmos, and divine rest:
The idea of rest in the ANE world as Walton observes carried with it the concept of freedom to rule, [15] and this is seen clearly in Psa 132 which links the temple at Zion with the place where YHWH rests, enthroned as ruler.
The final element in this argument would be a clear link between a temple-cosmos and Genesis 1, and Walton argues (persuasively in my opinion) that temple-building language is used in Genesis 1. [16] It is hardly coincidence then that the seven day motif occurs in the dedication of Solomon's temple with a seven day dedication followed by a seven day feast:
2 Ch 7:9 "On the eighth day they held a solemn assembly; for they had observed the dedication of the altar seven days and the festival seven days"
In integrating these themes of creation predicated on a functional ontology, creation as temple-cosmos, and the deity entering a temple to rule on the seventh day, Walton speaks eloquently:
As is the case in temple construction, the mere completion of the material construction phase does not produce a functioning temple. Only when the functions are identified, the functionaries installed, and the deity has entered the temple does it begin to function. This is creation as it was understood in the ancient Near East. Even in the biblical picture of creation in Genesis 1, the manner in which the material stuff of the cosmos came into being and the time involved in this process had little significance. The amount of time is unspecified, and the manner in which the material stuff came to exist is also unspecified. Creation takes place when the cosmos/temple is made functional for its human inhabitant by means of the presence of God. (Emphasis in the original) [17]It is no accident that in the final chapters of the NT the temple-cosmos motif returns for one final time. Rev 21 describes the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to Earth: Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and he measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal.
A city shaped like a cube 1500 miles in dimension is clearly not intended to be taken literally, but the stupendous size suggests the possibility that the city was coterminous with the known world. If so, then as Rikki Watts observes:
the climax of the new creation is not the abandonment of the earth, but instead the coming of Yahweh himself to the earth to dwell among us. Here, then, is the climax of Genesis 's six-fold affirmation of the goodness of creation with its progression in both sets of days from heaven to earth. The final goal is not the destruction of creation, but rather the unification of heaven and earth such that the renewed earth itself now becomes Yahweh's very throne room. [18]
With the temple-cosmos creation motif in mind, the the language of Hebrews 4, where the elect of God will finally enter into YHWH's Sabbath resonates strongly. The wooden YEC that Burt insists should be normative for all believers does not even begin to explore this theme.
By privileging a naive literal reading of the creation narratives above the clear witness from the natural world that such a reading is flatly impossible, Burt and other YEC fundamentalists in our community are needlessly creating an environment in which crises of faith will emerge when those who are indoctrinated with biblical literalism encounter the scientific evidence that exposes the YEC argument for the scientific and theological nonsense that it is. Too often, the end result is a loss of faith, and the creation of yet another angry ex-Christian. The environmental charity manager Gordon Hudson has eloquently written about how YEC can destroy faith: My own faith was shipwrecked by this issue because I had been told time and again that belief in a young earth and creation of the species as they currently are without evolution was essential to being a proper, soundly converted, bible believing Christian. When I started to doubt creationism I also began to question all the other things I had been told about God. I felt lied to, and ultimately I found I no longer believed in God. In hindsight if I had been in an environment where it was possible to believe in the Gospel message without having to accept creationism I would probably still be a Christian, or at least have some level of faith in God. Although its unlikely that this level of faith would have made me acceptable to evangelicals as a “real Christian”. [18]Hudson has since returned to a form of faith, but his point about how linking orthodoxy of faith to scientifically untenable propositions stands as a warning to fundamentalist zealots in our community who think that maintaining the purity of a YEC faith is a good idea. Nothing could be further from the truth. |
References
1. Walker CC "Is it 'Wrong' to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere?" The Christadelphian (1913) 50:346-348
2. Bowring, SA. Williams, IS. "Priscoan (4.00-4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada". Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology (1999) 134: 3-16.
3. Wilde SA. et al "Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr ago" Nature (2001) 409: 175-178
4. Dalrymple GB The Age of the Earth (1992: Stanford University Press) 399
5. ibid, p 477
6. Enns, Peter. The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2012) 52
7. Walton J Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology (2011: Eisenbrauns)
8. Assyriologist Irving Finkel notes how a 'monotheistic framework' was evolving around Marduk, the deity venerated in Babylon, around the time of the Judean exile: "[t]he Judaeans were thus to encounter a native
religious system more akin to their own than would have been the case at an
earlier date. Babylonian monotheism, whether a matter of wider state policy or
closed theology within the colleges (let alone debated loose on the streets),
must have offered a threatening backdrop to Judaeans with their own belief in a
single god and responsibility to preserve that belief from contamination. It is also worth
pointing out that the epithets of praise that were heaped on Marduk (shepherd,
champion of the poor and weak, protector of widows and children, fighter for
justice and truth) would not have sounded strange to Judaean ears brought up in
their own tradition." Finkel I The Ark Before Noah: Decoding
the Story of the Flood” (2014: Hodder & Stoughton)
9. The recent tirade by Neville Clark in which he implied that anyone who accepted evolutionary creationism would quickly find themselves 'no longer a brother', and the addition of evolution and denial of a six day creation to the 'Doctrines to be Rejected' list by some ecclesias make this readily apparent.
10. Walker CC "Genesis". The Christadelphian (1910) 47:361-362
11. Walton op cit p 170-171
12. Futato M "Because it had rained: A study of Gen 2:5-7 with implications for Gen 2:4-25 and Gen 1:1-2:3" Westminster Theological Journal (1998) 60:1-21
13. If the second creation narrative predates the first, then in it, as Futato argues, we can see a polemical element aimed at Baal which for the pre-exilic Israelites would have been the bigger threat to the orthodoxy of their faith as Baal, being a weather god, would also be seen as the one who sent the rain.
14. Walton, op cit p 178
15. Walton, op cit p 113-115
16. Walton, op cit p 180. Walton cites ANE scholar Mark S Smith who observes "the motif of “seven days” in both Genesis 1 and KTU 1.4 VII further indicates that the temple-building constitutes a type of creation. Fisher might have also mentioned that the tabernacle was thought to have been built over seven months (Hurowitz 1992:227), and Solomon spent seven years building the Temple (1 Kgs 6:38). As Hurowitz’ discussion (1992:242–43 n. 3) of temple-building indicates, these examples suggest not that temple-building is a metaphor for creation in the Baal Cycle, but that creation in Genesis 1 uses the language of temple-building." See Smith, Mark S. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1-1.2. Vol. 1. (Leiden; New York; Köln: E.J. Brill, 1994.) p 78
17. Walton, op cit p 182
18. Watts R "Making Sense of Genesis 1"
19. Hudson G "Why creationism is bad for Christianity - an open letter to creationists in Edinburgh." Gordon's Blog Oct 27 2010
