Seeing our Bodies - Part 2 - The Creation Account

Seeing our Bodies

Part 2 – The way I understand the Genesis Creation Account

 

An Algonquin translation of Genesis chapter one,

An image of the creation account drawn from a Google search

 

If you are like me, you become cautious when reading considerations drawn from the Genesis creation account by someone you don’t know.  That is true no matter what side of the debates about creation you are on.  For this reason I want to familiarize readers with my general viewpoint in how I look at the Genesis creation account.  I hope that even after you know my viewpoint you might indulge me by reading the later blogs in this series regarding three scenes in the stories of Adam and Eve regarding how they saw their beings and bodies according to the Genesis account of creation.

I have spent most of my life as one rooted in the Evangelical wing of Christendom.  That said my spiritual journey in this mostly Evangelical wing of Christendom has carried me from a beginning in which I was mostly a narrow fundamentalist to where I today embrace a historical form of Anglicanism in which it is important for the believer to integrate the authority of Scriptures with tradition and reason.  It is a perspective that can be messy.  It is a perspective from which when one reaches a fresh conclusion he might begin to be concerned that he is on the edge of heresy and apostasy.  Also from this perspective when one finds himself standing firmly with a conservative viewpoint he might worry that his conservatism might be a sort of Pharisaic intransigence against the Holy Spirit’s breath of freshness over the face of the earth.  I have embraced this approach to the Christian faith because I see it as a way that hears what others say to us, listens to the Scriptures, and replies with respect to those with whom we engage and dialogue.  I am sure many other Christians, with a similar or even a different methodology are pursuing the same goal I pursue in these matters.  It is simply that this goal made sense for me when I found myself embracing Anglicanism and an Anglican perspective of the truth.

What about my perspective regarding the creation account?  That is my reason for writing this particular blog, that I may be honest about with you concerning where I stand.

I have never reached a point in my life where I can simply discard the Genesis creation story, and I have never reached a point where I can say that I do not respect my brethren who hold a literal understanding of the Genesis creation account.  I consider carefully their concerns when they warn that so many of the truths of the Christian faith are developed from an understanding of the Genesis creation account so that when one begins to give up portions of the creation account then their understanding of the faith will likewise begin to unravel.  This for the literalist is a concern, and it is a proper concern for many of the teachings found in Scriptures, in the prophets, in the Apostles, in Christ are firmly rooted in the Genesis account of creation.

That said, I believe that one is able to accept the possibility that God expresses the truth of creation in an account that blends both the literal and the figurative in the story of creation.  I will explain this view chiefly by describing how God’s revelation about the ancient forming of creation is perhaps in some ways similar to how God revealed the distant future in the mystery of prophecy.  While much of the Bible is written by personal witnesses who wrote about what they saw, heard, and believed; prophecy speaks of what no man had yet seen and was revealed through both literal and figurative means.  The Biblical writing on the creation has similar features.  Adam and Eve were present only for a portion of day six in the creation.  On days one through five there were no human beings present.  The whole of creation in those six days is described as a calling by God who speaks to his creation and the creation responds and there is a movement of the Spirit of God speaking by the Word of God to bring from darkness and chaos; life, beauty, and order.  If we were being given a strictly historical account there would be no mystery but when God addressed Job and his friends in Job 38, they respond not with what they learned from Genesis but with silence and awe, for who among men can explain the work of the creation?  So I feel confident that what I am told in Genesis is like unto a parable that I may grasp that in understanding I learn that understanding is ultimately yet beyond the scope of my ability to comprehend.  So I feel that every word is important, given to us not to know so much how God created the world in a comprehensively historical or scientific way, but rather how he has ordered the universe that I might participate in it with relationships to the creation, to other human beings, and to the majestic God in whose image we human beings have been formed.

I do not begrudge the scientist the use of his methodology to seek to understand the creation.  I do not argue with him.  I am sure I can learn much from him.  But also I hope he may come to learn that there is grandeur in the grammar and poetry of this old story.  I believe it is God’s story about the creation.  Just as importantly I believe God created this story not to give us all the facts but to tell us we are all part of this story, it is about us and not just about them, and it is about them and not just about us.  So I invite you to consider a few more blogs on some story pictures given in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.