Ard Louis on Interpreting Genesis

there's two aspects to that the first is the question of what did the writers originally mean in Genesis 1 when they spoke about seven days and I think it's pretty clear that that passage was a polemic in many ways against the thoughts of the day and for example in the days that the Bible was written astrology was annulled with a scientific paradigm if you want to use that word the academic paradigm was astrology so people believe that the Sun and the moon and the stars influence our daily dies it's very very striking the Sun and the moon are not created until the fourth day you can't have a day and a night without the 7 the moon so clearly that suggests that there's a there's a pattern in there there's a structure that the person is trying to say something to us if you look at the Hebrew words for 7 million that are used there they're not the root no more for Sun or moon but they're great your lamp and master lamp so the writer is very clearly saying these objects in the sky are created objects they're not God's to be worshipped their lamps something like what you see at the day today and that's it amazing because that was that is in fact a scientific prediction that's a prediction to saying the Sun and the moon are not living objects the Sun and the moon are material objects they are lights and today of course everybody thinks these most scientists scientists think that and many day people hopefully agree that the Sun the moon don't influence our lives their material objects that was a full survival prediction that was made by the early writers of Genesis which has turned out to be true and the reason for you can see it that very clearly the reason it was being on the 4th day was to demote them from being there on the first day and so clearly that suggested this the 7 days were a literary device they're a way of describing in a more powerful way the creation of the world then you could by just saying and then this happened than that happened and so for me growing up in Africa in the village I often encountered an old man would told me a story and it would be in this kind of more symbolic way and he was trying to make a much more important point than just trying to describe to me the chronology what happened he was trying to make you know a point about the deep meaning of what was going on so that's one aspect of time the other aspect of time is what we might call deep time that's the idea that the world is very old the earth is four-and-a-half billion years old the universe is almost 14 billion years old and for many people that seems strange why did God take so long to create the earth but it's not that strange because we're all used to the idea of the universe being very large there's a hundred billion stars in our galaxies and there's probably 100 billion galaxies in the universe if not more and so we see in the size of the universe something about the glory of God and so why should do not also be deep time why should that not be just in a different dimension the time dimension something about the majesty and the glory of God so that's why I think it's a different way of thinking about time so I think that it's not I think that the Genesis story is describing deep truths though in a journalistic fashion but in a much deeper more powerful way about the way that God created the world that God sustains the world and he's involved in every aspect of the world but it's not giving us a journalistic count like Lucas this is the order in which the things that happen and this is exactly what was said by whom you

Channel: BioLogos

Views: 20,299

Rating: 4.7666669 out of 5

Keywords: science, religion, Genesis, time, Bible, Scripture, interpretation, evolution, creation, creationism, Christianity, God, chronology

Id: s3uUAgyJfNo

Length: 3min 38sec (218 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2010