Genesis Chapters 1 -3: Should They Be Taken Literally or Metaphorically?

What are we looking for in a creation account? What would satisfy you or me in a reading of this part of the Bible? Are we looking for a scientific text to describe the makeup of our world? The folks at Answers in Genesis say that the text is scientifically accurate, and they have built a 27 million dollar Creation Museum in Kentucky as a forum for showing theories of how it is accurate.

Or are we looking for a powerful and beautiful piece of poetry, a work that teaches us through myth and metaphor? This is what many translators of Genesis teach. It is also the perspective that a Seminary student I know personally has adopted after intensive study.

I would argue that both of these views are valuable, and they are compatible. Genesis is not a typical science book, insofar as it is unlike any other scientific history, because of the subject matter it deals with. A history of the creation of time and space must be different from any other history, because it is not in history, but speaks of the intersection between history and eternity.

Genesis is poetic, but it also goes beyond poetry. A poem has more metaphorical value than literal value. For example, when we read Homer's Iliad, we do not think that Achilles is actually invincible everywhere on his body except for his heel. We take this to be a metaphor meaning that he is awesome as a warrior but retains some ultimate weakness through which he can be defeated. This is a metaphor for his character and his personality. He is a hero with greatness and with vulnerabilities.

God creating the heavens and the earth through his word is not supposed to be just a metaphor. The apostle Peter reminds and admonishes us to remember that it does have literal value (See 2 Peter 3:5-6.)[1]

The text has properties of both scientific history and poetry. It is also its own kind of literature, unique and in a class of its own. Consider the first verse:

"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,"

"In the beginning" refers to the creation of all time, of all duration and sequence. "The heavens and the earth" refers to the creation of space, of all extension, place, and location. Notice that time and space are tied together, presented in the same sentence. There is no time without space, nor space without time. Nor is there either without God.

This is hard to grasp because everything that we perceive in our lives is perceived in terms of time and space. This is a point that the philosopher Immanuel Kant makes in The Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant argues that time and space are categories of the understanding, built into our very perception of the world. As such, they are also limits of our reason. Reason cannot venture outside of time and space to speak of time from outside of time, or space from outside of the extended universe.

Kant would say that what reason cannot venture to describe, must be either 1) non-existent, or 2) a matter of faith and revelation. That is why today we have believers and atheists, the faithful and agnostics. Some people - believers - conclude that there is something beyond what reason can describe. Whereas others - agnostics and atheists - believe there is not.

To give an example of how this works, we can describe and elaborate on the word "today." Today is now, the 24 hours from 12 a.m. this morning until 11:59 p.m. tonight. Today comes in a sequence after yesterday and before tomorrow. By the time we attain an age suitable for rational thought, we have already experienced many "todays" (as well as yesterdays and tomorrows).

But "in the beginning" is something we cannot describe or elaborate upon in the same way, as we are incapable of experiencing it. We can only use analogies, as we are able to perceive beginnings of days, even the beginnings of individual human lives. So we can imagine that there could be a beginning to all time, but we cannot possibly describe what it might be like.

Similarly, we experience many places. By the time we are of an age of rational thought, we have been in many different places, experienced the presence of objects and people, and the absence of objects and people. From our experiences of presence and absence of people and things, we can form a concept of "the heavens and the earth" as a whole, that there is such a thing.

But we can say nothing certain about what it is like, nor how large it is, whether finite or infinite. Nor can we decide rationally whether it had a beginning or has always been. For Kant those are matters that are either 1) unanswerable or 2) must be revealed.

In The Antinomies of Reason, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, he shows that rational and logical arguments can be made for both of the opposite positions: that the universe is finite, and that it is infinite. That the universe had a beginning, and that it has always existed.

What we know through Genesis is that the original creation was "good." The word paradise, in my opinion, is not applicable, because it is added to the text by a literary tradition. We do not know whether the Garden of Eden was a "paradise," but we do know that it was "good," which must mean that it was without any sin.

After each of the six days of creation God looks at the creation and says that it is "good." Actually, after the sixth day, when he makes man and woman, he looks at them and says they are "very good." They are perfect in his eyes, without a single flaw. This suggests that the original creation was vastly different from the world today.

There was no murder, no hate, no clinical depression, materialism, or other sin-related aspects of the world as it now is. People did not choose to kill other people. Nor did people suffer from any ill health that was debilitating or kept them from fully enjoying the creation. We must conclude that they were perfectly in harmony with God, with no sense of distance from Him.

So these are some of the things to keep in mind as we read the text of Genesis Chapter 1: 1) It is describing something that is beyond the capacity of our reason alone. 2) It is describing a world that was "very good," and had everything that God intended for it to have. 3) We can see aspects of poetry and science in Genesis, but we can't say that it is just a poem/myth, or just a science text. It has some of both, and it really goes beyond both genres.

[1] "They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world of that time was deluged with water and perished.