Interpreting the Bible Literally
My beloved Christian brethren, with whom I agree on most every aspect of the bible (the gospel, original sin, the rapture, Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, God’s love, etc.), largely hold one view that I cannot… that the earth is young. I do not believe in a young earth because I believe the earth itself contains ample evidence that it is old, and the universe contains ample evidence that it is even older.
Scientific arguments with those who believe the earth is young tend not to yield much fruit. One reason is because the unavoidable human frailty that is manifested throughout the scientific discovery process is taken as proof that scientific discovery itself is no less frail. However, discounting scientific discovery on such grounds only discounts ones own human frailty, a slippery slope that leads only to a point where no reasoned conclusion can be accepted as such. Many of my brethren will not acknowledge how their own human frailty may be playing into their opinion that the earth is young, and it is invariably due to the following reason: they believe the scriptures literally.
Now, I believe the scriptures literally as well, so a more accurate description of my brethren is that they believe they believe the scriptures literally, and that is the problematic point, because some aspects of scripture are not as easy to translate as one would think.
For example, when God said “Let the oceans teem with living creatures of every kind”, was He just thinking out loud? If so, then I think the literal meaning here is that He was literally “speaking” His sea creatures into immediate existence. However, if He was giving direction, then I think the literal meaning is more like “Don’t stop the…” light, land, birds, sea creatures, etc. For example, when I tell my son, “Let your brother eat,” I am not eating for my younger son, but ensuring that the he can now eat without interruption. If God was talking His Son, then it would be the same here… ensuring light could “be” without interruption or that sea creatures could teem without interruption.
John 1:1-3 and Proverbs 8 both record the presence of God’s Son at creation. Genesis 1 records the presence of the Holy Spirit. Both are subservient to the Father, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount records the Father’s place is in Heaven. This is, in my opinion, because God the Father was in Heaven talking to Jesus who was on Earth, and that therefore, the creative actions were really divine pronouncements that things not be hindered. “Jesus, let there be light.” And Jesus obeyed.
An immediate objection I get to my “literal” interpretation is that I have assumed an awful lot. But, what have I really assumed? that God is in Heaven, that Jesus is on earth, that God was talking to Him, and that God’s will was for Jesus to merely allow light, water, land, and life. I have merely assumed that God and Jesus were working as they always have, that Proverbs and John 1:1 are true, and that the Trinity’s distinct roles go back to before Creation. Even Jesus said, “I tell you the truth. Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58) To interpret God’s creative pronouncement of “let” as “Make there immediately be”, and to assume He was talking to no one assumes just as much. So, which interpretation is correct? One tie breaker for me is science.
I look at science, and see ample evidence that the earth is old, and that there were times in the earth’s history when conditions prevented the very condition God pronounced away in Genesis 1. I view this as credible evidence of when a given creation day occurred, and see where Jesus was obedient to His father, “letting” things happen that previously could not. However, these times are very far apart, and Genesis records God’s statements being separated by spans of 24 hours, if you take the scriptures literally. But wait, is that really what the scripture literally says?
When I take the scripture literally, I assume that someone at Creation experienced evening and morning (but only because scripture records someone there!), and that God called that a “day”. I see no specific duration actually expressed. But, with Jesus there, and the Holy Spirit hovering over the deep, the onset of evening points to a physical experience of sunset by God in some manner, and the only physical perspective God gives us in Genesis is the Holy Spirit hovering… and hovering does not require that sunsets be experienced every 24 hours. But, my Christian brethren seem to forget or omit the physical perspective of the Holy Spirit as expressed in Genesis 1, that it is expressed in physical terms, and that evening is a physical event with a physical perspective, and that someone was recorded in Genesis who experienced it. It escapes me as to why such detail is never explained. It only means that the truth discovered by science was recorded in scripture first, a territory any Christian should be anxious to stake out as their own.
And so I do.