It's just my absolute delight to be here tonight with 
you, to share some ideas; ideas for thinking.
I hope it will stimulate your thought. I'm not looking 
for conversions.
I'm not looking for people that are going to agree 
with everything I say, but I hope that as you 
consider some of the ideas I have to present,
that maybe it will help you at least a step or two 
along your own path, for trying to understand the 
early chapters of Genesis.
So it's great to be here in the midst of the two 
trees in the middle of the garden, and-- [laughter]
and I'll be talking to you-- that was that twisted 
sense of humor that Dr. Manor mentioned. 
Anyway,
I'm going to be wandering around here. I kind of 
like to do that while I talk, and so we'll be doing 
that. I also will be occasionally reading
from my slides there so I hope you won't be 
offended for me kind of half turning my back to 
you, but my
carrying around the laptop wouldn't do me any 
good, so we'll make that work. Tonight we want 
to talk about Genesis 1,
and try to come to some understanding of it. Of 
course, this has been an objective, a quest,
that people have had for centuries, to try to 
understand this material. It's particularly a 
poignant
point of discussion these days, as we continue 
to try to understand the relationship between the 
Bible and science, and to resolve
some of those challenges that we constantly 
face, as we try to sort through this.
I have no science to offer tonight. I am not a 
scientist, and I'm not really in a position to come to 
scientific conclusions.
I have no science to push. My concern is that we 
do the best that we can possibly do
to read the Bible well.
Lots of times what we sense as difficulty in the 
discussion between Bible and science
very much concerns, "what exactly does the 
Bible require of us?"
For those of us who take the Bible seriously, and 
I assume that's probably most in this room,
if we take the Bible seriously, we want that to 
guide our thinking.
But exactly how do we think about the Biblical 
material,
so that we can
be persuaded that we are taking the text 
seriously? So I want to talk to you tonight about 
reading Genesis 1.
Now, it's not just reading Genesis 1, but as you 
can see, "Reading Genesis 1 with Ancient Eyes." 
That means you need trifocals-- no.
-laughter-
Work with me. Okay, so-- [laughter] it means of 
course that we want to try to read the text as
it was written. As it was conveyed, from an 
ancient author to an ancient audience.
We're going to talk about that whole premise to 
begin with tonight,
before we actually launch into the passage itself 
and my thoughts on the passage.
So we have to start by talking about the issue 
of--
of authority.
For those of you have heard me earlier today, 
you know that this is kind of the battle cry. This is 
what frames everything that I do
when I'm talking about Scripture. We want to try 
to be certain that we can get the authoritative
message of the text. This is Scripture, this is 
God's Word. We can't take it lightly,
it has authority, and we want to make sure that 
we can get to that authority.
Now, the premise I'm starting with then is that 
God's purpose is carried out through human 
purpose. That is, human authors
wrote with ideas in mind. They're trying to 
communicate something. If we believe that they 
have been moved by the Holy Spirit to do so,
then we believe that their purpose coincides with 
God's purpose.
So if we want to understand God's purpose, the 
authoritative Word that he has for people, that we 
therefore have to get to it, through our
understanding of the human purpose. If we can't 
get to it through the human author, we have no 
access to it.
If God had something else in mind besides what 
he told the human authors, we have no way of 
getting that.
Okay? So we have to work through the human 
authors to try to understand what their purpose 
was. That authority then, that Scripture has, is
vested in the human authors. That's the way that 
God decided to do it. We might have objections. 
We might wish that He'd speak directly to us.
Okay? But He didn't.
That's not the way He did it. So we're working 
through these human authors, and they become 
our link to the authority of the text.
And everything that I do in the text has to try to 
preserve that link, because if I leave that author 
behind,
I've left authority behind, and I'm on my own. 
That's not what we want to happen.
So authority is vested in the human author. The 
text, then, is written for us, but not to us.
That human author wrote in his own language, 
wrote to his audience, wrote in that culture, with 
that culture's understanding,
and therefore even though God has revealed 
himself to the world for all of us,
this text is not written to us, and therefore we 
have to take steps,
to join that audience, so that we can make sure 
that we get that part that's for us,
by listening alongside of those to whom it was 
written.
And that's why we talk about reading Genesis 1 
through ancient eyes.
So the message transcends culture, because 
that message is God's revelation of Himself. 
That's for everybody,
that transcends culture. But at the same time, the 
form is culture bound.
That's why you need translations. And you not 
only need translations of the language,
you need translations of the culture.
Because both are foreign to us.
So we have to take our place in the audience,
in that audience that the author is speaking to.
We take our place in that audience, again, by 
understanding the language, but also by 
understanding the culture.
So, we have to think about this process of 
communication,
and what we think about that.
First of all, we assume the integrity of 
communication between the author and his first 
audience. The author is not up there, in a trance,
mumbling away mumbo jumbo that nobody 
understood.
Okay? He is speaking coherently, purposefully,
communicating to his audience, and we have to 
assume that there was integrity in that 
communication,
and that the audience would've understood what 
was going on. That's why we find hope in trying 
to join that audience
and listen in on the conversation.
When we talk about communication situations, 
and again some of you have heard me talk about 
this earlier today if you were in
whatever session I talked about this, we can talk 
about high context and low context.
High context, as it says, is where the speaker 
and the audience have a lot in common. They 
share a familiar ground for communication.
So if I'm talking to a graduate school classroom, I 
can assume certain things that they know, certain 
terms that they will understand.
I don't have to explain those all over again,
because it's a high context situation that allows 
me to communicate at a higher level.
On the other hand, if I'm talking to my sixth grade 
Sunday school class, teaching them an 
introduction to doctrine,
I have to use terminology that they will 
understand. They're in a much lower context.
Okay? So high context is high levels of familiarity, 
common ground. Low context is the opposite.
So low context is speaker and audience have 
little common ground so much has to be 
explained.
Now it's important, because what's happening is,
when the author
in a Biblical context, when an author is speaking 
to his audience, he's in a high context situation. 
They share language,
they share experiences, they share history, they 
share cultural ideas, they share a way of thinking 
about the world around them.
It's a high context situation.
When we try to step into that communication 
circle, we are a low context audience coming
into a high context communication. And therein 
lies the problem,
because we've got a lot of ground to make up 
before we can really take our place in that 
audience and understand what's going on.
Again, I really don't bring my sixth graders into my 
grad school classes and expect them to follow 
what's happening.
If you need another-- something else to hang a 
hook on for high context low context, think about 
texting with your parents. Enough said.
-laughter-
There are high context situations and low context 
situations. So we have to understand that 
communication, because that situates us
with regard to the audience that is the original 
audience for the material.
So we have to see the world the way the text 
sees the world. That's the first step.
After all, they think about the world very 
differently than we do.
Almost everything we think about our world is not 
something they thought about their world.
And you could kind of click off the issues and 
you'd see the differences,
but see, their whole communication, especially 
about something like origins,
is going to be premised on the way they thought 
about the world.
It's not some abstract, nebulous, universal truth 
about the world that God kind of engrained in the 
text.
He spoke His Word through that ancient author to 
that ancient audience. And it's no sense of,
"here's-- I'm going to use scientific truth that all 
people either do understand or eventually will 
understand,
and if people don't understand it yet, well, give it 
a couple thousand years and they will."
God didn't do that. Integrity of communication.
The author understands what he's saying,
and his audience understands what he's saying. 
That means he is not using our science.
He's using their world, and their ideas.
So we have to try to see the world the way the 
text sees the world, if we have any hope of 
understanding it.
I'll turn every once in a while and say hello to you 
folks. [laughter]
So, we have to think about cosmic geography. 
Cosmic geography is the shape of the world.
What do you think of when you think of the 
world? Well, we think about that one on the left.
Blue earth, there it is.
You've never seen that, of course, because 
you've never been out there. You've trusted the 
photographs.
Ha-- no, nevermind. [laughter] So that's kind of 
our cosmic geography over there
on the left,
and there's almost nothing about that that they 
knew or thought in the ancient world. Something 
like their cosmic geography is on the right.
Okay? A very different understanding of the world.
Yeah, let's do that.
Egyptians.
A little diagram from a tomb painting here on the 
right, in more modern style there on the left. My 
son's artistry, hope you like it.
And-- you know, when they thought about the 
cosmos, look at what they thought about.
Gods.
We think about a material cosmic geography.
Not them.
They thought about gods.
And so, there's the blue lady is the sky, arched 
over the Earth, and the stars are emblazened on 
her underside.
And then you've got the Earth god down at the 
bottom.
Okay, and the air god, the guy in white there, is 
holding them apart. They're husband and wife so 
they kind of would like to be together,
but he's really a spoiler, and he keeps holding 
them apart. Heaven and Earth, kept separately.
We've got the Sun god in his bark sailing across 
the skies. See the waters being held back by the 
lady in blue?
They're up there, he's sailing along on them. 
There's the Moon god back in the back, the storm 
god, here's Seth, battling the chaos creature
Apophis, Osiris in the west over there on the 
right. Their world was full
of gods.
Now, they've drawn this kind of picture because 
that is what is most important to them,
about understanding their world.
When they talk about,
"How do I think about the world around me?" 
That's how they think about the world around 
them.
You notice, of course, that this is not a material 
picture.
They didn't think that they could pick up a rock 
and hit that guy in the shins. "Ow!" A little cosmic 
"ouch" coming-- no, they're not thinking that at all,
because the material aspects of the cosmos 
didn't matter to them. Didn't matter-- matter didn't-- 
okay. Stick with me, I'm moving fast. [laughter]
The whole idea here of what's important in how 
you think about the world around you.
For the Israelites, of course, they did not have it 
peopled with gods.
For them, gods were not inside but rather God 
was outside. Gods were not identified with all of 
the parts of the cosmos like in the Egyptian
or Mesopotamian ways of thinking, but God is 
outside and above it all.
Even with that significant theological difference, 
their cosmic geography is still the same.
They're still the-- the water's being held up by a 
solid sky, being separated by the air pocket from 
the Earth,
so Heavens-- the waters above, waters below 
have been separated. And so, lots of the same 
concepts,
but again, not peopled.
So, we have a variety of cosmic geographies, 
but none of them are like ours. They are much 
more like one another
than they are like us.
If we think that we can take our cosmic 
geography
and import it into Genesis 1,
we're going to have a problem. There's 
anachronism there,
imposing modern ideas on ancient texts. That is 
not the way to try to make peace between Bible 
and science.
We have to read the text as an ancient text.
Now we also must see the text the way the 
ancient Israelite saw the text. We have to view 
the world through their eyes, we have to think
of the text through their eyes. So we have to try 
to read it the way they would.
Again, this is a matter of us (low context) joining 
a high context audience
so that we can understand the communication 
that's taking place there. We're not imposing 
meaning from our location,
we are trying to understand it from their location.
That means you have to start thinking about
what these words of the text would have meant 
to them.
Now we want to take the text at face value, then. 
By face value, I mean that our goal is to 
understand the text the way the author wanted
to be understood,
without trying to read anything into it, without 
trying to squeeze anything out of it.
This is just a way of saying, we're not trying to 
make the text be something that we want it to be. 
We're not trying to get it to answer our questions,
or extract answers for our questions, we are 
trying to understand the questions the text was 
asking,
and the answers the text was offering, and we 
shouldn't expect them to correspond to our 
questions,
and the kinds of answers we might want.
We would never expect the text to address 
common descent, or mutations, or evolutionary 
processes, or
anything of that sort. Those are not their 
questions. That's not their world.
And if we try to extract answers from-- about 
those from a text that wasn't meant to address 
them, we run a great risk of distorting the text.
So, part of understanding the face value of the 
text is first of all to understand what kind of 
genre they're using.
Now this is a tricky one, because our first 
inclination is to slap a genre label on it and say, 
"Oh, it's this,
or it's that." Some would say "it's history," some 
would say "it's mythology," you know, slapping a 
label on it. Problem:
Those are our genre categories that have our 
definitions of them.
No can do.
We have to understand how they're 
understanding the nature of the literature, and the 
minute we slap a modern label on it,
we are suddenly imposing a modern 
understanding on it.
We say, "well what else can we do? I mean, I 
don't have any Hebrew genre labels to put on it." 
True.
Okay?
We don't need to label it.
We need to try to understand it for the form of 
literature it is. After all, that's what genre talks 
about:
form and function.
So we try to understand the form and function of 
the literature, instead of squeezing that form and 
function into already established categories that
we have, we just open up and try to understand 
what the text is doing.
We don't need a label.
We just need to understand it in its own way. So 
genre's important.
Cultural perspective. Again, they're writing the 
text from their own culture, and we need to be
alert to all that. We also want to ask about the 
focus of revelation.
Now, by focus of revelation, we're recognizing 
something important about the way 
communication takes place.
Since it's a high context communication,
you need hooks to hang communication on.
And those communication hooks are not 
necessarily
going to be the actual thing that the communicator 
is trying to affirm or teach, but he's got to 
communicate with something.
Okay? Now this is a tough one to grasp, but for 
instance,
in the ancient world,
people didn't have a good grasp of physiology.
They believed, in the ancient world, that basically 
all the cognitive processes
took place
down here.
Liver, kidneys, heart, intestines.
Sometimes even stomach.
Sometimes I think with my stomach. [laughter] But 
anyway, they believed that all these things took 
place down here.
They have no idea what the gray stuff up here is.
Those of you who know about Egyptian 
mummification, the stuff down here
got taken out carefully, put in canopic jars, "this is 
the person. This is the self."
Brain?
Hook up the nose, pull it out, throw it away. 
Okay? No use for that.
So their physiology is a little bit goofed up. They 
just don't have the information.
When God communicates to Israel,
he does not give them a revised physiology.
That's not the revelation.
It doesn't say, "All those yahoos around you, or 
even the g-males around you think that they've
think with their guts, but no not you! You think 
with your brains! Thus says the Lord."
No. That doesn't happen.
In fact, God uses,
for communication,
that ancient physiology.
And so, God will take about loving the Lord your 
God with your heart and soul.
And... mind? You say "ah! ah! Mind."
Entrails. That's the word for entrails. Okay? 
Where translators have helped you out. So, God 
does not change
their ideas of physiology.
He uses the ideas they have because his focus 
of revelation is not anatomy and physiology.
And so He uses that ancient way of thinking as a 
communication hook, just to hang the 
communication on.
'Cause He's not trying to change their physiology. 
People figure that stuff out sooner or later.
That's not the job of revelation.
So when He says to love the Lord your God with 
all your heart,
it doesn't mean anything to say, "but wait a 
minute! Don't you really mean my brain?"
Well, it's talking about the same thing,
but the important part is, I don't care what you 
think with.
Honor the Lord with all of your thoughts.
That's the revelation. And that's clear enough to 
us. It doesn't matter that they have an old way of 
thinking about physiology.
God can get past that. So, that's the kind of thing I 
mean. There are things that are just 
communication hooks.
It's not the focus of the revelation, that's not what 
God's trying to accomplish,
and He's okay with using the world as they 
understand it
for His communication.
So, let's talk about science and the Bible just a 
little bit. I'm just going to hit a couple points. Again, 
I don't present myself as a scientist.
I married a scientist. That was my way of kind of 
getting by all of this,
it was my intention all along-- no it wasn't. 
[laughter] But anyway, my wife just happens to 
have scientific training and she helps me out with
some of these things, but there are just a couple 
major points that I want to make. First of all, not 
only did God feel free to use, to accommodate
if you will, their own native scientific ways of 
thinking,
we can further say that there is no scientific 
revelation in the Bible.
I can say that with a great deal of confidence.
Many of you know, I've written Bible background 
commentaries. That means I've been through 
every nook and cranny, every corner and every
line of Old Testament to try to explain the ancient 
Near Eastern thinking behind it. There is nothing in 
the Old Testament
that you would say, "oh, an ancient Near Eastern 
person wouldn't have known that little piece of 
information."
God didn't turn around and tell them, "oh, you 
know really, the Earth moves around the Sun."
Or, "really you live on a sphere."
Now some of you have heard before, "but wait a 
minute, the circle of the Earth! Isaiah 40:22."
Two observations: one, that's not the word for 
sphere, that's the word for disc. Still a circle.
Two, everybody in the ancient world believed the 
world was a disc.
No surprises there.
There are no science surprises in the Bible.
Every bit of thing that touched science, what we 
call science,
was understandable
in the ancient context, not only by Israel, but by 
her neighbors as well.
So, God is not doing scientific revelation.
Any times there are details of science, we can 
count on it: this is Old World science. And that 
doesn't mean that God is trying to affirm it,
it only means he's using it for communication 
purposes because He's got important things to 
say, and it's not that.
Secondly, observation of cause and effect does 
not remove God from the picture. Psalm 139:13, 
"You knit me together in my mother's womb."
We read that, we believe that,
but it doesn't make us pick at the obstetrics and 
gynecologists office and tell them to put God back 
in embryology.
Embryology is okay!
"But wait a second! No, I didn't grow that way. 
God knit me together in my mother's womb."
See? Our study of embryology only gives us 
better ideas about how God does what He does.
We don't deny what science can learn
about that process,
on the basis of Psalm 139:13. We rather believe 
that God is working through that process. The 
scientists cannot detect God's work.
We as people of faith believe that it is God's 
work,
but science can still describe it
in the way that they are able to.
Why can't we do the same thing with origins?
To say, whatever science describes,
an understands, and observes. If it's true,
that's only telling us how God does what He 
does.
We'll get back to that.
So, cause and effect does not remove God from 
the picture. Furthermore, in the ancient world, 
they do not have
the same
array of cause and effect possibilities that we 
have today.
They would have had no such thing as a 
category of natural
cause and effect.
But we talk about natural laws. Things are just 
following natural laws and that's how cause and
effect works, and that helps us understand 
things.
But in the ancient world, they had no such 
category. The only two sources of cause were 
God and people.
And of course, people had limited cause, but that 
was all there was.
So there's no chance,
there's no random,
there's no natural.
It's God at work.
The fact that we have a category of natural 
cause and effect,
then does not remove God from that. We can still 
talk about God as the cause, as ultimate cause, 
whatever language you want to use,
indirect cause, whatever.
Okay? Let the philosophers work through that 
one. But God as a causal factor in things that we 
might also identify as natural.
Again, giving a natural explanation does not 
remove God from
the causal role.
So, just a couple observations then about 
science and the Bible:
So, whose science?
Are we going to think in terms of our science, 
and that the Bible somehow affirms or validates 
our science?
Why ours?
What about eighteenth century science?
Might have they thought that God would validate 
theirs? What about fifteenth century? Twelfth? 
How about New Testament,
or Greco-Roman science? Oh, what about the 
twenty-fifth century science?
Whose science gets validated? Science 
changes.
And we really wouldn't be able to say, "it should 
be this one, or it should be that one." Why should 
it be ours?
And you know the only right answer to that:
it's theirs.
It's written against their science. It expresses 
their science, and we have to understand that 
that's how that text is working.
Reconstructing the physical cosmos from 
Genesis 1 would be like reconstructing the 
human anatomy from a Picasso.
You can't get there from here.
Now it's interesting because of course we know 
who Picasso's model was. There are 
photographs. We know what she looked like.
Even if you compared it to the photograph, you 
couldn't get there from here,
because Picasso's artistic conventions
were not designed
to result in a photograph, or an understanding of 
what the person looked like. There are other 
truths he was trying to capture.
It's your guess with mine what they are, but 
whatever. [laughter]
That's how his art was working.
There's a story about Picasso, an art show, 
accosted by one of his critics, as he constantly 
experienced,
and the guy was just badgering him. "I don't 
understand. Why don't you just paint things the 
way they are? The way they really are?"
Picasso said, "I'm not sure I know what you 
mean." "Oh, come on. Don't be coy.
Just paint them the way they really are." "Really, 
I'm baffled by what you mean." The guy whips 
out his wallet,
holds out a picture of his wife and said, "See? 
That's what she really looks like."
Picasso takes the photo and says,
"She's kind of small."
-laughter-
"Kind of flat.
And I don't know how she gets along with no 
legs or arms."
Conventions of reality.
See, that art critic had accepted certain 
conventions of reality
represented by a photograph of just a person's 
head.
But yet, because he accepted those conventions, 
that was reality to him.
Picasso was painting a different sort of reality.
There was just as much reality in his 
conventions.
Reality can be expressed in a variety of 
conventions. We have no right to impose our 
conventions
on the text just because we're persuaded that 
that's the more important reality.
There's the authority in the text.
We have accountability to the reality that it paints,
and to understand its conventions, and the reality 
that it is trying to express, not to impose ours on 
it.
So whose conventions count? If we're talking 
about authority,
theirs do.
So in my proposed thesis, there are two major 
points as I talk about, "What is there about the 
ancient world that we are totally
unaware of--oblivious--
that make a difference in reading Genesis 1. I'm 
going to have two things that I'm going to talk 
about.
Number one is what I call a functional ontology. 
Don't worry, I'll explain it. That might be high 
context, sorry.
Okay, but I'll explain it. And secondly, is the idea of 
the cosmic temple.
So I'm going to take a little bit of time and unpack 
these and talk about each one of them.
Okay? But again, the whole idea here is these 
are things that I have found in the Biblical text and 
in the ancient world that are totally foreign to us.
So,
day one.
Why didn't God just call the light,
"light"?
What's up?
You know, this is actually where I started, where 
I had my "aha!" moment. I was in class,
teaching about Genesis 1. Middle of a lecture.
And,
came to verse five in day one, and asked that 
very same question to my class. I had never 
asked it quite that way before, we had always
talked about the text and what it was doing. But, 
there it is. God called the light, "day."
What's up with that?
If it's light, call it "light."
If you call it "day," it's not really light, is it?
It's rather, whatever day is, a day is a period of 
light. That's the connection.
And that works; God called the period of light 
"day," and the period of darkness He called 
"night."
That makes sense.
Okay? Well back up a verse.
God separated between the light and the 
darkness.
Now, we know here we're not talking physics.
Okay? You-- darkness is the absence of light. 
You can't separate light and darkness. They're 
not together. That doesn't work at all.
But, let's stick with what we learned in verse 
five. So God separated the period of light from 
the period of darkness, and the period of light
He called "day," and the period of darkness He 
called "night." Now we can see it:
distinguishing periods, alternating periods of light 
and darkness, day and night.
Okay? Cool.
So, in verse five, it's a period of light and a period 
of darkness. In verse four, it's a period of light 
and a period of darkness. In verse three,
stick with me: God said, "Let there be."
We're stuck with it.
Period of light.
So, of course we know that in verse two there 
was darkness.
God said, "Let there be a period of light," and God 
distinguished between periods of light and 
periods of darkness, and the period of light He
named day, period of darkness he named light-- 
night. And so there's evening and there's 
morning; day one.
So on day one, God created
the basis for time.
Alternating day and night.
God created day and night on day one,
as a period of light and a period of darkness.
There is nothing material
going on here.
We might kind of
be able to think of light in material terms.
Particle wave-- I don't know about you, but I have 
trouble imagining all that. I know the physicists 
are right. I trust them, but we still have trouble
thinking of light as something material. You know, 
walk through a sunbeam and "bonk," "Sorry, I'll 
walk around that." [laughter]
No! We have trouble with that. But certainly, 
certainly if we're reading the text as an Israelite 
read the text,
they are not thinking that there's something 
material there.
To them, light is as immaterial as darkness is.
This is a period of light and a period of darkness. 
This is nothing material going on here.
Time.
Time is a function.
For them it's not Einstein type of thinking about 
time, of course.
They're not-- still they're not thinking physics 
there either.
What do they mean by time? Alternating periods 
of light and darkness.
Day and night, that's time.
This is His first step, then, in bringing order to the 
cosmos. An important function
that He establishes.
Now, that leads us to start asking questions 
about
this verb, God "created."
What are we dealing with here?
After all, if time is a function, then what do we 
mean that God "created"?
And that time is one of the results of that?
So, we have to do a little bit of study on the verb, 
"create," as it is used in Hebrew.
Here are some of the results of the study that I 
offer. It's in "Lost World," it's in other things that 
I've done. There are about fifty occurrences.
God is the subject, so it's a divine activity. But 
what's most important is, look at the direct 
objects. After all, we find out what kind of
activity a verb represents by looking at the direct 
objects.
What happens? What's the result of creating?
Okay? So, we look at it, and "Wow, look at these 
things."
we're doing with a whole list of drugged objects 
that are not material in nature
But what in the world would it mean for God to 
create something like Jerusalem?
God creates the nations,
God creates purity. "Create in me a pure heart O 
God." We're not talking about a heart transplant 
here.
Remember what heart is in that ancient context.
We're not talking about a brain transplant either.
What is it to create a pure heart?
Now we can get a little glimpse of this, because 
even in English, we have a variety of ways that
we use the verb "create." After all, we can 
create a masterpiece.
We can create a committee.
We can create a curriculum.
We can create havoc.
There's all kind of things that we could talk about 
creating; it really is not a material process.
Remember, here we're interested in 
understanding what Hebrew terminology means.
Once after I gave a lecture like this, a lady came 
up-- she was very irate. She was very upset 
with me. She didn't like what I was saying.
She didn't like my theories at all, and she said, 
"Why can't you just read the text?" [laughter]
"Why can't you read the word for what it is? It 
says 'create.'"
You know, when I-- it must have been the Spirit. I 
graciously did not open my Hebrew text and say, 
"You start."
Okay? But, see that's the issue.
We are looking at Hebrew words that have 
meaning to a Hebrew audience,
and we have to learn what that is.
When we find that "create" can be used in all 
these kinds of contexts where nothing material is 
going on,
we have to start asking the question,
"What do they understand
by this word, 'create'?"
Now, part of that we can discern by "what's the 
starting point and what's the ending point?"
In the Biblical text-- first of all, I would propose to 
you-- and I'm not going to argue this-- I'm not 
going to try to demonstrate this point--
it's not one that I hold myself-- I mean I do hold it 
myself, but I didn't make it up. Lots of Old 
Testament people believe this. That verse one
is not a separate act. It's rather a literary 
introduction.
So verse one is, "In the beginning, God created 
the heavens and the Earth--the cosmos. So let 
me tell you how He did it."
And then it's the seven days that he tells you 
how He did it, and then the result is at the end of 
those seven days, "so God completed the
heavens and the Earth, that He made." So, that's 
the way that he proceeds.
I need to keep moving with my time here, don't I? 
Okay, so, we start then in verse two,
where things are formless and void. Notice, it 
doesn't start with no material.
The sea is there. The deep.
Okay? It's already there. And so, if the starting 
point is not without material,
then,
we think that maybe he's not trying to tell you 
how all material came into being. Rather, the 
starting point is no functions.
It's not working.
It's not ordered.
No roles have been established.
And so it's lacking matter. It's not lacking matter, 
it's lacking order. Darkness and sea are elements 
of disorder, sometimes called chaos
in the ancient world. "Tohu," the words here 
"tohu wa-bohu," "formless and void,"
means "lacking worth of purpose; a place where 
nothing is done." We have an Egyptian parallel. 
The talk about the
nonexistent. And it's things like the desert, and 
the cosmic oceans, to them are nonexistent.
So here both in Hebrew Bible and the rest of the 
ancient text, we're getting the idea
that existence is not
defined by material
shape.
Structure.
That's not how they define existence.
If nonexistent can be something that we would 
call material, then existence is not defined by the 
material.
Here we're talking about ontology: what does it 
mean to exist?
Something exists by virtue of what? For us, it 
exists by virtue of having a material structure.
We can perceive it with our senses, and so we 
say it exists. "I can see it. I can touch it. It exists."
Our ontology is material.
But that's not the only way ontology can be.
But see, we would never even think that there 
could be another option.
We're so persuaded of our own ontology that we 
don't even think of another possibility.
But in the ancient world, I propose their ontology 
was functional.
That means something existed when it was given 
a function and a role in an ordered
structure.
Okay?
So, something-- the line between existence and 
nonexistence
is a functional line, not a material line.
That is their functional ontology, and that's how 
they thought in the ancient world.
And we can see evidence of this in the Bible as 
well.
Functions in Creation: we already talked about 
day one, time. Day two, weather.
God puts the weather systems as the ancients 
understood it.
Waters above, waters below. That's how the 
weather works. Separated by an air pocket and 
a solid membrane.
That's how weather works, and remember, the 
science part is just hooks.
Just like the heart, it's just hooks to hang things 
on. We don't have to go find the waters above,
or the waters below, the way they thought about 
them, just like we don't have to figure out how 
our blood pumps carry out cognitive exercises.
Okay? We don't have to do that.
We accepted that's the hooks to hang things on. 
God is not revealing science.
His point here is that God set up the function of 
weather.
Okay? Now, some people think the word used for 
the expanse, the firmament,
"raqia" in Hebrew, some people think it's the solid 
thing that holds back the waters. It might be,
in which case it's material, but it's not something 
that we think is material. We don't think there's 
anything
solid up there. NASA rockets, "boink." You know, 
we don't think that. [laughter]
Okay?
If it's the air pocket which I've been recently more 
inclined to think,
okay, that's not material. They're not thinking of
hydrogen molecules and nitrogen molecules and 
all of that, it's their world, and it's an air pocket. 
It's nothing.
So, again, day one had nothing material. Day two 
has nothing material-- at least nothing that
both they and we thought of as material. Day 
three, He says, "Let the dry land emerge."
It doesn't say "He made the dry land." It says "let 
plants sprout forth." It doesn't say He made the 
plants.
Functions. He's growing-- showing food here. 
You've got water sources, you've got dirt, and 
you've got the idea that
something grows, drops seed. "Same thing 
grew!" Drops seed. "Whoa! Happened again!"
We've lost the wonder of it, but [laughter]
this is the whole process! Amazing.
And that's why we have food.
In days one, two, and three, God created time, 
weather, and food. Now I'll tell you, that is 
meaningful to any culture, any time, any place,
and it's what we talk about at the bus stop and 
supermarket: time, weather, and food.
Somehow quarks haven't slipped into the 
conversation yet. [laughter]
So God set up this functional world, the 
functional world we all know.
He's the one that made it work.
They are not interested
in the manufacture of material.
It's just not on their radar. They don't care. Just 
like when you open your computer, you're 
interested in your operating system and apps
and the speed of this ROM and RAM, right? And 
you never once have asked the question about 
the soldering on your motherboard.
You don't care.
It's not an issue for you.
You care about the functions of that computer.
And so, in the ancient world, they cared about 
the functions in their world, because it's a world 
that's run by God or gods,
and who's in charge is what's important.
It's a business. It's a kingdom. It's not a machine.
And the material parts were of no concern to 
them. Look at Genesis 8:22. After the flood, God 
restores all of this.
"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and 
harvest," that's food,
"cold, heat, summer, winter," that's weather.
"Day and night," that's time.  Re-establishing the 
functions of Creation.
So our functional ontology: in ancient functional 
ontology, existence is defined by having a 
function. Genesis 1 then provides an account
of functional origins, not an account of material 
origins. It's their world. It's their text.
Genesis 1 is about God bringing order (that is 
functionality) out of disorder (that is 
nonfunctionality). It is therefore fruitless to ask
what things God created on a given day, what He 
made, what He manufactured,
because the text is not concerned about the 
existence of matter or foundational history.
Whatever matter existed or exists, God made it.
But we're not asking about all the things God did. 
We're asking,
"What is this account about?"
Because it's their text, not ours.
Dilbert! "Every project you worked on this year 
got cancelled after reorganization." Functional 
negation; you did nothing.
"It's as if you didn't exist!" Functional ontology, 
right? You didn't exist, because you didn't do 
anything.
"Well that's not entirely true. I occupied space."
Material ontology comes in strong.
"I'd like to see someone who doesn't exist do 
that." Well, "a dead person can occupy space." 
Uh oh.
"But a dead person exists." Really?
Hmm. Material.
Not functional.
Even in Dilbert.
The logical superiority of a functional ontology 
over a material one. [laughter]
Consider, nearly all of the modern controversies 
concern what the Biblical view is of the span of 
time over which things--
material objects--were created.
Old earth, young earth, that's material questions. 
If the text primarily addresses functions, not 
material, what's the implications for the
controversies? Poof.
Cosmos as temple--boy, I've got to move fast. 
Sorry. We doing alright? Okay. Cosmos as temple. 
Okay?
When we read Genesis 1, we get to day seven 
and we think that, "Oh okay, we've reached the 
end. This is the end music," as my father used to
call it in the movies. You know, it's just kind of 
tying things up here. A little theological footnote, 
and we're all taken care of here.
The real Creation takes place on days one 
through six. Day seven, you know, God rested. 
Whatever in the world that means.
Well no, not okay.
An ancient reading the text has a totally different 
response.
An ancient reading the text says, "Oh, this is a 
temple text."
And you say, "say what?
Where'd you get that? I don't see the world 
temple anywhere in sight."
That's easy. God rested.
"Okay, I'm not with you."
Gods rest in temples. That's the only place gods 
rest: in temples. In fact, that's what temples are 
built for--for gods to rest in.
If God's resting, this is a temple text.
We'd never see that.
High context. We're not in that circle of 
communication. We've got some catching up to 
do.
That's an ancient temple text there. Rest is the 
main goal of creation.
People may be the climax of the six days, but rest 
is the climax of the creation account.
This is a temple text. God, I'm proposing, is setting 
up the cosmos as sacred space, which is 
marked by his presence; what we call a temple.
God is setting up sacred space for his 
occupation.
If God's not there, it's not sacred space,
and all of the passage is meaningless.
He sets it up to work for people. He doesn't need 
it,
but he sets it up as sacred space. That means 
He's in it.
And if you miss that, you miss what Genesis 1 is 
all about.
Because this is not just about a
cosmos full of material stuff. It's about a cosmos 
that is sacred space, working for people with 
God in it, to relate to these people that
to relate to these people that He has created.
The temple is constructed as a microcosmos. I 
can't go into the details. Look at Psalm 132: "Let 
us go to his dwelling place"--temple--
"let us worship at his footstool"--the ark--"arise, 
O Lord. Come to your resting place." That's what 
the temple is.
For You and the ark of Your might, for the Lord 
has chosen Zion, He has desired it for His 
dwelling," okay? Temple.
"This is my resting place." Okay, now we get the 
clincher.
"Forever and ever, here I will sit,
enthroned."
We think of God resting as kind of kicking back, 
"Okay, I've had a hard week, creating things.
I'm just going to take a breather here." We know 
that's not true, but we don't know what else to 
say.
This tells us what to say.
When God rests, it means He has taken up His 
place there, His throne, His rest, His rule. Rest 
means everything
has been brought under His control, so that now 
what becomes normal can proceed.
God is ruling in His place.
When God says He's going to bring rest to Israel 
from her enemies all around, He's not saying,
"So you can watch Sunday afternoon football," 
or "so you can kind of sit back and have a cool 
drink."
He gives them rest, which means He brings them 
stability--equilibrium--so that they can live their 
lives.
That's what rest is, and Hebrews tells us we 
haven't quite gotten there yet.
There's more rest coming in God's presence, in 
new creation.
When God rests, it means He has created 
stability in this cosmos that is now operating four 
people as sacred space.
Him in it, relating to His Creation. It's His temple. 
This cosmos is sacred space.
And that's what it has to tell you. It is functional, 
sacred space.
The seven days then; we find out that temple 
inaugurations take place often enough in seven 
day periods.
If we ask, "Why is this happening in seven 
days?" It's because it's the inauguration of 
sacred space.
When they built Solomon's temple, they had years 
and years and years of material preparation.
And even when all that preparation was done, 
there it stands. You could look at it. You could 
touch it.
Is it a temple? No!
It's ready to be a temple.
Only when God comes into it in a seven day 
inauguration process,
does it become the sacred space it was built to 
be,
in a long material process.
So, the day suggest-- word "day" suggested 
should be a twenty-four hour period. Fine. But it's 
not a day for material things happening.
So that seven days has nothing to do with the 
age of the Earth. Age of the Earth is a material 
question.
Okay? So this is not about the age of the Earth. 
This is functions,
not material.
Seven days is a temple inauguration. The objects 
are not necessarily being made in those seven 
days.
The days are concerned with bringing order, not 
making things, and therefore the seven days 
have nothing to do with the age of the Earth.
We really got to move here. So, the text asserts 
that in the seven day initial period, God brought 
the cosmos into operation by assigning roles
and functions. That's what I propose Genesis 1 is.
I'd better stop there. Thank you very much.
-applause-
