The church has tended to have a tenuous relationship with science. While some of the earliest church fathers allowed for interpretive license when it came to biblical texts, later church leaders were rather firm in their objections to new scientific theories and their implications for biblical interpretation.
Nonetheless, the earliest innovators in modern science, including Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, were committed Christians. They believed that their Christian faith provided fertile ground for exploring the natural world.
The question that remains for the church then, is how to appropriate texts that on the surface appear to teach a particular account of creation. Does science become subservient to a theological text?
3 Responses
With all due respect, God said what He meant and He meant what He said. When you study the text inductively, without any preconceived notions of science, it is overwhelmingly obvious that day means day….a 24 hour period. You have to ignore “there was morning and there was evening the first day” etc. Death entered the world as a result of sin, therefore you cannot have billions of years of animals evolving and dying over time. Science is man’s attempt to explain and understand the Supernatural work of God from the framework of a finite mind and understanding. If you can’t believe God meant what He said in Genesis 1 & 2, then you can’t believe the miracles of the feeding of the 5000+, etc. In Genesis, God tells us how the house AND home were built……in 7 literal, 24 hour days. Please stop trying to fit my Omnipotent, Omnicient, Omnipresent, Transcendant Creator into a man-centered theological framework devoid of faith and recognition of His Sovereign Word.
I respectfully disagree. Genesis was written by a godly man under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and it was the first origin story because it is from the beginning. The ANE origin stories and mindset are the result of ungodly men who wrote in rejection to the story of their origin. The Word of God is not subject to the interpretation of the writings of pagans and their myths. It is the Word of God and stands alone and is easily understood from it’s earliest chapters. We should not make this so complicated.