Genesis 1: How Should We Interpret It? --Part 4

Fourth in a series on In the Beginning . . . We Misunderstood by Johnny V. Miller and John M. Soden. Click here for the first post.

*****

Miller and Soden ask dozens of trenchant questions that they believe might help us carefully come to a conclusion about how we should interpret Genesis 1 and 2. I would like to share just a few of those questions here.

What struck me as I read Chapter 6 in their book: Most of their questions are of a type I have heard no one else ask . . . much less answer.

Take a look:

• Why would God choose to describe the beginning of the earth with these particular features: desolate, and deep, dark, and watery (Gen. 1:2)? Why are they significant?
   
• How do you separate light from darkness? What was the state of things before light and darkness were separated?
   
• Why does Scripture point out that God called the light "day" and the darkness "night”?
   
• Why did God create light before he created the sun, moon, and stars? What does this mean and how can it be?
   
• On the "second day," God separated "the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse" and made the "expanse" to go in between (Gen. 1:7-8). . . . Does this indicate that originally there was extra water somehow stored above the atmosphere in a sort of vapor canopy?
   
• Is Moses giving some information that we need to correlate scientifically?
   
• What does it mean that the waters are gathered into one place? If we look at our globe, how does the water only end up in one place?
   
• Why does Genesis 1 suggest God spoke the animals into existence, but Genesis 2 says he made them from dust?

"On and on the questions go," say Miller and Soden. "Some seem easier and some harder. Some seem picky, while others seem intuitive. But are they either picky or intuitive?”

Implicit answer: No. They're neither picky nor intuitive. But, once raised, they really need to be addressed.

I think Miller and Soden ask these questions partially by way of caution, but also because, by asking these questions, they believe that, in some way, we might be led either away from answers that won't satisfy, or toward answers that will. If theirs were anything like the books I have read in the past, I would have found these questions rather heart-wrenching and hopeless: “Who is sufficient to answer such things?”

But considering that Miller and Soden asked the questions relatively early in their book suggested they might have some insights heretofore overlooked. I harbored a glimmer of hope that maybe, indeed, they would answer them. And, as I have suggested before, I was not disappointed. Not only did they answer these questions, but, to my mind, they answered in a manner that addressed deeper issues that had been bothering me on the edges of my consciousness: issues that no other authors I have read--young- or old-earth, concordant or non-concordant--have addressed.

But we'll begin to talk about those things next time!

Next post in this series.