Chris, I could respond in many ways but let me narrow my focus to what’s most important to my purpose.
Here again is the Walton quote from BioLogos site:
If we are correct in identifying Genesis 1 as a creation account that intends to inaugurate the functioning cosmic temple, then that interpretation is going to express the truths being conveyed by the biblical author. When we seek to take the Bible seriously, we would therefore no longer have to try to defend the “biblical” view of the age of the earth. The age of the earth is a material issue not addressed in a functional account. Likewise, if Genesis 1 is not an account of material origins, the Bible offers no account of material origins. If that is the case, then empirical science could not possibly offer a view of material origins that we would have to reject in defense of the Bible.
If, as you say, “offers no account” does not mean “is silent,” how then can Walton make the claim that “empirical science could not possibly offer a view of material origins that we would have to reject in defense of the Bible”?
Second, where are the verses/passages that Walton says speak of material origins without giving an account?
Thanks for accepting my apology. I greatly appreciate your kindness.
You ask good questions. It will be easiest for me if I answer them in reverse order.
In Lost World, Walton states that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is supported by the Bible. IIRC, he cites Hebrews 11:3 as a supporting text.
The reason that empirical science cannot offer a refutation of creation ex nihilo is that the doctrine is not subject to empirical, scientific scrutiny. The methods of science cannot prove or disprove God’s existence, nor can they prove or disprove His providential involvement in creation.
The only way a contradiction could arise would be if the Bible were to offer, on top of the doctrines of God’s creation and providence, an account of natural history that could be framed in the terms of modern science. Then the account would be subject to investigation by the methods of empirical science.
Walton’s contribution to Biblical studies is his illumination of how ancient literature reveals the Biblical Hebrew creation texts to be functional ontologies rather than material ontologies. Thus the Bible contains no “account” of natural history, at least in the way that you and I think of natural history.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It helps me better understand where you are and from where you’ve come. Of course, the constant for all of us is the resurrection of our Lord. If we cling to that, everything else will eventually fall into place - and until then it will anchor us. He is risen!
When you say “God ceased from creating,” I assume you are thinking of Gen 2:1-3. You seem to believe that the earth is old, and you seem to believe it because scientists say so. You also say that “creation itself…continues to create.” Does this mean that you think God was creating until Gen 2:1-3 and that since that time creation has continued to create itself…such that Gen 2:1-3 marks a seamless transition from one to the other, so that you see progressive creation of the earth as having begun 4.543B years ago and continues until now and will continue beyond?
(This question is neither polemical nor rhetorical.)
My point is not that the biblical authors see their role as government clerks in a bureau of statistics, but that their view of genealogies is not so different from ours that we are denied any ability to infer chronology from them. For the prophets and apostles, history and theology were inextricably intertwined…such that while they might emphasize theology over history, they would never de-historicize. To have done so would have been to undermine their theology. For example, think of the Psalms where God’s acts on behalf of Israel were expounded for what they revealed theologically, and of the resurrection of Christ, the historicity of which is so important that, according to Paul, the entirety of the Christian enterprise rises and falls upon it.
Your view requires an enormous shift in the Bible’s view of historiography, occuring between Gen 11 and Gen 12, which has no biblical identification, justification, or explanation insofar as I can tell.
Until I can be convinced that Jesus applied a different view of historiography to Gen 1-11 than He did to all that follows, I don’t see how I can do so.
Could you demonstrate this in the case of the text under discussion? I’ll give you an example of their view of genealogies. Here’s just one.
103-124En-akigalaguba: his personal god was …, he dug the canal Nijin-jic-tukuam, he acted for 1200 years. In those days there was no writing, …, canals were not dug, earth baskets were not carried. In those days, …, the people … offerings of refined gold
2 lines uncertain
a good shepherd rose over the Land; he gave them (?) … as a gift. En-Ninjirsu-ki-aj, the son of En-akigalaguba: he acted for 1320 years. En-Enlile-ki-aj, the son of En-Ninjirsu-ki-aj: he acted for 1800 years. Ur-Bau the son of En-Enlile-ki-aj: he acted for 900 years.
125-130A-gal: his personal god was Ig-alim, he acted for 660 years. Kue (?), the son of A-gal: he acted for 1200 years. Ama-alim, son of Kue (?): …, he acted for 600 years.
131-142 12 lines unclear or missing
the lines list further rulers with unrecoverable names and length of rule
143-163 2 lines missing
he dug the Mah canal, the … canal, the Pirijgin-jen canal, the … canal, the Pirij canal at the mouth of the Lugal canal, the Gana-hili-ana canal, the … canal, and the Nance-pada canal. To care, single-handedly, for the great arable lands, he dug irrigation ditches and …, he acted for 2220 years. Ur-Nance, the son of …, who built the E-Sirara, her temple of happiness and Nijin, her beloved city, acted for 1080 years. Ane-tum, the son of Ur-Nance, in whose … place the gods stood, who … the land register of great Enlil: his personal god was Cul-utul, he acted for 690 years. …, the son of Ane-tum: he acted for X+360 years.
164-172En-entar-zid: his god was Mes-an-du (?), of the seed of ancient days, who had grown together with the city, he acted for 990 years. …, the son of En-entar-zid: he dug the canal Urmah-banda, and the canal Tabta-kug-jal, his personal god was Mes-an-du (?); his master Nin-jirsu commanded him to build his temple; he acted for 960 years.
173-175En-Enlile-su: he acted for 600 years. …, the son of En-Enlile-su: his personal god was Ninazu; he acted for 660 years.
176…: he acted for 1110 years.
177-181Puzur-Ninlil: he acted for X x 60 + 1 years. En-Mes-an-du (?), the son of Puzur-Ninlil: his personal god was …, he acted for 120 years. Dadu, the son of En-Mes-an-du (?): he acted for 160 years. Tuggur, the son of Dadu: he acted for 160 years.
182…: he acted for 120 years.
183-191Puzur-Mama, the scribe of Ninki: his personal god was Zazaru; he acted for … years. Lamku-nijgena (?), the administrator of Puzur-Mama, who built the wall of Jirsu, his …, and the Tirac palace in Lagac: he acted for 280 years. Henjal, the son of Lamku-nijgena (?): his god was Pabilsaj (?), he acted for 140 years. …, the son of Henjal: he acted for 144 years.
The difference is between how the entire Bible treats history and how you treat history. The genealogies are an example of this difference. Much effort is expended trying to get them to fit our modern view of history when the reality is they were written using a different view. This difference is not apparent to you because you apply your view as you read the text.
And there is significant evidence that during that era of the Ancient Near East people used numbers in symbolic ways which are totally foreign to us to day. That helps to explain why the final-digit distributions in the Genesis genealogies do not have the characteristics we would expect of “literal” numbers. Here is something I wrote long ago for my lecture notes at a conference:
Consider this: Why do ALL of the ages in the PRE-FLOOD genealogies (that is, ADAM TO NOAH) end with just FIVE of the TEN possible digits: 0,2,5,7,9? Again, I’m referring to the FINAL DIGIT. There is not a final 1,3,4,6,8 among any of those ages. If those were “literal” ages, real ages of people, we would expect their final digits to be MUCH MORE RANDOMLY DISTRIBUTED. The chances of only 0,2,5,7, and 9 appearing as the final digit of every patriarch’s age in the pericope is about one in a billion. Why so skewed? Answer: those “ages” were symbolic numbers meant to communicate ideas important to the ancients.
My lecture notes went on to explain some of the reasons why 0,2,5,7,9 occurred in the pericope but not 1,3,4,6, and 8. The favored digits reflect some of the same symbolism which most of us know from countless Sunday School discussions about the meanings of numbers, such as the sabbatical seven.
==> Of course, I should emphasize that these ideas about the symbolic uses of numbers in the Genesis genealogies are NOT something which I discovered. Scholars started noticing these digit distributions long before I did. And lots of people who have worked around the world in diverse cultures have noticed that some societies use numbers in non-literal ways. For example, some cultures use one’s age to reflect one’s status in the tribe or in the extended family. Thus, when one celebrates the birth of a grandchild, one may suddenly “age” from 30 to age 40. And a village chief may say that he is age 60 (which demands great respect from the tribe) even though he might have said that he was age 40 when asked just one year before his elevation in status.
I remember when American society suddenly started using terminology to refer to age groups: “Our church has a Sunday School class for the thirtysomethings.” It was a way to refer to the couples who had young children, even though the ages in the class actually ranged from 23 to the early 40’s. (The term apparently got a huge boost from a popular TV show of that era.) If scholars of the future came across our Church bulletin where the Sunday School options were listed, overly-literal interpretations of the class labels could have been quite misleading. (I wonder what those scholars of the future would think of our “Crusaders” class, which was for the empty-nesters who weren’t quite ready for the senior citizens class. Perhaps they would assume the Crusaders to have been particularly militant, or at least aggressively evangelistic—but that doesn’t fit the group of fiftysomethings I recall.)
Another thought about age comes to mind that illustrates a non-literal meaning: I keep seeing references to “Americans over age 65” which refers to people who are or will be eligible for Social Security benefits. Yet, when I read in more detail, I realize that the “over age 65” is a generalization because that “traditional” age 65 qualification milestone has been replaced by a sliding scale of retirement eligibility where one’s date of birth determines one’s potential SS eligibility age. (For example, those born after 1960 have to age an additional year and more before they can apply for those “over 65” Social Security pension benefits.) Even so, a lot of people casually say"over 65" to refer to people eligible for Social Security even though age 65 is not longer the sole criterion. Rather than getting stuck on the technicalities, it is easier just to speak of “over age 65” people as being eligible for Social Security.
Yes, American culture tends to be far more “literal” in the use of numbers but we still have our exceptions. How many people joke about being “forever 39.” (It probably severely dates me to admit that I remember age 39 as Jack Benny’s perpetual age. It was a running joke which probably explains why one can still find birthday greeting cards which perpetuate that joke. I doubt if anybody takes “May you always be 39!” as a “literal” expectation even though it refers to an actual age.
So what are we to make of Jonathan_Burke’s example:
Is that a Lagash (sp??) text? Even a casual reader of the entire ancient text notices that almost every one of the numbers ends in a zero digit. (The obvious exception is Henjal’s “144 years”, the very striking square of 12, which itself is 2^2 x 3. Thus, 144= (2^4) x (3^2). Is it any surprise that Henjal “acted for 144 years” instead of 143. Just as in the Book of Genesis, the numbers tend to be composites which factor into a lot of 2s, 3s, and 5s.)
You have repeatedly challenged your readers to bridge the billion year gap.
But is this reasonable? Isn’t it more than enough to show that the Biblical geneaologies are not consistent and thus unreliable?
If the principle reason we know there is a factual conflict is because we have overlapping accounts… what does that suggest to us when we sojourn through narratives for which we have no corroboration at all?!
What you call “challenges,” I consider honest questions and appeals. I’m asking if focusing on such things “moves the needle” in terms of the question that drives this thread. If it does, fine; let’s discuss. If not, I’m appealing for a focus on matters more material to our purpose.
No, I believe the earth is old because it is verifiably old. I don’t need scientists to tell me it is old.
I see God as ceasing from creation as He said He did, and I see creation as continuing to create. I don’t see any relationship between the two. I don’t see this as progressive creation of the earth.
Are you saying you don’t know how to read it? I thought genealogies were easy to read, you just add up the numbers. Right?
How is it “verifiably old” to you outside of science?
I often find it difficult to understand you. (I guess we just think differently.) This is one of those times. I would never have expected your second sentence after the first. Nor would I have expected your third sentence after the first two. I don’t even know how to ask a question about this paragraph. Compounding the problem, I think you get frustrated with me when I don’t understand you. Let me assure you, though, what seems self-evident to you does not always seem self-evident to me.
I don’t belittle the work of men like James Ussher. Rather, I respect their work and benefit from it.
I didn’t say it’s verifiably old to me outside science. I said I don’t need scientists to tell me. I can verify it for myself.
Ok well sorry about that, but I don’t see that it matters in this case.
That’s fine, but it’s not getting us any closer to the answer. The issue is, can you understand that genealogy or not? I will give you a hint; James Ussher, as much as you respect him, would have had no clue about how to read it.
Not really. Nothing in the Bible provides an age for the earth.
Even if one assumes the aforementioned Genesis genealogy pericope to be a “very literal” family chronology, at most it would tell us that the first Imago Dei human, HAADAM, lived a few thousand years ago. That still wouldn’t tell us anything about the age of the earth.
Even if one assumes that Genesis 1 describes six 24 hour days, there are multiple ways to “literally interpret” the text without demanding a young earth of a few thousand years. For example, one of the multiple Framework Hypothesis views is that the six YOM are Days of Proclamation. Under this view, God’s commands are conveniently outlined as taking place over a six-day period, where God is so powerful that he builds our world in a single workweek. The chronologies of the fufillment of each command are simply not relevant to the author’s purposes. Indeed, the usual criticisms of temporal inconsistencies in Genesis 1 (e.g., creating plants before there is a sun to power them) evaporate under the Days of Proclamation view because the cascade of events which result from each day of divine commands can unfold concurrently and in appropriate chronological orders. In this view, Genesis 1 is about an omnipotent Creator who is outside of time (because he is the creator of the time attribute of the matter-energy universe) and God’s commands can also be viewed as initiating natural processes which fulfill God’s will over long periods of time.
For example, “Let the earth bring forth [living things]…” and “Let the waters bring forth [living things]…” are the very opposite of the traditional “poofing” type of creation many of us were taught in Sunday School. Their fulfillment could just as easily involve millions or even billions of years, not just thousands of years. (Frankly, I see nothing in the Hebrew text of Genesis 1 that is suggestive of thousands of years.)
Indeed, “Let the ERETZ [land, earth] bring forth…” sounds a lot more like abiogenesis and evolutionary processes operating over long periods of time than the “special creation” and fixity of species which many Christians presume. [Yes, I realize that most YEC ministries today reject “fixity of species” but I’m talking about the traditional view of many generations of Christians including Bible Belt America of much of the last century.]
I’ve noticed that a lot of Christians simply assume that “instantaneous poofing” (immediate complete fulfillment of God’s will) is somehow more God-honoring than gradual fulfillment over long periods of time. Yet, in the Bible God’s slow and gradual but certain purposes are the norm throughout! Indeed, God tends to operate so gradually that we humans are constantly frustrated by this. That is why there are so many scriptures reminding us that God is outside of time and observes days and years with equal immediacy and omnipresence. (“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” and “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises…”; “Where is the promise of his coming?”) We humans may think that “instantaneous poofing” is more impressive. But aren’t the details of God’s amazing creations more evident and impressive as they unfold over vast eons of time? (Personally, I find a God who can create natural processes which inevitably produce life and the evolutionary processes which diversify that life to countless changing environments much more impressive than a weaker but traditional deity who must constantly monitor, tweak, and repair a creation which regularly deviates from his original plan.)
Of course, whatever may be our human opinion on such matters, the fact remains that God in his wisdom chose to display his sovereignty over billions of years of creative splendors! We know that because of what we observe in that creation—and I refuse to believe that God has filled the universe with misleading evidence.
For me it became a realization that long cherished traditions were comforting but reality was far more amazing.
Of course, Genesis 1 is full of accommodations to human limitations. Was “creation week” truly like a Cecil B. DeMille movie where a loud voice produced instantaneous stars and planets? Of course not. Does God have vocal cords? No. Did air molecules exist so that God’s spoken commands could resonate throughout the galaxies? No. The purpose of Genesis 1 is to describe an omnipotent God exerting his creative will—and it frames those ideas through a convenient six-day workweek outline where each creative “domain” just happens to correspond with the various “spheres of governance” by which the gods and goddesses of Israel’s pagan neighbors were thought to rule the world. For example, Yam, ruled the fishes of the seas. Shemesh was the sun god and Yanikh was god of the moon. Other deities were thought to rule the beasts of the field and the seed-producing vegetation. Genesis 1 declares Israel’s God the ruler of all of the world’s domains, and employs lots of chiasmic structures (AB+BA) as the 3+3 outline of creation week establishes a clear monotheistic worldview. The western emphasis on chronology (and even verbal tenses) is foreign to Semitic culture and language. Even the numbering of the days in Hebrew doesn’t necessarily require the same sort of sequential view of an historical narrative that we naturally assume in English. (I never gave that idea much thought until I studied Hebrew grammar under a prominent rabbinical scholar who constantly reminded us “You are still thinking like a 20th century American!”)
Reading Genesis 1 (and the OT in general) within its own cultural context is no easy task. It has taken me a lifetime of arduous study to grasp just as little of what my rabbi grad school professor was talking about. (At the time he was considered one of the world’s top experts on the MIshna, and I wish I could have recorded his many impromptu expositions which totally challenged a lot of my traditional fundamentalists views of the Old Testament. I’ll never forget his explanation of why “The fool has said in his heart that there is no god” has absolutely nothing to do with atheists. His class handout on Hebrew idioms alone was enough to upend a lot of Bible Belt amateur exegesis.)
You point me to Walton’s “Lost World” for his affirmation of creatio ex nihilo. However, Walton has published three “Lost World” books (“…of Genesis One” in 2009, “…of Scripture” in 2013, and “…of Adam and Eve” in 2015). I have the first and it only has one very fleeting reference to ex nihilo (and there’s no mention of Heb 11:3). I can’t imagine such a reference would be more likely to show up in the second and third books than the first one. Might you have read it in an article or found it in some other source to which you could point me? I’m not so much focused on ex nihilo per se, but rather where Walton sees material origins in the Bible since he doesn’t see them in Gen 1. Since he believes in creatio ex nihilo, I assume he believes the Bible somewhere testifies to that. You gave me Heb 11:3, but I’m wondering if he has a short or long list of passages that he thinks affirm God’s hand in material origins. I know most would think that such a position would be natural for him, but he makes a point of saying, “The Bible only insists that God is the one who is the Creator and that however it took place, he is responsible for creation.” (This is taken from the BioLogos article by him I excerpted for you before.) If indeed “the Bible insists that God is the one who is the Creator” and if neither Gen 1 nor occurrences of “create” (bara’) are the places where the Bible manifests this insistence, “Where are those places?” is a reasonable and natural question, isn’t it?