I would like to contribute to this divisive issue, but not by engaging in an argument with ultra Darwinists or creationists. I consider myself a person who seeks peace. My contribution is an effort to place on the table the evidence that needs to be taken into account by those who affirm faith in the God of the Bible. Creation is a fundamental theme in the Bible, and faith’s affirmations of God’s creative action find expression in multiple ways. Creationism, on the other hand, is an ideology that manipulates biblical stories and pretends that they have scientific validity. Creationists and ultra Darwinists who deny the existence of what cannot be the subject of scientific study are involved in a battle that, as I have already said, cannot be won with the boots on.
Most scientists understand the limits of what science can study. I am not in any way wishing to enter the battlefield in which creationists wish to defeat evolution. For creationism I have no use. Given the centrality of the Creator God in the Bible, however, I would like to pay closer attention to what the whole Bible has to say about creation. That is, I do not accept the reductionist way in which the participants in “the battle of the Bible” limit the biblical evidence on creation to what is found in Genesis 1–3.
My aim is to explore what different parts of the Bible say about creation. My exploration does not aim to be exhaustive, but to be representative. I will try, as far as I am able, to bring out what must certainly be considered as the evidence. I leave it to my readers to draw the conclusions they think the evidence supports. Those who claim to form their opinions on the basis of what the Bible teaches cannot ignore most of the evidence and make arguments based on three of its chapters. A debate as divisive as the debate about the relationship of the Bible and science cannot be an honest debate if most of the evidence, whether from science or from the Bible, is overlooked. Thus, rather than entering the debate, I propose to my readers to bracket the debate and examine the biblical evidence as a whole. After the evidence has been duly taken into account, then an unbiased assessment is in order.
In the chapters that follow, each will focus its attention in a biblical book, or on books that belong together. The first section of each chapter will have a brief introduction to the main theme in the text being considered. Then I will try to show the role creation plays within the context of this main theme. Since each book, or cluster of books, deals with specifics at a particular time and participates in a concrete cultural environment, each chapter will try to show how creation within the Bible is viewed in varied and sometimes contrasting ways. By taking seriously the various ways in which creation is viewed within the Bible modern believers should find their warrant to understand creation in the twenty-first century in yet another way. No matter in which way the biblical authors viewed creation, they were free to affirm their faith in the Creator. We, like them, can also affirm our faith in the Creator God no matter how we view the natural world and the universe in which we live. The Bible itself demonstrates the independence of faith from any and all cultural descriptions of the material reality of which we are a part. This is the argument of this book.
CREATION IN THE
PROPHETIC LITERATURE
In ancient Israel there were both official and charismatic prophets. The official prophets were employed by the court and the temple. The charismatic prophets confronted the throne and the temple with accusations of idolatry and injustice. Idolatry manifested itself both in the importation of foreign gods and in the participation in the fertility cults of Canaan. Military alliances with other nations, according to the prophets, weakened national security instead of guaranteeing it. Thus, marrying foreign princesses as part of foreign policy, and the establishment of temples to their gods was seen by the prophets as a rejection of Yahve. These sanctuaries to foreign gods, together with the high places and the groves where the cult of the fertility deities of Canaan was carried on, attracted the majority of Israelites before the Babylonian exile (605–536 B.C.E.).
The prophets also indicted the political powers for prevalent injustice. While the “former” prophets were remembered for their conduct before kings (we may think of Samuel and Elijah in this connection), the prophets whose sayings were valued and preserved addressed the people as interpreters of what was taking place from the perspective of Yahve.
Injustice was manifest in the unequal distribution of wealth. The rich had summer homes and winter homes (Amos 3:15), spent their days eating mutton with an abundance of wine and songs and their nights sleeping in beds of ivory (Amos 6:4–6). In the meantime, the poor wasted their lives in forced labor with little bread and no beds. The greed of the rich is described as the behavior of wild beasts which tear apart and devour weaker animals. In nature might makes right and morality does not exist. In history justice must prevail, and God takes care of its existence. “Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice? — you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people, and their flesh from off their bones; who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a kettle, like flesh in a caldron. Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them” (Micah 3:1–4).
The message of the prophets, according to most of their readers, has been encapsulated in other words of Micah:
“With what shall I come before the Lord?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings?
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression?
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has showed you, O human, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice,
to value covenant loyalty,
and to live humbly with your God (6:6–8).
Here we learn what we must do to stand before God. The religious life is not manifested primarily by participation in the cult, even when it includes extraordinary acts of ritual devotion. The religious life consists of daily living. It is by dealing justly with our neighbors, showing loyalty to the covenant with God, and recognizing God’s power and glory by a humble demeanor that we are accepted before Yahve.
The prophets distinguished themselves by their engagement with history. In fact, starting with the first one, Amos (circa 750 B.C.E.), they discovered that a person’s life does not acquire meaning by being tied to ceremonial rites that are repeated in annual, monthly or weekly cycles. Life acquires meaning as it forges a future, and God is the One who is actively leading His people toward the future. In this way God makes history and human beings occupy it.
The prophets of Israel have the honor of having been the first philosophers of history, the first to break the circularity of traditional societies that identify themselves with a golden past that every succeeding generation is bound to preserve. Amos proclaimed for the first time a “Day of the Lord” (5:18–20). This future day is determinative of the quality of all human life. It is the day of judgment of the nation, the day of the divine verdict on the history of nations.
For the prophets the central idea is the covenant that ties the people to God. The covenant, obviously, is a historical reality. It was