From the time I was child I've been fascinated by the natural world, and since I was in high school I've been very concerned about developing good ways of bridging the perceived gap between Geology and the Bible. I majored in Geology in college with the intention of going to the Institute for Creation Research after graduation. While in college I became disenchanted with that enterprise (for reasons I'll discuss later), and I've focused since then on developing what I hope are faithful ways of interpreting Scripture as a theological text rather than a scientific text. Over the last few years, I've become progressively more concerned with our need to respond to global environmental problems such as climate change and land use issues that are unsustainable for our planet. In the process, it's become increasingly clear to me that the evangelical church does not have a meaningful way to engage in these types of issues in a way that is both Biblically grounded and relevant to contemporary concerns. What I'd like to do here is offer a series of posts as a kind of working hypothesis to be tested by other like-minded believers who have both a high view of the authority and inerrancy of Scripture and a desire to be honest and forthcoming about scientific evidence.
A casual survey of Christian literature investigating science and faith issues reveals that, even among those with "evangelical" commitments, we tend to adopt one of two strategies (with a myriad of ways to use each strategy). We tend either to make our understanding of scientific evidence conform to our interpretation of the Bible or we make the Bible conform to our understanding of scientific evidence. We can refer to each of these broad strategies (with a lot of diversity in each) as literalist and concordist strategies (I'm open to a different set of terminology).
I grew up with a more literalist upbringing, but one of the challenges I've faced, both as I studied Geology in college and the Scriptures in seminary, is that very few of those identifying with the literalist camp are actually literalists. The language of Scripture frequently gets taken metaphorically (and sometimes the language of Scripture is obscured by translations). If you look the Scriptures carefully, though, you see a fairly consistent description of Biblical cosmology. The Biblical cosmology may look very surprising to modern readers. According to Scripture:
- The Earth is laid on foundations (1 Ki 16:34; Ps 137:7; Isa 44:28; 54:11, 12; Lam 4:11; Mic 1:6.) "In the beginning [God] laid the foundations of the earth" (Ps 102:25; see also Isa 51:13).
- The Earth has "footings" and a "cornerstone" (Job 38:6).
- On these foundations are pillars (Job 26:11; Ps 75:3), and the earth and sky are built on these pillars.
- On land there exist "fountains of the deep" that bring water up from the lower waters to the surface of the Earth (Gen. 7:11, 8:2; Prov. 8:28; 18:4).
- The Hebrew word for sky is raqia, often used to describe a flattened material (Ps 136:6; Isa 42:5) that God has stretched out by his wisdom (Job 9:4-10; see also 38:1-41; Amos 9:6; Ps 104:2-3; Isa 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13; Jer 10:12; 51:15) like a tent (Ps 104:2), a veil or a curtain (Isa 40:22).
- The Sun and the Moon (and the stars) move in the raqia; the Sun's movement predictably moves linearly from east to west during the day. The sun rises above the horizon in the east and sets below the horizon in the west (Is 45:6; 59:19), then travels back to its starting place at night (Ecc 1:5). The sun's starting point are compared to a bed chamber (Ps 19:5). During the day, the Sun illuminates the whole surface of the Earth (Ps 19:6).
- The raqia has "windows," "doors" (Ps 78:23) or portals to the "waters above" (2 Kings 7:2; Mal 3:10; Gen 7:11; 8:2; cf. Isa 24:18).
- Above the raqia is God’s chambers (Ps 104:3) or throne room (Ps 11:4).
If we put all these features of a Biblical cosmology together, it would look something like the diagram below. The diagram is missing some of the features I describe above (like the fountains of the deep) and doesn't show the Earth's mountains, but it's a pretty good description.
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From Peter Enns Inspiration and Incarnation[1]
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What should be clear from this description of the cosmos is that God is describing creation like a building—it has foundations, a floor, pillars holding up a ceiling, and lights that shine by day and night. This is intentional and deeply theological. The creation is depicted as God's cosmic temple, the arena of his presence and glory, and in future posts, we'll see that God created humanity to serve as royal priests in this cosmic temple.
In the above configuration, the geography of Earth is centered on the temple mount. God's throne is in heaven above, and the Earth is his footstool below (Is 66:1), but the center of the Earth is the Most Holy Place in Israel's temple, which is why worshippers come to Jerusalem to worship at God's footstool (1 Chr 28:2; 2 Chr. 9:18; Ps 99:5; 132:7). The Most Holy Place resides directly below the center of God's throne in heaven. Surrounding the temple mount is the land, which is surrounded by ocean. The "farthest horizon" (Is. 13:5; Neh. 1:9) is a phrase used for distant lands, sometimes translated as "the end of the heavens." This language appears to come from the observation that as you travel, the farthest point in the distance you can see (the horizon) changes.
It should be clear that this picture of creation, if taken as a literal, physical description of the cosmos, is incompatible with current human experience, but this shouldn't be too surprising. To be honest, it was probably incompatible the experiences of ancient Israelites as well. I believe this description is intentionally metaphorical; the authors did not intend to say that this is the way the universe is actually shaped. They instead were describing the creation in a manner consistent with the way God intends us to think about creation - as his cosmic temple. Please understand me here; I do not want to dismiss this language as being "just metaphorical," as if this was just poetic license on the part of the writers and some other metaphor would do just as well. I'm proposing that this is a theologically prescriptive metaphor. The language of Scripture is giving us the binding and truthful way to think about the creation theologically. I want to refer to this concept as a "metaphorical imperative." The Scriptures speak both metaphorically and prescriptively about God's creation to inform us how we are to think about and treat the creation, and this is intentional on the part of the Biblical authors.
One indication that the authors of the Scriptures knew their language was intentionally metaphorical comes from the diversity of ways that the Scriptures speak about the weather. Being an agrarian society, the Hebrews were accustomed to watching for and learning from patterns in the weather. So even though the Scriptures describe rain as coming from the opening of “windows” or “floodgates” in the heavens (Genesis 7:11), they also understood rain comes from clouds (1 Kings 18:44, Job 26:8). Any agrarian society would certainly understand the types of clouds that are likely to bring rain for crops, but theologically, rain is also God's provision, so the language of windows and floodgates in the raqia would illustrate theologically that their dependence on God's provision in this world is built into the very fabric of the world itself. I'm viewing this as a kind of paradigm for viewing Biblical cosmology. Theologically, rain comes by God's provision from the floodgates of heaven while at the same time writers understood that meteorologically, rain comes from clouds. These two descriptions are both true in their respective frames of reference. Theologically, the Earth is a building constructed by God as his temple; astronomically, the Earth is a round planet orbiting a medium-sized star.
Let me be clear about one thing. I'm not suggesting at all that the Biblical writers knew that the Earth is a globe orbiting the Sun or that the Sun is but one star in the Milky Way. I'm not going to infer anything about what they believed about the physical arrangement of the Earth, Sun, Moon and stars from what they wrote in Scripture. What I'm suggesting is that, regardless of what beliefs they held, what the Scriptures teach is how we ought to think about the cosmos theologically; it was not a physics lesson on the shape or the Earth and its orbit around the Sun.
Metaphorical language is common even today in scientific terminology. In Geology, we speak of the Earth's "mantle" as a clear and obvious metaphor; the mantle is not a cloak under the Earth's crust. In computer science, we refer to "bugs" and "viruses" and "trojan horses," all metaphorical language. The metaphorical language is technically defined so it can work in the scientific literature. The Bible is not a scientific text; it's a theological text, and Biblical authors were more interested in how we are to conceive of and think about God's creation as his cosmic temple - the place where God's presence and glory, with God as the sovereign king over all creation. The metaphorical language for creation is therefore much more consistently architectural than we see in the scientific literature today, since it's designed to be prescriptive to us. I believe Scripture requires us to think about creation in this way, though we are not required to take this metaphor as a literal description of the cosmos (as flat earthers try and fail to do). It is this prescriptive metaphor that I'm referring to as the metaphorical imperative, and this imperative will undergird a Christian approach to creational stewardship and our obligation to care for God's temple as the royal priests he placed us in this world to be.
References:
[1] Alan P. Dickin,
On a Far Away Day: A New View of Genesis in Ancient Mesopotamia (Columbus, GA: Brentwood Christian, 2002), p. 122. Reprinted in Peter Enns,
Inspiration & Incarnation. Note: I have some serious issues with many features of Enns' book. Please don't take my reference to it as an endorsement of his conclusions. One reason why I'm writing these posts is to deal with the same material in a manner that is more faithful to Biblical authority.
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