There’s a common hermeneutical epistemology employed in respect of Genesis 1 that represents, I think, a retreat from the possibility of gaining understanding, rather than an advance into understanding. Applied to texts wholesale, the approach often adopted to Genesis 1, etc. would render problematic any attempt to provide safety instructions on cleaning fluids!
One of the features of the relationship between us and God is that it rests on propositions: the ‘word’ is of central importance in Christian theology, practice and devotion. Indeed, it was in the beginning and through it all that exists came about (John 1:1-3 and Genesis 1, Hebrews 1:2, 11:3 Ps 33:9?).
But when it comes to G 1, we have commentators telling us that God is not capable of communicating propositions that have any connection with the real world to which they appear to represent a connection, but by such propositions communicates something other than the content of the words used.
This does two very dramatic things: firstly, it puts out approach to the Bible on par with a world-concept in which there is no communicating God. It gives Christian theology the same footing as paganism, where lack of knowledge leads to myth, where explanation is rendered irrelevant and inaccessible by the ‘mists of time’, questioning is deflected by vagueness, and enquiry denied by imprecision. In G 1 we have to the contrary of myth the elucidation of information to demonstrate, not just assert, God’s creative activity. If the information is false, the demonstration fails and we don’t know that (let alone what) God created!
Asserting the validity for exegesis of applying whatever explanation we like for words in the Bible (that is, explanations that overturn the sense of the words on their face reading, given the narrative genre we are dealing with here), puts us in the same position as the pagan who denies that there are any such words, or an author of God’s capability and love (and therefore truthfulness) to produce them.
Secondly, and by implication, it denies that the content of G 1 is able to convey precision, despite it being replete with precision on its face: as to timing, events, and their distribution over the period stated. If anything, the content is nothing but precise. To overturn it, you must deny that God can communicate content that is congruent with actual events in our earth “frame of reference”. And if he can’t, you must establish the basis upon which we can use the communication of these events (which become not-events) to establish a principle that only exists on the basis of the report of these events having correspondence with their occurrence in time and space, and therefore having a date and a location!
The step-wise denial, which if not articulated by commentators, is implicit, means that the hope that we can make anything of G 1 collapses under the weight of a level of incoherence that makes texts pointless as means of communicating. Welcome to the Framework Hypothesis!
(Briefly here: a previous post on God's word qua word.)
