Letter to my minister on a sermon he gave this week.
I was pleased that your series on Genesis commenced with theological questions. Too often consideration of Genesis 1 sets out initially to grapple with various concordist challenges to the detriment of its central message.
Without wanting to throw a spanner in the works, the notional separation of a literary and a literal take on Genesis 1 is problematical on a number of fronts, in my estimation.
At the outset the distinction seems artificial, as anything intentionally written is by virtue of this fact literature and will be marked by literary devices of various sorts. The question of genre, and the framing of a hermeneutic approach from this is pertinent; but whence our conclusions about genre? From two directions, I think. The overarching 'meta-genre' of the containing unit of text has to be one determinant, with the other responsively being the lexical-grammatical forms and micro-structure of the subject text.
Of course, the meta-genre that Genesis 1 forms a part of is largely historical; about 20% of Genesis 1-11 is concerned with passing time, denoted with a high level of specificity – and I am aware of some of the debates here, but it is inescapable that a large number of verses are to do with historical flow denominated with what would appear to be precise date references; furthermore a similar proportion of Genesis 1 has a similar characteristic.
Undeniably, there are various forms of literature within the Pentateuch, including a snippet of poetry in Genesis 1, and elsewhere, legal codes (compare Ex 20:11, for example), and lists. Blocher refers to Genesis 1 as a 'list' and its form seemingly lines up nicely with Numbers 7. Indeed, the regularity of the treatment in Genesis 1 reminds me more of a computer data structure than anything else: a fabulous means of communicating a sequence in an economical and unambiguous manner; with particular reinforcement of the flow. In fact, in Genesis 1, the author is emphatic about chronological flow.
But, the critical question for the so-called 'Framework Hypothesis', is does the passage allow the six days to fall into paired triads? First raised, to my knowledge, by Herder, in the 19th C. then debunked by Keil and Delitzsch, revived by Noordzij, rebutted by Young, given fresh air by Kline, as the doyen of contemporary frameworkers, then criticised by Pipa and McCabe (and McCabe part 2), amongst others. It's had its latest day out to my knowledge with John D at an ISCAST seminar a few years ago at UNSW.
All said and done, though, it doesn't work! The correspondence proposed appears to hold at first blush, but when the detail is brought to the table, any coherence evaporates. Heavenly bodies of D4 are placed in the firmament of D2, not D1. Birds of D5 breed on the ground of D3 and they are not in the firmament, but on its face; the creatures of water of D5 live in the oceans of D3. The land for D6 has its first mention by implication on D1, in the earth's wilderness state. No line up at all! The point has often been made in the literature, but the frameworkers have failed to deal with it.
The 'forming-filling' analysis seems interesting, but I think also falls short of the mark. In not properly handling the cascade of dependencies that build in complexity as a network of relationships are woven through the six days; days of organising and distributing with increasing refinement. Acknowledging this provides a sounder basis for developing a theology of creation than the comparative aridity of the 'forming-filling' model, in my view.
Then, one has to ask, what would be the purpose of a 'framework,' if there was one, or even of the 6 days if purely a literary stylism? I've not read anything that convincingly sets out a purpose that is proximately connected with the content of the text and not 'puff'. There are 'purposes' proposed, but they are distant from the text's references, and being distant, do not make a connection with what is related in the terms related. They are not consistent with the relational intimacy that the Bible speaks of between God and mankind, and so, in concept, depart from the text and do not support its central message of relationship and dependency. I actually asked John D. how Genesis taught what is commonly claimed if it wasn't true to life. He gave no answer (but that could just be John being John).
Similarly to the approach you discussed, the abstracted theology that is presented as being the point of the revelation ends merely with a form of propaganda for God's being an orderly creator, we being his dependent creatures or in symbolic contests with competing myths: polemical 'mythbusting' as you put it. No adequate explanation is ever given in these contexts as to how a mere arrangement of words, without any real world referent that corresponds to those words, busts any myth? It's merely an unproductive case of 'my myth vs your myth,' reminiscent of the old Goon Show joke "give up, or I'll show you a photograph of a gun"
God's formation and his re-formations of his relationship with his creation, then his particular people is always based on his acts (initiated by his word), not just words empty of concrete effect; facts, not fiction; acts grounded in a realist encounter. Consider, for example, the competition with Baal and the wet wood.
Genesis 1 stands at the commencement of a great trajectory of history that will culminate in the (real) new heavens and the new earth; the incarnational trajectory is similarly historical, with the Son of Man doing what the Son of God (Adam, referring to Luke's genealogy) failed to do. The two trajectories are coupled ontologically; if one is undermined they both collapse.
My fundamental concern with the direction taken in your sermon is that it was not sufficiently free from the dualist shackles that dog us in both theology and culture. For example, if God brings order from chaos, the question immediately springs as to the origin of the chaos. It would seem peculiar to make a problem in order to solve it, and just for rhetorical reasons. Or it may invite reference to a sort of 'counter-demiurge' to do the initial 'chaos making'. Either way, inconsistent, I would think, with Genesis 1 which has its focus the steady and grand unfolding from initial conditions.
Assigning to Genesis 1 the status of a purely theological account of origins also steps through the idealist portal and invites us to run a kind of OT docetism. The disconnection of theology from the real world runs counter to the Bible's pattern of theology being embedded in real world events: that is, events bounded by our 'earth frame of reference' and the horizon of the categories of human experience: what is in relation to God and in this world of his making is coupled, not disarticulated.
Nowhere in the Bible is there such a disjunct between what God reveals and what he does as the 'literary' theology of creation requires. Moreover, to make such a separation immediately undermines any attempt at a polemic not rooted in actuality. Doubly ironic for the creation account in that it sets the terms of its perspective very forcefully: by making it's only referents the categories of our life: place, time and relationships all which are within the terms of our experience, and in material terms; how peculiar if the revelation of creation is very 'this-worldly' in terms and categories, but intends to reveal something 'unworldly' (that is, something else really happened, not this, but the 'other' is more significant that what is conveyed)! Thus it raises the question of the truth-value of Genesis 1, if it is only true 'theologically'. The 'idealist (or, even worse, dualist) on the premises' alarm bells start ringing because 'theology' is itself not 'real'. Theology is our discourse about God and from his revelation and that alone. To say that Genesis 1 is only a theological truth is exactly what we would avoid in theologising about the Incarnation, for instance, and should be what we would avoid with any part of the revelation, particularly where the question of genre interfering with an historical appreciation is typically answered tendentiously. No, it is only possible to do theology with Genesis 1 because it is put in the same 'historical realist' frame as all God's dealings under his covenants and the only frame of our experience of God. The history of relationships is earthily historical; to think that Israel invited Babylonian or other pagan myth-making to underpin its very personal and concrete religion is surprising, to say the least.
Overall, it would be interesting to contemplate how we might know that Genesis 1 is not true to actual events circumscribed by our spatial-temporal frame and so establish that it makes only a 'theological' play, and not a realist one. Would we refer, or defer, to the conclusions of a worldview that starts with the assumption that there is no God? Would this not have us jettison the worldview that emerged from Genesis—from taking Genesis seriously, and literally, I might add—and, as you rightly mentioned, formed the basis for modern science, as Jaki, Harrison and others have described?
The final word I think which unhinges the dualism of Genesis 1 as a 'theological' account, but not an historical-realist account is the remark that M. made at the end of the service, He said something to the effect that he would now be able to discuss the 'unreal story' [of creation] with his classes but not imply an 'unreal God'. To the contrary! If the origin is an 'unreal' story, then we must look elsewhere for who we really are: the God who cannot found a relationship in actual events is probably not a god that can maintain any relationship with temporal creatures…as holds much of the New Age movement. I'm sure most of his students will see the unreality of a god who only attaches to us through a non-story that tells of things that didn't happen. Literary or not: a God we cannot meet.
