In the Beginning

I found some interesting quotes at James's blog on John H. Walton's The Lost World of Genesis 1. I have not read the book, but the following are a list of ideas that I thought were interesting.


The place of humanity in the cosmos:

"It has already been mentioned that whereas in the rest of the ancient world creation was set up to serve the gods, a theocentric view, in Genesis, creation is not set up for the benefit of God but for the benefit of humanity—an anthropocentric view. Thus we can say that humanity is the climax of the creation account. Another contrast between Genesis and the rest of the ancient Near East is that in the ancient Near East people are created to serve the gods by supplying their needs. That is, the role of people is to bring all of creation to deity—the focus is from insde creation out to the gods. In Genesis people represent God to the rest of creation. So the focus moves from the divine realm, through people, to the world around them."—The Lost World of Genesis One, page 69 [Taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/06/focus-of-creation-is.html]

"In the ancient Near East people were created as slaves to the gods. The world was created by the gods for the gods, and people met the needs of the gods. In the Bible God has no needs, and his cosmic temple has been created for people whom he desires to be in relationship with him. In modern materialism people are nothing but physical forms having no function other than to survive. The theology of Genesis 1 is crucial to a right understanding of our identity and our place in the world."—The Lost World of Genesis One, page 149 [Quote taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/humanitys-role-in-world.html]

My thoughts: I have heard preachers who preach quite passionately about how important it is to have a "theocentric view" as opposed to an "anthropocentric view." The Westminster Confession claims that man was created to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But I think I take issue with the dichotomy between "theocentric" and "anthropocentric." If one views God as an imminent part of creation, as the New Testament certainly does (God is "in all," and "through all," etc.), then the point is not to find out who is at the center. Rather, the whole cosmos is interdependent. This seems to fit the entirety of the biblical texts, which do not place humanity or God on the throne, but present a narrative of God and human beings interacting together. Each move effects the other.

On a modern, scientific approach to life:

“Our scientific worldview has gradually worked God out of the practical ways in which we think about our world. When science can offer explanation for so much of what we see and experience, it is easy for our awareness of God's role to drift to the periphery. It is not that we believe any less that he is active, it is just that we are not as conscious of his role. The result is a practical (if not philosophical) deism in which God is removed from the arena of operations.

“In contrast, when God's work is fully integrated with our scientific worldview and science is seen to give definition to what God is doing and how he is doing it, we regain a more biblical perspective of the work—a perspective that is theologically healthier.”—The Lost World of Genesis One, page 143 [Taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/gods-role-in-world.html]

On Genesis being an account of functional origins, not material origins:

“Unless people (or gods) are there to benefit from functions, existence is not achieved. Unless something is integrated into a working, ordered system, it does not exist. Consequently, the actual crative act is to assign something its functioning role in the ordered system. That is what brings it into existence. Of course something must have physical properties before it can be given its function, but the critical question is, what stage is defined as 'creation.'

“In the ancient world they were not ignorant of the senses and the level at which objects could be perceived by the senses. They wold have no difficulty understanding the physical nature of objects. The question here concerns not what they perceived but what they gave significance to...our ontology focuses on what we believe to be most significant. In the ancient world, what was most crucial and significant to their understanding of existence was the way that parts of the cosmos functioned, not their material status.”John Walton in —The Lost World of Genesis One, 27-28 [Taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-constitutes-creation.html]

"Concordist approaches, day-age readings, literary or theological interpretation all struggle with the same basic problem. They are still working with the premise that Genesis 1 is an account of material origins for an audience that has a material ontology. Modern inability to think in any other way has resulted in recourse to all of this variety of attempts to make the text tolerable to our scientific naturalism and materialism."—The Lost World of Genesis One, pages 106-107 [Quote taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-thoughts-on-genesis-1.html]

"...This book has proposed, instead, that Genesis 1 was never intended to offer an account of material origins and that the original author and audience did not view it that way. In fact, the material cosmos was of little significance to them when it came to questions of origins. In this view, science cannot offer an unbiblical view of material origins, because there is no biblical view of material origins aside from the very general idea that whatever happened, whenever it happened, and however it happened, God did it."—The Lost World of Genesis One, page 113 [Quote taken from http://anebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-thoughts-on-genesis-1.html]

Doyle's Meaning/Language Approach:

Our friend, John Doyle at ktismatics has been writing, researching, and blogging about a theory similar to the above "functional" creation account. John suggests that God is actually creating something in Genesis 1, but the point of the narrative is not to suggest that God is creating physical material--that's just not the intention of the text. Rather, the text is showing us that God is creating meaning, linguistically marking off what is what. It makes sense then, that as text moves along God will hand off this task to the man he created: I've shown you how to create meaning with language, now it's your turn.

That's Doyle's approach, in a very small nutshell. I'll let him flesh it out a bit more, if he has a few extra moments.

I like the "functional" creation account and I like the "meaning" creation account. I think they both get us closer to the intention of the text, which is not to convey the creation of matter (as we think of it in our Modern scientific mindset), but the creation of something eve more profound: meaning, language, function. That, like God, we have the ability to create the linguistic meaning and parameters of our world.

Thoughts?

For more on Doyle's approach see the following links:
Maybe the Witness is Me
The Mythic Truth
Does Genesis Qualify as True Myth? (Cf. True Myth--5 interpretations)
Original Sin Reinterpreted