Saturday, July 29, 2006

Of Jordan on Genesis

In response to my posts on the Genesis creation account, Dan Sack posted a link to this article by James Jordan, to which I would like to respond in turn. Jordan presents seven reasons for understanding the creation-days of Genesis 1 as twenty-four-hour periods; I'll address them in order:

1. Notice that Jordan has assumed that the division of light from darkness is a division in time, which is why he sees "Day" as "light-time" and "night" as "dark-time." This is a reasonable enough assumption, on the face of it, but it should be noted that the text itself does not define "Day" as light-time, but rather applies "Day" as a sort of proper name of light. God names the light "Day," and the darkness "Night"--the things themselves, not the periods of time in which we generally experience them. Time is never mentioned. In fact, "Day" is not separated from "Night" until day four, when celestial bodies are created to separate them, and it is there that the concept of time is first mentioned explicitly.
2. This point is interesting because Jordan's reading becomes less consistent than mine. Jordan sees the use of the word "day" in Gen. 2:4 as essentially different than its use throughout the first chapter. I see the usage as essentially the same--when the "days" are seen as discrete creation-acts of God, then naturally whenever the creation process as a whole is considered as a single unit (a single "act"), it is described as a "day."
3. Once again, I do not see a problem with the days of God's working-week providing the basis for the days of our working-week. Of course God created in such a way as to provide a pattern for our labors. But notice that my understanding is more sacremental--our week is an earthly reflection of God's week; it is not exactly the same thing. It lifts us into his life by a ritual approximation of his actions, but his actions (and his "week") are greater than ours.
4. I agree with Jordan here. Don't see a problem.
5. I have one minor quibble, and then a more substantial disagreement. The sun was not "made to fit the pre-existent length of the day." The sun doesn't regulate the length of our days; the earth does. That's minor, but there is actually a major disagreement/difference of understanding at stake, in that I simply and fundamentally disagree with Jordan's belief that qualities like duration of time have some essential reality apart from the material (or spiritual) systems that they describe. To assert that they do smacks of rank Platonism to me. I see nothing in scripture that encourages such a view. It's bad philosophy and bad science.
6. I agree--Gap Theory is dumb.
7. I also see the Framework Hypothesis as fundamentally flawed, in that it renders the creation account non-historical. The book of Genesis is a history, and needs to be understood as such.

posted by Jeremy at 7:31 AM

1 Marginalia:

Sorry Tank. It still sounds to me like you are saying that the first Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday took a collective fifteen billion years of earth time to accomplish. And the primal weekend, governed by the newly apparent Sun, passed in a mere 72 earth hours. It still doesn't sound very enjoyable to me.

So how about you come to our Thanksgiving festivities in Moscow and explain in person. [Regretably all events will take place in terrestrial temporality.]

By  Katy Cummings, at 7:46 PM  

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