The Function of Humanity

One of the things that gets lost in the origins debate is the role assigned to humans in Genesis One. We are:

• Like the animals, commanded to be fruitful and multiply;
• Given the charge of subduing and ruling creation;
• Created male and female;
• Created in the image of God.

The most important of the four is that we are created in the image of God. “All of the rest of creation functions in relationship to humankind, and humankind serves the rest of creation as God’s vice regent.” (Walton, 68) In other words, we represent God to creation, ruling it and caring for it as he would. This, of course, has many ecological implications, but I’d like to stick with the theological implications for now.

Humans are not assigned such a high place in the creation stories of Israel’s neighbors. In fact, the purpose of humanity was to serve as the slaves of the gods. We are here to see to it that all of the gods’ needs are taken care of. Creation has been made in order to serve the needs and pleasures of the gods, and humans are often a most despicable byproduct of some great cosmic battle, being made from the blood of some horrible chaos monster. “In the rest of the ancient world creation was set up to serve the gods, a theocentric view, in Genesis, creation is not set up for the benefit of God but for the benefit of humanity—an anthropocentric view.” (69)

If creation is anthropocentric, it is because God has no need of creation. That is to say, he is distinct from creation. All the other ancient cultures viewed creation as an extension of a greater, unseen, and truer reality—the realm of the gods. (see also, The Bible Among the Myths by John Oswalt) Therefore, what happens on earth is happening in the truer, invisible reality. But the genius of Genesis One is that it establishes the transcendence of God—the teaching that he is distinct and above creation. He has created this world not for himself, but for us.

Rather than being an inferior copy of a greater, unseen reality, God elevates the state of creation by making it his temple! On the seventh day he moves into his temple because, as Walton points out, divine rest always takes place in a temple. Now, every temple has an image of the god to whom that temple belongs. And what is the image in God’s temple? Humans!

The images of all the other gods are made of wood or stone. They can’t move, speak, or think. But the image of God is made of flesh and blood, and they can run and speak and write and think and choose and love! The image of God is alive! How much greater than all the other gods is that God whose image is alive. The nonfunctional, nonexistent images of the other gods imply that those gods do not exist. The living, breathing image of YHWH God means that he is alive!

Book Review: The Lost World of Genesis One

The first chapter of Genesis is the most hotly contested biblical text of our time. Theories and interpretations abound as scholars have turned the chapter upside down and inside out looking for biblical clues (and ammunition) to the origins of the universe. There are at least four major schools of interpretation on Genesis One: young-earth creationism; day-age theory; the gap theory; and the literary hypothesis. It’s time to add a fifth school to that list: John Walton’s cosmic temple inauguration.

Walton derives his thesis from his exploration of Ancient Near Eastern cultures and their creation myths. The problem with the current, Western interpretations of Genesis One is their failure to overcome the distance between our modern culture and the culture of ancient Israel (existing alongside and within larger cultures like Egypt and Babylon, which all have their own fascinating creation stories). “Despite all the distinctions that existed across the ancient world, any given culture was more similar to other ancient cultures than any of them are to Western American or European culture.” (12)

Crossing this cultural gulf means making one significant, and seemingly obvious, proposition: Genesis 1 is ancient cosmology. (16) This means that “it does not attempt to describe cosmology in modern terms or address modern questions.” (16) What, then, are the terms in which it describes cosmology? This is the crucial question, and what sets Walton’s interpretation on a different course from the others.

Moderns tend to think of creation only terms of material origins. What is the sun made of and how did it come into being? How long did it take for the mountains to be formed and how did they get their current shape? What is the physical composition of humanity and how did we get to be the way we are now? These are the questions of a modern, Enlightenment-oriented culture. But these are not the questions of a polytheistic culture, or even a monotheistic culture within a wider polytheistic world? In order to understand Genesis One, we need to ask the questions the ancients asked.

Rather than questioning the material origins of the universe, the ancients told stories about the functional origins of creation. Existence, for them, was not tied to the material properties of an object, but rather to how that object functioned within a closed system. “In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it material properties.” (26) Walton proves his point through numerous examples from ancient Near Eastern texts, and concludes with this contrast between modern and ancient thinking: “We tend to think of the cosmos as a machine and argue whether someone is running the machine or not. The ancient world viewed the cosmos more like…a kingdom.” (35)

Functional Ontology is the cornerstone of Walton’s interpretation of Genesis One. Using this as his lens, he sees in Days 1-3 the creation of the three fundamental functions of life: time, weather, and food. “So on day one God created the basis for time; day two the basis for weather; and day three the basis for food. …If we desire to see the greatest work of the Creator, it is not to be found in the materials that he brought together—it is that he brought them together in such a way that they work.” (59) Perhaps a better translation of “It was good”, then, would be “It worked.”

From here, Walton proposes that Genesis One “should be understood as an account of functional origins of the cosmos as a temple.” (84) Because “divine rest takes place in temples,” (87) the seven days of creation are best understood as a temple inauguration. “By naming the functions and installing the functionaries, and finally by deity entering his resting place, the temple comes into existence—it is created in the inauguration ceremony.” (89)

The implications of this interpretation are numerous., but I will only mention two. First, if Genesis One is an account of functional origins rather than material origins, there is no conflict between a “literal” reading of Genesis and the findings of evolutionary science. (Walton argues that the real fight between the creation (and ID) camp and the evolution camp is over teleology, and he makes some interesting prescriptions for public scientific education.) Second, if the cosmos is God’s temple (or divine resting place) then there are no such things as natural resources—there are only sacred resources, and we must adjust our ecology accordingly.

Walton’s book offers valuable insight into the Genesis One debate, and ought to be carefully examined by those on all sides. There is much more in the book that is worthy of discussion, and it is accessible enough to encourage conversation between all interested parties.

Questions: Does Walton present a reading of Genesis One that allows Christians to remain theologically and exegetically faithful while being scientifically relevant? Do you find the argument of functional ontology convincing? How does this interpretation change the game on cosmic origins?

Six Days of Creation

For the last several days I’ve been blogging through John Walton’s book, The Lost World of Genesis One. It’s a fantastic book that has very interesting and compelling interpretation of Genesis 1. Today I’m going to dig more deeply into the text and lay out Walton’s understanding of the six days of creation.

The table below represents the arrangement that Walton sees in the six days of Creation. For those of you who are aware of the Literary Framework interpretation of this chapter, you'll see some basic similarities between the two.

Day	Function	Day	Functionaries
1	Time	4	Sun and Moon
2	Weather	5	Fish and Birds
3	Food	6	Animals and Humans

On the first day, God created light and separated it from darkness. He called the light "Day" and the darkness "Night". He is clearly establishing the function of time on the first day.

On the second day God created something called an expanse, or a firmament, which the ancients believed to be a material object that held back the waters in the sky. The expanse had windows and doors in it that allowed rain to come through in season. We can understand this today as God establishing the function of weather.

On the third day God gathered the lower waters so that dry ground would appear, and out of that dry ground grew vegetation. In other words, he created the function of agriculture, or food.

Time, weather, and food are the crucial and unique elements required to sustain life on earth. They are the ordering principles of existence. So on the first three days God is creating the fundamental functions of existence.

On the fourth day God creates the sun and moon to govern time. On the fifth day God creates fish and birds, not to govern weather, but to populate the spheres of sky and sea. He also gives them a function: Be fruitful and multiply. Likewise, on the sixth day he creates animals, not to govern the land, but to populate it with the same function: Be fruitful and multiply. The function of the beasts is life.

This, of course, brings us to humans. But that's such a big topic that it deserves its own post.

A Picture of the Universe

Have you ever wondered how the ancients viewed the world? What did they think the universe looked like? Here's a good representation created by Michael Paukner. You can find it here.

While I'm not sure he and I share the same appreciation for the Bible, it is important to know how the ancient Israelites pictured the world. And who knows that in 5000 years people won't be laughing at our picture of the universe.

Rethinking Create

Yesterday I blogged about how modern folks have a certain way of looking at the world and the nature of the existence of an object, or its ontology. We tend to think of the material properties of an object as its primary characteristic of being. In other words, a coffee table is still coffee table regardless of where it is or how it is used. But the ancients didn’t think this way. They weren’t concerned with material origins because that question was settled—whatever was made was made by the gods. Instead, they thought in terms of functional origins. Of course the gods made the sun but their concern was with how it came to function in the world.

Because the ancients held to a functional ontology, we need to rethink a very important word in Genesis 1—create. If the most important thing about something is how it works instead of what it’s made of, we need to understand the word create in terms of function instead of materials.

In his book The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton does a comprehensive word study on the Hebrew word bara, which we translate create. (And remember, in order to read a text literally its crucial that we know how to read it in the original language, not our English translation.) He finds that in every instance of the verb bara, God is the subject and the object is difficult to identify in material terms. This leads him to conclude that “the Israelites understood the word bara to convey creation in functional terms.” (43)

So what does this mean? When we read Genesis 1:1, we tend to read it like this:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing.

Of course none of us consciously add that bit at the end because we wouldn’t dare do that to the biblical text, but that’s the assumption that we work from. To create something means to give it material properties. But to the ancient mind, to create something means to give it a function and a purpose. So the first readers of Genesis 1:1 probably read it in some way like this:

In the beginning, God established the system of heaven and earth.

And the rest of the chapter doesn’t so much tell us how he did that, but why he did it.

Rethinking Ontology

I come across many big words in my reading, and to be honest, I don’t always know what they mean. But I like to pretend I do so that I don’t feel stupid. One of the words that I’ve come across again and again and never understood well is ontology. It comes up often enough in the books I read that I probably should have looked it up in the dictionary, but alas, in the words of Krusty the Clown, I’m a lazy, lazy man.

John Walton uses the word ontology in his book The Lost World of Genesis One on nearly every page, but he graciously provides a definition of the term at the very beginning. “The ontology of X is what it means for X to exist.” (24) Using the example of my coffee table, the ontology of my coffee table is how I define the “principle quality” of its existence.

In our post-Enlightenment world, we define the principle quality of the coffee table’s existence as its material construction. In other words, the coffee table exists whether or not it’s a part of my living room décor. It exists because it has been built. The source materials of wood and paint have been combined in such a way that a coffee table has been created. Where it is (my living room or the showroom floor) and how it is used (to store magazines or prop up my feet) is irrelevant to its existence. This is what we would call a material ontology. The coffee table exists because it has been constructed out of certain source materials.

But Walton contends that this is a relatively new way of understanding ontology—of looking at the world. The ancients, he says, were not concerned with material ontology because everything existed according to the will of the gods. In other words, there was no distinction between natural and supernatural. There was only supernatural. So the question was not, “Where did this come from” or “Who made this”. They knew the answer to that—the gods. The question was, “How does this work”. “People in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function within an ordered system.” (26)

This means that we have been asking the wrong questions of Genesis 1. We have been asking the text to answer questions of material ontology, but it was written to answer the questions of functional ontology. We have been asking, “Where did the universe come from” and “How was it created”. But, in Genesis 1, God is telling us how it all works and why it was all created. In order to understand Genesis 1, we need to shift our ontology. We need to look at the world through the lens of ancient cultures rather than our own post-Enlightenment worldview. Until we can do that, we’ll never understand that all-important first chapter of the Bible.

Origins

There is, perhaps, no more hotly debated biblical text than Genesis 1. Within the Church, Christians interpret this chapter in at least four ways: 6-day literalism, day-age theory, the gap theory, and literary framework. (For a good look at the strengths and weaknesses of these four views, check out this session {with handouts} from our e4 course.) Evolutionary atheists outside of the church use this text more than any other to attack the authority and veracity of the Scriptures. It is a morass of passion, propaganda, and poor exegesis. Can we possibly hope to find clarity within and direction out of the swirling chaos of the creation v. evolution cultural war?

I just finished reading John Walton’s excellent book, The Lost World of Genesis One. (Review coming on Friday) I highly recommend that you read this book because in it, I believe, Walton points the way out of this mess. I’ll be blogging on this book for the rest of the week, and I’ll start with Walton’s most important point.

When you read Genesis 1, what do you think is going on? Is it the story of God creating the material universe out of nothing in a meager six days? How do you suppose that the people of ancient Near Eastern cultures, including ancient Israel, understood their own creation myths? What was of greatest significance to them?

Since the Enlightenment, material origins has been of greatest significance to the Western mind. When we think of creation, we think of how something came to have the physical properties it now has. Take the coffee table on which my feet are currently propped, for example. What materials is it made of? (Wood and wicker.) How was it constructed? (Probably in a factory somewhere.) These are the questions of origin that we ask.

Believe it or not, these are not the questions of origin that the ancients asked. They were not concerned with material origins. Instead, they gave significance to functional origins. That is, they didn’t necessarily care how the coffee table was built, but rather how it came to function as a coffee table within the closed system of my living room. In other words, the coffee table did not exist until I bought it, placed it in my living room, and then put my feet up on it. It served no purpose in the showroom (and therefore had no significance and no existence), but in my living room it has a great purpose and functions within the closed system of my living room décor.

When we extrapolate this out to the cosmos, we find that the ancients didn’t write mythologies and hymns about the material creation of the earth, but rather of how the earth (and humanity along with the rest of creation) came to function for the purposes of the gods. In this way, Genesis 1 is no different from the creation myths of Egypt, Babylon, or any other ancient Near Eastern culture. Genesis 1 is a hymn about the functional origins, and not the material origins, of the cosmos.

This may be difficult to understand, which is why you should read Walton’s book. I’m only summarizing here. But I’m looking forward to exploring these themes and their implications more this week.