T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences

John P. Slattery, John P. Slattery

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567680440
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie

This handbook surveys the many relationships between scientific studies of the world around us and Christian concepts of the Divine from the ancient Greeks to modern ecotheology. From Augustine to Hildegard of Bingen, Genesis to Frederick Douglass, and physics to sociology, this volume opens the intersections of Christian theology and science to new concepts, voices, and futures. The central goal of the handbook is to bring new perspectives to the foreground of Christian theological engagement with science, and to highlight the many engagements today that are not often identified as 'science-theology' discussions. The handbook thus includes several aspects not found in previous handbooks on the same topic: significant representation from the three major branches of Christianity-Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant; multiple essays on areas of modern science not traditionally part of the "theology and science" dialogue, such as discussions of race, medicine, and sociology; a collection of essays on historical theologians' approaches to nature and science. T&T Clark Handbook to Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences is divided into 3 sections: historical explorations, encompassing a eleven chapters from Aristotle to Frederick Douglass; Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox surveys of theology-science scholarship in the 20th and 21st centuries; and ten explorations in Christian theology today, from Einsteinian physics to decolonial sociology. The 24 chapters than span the volume offer the reader, whether scholar, student, or layperson, an essential resource for any future conversations around science and Christian theology.

PART ONE

Historical Explorations

CHAPTER ONE

The Genesis Creation Accounts

J. RICHARD MIDDLETON

The Bible opens with a majestic, wide-angle view of cosmic creation in Gen 1:1–2:3, and then zooms in telescopically to focus on the creation of humans in the context of their earthly environment (beginning in Gen 2:4). Despite the differences between these two creation accounts, their canonical placement as the introduction to Scripture suggests their paradigmatic function for thinking about the cosmos, including the role of humans vis-à-vis other creatures and their Creator. This essay will explore Genesis 1 and 2, along with related biblical texts, in order to clarify the cosmic and ecological vision of these paradigmatic creation accounts. The focus will be on the intrinsic (emic) conceptuality of these texts, how they envision the world, and the place of humans in it. But this will require some reflection on how the vision of these ancient texts might relate to modern conceptions of the world.

THE COSMIC VISION OF GENESIS 1

“Space,” says The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.”¹ Just how big is space? The distance from the Earth to the sun is 93 million miles. Neptune, the furthest planet from the sun in our solar system (now that Pluto is no longer formally a planet), is just under 3,000 million miles from the sun.²

The Milky Way galaxy (of which our solar system is a part) contains minimally 100 billion stars, and possibly up to 400 billion, depending on our assumptions about the average star density of the galaxy. But the Milky Way is just one galaxy in a universe that contains an estimated 20 billion trillion stars, and the farthest stars in any direction are 46 billion light years away, which makes the observable universe 92 billion light years across. So, “mind-bogglingly big” might even be an understatement.

And not only is the universe big, it is also old.

The Earth itself (along with our solar system) was formed some 4.6 billion years ago, whereas the universe originated in the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. If it seems contradictory that the most distant stars are 46 billion light years away while the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, this can be resolved by realizing that the universe is expanding at an exponential rate.

FIGURE 1: The Biblical Cosmos.³

So the universe is really, really big and very, very old.

At first glance, it looks like our modern scientific picture of a universe of immense size and age must be in tension with the biblical picture of the world, especially as found in Genesis 1. After all, this text claims that God created “the heavens and the earth” (i.e., the cosmos) in six days (then rested on the seventh); and by some calculations (using the genealogies in Genesis), this took place no more than six to ten thousand years ago.

But going beyond the assumed contradiction in time scale, there are the widely differing understandings of the size and structure of the cosmos when we compare the Bible with modern science (Figure 1). The world picture that we find both in Genesis 1 and in many other biblical texts seems to assume a flat earth founded upon the waters, with the netherworld somewhere “down there,” either in or below the subterranean waters.⁴ At the extremities of the earth were the distant mountains that extended down into the underworld waters and up into the heavens or sky. These mountains were thought of as the “pillars” that supported the dome (or “firmament”) of the heavens, envisioned as a sort of roof over the earth, which held back the cosmic waters above.

So long as we don’t take this world picture as overly literal (it is more a phenomenological portrait of the world), this makes perfect sense as a nonscientific way of describing the human environment.

World Picture versus Worldview

Here it is helpful to distinguish the world picture (German Weltbild) or cosmology or “cosmic geography” (a favorite term of scholars) that the Bible assumes from its normative worldview (German Weltanschauung), the distinctive and abiding theological vision revealed precisely through this ancient world picture. The biblical writers were not teaching this ancient world picture (this way of seeing the world was simply the common understanding of ancient Near Eastern cultures); rather, they were using this world picture to communicate a distinctive vision of the meaning of this world.

Christians in earlier ages transferred the abiding values of this ancient theological vision from the original picture of a flat earth with heaven overhead to the medieval conception (learned from the Greeks) of the Earth as a sphere, with seven concentric crystalline spheres around it, in which were embedded the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in that order.⁵ This theological vision was again transferred to the heliocentric universe of modern times, with the various planets orbiting the sun (and the moon orbiting the Earth). Today most Christians intuitively read the creation account in Genesis 1 in ways that assume the earth is a planet, something no biblical author ever thought.

The Literary Structure of Genesis 1

Without denying our modern conceptions of the world, this essay will attend to the intrinsic theological claims of Genesis 1 and 2 as ancient texts, beginning with the cosmic vision of Genesis 1, technically 1:1–2:3. This will clarify how the world picture of the text, which the Bible largely shares with the ancient Near East, conveys an important theological vision or normative worldview that is relevant to any cosmology.

As is widely recognized, Genesis 1 uses a literary framework of six days of creation, organized into two parallel panels, after which God rests (Figure 2). Whereas the first panel of days 1–3 consists in God providing cosmic structure by separating or differentiating realms of existence, the second panel of days 4–6 consists in God filling these structured realms with mobile creatures appropriate to them. The days of the first panel thus provide the conceptual foundation for the days of the second panel.

First, in the pre-creation preamble, the earth is pictured as covered with water and darkness. On Day 1, God separates the realms of light and dark, thus bringing into being the temporal alternation of day and night. This provides the foundation for the creation of the luminaries, the light-giving bodies, on Day 4, which more specifically govern times and seasons.

On Day 2, God opens up an air space in the midst of the waters by means of a firmament or dome (named “sky” or “heaven”; Hebrew šamayim). This provides the foundation for God’s creation of flying and swimming creatures on Day 5, which inhabit the realms of sky and waters below.

On Day 3, God separates the waters below from dry land. This provides the foundation for God’s creation of various types of land animals, including humans, on Day 6. Finally, the creation of vegetation on Day 3 provides the foundation for God’s assignment of food for living creatures on Day 6.

In the preface to the six days of creation, we find the statement (Gen 1:2) that the earth was initially “formless and empty” (Heb. tohû wābohû). At one level this phrase is onomatopoeic (like “hurly burly” or “helter skelter”), portraying a world that is not yet productive or habitable.⁶ But the phrase may also function as a double entendre, representing the initial state of the two panels before God structured and filled the world: “formless” (tohû) referring to the lack of differentiation between realms and “empty” (bohû) referring to the lack of creatures inhabiting these realms. The creation account thus appropriately concludes (Gen 2:1) by noting that “the heavens and the earth” (panel 1) were completed, along with “all their host” (panel 2) (Figure 2).⁷

FIGURE 2: The Literary Structure of Genesis 1.

This is clearly not a scientific account of the cosmos.⁸ Rather, Genesis 1 portrays an architectonic scheme of a wisely ordered and well-planned world, which provides an appropriate habitation or dwelling for a variety of creatures (both human and nonhuman). In other words, the cosmos is likened to a house.

The Cosmos as a Building

In both the Bible and other cultures of the ancient Near East (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, etc.), the world was thought of as a building, a habitable space for humans and other creatures to live in.⁹ This is why God’s creation of the world and the building of a house are described in similar terms in the book of Proverbs.¹⁰

By wisdom a house is built,

and by understanding it is established;

by knowledge the rooms are filled

with all precious and pleasant riches. (Prov 24:3–4)

A few chapters earlier we find this description of how God created:

The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;

by understanding he established the heavens;

by his knowledge the deeps broke open,

and the clouds drop down the dew. (Prov 3:19–20)

Not only do both texts speak of a well-designed building—using the overlapping terms “wisdom” (ḥokmâ), “understanding” (tĕbûnâ), and “knowledge” (da‘at)—but they replicate the two panels of Genesis 1. First, the structure is described; then the provisioning of the house is mentioned.¹¹ Further, verbs like “founded” (yās...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE Historical Explorations
• PART TWO Transitioning from the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century
• PART THREE Explorations in Christian Theology Today
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright Page