Is a fully metaphorical reading of Genesis truly necessary for theistic evolution?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I think there’s an important distinction to make. He wasn’t proposing evolution in the modern Darwinian sense, where all forms arise through purely naturalistic processes from a common ancestor. Instead, his idea of the “vertebrate archetype” was a structural framework—an underlying pattern that different organisms instantiate in various ways.

So when early vertebrates like jawless fish appear, they can be understood (from Owen’s perspective) not as ancestors in a strictly genealogical sense, but as early expressions of a recurring anatomical pattern. That’s a different conceptual model from standard evolutionary accounts, even if there are points of overlap.

I think that’s fair to raise, but in this case the reference is more about continuity with Owen’s broader body of work. In On the Nature of Limbs, he doesn’t re-develop the full philosophical background because he had already done that elsewhere—particularly in his earlier discussions of archetypes, which were influenced by Platonic and idealist traditions. The lecture builds on that foundation rather than restating it in full.

And Yes, I read at least of his works, but it was not cover to cover.

Skeptics, such as Talkorigins, have claimed for years that Genesis has gotten the creation order wrong because, at the time, land plants came after sea animals appeared. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH801.html

For example, the timing of early photosynthetic life has been revised significantly over time. Earlier models placed key developments later, while more recent work has pushed some of these events further back [1,2].

[1] Knauth, L. P. and M. J. Kennedy 2009. The late Precambrian greening of the Earth. Nature 460: 728-732.

[2] Strother, P. K., L. Battison, M. D. Brasier and C. H. Wellman. 2011. Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes. Nature doi:10.1038/nature09943.

In Psalm 8 6–8, you get:

“You made him ruler over the works of your hands…
the sheep and oxen…
the birds of the heavens…
and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”

Compare that with Genesis 1:26:

“Let them rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, and the livestock…”

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I think that’s a fair concern, especially about the risk of eisegesis. There’s definitely a danger in forcing modern ideas into the text or trying to make it answer questions it wasn’t written to address.

Where I’d frame it a bit differently is that the goal isn’t to use science to reinterpret Scripture, but to ask whether interpretations of Scripture can be consistent with what we observe in the natural world.

In that sense, it’s less about reading science into the text, and more about exploring whether the two can be understood in a way that doesn’t put them in conflict.

That’s closer to how figures like Richard Owen approached things, and how RTB tends to frame it—using Scripture as a conceptual framework while still allowing scientific claims to stand or fall on empirical grounds.

So I think the real point of disagreement is whether that kind of interaction between theology and science is legitimate at all, or whether they should be kept entirely separate to avoid the risks you mentioned.

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I think those are fair questions, and I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been.

When I say “literal history,” I don’t mean a modern, strictly material or scientific description of events. I mean that the text may still be referring to real events or realities, even if it uses symbolic, theological, or phenomenological language to do so. So I’m not trying to strip symbolism out of the text—Genesis, like many parts of Scripture, clearly uses symbolic and literary elements.

At the same time, I wouldn’t assume that the presence of symbolism means the account has no grounding in reality. Biblical texts often communicate meaning through layers—historical, theological, and symbolic—rather than fitting neatly into one category.

On your point about parables, I agree completely—Jesus explicitly uses symbolic language to communicate deeper truths. But I think Genesis may be doing something slightly different: not a parable in the same sense, but a structured narrative that conveys theological meaning while still being connected, in some way, to real aspects of the world.

So for me, the question isn’t “literal vs symbolic” as a strict divide, but how those elements interact—what kind of claims the text is making, and how they relate to reality.

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Ok. But I would call this historical but not literal – or we can even use the word “mythological.” I can point to many myths which I think likely refer to real people even though many things said about them are not literally the case. A great example is Santa Claus, for St. Nicholas was a real person. But no there is no workshop at the northpole.

Indeed. And I would be specific. The Bible treats the snake as symbolic, and it gives many meanings to the “tree of life.” Neither of those two trees sound anything any actual angiosperm (fruit bearing tree), nor is there any literal flaming sword to be found blocking our way into some garden of Eden. These are symbolic. But that doesn’t mean the story isn’t describing real people and historical events.

Well, I do not think Genesis is a parable. I think the intent of the whole book is historical. But like many histories it begins with myths older than recorded history, likely transmitted in an oral tradition before there was any specialization of tasks separating history from law, theology, or bed-time stories.

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Just noting a lack of either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in that reply.

That’s not the only reason they give, or even the main one, and doesn’t reflect the cited source, which refers to fruiting plants coming after sea creatures, not land plants in general.

I usually focus on Genesis having flying creatures before land creatures, which is much more straightforward and harder to wriggle out of (though it doesn’t stop people trying - or even ignoring the discrepancy completely, as here).

Also that response is a non sequitur. Strike 3.

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I think I follow you, and I agree symbolism doesn’t rule out historical grounding.

But I’d separate “symbolic” from “mythological”—they’re not the same thing. Symbolic elements don’t automatically mean the narrative itself is myth-based.

The key question is: how do we decide which parts reflect real events and which come from inherited mythic structure?

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I think that’s a good challenge, and it’s one people often raise. The key issue, though, is how the categories in Genesis are being understood.

For example, the Hebrew terms used in Genesis 1 don’t always map neatly onto modern biological classifications. Words like tannin (often translated “great sea creatures” or “sea monsters”) refer to broad categories of large creatures and aren’t restricted to strictly marine animals in the way we might assume today.

More importantly, the text groups creatures by functional or observational categories—like “creatures of the waters,” “creatures that fly,” and “creatures of the land”—rather than by evolutionary lineage. So “flying creatures” (‘ôph) can include anything that moves through the sky from an observer’s perspective, not necessarily what we would classify today as birds alone.

Because of that, the sequence in Genesis may not be attempting a strict biological ordering in the modern sense, but rather describing the emergence of different domains (water → sky → land) as experienced from a human perspective.

So the question isn’t just whether “flying before land” conflicts with modern taxonomy, but whether the text is even trying to describe things in those terms in the first place.

If the sequence were intended as a strict biological timeline across separate stages like the example I gave, the objection would carry more weight. But since multiple categories appear within the same framework, it’s not clear the text is aiming at that kind of precision.

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You are regularly using terminology in ways that differ greatly from my understanding, and I suspect from others’ too.

In this quote you are contrasting real and mythic, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that you think mythic is unreal. But I go the other way. It’s all real. History is time linked reality. Myth is timeless reality, and personally I think that makes it more real. It’s literature focussing on ultimate truth, truth before time and space was even a thing.

So if Genesis 1 is myth, it’s true myth, and the real question is to decide that one way or the other using normal literary tools. Starting with any question of the relationship between Genesis then and science now misses the whole point.

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I get your point about starting with literary analysis, and I don’t disagree with that. My comment wasn’t about using science to interpret Genesis, but whether interpretations of Genesis can be consistent with what we observe in nature.

So the real disagreement seems to be whether theology and science should interact at all, or be kept separate.

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Yes, that’s exactly the kind of unsuccessful wiggling and ignoring I was referring to.

It doesn’t matter whether you take Genesis to be referring to birds or to flying creature or to anything that moves through the sky, because they all came after the relevant land creatures. Furthermore, “the emergence of different domains (water → sky → land) as experienced from a human perspective” is meaningless unless accompanied by some explanation as to why a human perspective would lead to that order, and why the Genesis story would use a human perspective for something that happened before humans existed.

Ignoring the mismatch between what you said about talk.origins and what is at talk.origins is of course standard procedure.

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I think you’re raising two separate issues—order and perspective—so let me try to address both more directly.

On the order point, my earlier comment wasn’t just about redefining “flying creatures,” but about how Genesis groups categories. For example, terms like tannin refer to a broad class of large creatures and don’t map neatly onto modern biological distinctions like strictly marine vs. land animals. Because of that, the sequence may not be aiming to track evolutionary order in the way we’re expecting.

Also, the text describes multiple types of creatures being created within the same “day” (e.g., sea creatures and flying creatures together on day 5). So the issue isn’t a strict step-by-step biological sequence, but broader groupings. If the text were trying to give a precise chronological ordering in a modern sense, you might expect clearer separation between categories across different “days.”

On the “human perspective” point, I think the idea isn’t that a human observer was literally present, but that the description is framed phenomenologically—describing things as they would be experienced from Earth. That kind of language shows up elsewhere in Scripture (and even in modern speech—we still talk about the sun “rising” and “setting”).

So the question isn’t why Genesis uses a human perspective before humans existed, but whether it’s using a familiar observational framework to communicate order and structure in a way that would be intelligible to its audience.

Finally, on the “days,” this connects to how yom is being used. If the days are not strictly 24-hour periods—but instead represent broader phases or a structured framework—then the sequence is less about precise scientific chronology and more about organizing domains and functions.

So I think the disagreement comes down to this: whether Genesis is trying to describe a modern biological timeline, or whether it’s organizing creation in a different, more phenomenological and theological way.

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Funny how his contemporaries criticized him for doing so.

And if he had known about DNA he would have understood why that is seen. He describes the pattern in great detail without making any effort to explaining why the pattern exists.

Reference?

I am not seeing what you are trying to get at. The two papers you provide say nothing about land plants. They are describing cellular life. What you need to provide is a progressive creation interpretation that predates the science. Otherwise it is just a case of interpretation following the science.

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I think there’s a bit of nuance missing here.

Owen wasn’t proposing Darwinian evolution in the modern sense—he explicitly rejected natural selection as a sufficient explanation for animal body plans. At the same time, he wasn’t completely opposed to the idea of change over time, which is why some of his contemporaries interpreted his work that way.

I think it’s important to distinguish between different kinds of explanation here.

Owen absolutely did attempt to explain the unity of structure—his concept of the vertebrate archetype was meant to account for why similar anatomical patterns recur across different organisms. His idea of “vegetative repetition” reflects an effort to describe an underlying structural principle that generates homologous forms.

At the same time, he openly acknowledged that he did not know the underlying causal mechanisms—what he referred to as the “natural laws or secondary causes” responsible for those patterns. So in that sense, he wasn’t offering a mechanistic explanation like Darwin or modern biology later would.

So I don’t think it’s accurate to say Owen “didn’t explain why.” He did—but at a structural level rather than a causal or mechanistic one. Modern biology answers a different kind of question—how those patterns are produced—while Owen was focused on why those patterns exhibit unity in the first place.

My mistake. I did not mean to suggest it was his article “On the Nature of Limbs” but instead it is this………. R. Owen, On parthenogenesis, or the successive production of procreating individuals from a single ovum (John Van Voorst, London, 1849).

I think the disconnect here comes down to how “vegetation” in Genesis 1:11 is being understood.

The Hebrew terms used there are broader than our modern category of “land plants.” Words like deshe (vegetation) and related terms describe plant life in a more general sense, without the same level of biological precision we use today. Because of that, some interpretations take this category to include early forms of photosynthetic life, not just fully developed terrestrial plants.

That’s why sources discussing early photosynthetic organisms are being brought in—they’re relevant if the Genesis category is understood more broadly rather than strictly in modern biological terms.

Some interpretations, like RTB’s, also view the “day” as encompassing a broader developmental phase rather than a single moment, which allows for a progression within the category of vegetation itself. Whether or not one accepts that, it reflects an attempt to read the text at a more general level rather than as a strict botanical sequence.

I’m not saying that interpretation is definitive, but it does show that the comparison isn’t necessarily mismatched. It depends on whether Genesis is being read as describing modern scientific categories or more general functional ones.

For centuries, the scientific consensus held to a static and an eternal universe, but Christianity and the bible was the only monotheistic religion that specifically predicted that the universe had a beginning from the Genesis account.

If this is still not what you were suggesting, can you give me example of what you asking for then?

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I’ve lost count of how many times your posts take the form of “I get your point…but I would phrase it slightly differently”. And then you circle round to misunderstand or misrepresent the point. (Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I assume it’s misunderstanding.)

Asking if “interpretations of Genesis can be consistent with what we observe in nature” is precisely the definition of using science to interpret Genesis. The only question to ask is, What did the original author intend to say? That’s the question we should ask of every written text.

But you then go on to assume that I and others in this thread are trying to keep theology and science separate. That’s nonsense. Of course they interact, and do so deeply. Genesis 1 says that God created nature. It says that nature is good, and well ordered, and bountiful. It says that humans are created in God’s image, which includes exploration and wise management of creation. These are strong interactions, based on what (in my view) Genesis actually and naturally says.

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I think the confusion here is about the order of interpretation, so let me clarify that more directly.

I agree with you that the first question should always be: What did the original author intend to communicate? That’s the starting point for any responsible reading of the text.

What I meant by “consistency with what we observe in nature” comes after that step, not before it. In other words, the idea isn’t to use science to determine what Genesis means, but to ask whether a given interpretation—once established on textual and contextual grounds—conflicts with or can be understood alongside what we observe in the natural world.

So the direction matters:

Step 1: Interpret the text on its own terms (language, context, genre)

Step 2: Ask whether that interpretation is compatible with observations of nature

The RTB example I mentioned is just one attempt at doing step 2—it’s not meant to redefine the meaning of the text, but to explore whether a particular interpretation can be coherently related to scientific understanding.

I didn’t mean to suggest that everyone here is trying to separate theology and science. My point was more general—that some approaches prefer to keep them methodologically distinct, while others are open to some level of interaction. I was trying to identify that difference, not attribute it to you personally.

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How could he? The modern sense didn’t exist yet. What is ironic is his work in comparative anatomy actually provided strong evidence for Darwin’s theory.

By arguing there was an underlying plan that was responsible. Something we now know doesn’t exist but is due to the underlying DNA. He had a good look at the trees but missed seeing the forest.

Perhaps you can point me to an example of this. I have failed to see it.

Scanned it and found nothing that I would consider philosophical. Are you confusing natural philosophy, AKA science, with something else?

You are wanting to stretch the Hebrew out to encompass meaning that would have been meaningless to the original audience. I am pretty sure they would have had no idea of a single cell organism. It is like saying maor, or light, means neuclear fussion.

If I understand correctly, you want to use Biblical interpretation to direct our interpretation of scientific data. To me, for the Biblical interpretation to be correct it would have to precede the scientific data otherwise the interpretation is just being stretched to fit. So I asked for any example of a progressive creation interpretation of Genesis that predates modern science. There is also the unstated goal of using this reinterpretation of science to discredit modern evolution theory.

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Ok, so my view is clear. Step 1 is the beginning, middle and end of all literary interpretation. End of story. My question to you is: what is the point of step 2? In the setting of this whole thread it’s hard for me to avoid the conclusion that you are sneaking in some form of “science reinterprets Genesis” approach.

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The point of step 2 isn’t to use Scripture to do science or override it, but to ask whether a particular interpretation of the text can be understood in a way that doesn’t conflict with what we observe in the natural world.

So it’s more of a consistency check than a method of generating scientific conclusions. If an interpretation clearly contradicts well-established evidence, that might be a reason to re-examine the interpretation. But if it’s broadly compatible, then it remains a viable reading.

I think I may not have been clear earlier. I’m not trying to suggest that science should reinterpret Genesis or that Genesis should function as a scientific authority. The idea is more modest: once we’ve done the interpretive work on the text itself, we can ask whether that interpretation coheres with our broader understanding of reality.

I mentioned Owen earlier not to say he was doing exactly the same thing, but to illustrate a similar interest in connecting structural patterns in nature with broader conceptual frameworks, rather than treating them as completely isolated domains.

In that sense, the goal isn’t to merge the two or let one override the other, but to ask whether they can be understood in a way that is coherent. For those who take both seriously, the expectation is that they shouldn’t ultimately be in contradiction—but that still leaves open the question of how that coherence is best understood.

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I don’t. My point was that myths DO reflect real events. It is history. It is just history from before there was any such thing as modern historical science. It is history from a time of oral traditions passing down accounts of the past… though with other aspect of culture (like theology) added in.

In other words, my point is that we are justified in treating as history – learning from it everything we can. Let us not forget that even the history in history books (even our own memories) are full of interpretation, because the point is not just a recording things but attaching meaning to things and calling attention to the events we thing are important.

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I think it would help to be more specific about what you mean by “underlying plan doesn’t exist.” Owen wasn’t proposing a genetic mechanism like DNA, but a structural explanation for why similar anatomical patterns recur. Modern biology explains how those patterns arise, but whether it fully replaces the kind of structural question Owen was asking is still debated.

Owen’s work builds on earlier ideas about archetypes and structural unity that he develops more fully in his broader body of work. On the Nature of Limbs doesn’t restate all of that, which is why it may not appear explicitly in that single text.

My point isn’t that they can mean anything we want, but that they are broader than modern scientific categories. Because of that, the original audience wouldn’t have been thinking in terms of modern biology at all—they would have understood these categories functionally or observationally. So the question is whether applying modern precision to those terms is actually imposing something onto the text rather than preserving its original intent.

You can find everything you need to know about this in RTB’s main article: OSF | A Reboot of Richard Owen’s Common Archetype Theory: An Alternative Framework for Biological Complexity