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Reviewed by Timothy McNinch. The Lost World of Genesis One. By John H. Walton. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2009. Pp. 192. $16.00.

With this concise study, John Walton (professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College) has delivered a significant contribution to the ongoing conversation at the intersection of faith and science. Drawing upon the insights offered by ancient Near Eastern cultural and literary studies, he proposes that the creation account found in Genesis 1 is not a depiction of material origins at all. If his thesis is correct, John Walton has highlighted an important ‘missing link’ in the often stalemated debate over origins.

Walton attempts to demonstrate that the literary and cultural context of Genesis 1 reveals it to be concerned with how the world functions, rather than where and when stuff of the world came to be; that is, Genesis 1 is presents a “functional ontology” over against a “material ontology”. Walton attributes the common misreading of Genesis 1 as material ontology to simple anachronism. We in the modern West have difficulty reading it as anything other than an account of material origins because we live in an ontologically materialistic era. So we unintentionally read our own ontology into the text. The author and audience of Genesis 1 had an entirely different view of the world, a world that Walton exposes to the popular reader.

Walton builds his argument through a series of 18 propositions, comprising the chapters of his book. The propositions systematically delve into the cultural world of Genesis (propositions 1-2), the meaning of key words, notably bārā’ – “create” (propositions 3-4), analysis of each of the seven days of creation (propositions 5-6), and the cultic context that provides the literary framework of the Genesis 1 (propositions 7-9). Having built a cumulative case for reading Genesis 1 as functional ontology, Walton applies this reading to several of the side conversations concerning faith and science: Young- vs. Old-earth creationism, the merit of Intelligent Design Theory, the impact of Genesis 1 on a Christian response to the scientific theory of evolution, and whether or not public science education should allow for Design.

The common thread of Walton’s thesis applied to these issues is that Genesis 1 and evolutionary science are not in conflict, and science therefore poses no threat to those who take the Bible seriously. “If Genesis 1 is not an account of material origins, then it offers no mechanism for material origins, and we may safely look to science to consider what it suggests for such mechanisms” (p. 163).

Walton suggests that what Genesis 1 does offer is a strong case for divine teleology, that whatever mechanism led to the presence of Earth’s biological diversity, its functionality was driven by the express purpose of God. That this purpose may be undetectable by science does not render it irrational. Just as Walton criticizes Young-Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and other forms of “concordism” for breaching territory outside their jurisdiction, he also criticizes the branch of Neo-Darwinism that suggests dysteleological, or “purposeless” evolution. He makes the great point that teleology or dysteleology belong within the discipline of metaphysics, not science, concluding that neither (represented by the Intelligent Design community and certain Neo-Darwinists, respectively) belongs in the public education science classroom. Students in public education deserve exposure to metaphysical arguments, Walton recommends, but not in the science curriculum.

While this book zeroes in on one of the key places of supposed conflict between faith and science, namely the text of Genesis 1, the thoughtful reader does not leave with all his or her questions answered. I was disappointed that Walton did not carry his analysis into Genesis 2 and 3, or into the rest of the Genesis prologue. These chapters carry almost as much potential conflict with the theory of evolution as does chapter one, but Walton is nearly silent on their contribution to the issue, aside from a few references for support without much substantiation. Perhaps a sequel is in order. I thought Walton was also a touch unclear on how his “cosmic temple inauguration view” (the title he gives to his analysis) relates to actual historical space-time events. Is Genesis 1 a literary construction to convey the functional ontology of the author, or does it describe a “functional” process that took place during seven days of real history? Walton flirts with the question, but ultimately dismisses it as irrelevant. Finally, I thought he waffled on his otherwise strong argument for teleological evolution when it came to human evolution. At some points he suggests that biblical Christians should have no problems attributing the material origins of humanity to the same processes that produced the rest of Earth’s biodiversity. But on a couple occasions, he calls that same perspective into question. “My theological convictions lead me to posit substantive discontinuity between that process [the evolution of plant and animal life] and the creation of the historical Adam and Eve. Rather than cause-and-effect continuity, there is material and spiritual discontinuity, though it remains difficult to articulate how God accomplished this” (p. 139). I think Walton weakens his case for God’s teleological involvement in whichever material process he chose for creation by suggesting the need for God to intervene in the case of humanity. It smacks of a God-of-the-gaps approach, which Walton elsewhere eloquently dismantles.

These limitations and weaknesses do not detract, however, from the overall force of Walton’s presentation, which is clear and convincing, yet free of polemic and propaganda. Walton brings a respectful tone to a conversation that so often devolves into political entrenchment.

The Lost World of Genesis One is published under InterVarsity’s Academic imprint, and I am anxious to see how John Walton’s propositions are received by the academic community. At the same time, this volume is absolutely accessible to any thoughtful reader. Walton speaks to the popular reader, defining new vocabulary and using helpful analogies to clarify complex points. His introduction alone, explaining the necessity of contextualizing our exegesis of Scripture, is worth the price of the book for the student or teacher of the Bible. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wrestles with the Creation/Evolution controversy, and label it a “must read” for any Christian student of the natural sciences.

Here’s a link to the PBS site.

a heads up: there are a few graphic images…

I’m an evangelical Christian, and with most of my fellow evangelicals I highly value the Bible as a unique piece of literature. I believe it has (mysteriously) a dual authorship: it’s books were written by men, but there is some sense in which these writings are also from God. So the canon of Biblical Scripture comes to us as the “inspired word of God”. It’s teachings are “authoritative” in the lives of believers. And the Bible, as a whole, is categorically “true”. I believe these things about the Bible not because I can empirically demonstrate them, but I take these statements to be accurate on the authority of a tradition I choose to trust.

On the other hand, I don’t go as far as some of my evangelical brethren, in that I don’t claim that the Bible is “inerrant”. In fact, I think the Bible contains many errors. My justification for this perspective comes from that same doctrine of “dual authorship”. The Bible’s human authors wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, but they wrote from their own perspective, out of their own worldview, and in their own words.

Why would God allow human authors to include factual errors in their writings? Wouldn’t he ensure that everything they wrote was accurate? Well, maybe. But I don’t see why that has to be the case. I think it’s just as plausible that God chose to allow factual errors in order that the didactic truth of these writings would be recognizable to those who heard and read them in the cultures of their writing. In other words, God may have allowed theological truth, theological reality, to be embedded in communication that was culturally recognizable to the ancient world, even if scientifically inaccurate. God gave them the truth they needed in order to worship God rightly in their world, and allowed them to remain in error about matters that were not of consequence to them. This is what I mean about the Bible being “categorically true”, while containing errors of fact.

As this applies to Genesis, and to the story of origins there, there are a couple things to say. First, I think we should allow that the author(s) of Genesis didn’t know how the cosmos really is, and may not have been given special insight by the Spirit of God to understand it. The general cosmology, geology, and biology of Genesis could very well have its origin in the inherited worldview of the ancient middle-east.

Secondly, I think we should appreciate that Genesis is a contribution to an existing ancient conversation about the origin of the world and the place of humans in it. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see the language of Genesis crafted in response to existing ancient creation myths. And we should give the author(s) of Genesis room to be literary: to co-opt and twist those existing stories, to parody and debate the existing theologies of their day through their writings. In other words, it’s too simplistic to take Genesis as an impartial, disinterested, independent history of events as they happened, as if someone was taking notes while events transpired, or as if God dictated them in the narrative of a theophanic interview. We need to allow for Genesis to be in dialogue with other literature, and to employ various genres (beyond simple description) in order to do so effectively.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I think it’s unfair to the human authors of Scripture, and presumes too much about how God inspired them, to talk about the “plain meaning” of Genesis. Taking the surface meaning of the Genesis creation story is, well, surfacy. I submit that there is depth to this narrative! And we owe it to God and to those brilliant human authors to do the hard work of interpreting their opus with the attention to context, literary analysis, and nuance that it deserves.

I realize that this has been a mere string of assertions. Take them for what they’re worth. What I’m really curious about are the implications of these assertions. Now, as we go forward, let’s see what kind of theological corners I’ve painted myself into and whether I need to backtrack or press forward…

I think it is. There are real consequences, I believe, for failing to address the issue of evolution honestly. I’ve worked for years with Christian college students who are beginning to study science. They all have to deal with evolution. There are basically three typical responses to college-level education in evolution, and none of them are good:

1, the student is convinced that evolution is a fact, and his faith in a Creator-God has been a fairy tale. He drops out of the faith. Obviously tragic, from a faith-standpoint.

2, the student stands firm in her faith in the Creator, and decides that she can’t continue a career path that is based in atheism. She drops out of science. This, too, is tragic. Why should science be the exclusive proprietorship of atheists? Why should Christians abandon the God-given mandate to “govern the earth” (Genesis 1:28), which is basically what the natural sciences are all about?

3, the student decides that faith and science are talking about different things. So he continues in the sciences, never thinking about God when studying and applying evolution, and his faith remains a meaningful, personal experience. In essence, he lives a double life; he’s a dualist.

The last one, the dualism, is especially prevalent in my experience, and I find it a great tragedy. A dualist may think they’ve found the happy middle ground, but really they’ve shortchanged both ends. Science is reduced to pragmatic, godless work. And faith is reduced to merely a personal preference, with nothing to say about how the world actually is. Both faith and science become hobbies, and the dualistic scientist/believer floats through life without a unifying and compelling worldview.

What can the dualist say to her scientific colleagues about her faith? Certainly not that it’s true! Only that she has a part of her life that gives her a personal sense of meaning. It may impact her moral behavior, or her experience of inner peace, but it has no place or impact on her vocation, the world she shares with them. How compelling is that? I remember hearing Stephen Jay Gould (a leading popular spokesperson for evolution) say something to the effect of “I know that many of my colleagues are Christians, and that’s fine. It’s a personal part of their private lives. But their Christianity has nothing meaningful to say about the science of evolution.” Which, to him, translates: their Christianity has nothing meaningful to say to me.

Another devastating implication of our failure to honestly address the theological questions raised by evolution, is that we leave a massive hurdle in the path of potential Jesus-followers. Now, I know that many people throw out philosophical challenges to the faith as smoke screens to avoid dealing with their actual reservations about Christianity. “How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” is not a reason anyone won’t follow Jesus. But in our generation, two philosophical problems really do stand out as roadblocks to Christianity for the average secular inquirer: the problem of evil and suffering, and the compatibility of science and faith.

Remember, for almost 150 years, the process of evolution has been the foundational narrative of origins for the mainstream secular world. If we ask them to abandon that story, and all the ‘facts’ and research that has rooted it, for a new story about a God who created the world basically as-is with a command and a “poof”… that’s a mighty big pill to swallow. And if, somehow, evolutionary science and the Christian faith ARE compatible, we’re erecting a major barrier that keeps out a lot of people unnecessarily. We should think twice (or three times! or four!) before we move on and say this issue doesn’t matter.

Like I said in my previous post, the point of this blog is to acknowledge that evolution DOES matter, and that we should take it seriously. I have heard a number of pastors and thoughtful Christians concluding that evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible, but I haven’t heard much conversation about the implications of this compatibility for our traditional doctrines about origins, physicality vs. spirituality, sin and death, and the nature of the biblical Scriptures that teach about these things. Do we need to adapt, refresh, or reformulate these doctrines in light of the findings of evolutionary science? I know that’s a dangerous question to ask, but if the alternative is intellectual dishonesty, I think we need to go there with an open mind.

Theistic evolution presumes “theos”, then looks for ways to see God at work in biological evolution. I feel a need to explore what happens when we presume evolution, and then ask what happens to “theos”, i.e., “evolutionary theology”. Now, I do presume God; I am and will always be a theist. But if I want to take the scientific method seriously as a (yes) limited, but still real and valuable epistemological source, there are some theological questions I need to ask. And I haven’t heard many others asking them. So, I thought, why not blog it?

Here are some of my questions:

• What is the biological definition of “life”, and what implications does that have for an understanding of the “soul”?

• If death is a necessary part of the evolutionary process, how do we imagine the role of death in God’s “creative process”?

• We attribute global consequences to human sin (“the fall”), but were not those dynamics (death, decay, carnivorism, thorns, earthquakes) present in creation before humans evolved? How does this impact our understanding of the Biblical account?

• If humans evolved from earlier species, who was Adam? Even if Adam is a literary device (“Adam” means “Earth Man”), how can we understand human-ness in light of evolution? Or a concept like the “image of God”. How are homo sapiens divine image-bearers in a way that, say, neanderthals are not? And since evolution takes place in populations and not in a direct line of descent, who then was the first “image bearer”? And what about that person’s mother?

• What impact does evolution have on our theology of “original sin”? If (“IF”) the early chapters of Genesis are not describing history, but are rather a poetic depiction of the theological relationship between God, Humanity, and Creation, then is a “pre-condition” of sinfulness really passed from parents to children, inherited from Adam? How does this impact a theology of total depravity?

• How do we imagine the “new creation” as a world without sin or death? Will God really disrupt the path of evolution that started with the Big Bang? How would that impact physics? Biology?

• What light does evolution shed on the theological problem of evil and suffering?

Well, that’s a start… What would you add?