Dr. Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue, Lecture 4
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
We had discussed one thing in that question of the antiquity of man and what we can say about that, by looking at the genealogies from Genesis 5 and 11. We concluded that these genealogies were incomplete, that there was an element of discontinuity. We simply took the position that the Bible itself does not compel us to any particular view in respect to the antiquity of man. This leaves us open to accommodate the valid findings of science in that regard.
Review of the 3 views on the age of the cosmos
Then
we moved on from there to the question of the age of the cosmos, which is
another big area of dispute, of course. We had time, I think, last week, just to
set forth what are generally recognized as the three major views. For example,
right now I am sort of indirectly involved in a book, which is being produced
to present these three views. There are three authors, in the case of the
other two views, there are co-authors, and with the case I’m involved with, I’m
a consultant. But, in any case, the three views that will be dealt with in this
particular book, it will probably be four or five or six months before it is
out, are that the days are solar days. Secondly, the days represent ages, each
one. Then, there is the third view, which has become known as the framework
interpretation and would have been the least familiar to you, so we spent a
little time trying to sketch out what it was. But very quickly reviewing, the
literal view, the first view, holds and that what we have here was an actual week
in Genesis, with six regular solar days and the seventh being the Sabbath. The
second view, then holds that the Hebrew word yom should be translated
“age.” The picture that is formulated in Genesis 1 would not be that of a week
of normal days, but a week of ages, with an attempt made to show there is a
correspondence successfully of the six ages and the succession of geological
eras. So that would be the second view. Then there is the third view, which is
the framework interpretation.
Now, the second and the third views are both figurative. The second
view, the Day-Age view, takes the matter of duration, and says it can be
handled figuratively. So the “days” can be stretched as to their duration
instead of taken literally. On the framework interpretation, the principal of
figurativeness impacts the thing in such a way that it is not just a question
of the duration of the time that could be understood figuratively, but also,
and this is the distinctive feature of the Framework view, it would hold that
the narrative sequence is not intended to correspond to the actual biological
sequence. There was, of course, a period of time, whatever it was, where it was
a real historical chronology, but the narrative sequence is not designed, then,
to portray the actual historical sequence. That is, the view we develop, trying
to show the actual narrative sequence is a matter of theme. It is interested in
various themes rather than just driving ahead in terms of straightforward
chronology.
The total structure of Genesis: ten sections thematically arranged
Now,
earlier in our lesson last week, we had been looking at the total structure of
the book of Genesis, and we had already discovered there, that the whole book
of Genesis is structured in such a way, that instead of following straightforward
chronology from beginning to end, it is set up in such a way that after the
prologue, which is the creation story we are now concerned with, the whole of Genesis
is divided up into ten sections. These ten sections were arranged in interesting
patterns, which reflected a concern to achieve certain numbers, like triads. So
there are groupings of the ten sections of Genesis, that produce triads, or
pairs. So more to our present way, what we discovered was that here in the
first section, for example, it treats the entrance and the escalation of sin in
the world from the actual fall of man up to the time of the flood. So the first
chapters, two, three, and four, take you all the way up to that period.
Then, instead of proceeding forward in a straightforward
chronological line, another theme is picked up. This story of the line of Cain,
the line of the City of Man, then having gotten up to the flood, you go back in
chapter 5:1, and you go through the whole history again from Adam to the flood,
but now, from the point of view, not from the line of Cain, but of the line of
Seth, which is the content of the Community of faith, the City of God. The same
thing happens here in the fourth section, the Table of Nations, the City of Man.
In the fifth section, the line is the Community of Faith. So Moses, the author,
has a particular style that he arranges things thematically. So he takes one
theme up from a certain point, and then backs up and takes another theme.
Support for and elaboration of the framework interpretation
The
framework interpretation suggests that that is what is going on in Genesis 1
where, again, things are divided into triads plus the climactic seven. You
follow along with one theme, mainly the various Kingdoms that God has created--the
spheres of Creation, the Kingdoms. That is the theme here. Then the second
three days, four, five and six, pick up another theme. Interestingly, this will
be one of the points we will underscore in a few minutes. When you come to Day
Four, you find yourself repeating Day One; exactly the same things are produced
on Day Four as in Day One, but chronologically you are back there. Thematically,
on Days Four, Five, and Six, are the story of a kings who ruled over the
kingdoms. The story of man and how he ruled over everything, that he’s a priest
of God and how he delivers his kingdom and subdues it under the great king of
the Seventh day, the Lord of the Sabbath. That very quickly, then, may serve to
identify the Framework Interpretation, which is, then, another figurative view.
Now to get at this, let me say this first, the view that I will be
advocating by now you understand is the framework interpretation. This view
agrees with the literal view that what is being portrayed is ordinary days, with
the evenings and mornings. That is the language and that is the picture that is
being portrayed. Those who hold to the solar day, I don’t think are right. It
isn’t that this thing, called in Hebrew, a yom [day] should be translated
an “age.” No, these are regular days. That is right. What the question is: Is
this total picture a week of normal days, or is this picture as a whole? We’re
not just talking about an individual word, the word yom or something
else. Is this picture to be understood literally, or as the whole thing? That’s
the real question, I think, and what I would like to procede to do is to show,
that this picture of the normal week is not to be understood literally, but
figuratively.
Figurative approach: Sabbath as figurative
Now
to compare it, let’s say, here is the parable of the sower. Now if you ask,
“What is the actual literal picture there?” Well, the literal picture is the
farmer goes out, with actual seed, and sows the seed, and so forth. Is that what
Jesus is talking about? Is he talking about agriculture? No, literally, that’s
the picture all right, but the exegetical question for the whole piece is: What’s
the nature of this piece, this genre? Is it intended as a whole to be
understood literally, or is it a parable? Now in the case of the sower, yes,
Jesus is not talking about agriculture, he is talking about the Son of God
going forth and preaching the word of God. Now, that is not literally what the
text says, but that’s what the contextual considerations tell you is going on.
So one question is: What is the literal picture? It is a week of days. But the
bigger question is: Is that intended to be understood figuratively? Now let me
give you a series of arguments to show that that literal picture is intended to
be understood for something else just as the parable of the sower, the farmer
sowing the seed, is given as a picture intended to convey the truth about the
preaching of the Gospel.
The first thing along that line that I would cite as evidence that
these “days” are intended to be understood figuratively, is the seventh day.
Seventh Day, the Sabbath day, the Lord’s Sabbath day is his rest. How long did
that one last? Of course, it’s still going or, isn’t it. In the nature of the
case, what is the nature of God’s Sabbath rest? God’s Sabbath rest is that when
he had consummated his work, he had created the heavens and the earth, “the heaven
is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.” When he has created this cosmic
temple, this “cosmic throne” for himself, he takes his place on his heavenly
throne. The Sabbath is the enthronement of the one who has consummated his work
of creation. He takes his position as the one who has finished the work, as the
one who is sovereign, as the one who rules in majesty over all the works of his
hand. When did he stop doing that? Twenty-four hours after he started his work?
Obviously not! Or a month later? No. God’s Sabbath rest, God’s Sabbath status, as
the Sabbath God who is enthroned over his consummated creation in the nature of
this case is unending.
The proof of the pudding, exegetically, is what we read elsewhere
in the Scripture about that Sabbath. In Hebrews 4, you can look it up for
yourselves, we have the discussion of the Sabbath. Readers are reminded of how
Joshua, in the Old Testament, led the people into their Sabbath land. So what
the Sabbath signifies was the consummated Kingdom. What is being prototypically
portrayed there is Israel’s experience of entering into the land. So Joshua,
led them into the Sabbath land. But that wasn’t the real one, the author of Hebrews
quickly reminds us. The real Sabbath, is the one that is still out there. In
this connection, he quotes now from Genesis 2 about God’s seventh day. He
quotes from Genesis 2, this is the thing he is explaining and expounding - God’s
seventh day of rest - and what he says is that, “Look, you believers in the
Lord Jesus, this is where you are heading. God is entered into, from the
beginning, that Sabbath rest, and that Sabbath rest is going on. Heaven is
there, the Sabbath is there; they are all in place. Here we are on earth, and
we’re making our earthly journey in terms of the covenant, as God sets up the
way whereby we can get up into heaven, to his Sabbath rest with him. In Christ
this is being fulfilled as the Old Testament Joshua was enabled to do it. Jesus
is doing the real thing, and he is leading us into that real Sabbath rest, into
that Seventh Day of God.” So Hebrews 4 expounds God’s seventh day of creation
and says that the goal, that telos, that we are moving to it goes on
forever. Now, that is the seventh day. That is the best clue you have, then, as
to what the nature of these days is. One of them certainly is not a literal
day. It had a beginning, but it has no end. There’s one of them.
Sabbath as literal? Exod. 20:11
Maybe
in this connection, I could cite something which is usually an appeal to the
strongest arguments for a literal view if you’re against a figurative view,
namely, the fourth commandment. So when you turn to Exodus 20:11, you remember,
of course, there that Sabbath observance, in terms of working six days and
resting the seventh day, the ordinance of the Sabbath, which is a sign to
mankind. Let me qualify that a little bit, it’s a sign to mankind within the
covenant. We’ll talk more about the Sabbath later on. But the ordinance of the
Sabbath is there, based squarely on the fact that God worked six days and he
rested the seventh. Therefore, you work six days and rest on the seventh. The
point of the objection to my approach, or to any figurative view, is that it is
assumed there is a one-to-one relationship between the original and the copy.
God worked six days and rested the seventh; therefore, you work six days and
rest the seventh.
Now, our working six days and resting on the seventh, we know as
normal solar days. The argument is there must be a one to one relationship, otherwise,
this doesn’t make any sense. If God’s days are not literal ones, then there is
no copy. Now that’s a false assumption. What we're talking about here is a
likeness. With the likeness, there is similarity, but also difference.
Realities in heaven copied on earth: Image of God in Adam
Now,
before we’re done, we hope to be showing how there’s a whole series of things,
whereby, the realities of heaven are copied on earth. That’s a very important
theme, that the reality of heaven, the Heavenly Temple, is replicated here on
earth. God, his nature is replicated in Adam, who was made in the image of God.
Let’s take that one.
Adam was made in the image of God. There’s the original, and there’s
a copy. There’s likeness, and that’s what justifies calling Adam, the image of
God. There’s likeness, but with a big difference. Likewise, not just with the
nature of man, that he is like God but with a difference, but with man’s
activity: his working six days and rest on the seventh, that is like God, but
with a difference, in each case.
So, the assumption that there must be a one-to-one relationship
between the two things is simply false. What proves it is Hebrews 4, because we
already have seen that there is not a one-to-one relationship when you come to
the seventh day. God’s seventh day is forever. The weekly ordinance of the Sabbath
is twenty-four hours. So there is likeness between the two, but with a
difference, we know, with respect to the seventh day.
So what you usually hear as a big argument for insisting on a
literal view, it is one of the two main arguments I hear most against a
figurative view. It doesn’t say that at all, and in fact it points us in the
opposite direction. It leads us to recognize that God’s Sabbath day was
eternal. Therefore, it is a figure in Genesis 2:1-3. So there is one point. So
now I might have prefaced that, I jumped right in to a first argument for
treating this picture of a week of days figuratively.
Genesis
1 as prose or poetry?
I
might begin with just a general comment. I’ll do it quickly. Where do you expect
figures of speech in prose or poetry? Well you can have them in either can’t
you. You can encounter a figure of speech in prose but you would expect more of
it in poetry. So you get more figures of speech in poetry. So, for what it’s
worth, it’s worth noting, then, that the creation narrative is formed in a way,
which would be difficult to say is just ordinary prose. It has many striking
features of poetry. Poetry is created in stanzas, which have a certain format
which keeps being repeated. It has certain refrain lines, initial lines,
closing lines, and refrain lines that keep getting repeated. Various other
features of Semitic poetry might be mentioned. Now, when you look at Genesis 1
and 2, the Creation Narrative, what you right away realize is that the
formalized structure of the thing, it’s six stanzas, the six work days, each
one with the same basic format: Fiat--“Let there be…and it was so—fulfillment.
So there is this arrangement of six blocks of material. It’s not just strung
out in some indefinite kind of paragraphs, but the thing is shaped in these six
stanzas, these six strophes all with the same form, Fiat-Fulfillment, “Let
there be [fiat]… and there was [fulfillment].”
Then, interspersed throughout the strophes, there are all kinds of
refrains. Now, if I read through them, it will ring bells: “and God said, ‘Let
there be,’ and it was so and God separated this from that, and God made, and
God named, and God blessed. God saw that it was good, and it was evening and
morning day whatever.” Now, you just underline all of those refrains, each of
them appears several times, you will have taken up most of the material in the
narrative. So, here we have something, which is written in sort of poem style in
stanzas with refrains, and other things could be mentioned.
Parallelism and Poetry
One
striking feature of Semitic Hebrew poetry is what is known as the “parallelism
of clauses.” Parallelism is where you say something and then you say virtually
the same thing all over again in synonyms. It produces a certain logical
balance and sometimes a certain rhythmic balance; a quantitative balance that
gives at least the appearance of meter. The synonymous parallelism, especially
the “balance of clauses,” is the repetition of a particular thought. You don’t
need that feature to have genuine poetry. For example, take the Song of Solomon,
the Song of Songs is certainly beautiful poetry and about only fifty percent of
the lines in the Song of Songs have this particular feature of this kind of
poetic balance. So you don’t need this in order for the thing to qualify as poetry;
although, it is a striking feature. In Genesis 1, you might note, then, that
this poetic feature is used sparingly but it is used very effectively. It is
used only twice, but it is used at the two climax points. So that here is this
particular poetic device and the author has saved it in order to highlight the
two climax points in his narratives.
What would you say is the first highlight? I would think certainly,
that when you come up to the creation of man, that’s the first climax of the
story--the crown of creation under God. There was Genesis 1:27 where it says
“so he created man in his own image. Yet in the image of God he created them.”
The thought is restated, not even in synonymous terms, rather virtually the same
terms. Then the ultimate climax, is certainly when you come to the seventh day
and there, it would be Genesis 2:2, it says, “So God completed everything. Yes,
he had completed everything. All that he had made.”
All I’m trying to say then is that as you look at this record, you
should come to the conclusion that this is poetic. Now this doesn’t settle the
question, all it does is this though: you shouldn’t be so surprised if this is
a piece of poetically flavored material. You shouldn’t be so surprised if it
should turn out that there are some figures in it such as what we are
suggesting is the case with the chronological refrain “it was evening and it
was morning day one,” “it was evening and it was morning day two” and so on. So
this just sets us up so that we shouldn’t be too hostile to the thought of
figures of speech.
Poetry and History
Now,
in that connection, however, let me just add this further word of explanation
because one is very often misunderstood in this regard. I know, about thirty
years ago, I wrote an article on this subject for the Westminster
Theological Journal, and we might refer to this later on. It was called “Because
It Had Not Rained.” In that article I made something like the point I just
made to you, that this material is sort of poetic and therefore could be
considered as figurative. My good colleague E.J. Young, who was my senior
colleague in the Old Testament department, didn’t hold to the view that I’m
advocating, but to one of the others, which I’m not quite sure which one he
held to. He at least was cautioning people, that if you hear that material is
poetic that you shouldn’t buy into the notion that it was not historical, as if
to say if something was poetic and figurative meant that you were denying the
historicity of the thing. Now that doesn’t follow. I do say that it is
figurative, but I say that it is very much historical.
For example, in Exodus 14 and 15 you have two accounts of the
crossing of the Red Sea, a great salvation event there in the Old Testament. In
Exodus 14 you have the prose account, and in Exodus 15 you have the poetic
account. No one doubts, of those who believe the Bible, that Exodus 15, the
Song of Moses, is actually an account of the history, but it isn’t poetry. When
you cut right to the big event, Exodus 14 speaks about, God caused an east wind
to blow all night long. So there’s this appeal to certain natural secondary
causes that might have come in to play that God used in order to dry up the
waters for the passage of his people. Now, when you come to that same point in
the poem you get a tremendously strong anthropomorphic figure there, saying, “by
the blast of his nostrils, God dried up the water.” No more east wind talk over
here, it was a very strong figure of speech. Non-historical? No, absolutely
historical, but a very strong figure of speech.
So, I don’t want people that are listening to me to think that I’m
denying the historicity of these events. No, absolutely this is real historical
stuff just like the crossing of the sea is real historical stuff. Real history can
be described in real poetic ways and that’s the question, that we must face.
What’s the evidence for it? So I looked at the seventh day, and I said, “There’s
one of them. There’s one of the seven days that’s not literal as interpreted by
the Bible itself. It’s figurative.”
Along the line, I might be making some use here of
an article I wrote more recently, as I just said, about thirty years ago, I
guess it was about 1957. Wow! How time flies, doesn't it? I hate to think about
how long ago I wrote that other article. Okay, here’s the article I wrote more
recently in March 1996, in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.
The title of the article was "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony."
Cosmogony is the account of the origin of the universe. So I might, from time
to time, be reading from that. If you are interested in seeing the whole
article, that’s where you would find it. It’s Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith. It used to be the Journal of the American Scientific
Affiliation (ASA), but it’s still the magazine put out by them. The editor
of it is Jack Hodges, one of our elders at the OPC in church in Northshore of
Massachusetts. If I do make use of it, I will be reading from a typed copy of
my own here.
[Student question]
It’s hard to appeal to how people back there understood the thing
because we don't know how they understood it. So, all we can do is try to use
honest principles of biblical exegesis to find out what they should have
understood by it. We always run into this problem. For example, if you are
talking about messianic prophecies, well, we know what they should have thought
about them, for example, Jesus, in Luke 24, when he expounded all Messiah
sufferings and glory and Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. But they should
have understood what Jesus said and they meant, but of course, they didn't. So
I don't know what they actually understood, and all I can do is to try to find
some biblical evidence as to what they, and we, should understand about these
things. Now, part of it has to do, of course, with having some sensitivity to
the literary styles and so on of the ancient world. That will certainly help
us, and along with a certain modesty about approaching it, that we do not
already know everything about that.
Reflections on the Sabbath and the two registers
The
Sabbath, then, as we have already discussed, reminds us, then, that there are
two levels to reality. In this article I talk about the upper and lower
register. There’s that seventh day, God's seventh day, which is an eternal
thing, and what does it consist of? We've already said, it consists of God
taking his throne in heaven as Creator of the whole world in an unending
Sabbath rest. It is invisible to us now, but with the invitation one day we are
going to get into that Sabbath seventh day, which is invisible to us because it
is part of that heavenly realm. It has dimensions that we cannot penetrate with
our present earthly bodies. The day will come when we are glorified and we have
new capabilities and so on. And, so what is now invisible to us will be opened
up to us, and it will put a new face on the whole world, so it becomes to us a
new heaven and a new earth. But there is that invisible realm of heaven up
above. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." What is Jesus
talking about there? He's talking about the two registers? “Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven is where God is enthroned in the midst of his
angels, unseen to us, the invisible realm, the upper register, the invisible. That’s
all we are talking about. So over against this earthly realm to which, until
our glorification, we are limited.
So, the seventh day reminds us of these two levels. Because up
there, there is the divine original, that ongoing thing which is forever, and
down here, there is the ordinance; the ordinance of the Sabbath. I have
already taken the position, then, that in Genesis 2:2-3 there you have the
ordinance of the Sabbath. The Sabbath, as I understand it, is a creation
ordinance, the ordinance of the Sabbath, what we are supposed to do: work six literal
days and rest the seventh day. The ordinance of the Sabbath brings us down here
to the lower register. All the way through this thing, there’s going to be a
replication of what’s going on up there as it’s copied down here. So I want to
develop that. I might have said this as an introductory word, we are dealing
with this whole thing in terms of this one problem of the days of Genesis and
the chronology. But I want our study to be more positive than that, and so,
while we are at this, I am trying also to bring out the positive teaching of
Genesis 1, and I think I can interlock the two discussions so that we don't get
lost along the way. So, what we are doing is trying to give you some insight
into the teaching of Genesis 1 about the nature of the cosmos.
The Nature of the cosmos
I
think Christian people are a lot more interested in that kind of thing--the
nature of the whole cosmos. Especially, as modern science gives us some
beginnings of an understanding of the vastness of it and the questions about
its origin, and its future, whether it is headed for the big crunch, or
stability, or whatever. But people are interested in that. I think the Bible
has things to say about it, and it’s a subject that deserves more attention
than it gets. I'll just say a little bit about it here. Let's go back to and
work right through Genesis 1, right back to the Sabbath day. As I said
repeatedly, we are going to see that God has structured the cosmos in such a
way that heavenly realities serve as archetypes that reproduce themselves in
copies here in earthly existence.
Genesis
1:1 and Proverbs 8—upper register perspective
So
Genesis 1, then, verse 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth…" We have "in the beginning." You can read that can't
you? "In the beginning," that says, then “heaven and earth.” All
right, original Sabbath up here and copy of the Sabbath down here. Heaven/earth,
all right, my contention is going to be, as we look at this presently, is that
heaven, in Genesis 1:1, is not describing the visible sky up there, but it’s
describing the invisible heaven as we just said in the Lord’s prayer, "Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven…" That’s the heaven and earth
contrast that you have in Genesis 1:1 already. Genesis 1:1 is saying that in
the beginning God made everything: invisible-heaven and earth-visible. Now,
before we get to that we have this expression "In the beginning," and
especially, in the connection with this problem with the days of Genesis. We
are interested in that timeline up there. The thing that begins with "in
the beginning" and ends with the Sabbath day up in that upper register,
not down in this lower, literal register down here but up there. Of course,
this line of argument will end up by showing, that the six days, the form it is
about, “it was morning and it was evening, one day, two day, three” and so on.
The six days, of course, are bracketed by these beginning and ending points,
which have to do with the upper register with the original, not with the
literal day of the Sabbath ordinance, but with the thing for which it is a
figure up there. That’s where these six days fit in. Likewise, in the beginning.
What is the "In the beginning"?
Let me just read a spectrum of that article. I see
the heading there is “Upper Register Time: The Beginning” “as observed above,
the allusion is in Proverbs 8.” Now we are going to get to Proverbs 8. It’s a
fascinating thing. In Proverbs 8, you have the first interpretation of Genesis
1, and Solomon, or whoever is writing there in Proverbs 8, believed in the
framework interpretation, because he expounds on Genesis 1 in terms of wisdom, and
we’ll get back to that in a minute. But the allusions in Proverbs 8 to the “in
the beginning” bereshit of Genesis 1:1 shows that this beginning precedes
the situation surveyed in Genesis 1:2 and following, it stands at the head of
the creation days while belonging to the creation week it marks.
“In the beginning,” what do other passages in the Bible do you
think of right away? Well, here, I’m suggesting “in the beginning,” while
belonging to the creation week, marks the interface of pre-creation and the
space-time continuum. Pointing back, “in the beginning,” pointing back to what
is signified by, “was” in the identification of God as the one “who is, and who
was, and is to come.” “In the beginning” is that God who “was.” Now he “is and
is to come.” In Genesis 1:1, the beginning is peculiarly associated with God
himself. “In the beginning God created.” Likewise, echoes of the Hebrew word
of Bereshit, “In the beginning,” in the scriptures focus on divine acts
and intra-trinitarian relationships back of creation. “In the beginning”
has to do, what I’m trying to say, with the upper register here not with this
lower register. It has to do the heavenly scene not so much the earthly scene.
It has to do with divine acts and intra-trinitarian relationships back of
creation, equating the beginning with the stage before the earth was. As we
will see in a moment, Proverbs 8:23 asserts that the personified divine wisdom
was present with God at the beginning.
The prologue of John’s gospel, which I suppose is the one we all
think of right away when we think of “in the beginning.” The prologue of John’s
gospel identifies “the beginning” in terms of the relationship between God and
the Logos, who was God and made all things; the one who
identifies himself as “the beginning of the creation of God,” and speaks of the
glory of what he had with the Father before the world was.
So all the indicators tell us that “in the beginning” refers to
that upper register where Father, Son, and Spirit act together in sovereign
purpose, in words and power to create the world. “In the beginning,” is a time
coordinate of invisible space. So the story begins then by putting us up in
heaven, through the account of creation. It isn’t told from the point of view
of someone on earth. It’s told in the perspective of God in Heaven. “In the
beginning” there is God. He is the one who proceeds to act. He is the one who,
in the end of the thing, is enthroned in this world, that he has created. This
is the perspective of the passage. “In the beginning” has that flavor. As I
said, Proverbs 8 is a good place to find out just exactly what “in the
beginning” means.
“In the beginning”
Some
people have said that “in the beginning” describes the whole period of the six
days of creation. That was the beginning period. Now what I’ve just been arguing
is that “in the beginning” is not the equivalent of the whole time span of
creation, but it belongs there to the initial chunk of time. If your trying to
figure out how much time was involved, and if you accept something like the
modern estimate of the cosmos, being some 12 billion or so years old. Actually,
this beginning period lasted for billions of years.
According to Proverbs 8, it describes the period before those
developments, which begins to be described in Genesis 1:2. When you come to
Genesis 1:2, you have to do with a planet earth, that exists in a certain
condition of deepened darkness which, as the days move along gets structured.
First, the waters, the darkness gets structured by the introduction of light
into a cycle of day and night. Then the waters get structured horizontally and
vertically as you move along.
But here now according to Proverbs 8, “in the beginning” is the
period before you come to that stage. What is that? The earth is supposed to be
about 5 billion years old? So, the universe is 12 billion years old “in the
beginning” has covered about 7 billion, but forget that, if you don’t buy into
that, at least “in the beginning” describes that chunk of time before you come
to where Genesis 1:2 describes the situation of planet earth as being in such
and such a condition.
[Student
question]
The six days can’t be separated from the seventh day. They belong
to that series. So, the seventh day is up there that already settles that the
six days, that are linked to them, must also be. Then I’m also trying to show
that it’s very difficult to disassociate “in the beginning” from that time. So
really, the six days are bracketed by two things that put you up in the upper
register and, ergo, the six days must be figurative. That’s the argument.
Proverbs 8 and the creation
You
might want to turn to Proverbs 8 with me now. It’s a wonderful passage. In the
opening nine chapters of Proverbs, you keep reading about this woman Wisdom. She
is extoled and she is commended to everyone to receive this woman. She is set
as the foil to the harlot. So don’t go after the harlot whose ways lead down to
death, but follow this woman [Wisdom] and her ways are the ways of life. So,
you get that personified divine wisdom through these opening chapters. Then,
when you come here in Proverbs 8, you have a wonderful poem. We talked about
poetry in Genesis 1 the poetic feature is limited to certain chronological
details, maybe one or two other things. Here [Prov. 8], you have a beautiful
piece of poetry throughout. It tells us about the role of wisdom in creation. Why
should we be so eager to embrace and follow Wisdom? Well, she says, “look at
who I am and what I did.” So, Wisdom commends herself to us in terms of the
role she played in connection to creation. “You’re impressed by the wonders of
creation are you? Well, then, you should be impressed with me because, look, I
was there when all that was happening.” Then, the punch line at the end, “I
was not only there but I was the architect.” This one, the boss man, said, “I’m
‘amon,” he’s an architect. That’s what wisdom says. Let’s look at it,
beginning at verse 22, Proverbs 8:22. Get your Bibles out. Well, what we’re going
to be finding here is that business of theme and recapitulating
chronologically, after you’re done with a certain theme.
Transcribed by Jordan Clare and others unnamed
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt