Is the Genesis Creation Story Relevant To Us in the Space Age?

'Earthrise'

In 1968 James Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman were aboard Apollo VIII as it was drawn into the gravitational field of the Moon. As the orbit began they read from the opening verses in the book of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen. 1:1) …

Beholding the Earth rising majestically above the lunar landscape, these scientifically trained men of faith read from a text that lies at the heart of Western civilization and literature. Was this nostalgia for a sacred religious text, a poignant reminder of a bygone era? Or, was it the sign of a deeper connection between the age-old wisdom of the Bible and the quest for certainty of knowledge that drives present-day scientists?

Nowadays knowledge about how the solar system was formed is provided by leading astrophysicists and organizations like NASA. No one who is scientifically literate opens the Bible, even though the first chapter describes the formation of the Sun, Moon, Earth and other planets (‘stars’) in the narrative of the fourth day (Gen. 1:16). This indicates how deeply the ethos and theories of modern science have shaped our understanding of the cosmos.

This is not surprising since numerous scientific discoveries have called into question the truth of biblical statements concerning how God created the world. Famously, Nicolaus Copernicus demonstrated that the Sun is at the astronomical centre of the solar system, with the Earth in orbit and rotating on its axis − and Galileo adopted this solar cosmology that is now normative. So it is reasonable to ask what the Bible can offer in an age of science. Perhaps the Genesis creation story has reached its use-by date, and the time has come to concede that astrophysical discourse has replaced it.

Let’s consider another possibility. Rapid developments in space science might empower us to re-engage with the teachings of the Bible at a deeper level than was possible for past generations. Why this view is never discussed needs to be teased out.

A fracture has run through Western culture since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, arising from the modern conviction that theology and science are largely independent disciplines with little common ground. Jewish and Christian religious thinkers decided that modern science is the authority for answering questions concerning how the world came into existence, whereas theology treats the why of existence. This mentality informs the work of liberal sceptics who claim that the narrative of the seven days of creation is a religious text written in the idiom of poetry, and that it was never intended to provide a scientific explanation of the origins of existence. This is a ‘science-free’ theory of interpretation because cosmology and astrophysics are deemed to have nothing to do with the subject matter. But the whole project is problematic because the faith-science division is a modern invention!

Understandably, during the nineteenth century conservatives reacted to this extreme scepticism regarding the truth of Genesis 1-2. In the US Christian fundamentalism took root in the early twentieth century and developed into creationism (or intelligent design). In these circles a deadening literalism asserts that ‘creation science’ records how God created the world in seven 24-hour days. Numerous commentators (e.g., Lloyd Bailey and Howard Van Till) demonstrate that creationists try to exalt the authority of the Bible by producing pseudo-science.

A new approach alive to the indigenous culture of the biblical author is required. The creation story draws heavily on Egyptian, Canaanite and Babylonian origin myths and, since myth is a kind of proto-theology and proto-science, the faith-science fracture of modernism is clearly alien to the narrative. Only a method of interpretation that is at once theological and scientific is commensurate with the author’s narrative world. I introduce ‘theological’ or ‘spiritual’ science to collapse the obsolete faith-science dichotomy that has bedeviled biblical studies for three centuries. The upshot is that we can come to the text afresh, without the cultural baggage of discredited liberal and creationist approaches.

I have discovered that biblical theology has an inherent scientific dimension of meaning, that is, the why and how are fused. The theatre of creation in Genesis can be shown to correspond to what we think of as the solar system. But fruitful engagement with the biblical text is only feasible if the scientific worldview rooted in matter is properly configured in relation to the more inclusive biblical worldview. The problem is that the Genesis story of creation begins with a spiritual reality − the mysterious ‘spirit of God’ moving over the face of the dark waters (Gen. 1:2) – and ends with matter organized into mineral and biological forms. In contrast, astrophysics begins and ends with matter. In short, we must ensure that biblical ‘apples’ are being compared with astrophysical ‘apples.’

The biblical model envisages two stages leading from spiritual realities (causative forces) to astrophysical and biophysical processes. The first is metaphysical and beyond the domain boundaries of natural science which only enters the picture when grappling with the second stage of physical manifestation.

One task is to discover the physical sense of a narrative written from an overarching spiritual perspective, and the objective clarity of space science is a powerful tool for making sense of a dense and notoriously difficult text. When leading-edge astrophysics is cross-referenced with the biblical text we can decipher advanced scientific concepts conveyed through theological language written using the pictorial idiom of story. Conversely, holistic pictures in Genesis have the power to integrate an avalanche of scientific data and facts (meaningless in isolation) into an imaginative narrative with explanatory power.

The results of my research demonstrate that the enigmatic ‘days’ of creation can be correlated with developmental stages pinpointed by astrophysicists to explain the formation of our solar system. Over the next year or so I wish to share this material with you, by publishing these findings in electronic and printed formats.