Nine million girls have gone “missing” in India over the past two decades due to sex-selective abortions, according to a new report on sex ratios and gendercide in the world’s second-most populous nation.
The problem rests mainly within the Hindu and Sikh communities, according to government-backed data, while the subcontinent’s Christians have maintained a “natural balance” of sons and daughters since 2001, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released today.
Pew estimates that Christians account for 53,000 of the missing girls in India, whereas Hindus account for 7.8 million girls, Muslims account for 590,000 girls, Sikhs account for 440,000 girls, and other religious groups such as Buddhists and Jains account for 110,000 girls.
The tallies were disproportionately high for Hindus, who comprise 79.8 percent of India’s population yet 86.7 percent of the missing girls, as well as for Sikhs, who comprise 1.7 percent of the population yet 4.9 percent of the missing. The tallies were disproportionately low for Muslims, who comprise 14.2 percent of India’s population yet 6.6 percent of the missing girls, as well as for Christians, who comprise 2.3 percent of the population yet 0.6 percent of the missing.
However, bias toward sons is waning among all religious groups in India, and researchers concluded the annual number of missing girls has dropped from about 480,000 in 2010 to about 410,000 in 2019.
“The new data suggests that Indian families are becoming less likely to use abortions to ensure the birth of sons rather than daughters,” stated Pew research associate Yunping Tong. “This follows years of government efforts to curb sex selection—including a ban on prenatal sex tests and a massive advertising campaign urging parents to ‘save the girl child’—and coincides with broader social changes such as rising education and wealth.”
Classic and contemporary excerpts.Forget the numbersThere never has been a power so dramatically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude [people] with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that truth lies in the single individual.—Søren Kierkegaard in Purity of Heart Is to Will One ThingWhat if God is ugly?The question “What if God is ugly?” has been going through my brain for about a year. The more I think about it the more sense it makes to me. Whenever we see something we think is beautiful (based on our own concept of beauty), we think of God. But we all have a different (cultural, individual) sense of beauty. So in heaven a lot of people will be disappointed.…In my creativity class, students have to make a list of ugly and beautiful items. And the lists always surprise me. Under the heading “ugly” I will find the words “spider” and “feet”! How can they claim these are ugly?… What we call ugly is only our appraisal. My lifelong sermon message has been to acknowledge life wherever you are and whatever it is. For the ordinary is special.—Reinhold Piper Marxhau in a letter to Martin Marty (Christian Century, March 23–30, 1988)What’s the difference?The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that very often the person who tries to practice spiritual disciplines in everyday life is looked upon with disapproval by a large portion of the Church. And for the most part, the followers of Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the world, and so like it in almost every respect, that to a casual observer, there is no difference between the Christian and the pagan.—Hannah Whitall Smith in The Christian’s Secret of a Happy LifeA losing raceTechnology is so far ahead of human relations! As for the latter, we are still in the Stone Age. Why do we human beings learn so much, so soon, about technology, and so little, so late, about loving one another?—Henri Nouwen in New Oxford Review (June 1987)God and the mediaIt could not possibly be the case that something men have invented, like the media, could never be serviceable to God.… For instance, once when I was standing waiting for a train in an underground station, a little man … came up to me and asked permission to shake my hand. I gladly, and rather absentmindly, extended a hand.… As we shook hands, he remarked that some words of mine in a radio program had prevented him from commiting suicide. The humbling thing was that I couldn’t remember the particular program he had in mind; doubtless some panel or another, to me buffoonery, and yet a human life had hung on it.—Malcolm Muggeridge in Christ and the MediaAPSALMON TWA FLIGHT 81High above the cloudssix miles over earthI think of Timeand Lifenot timeless lifeof coffee tea or milknot living waterbread of lifeof landingon hard concrete stripnot flying on to meetYou.I guess I fear that.Earthbound in theheavensLord not heavenbound.Lord have mercy.—Joseph Bayly inPsalms of My Life:Calligraphy by Tim BottsPew’s latest report on religion in India examines the sex ratio at birth among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs, as other religious communities were too small to study. The report found “signs of normalization” in the ratio of baby boys to baby girls, with “son preference” or “daughter aversion” declining “sharply” among Sikhs which previously had the greatest gender imbalance.
While acknowledging geographic variations in laws and norms within India, Pew explained:
Around the world, sex selection is often attributed to “son preference” (or “daughter aversion”), a form of gender bias in which families prioritize having sons over daughters for economic, historical or religious reasons. In India, son preference may be tied to cultural practices that make daughters more costly to raise than sons. In Indian tradition, only sons pass down the family name, thereby carrying on the family lineage, and Hindu sons are expected to perform last rites for deceased parents, including lighting the funeral pyre and scattering their ashes. Sons have also been a way for families to preserve ancestral property because males generally dominate inheritance lines (even though most Indian inheritance laws now prohibit gender discrimination).
Daughters, meanwhile, often take wealth away in the form of large dowries at the time of marriage, with payments sometimes continuing throughout a daughter’s life. And while sons continue to live in the parental home after marriage, with wives who often become the primary caregivers for aging in-laws, a daughter is expected to move away from her parents and into her husband’s family home.
The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 105. The advent of prenatal testing and legalized abortion in India in the 1970s led to a rise in sex-selective abortions that skewed its sex ratio to a recorded high of 111.2 male births per 100 female births in 2010. This put India among the most skewed nations in the world from 2000 to 2020, alongside China, Vietnam, Albania, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. (The United Nations estimates that China accounts for 51 percent of missing girls and India 32 percent.)
NEWSABORTIONProlife activists are at odds over the best strategy for bringing about a change in abortion law.Two events this summer crystallize the differences between factions within the prolife movement. Both sides say they are working toward the same goal: making abortion illegal. In Philadelphia, more than 800 demonstrators were arrested last month for blocking the entrances to two abortion clinics. They believe social upheaval is necessary to effect change.Barely a week earlier, the Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing religious groups that receive federal funds to continue counseling teenagers to seek alternatives to abortion. The traditional prolife movement, shunning illegal demonstrations, regards this victory as evidence that working within the law will eventually bear the desired fruit.Protest 80S Style“No babies were killed at this clinic today,” Randall Terry shouted to the remaining demonstrators in front of Philadelphia’s Northeast Women’s Center. The founder of Operation Rescue, which to date has sponsored “rescues” in three major cities, Terry believes the prolife movement must add civil disobedience to its arsenal in order to win its battle against abortion.Unlike the sit-ins of the sixties, which often drew violent responses from police, leaders of last month’s effort worked closely with the Philadelphia police to ensure an orderly protest. The predominantly white, evangelical demonstrators sat in 100-degree heat, some for nine hours, waiting to be arrested. Leaders used bullhorns to urge protesters to delay the arrest process so the clinic would stay closed as long as possible. After a short bus ride to a makeshift processing center, demonstrators were charged with trespassing (a misdemeanor), then released.“Every major political change in our society has been preceded by social upheaval,” explained Terry. “The prolife movement has failed to learn the lessons of history, which show how the labor movement, the civil rights movement, Vietnam protest, and gay liberation all occurred because a group of people created social tension.”Operation Rescue represents a growing segment of the prolife movement unwilling to wait for politicians to change abortion laws. They say they must obey God’s law when it conflicts with earthly law, which for them means breaking U.S. laws to prevent abortions.Though abortion clinic protesters usually face only a small fine, some pay the price of freedom. From a telephone in the District of Columbia jail, ChristyAnne Collins, director of Sanctity of Life, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY of being arrested, handcuffed, and sentenced to nine months for refusing to leave a public hallway in front of an abortion clinic. “I may be released early with the provision I refrain from further activities outside abortion clinics,” she said, “but I cannot do that. I’ll use whatever nonviolent means I can to help save the babies.”Some, however, go further than Collins. “Philosophically, blowing up an abortion machine can’t be wrong, because it’s a machine used for killing innocent human beings,” said Richard Traynor, an attorney and president of New Jersey Right to Life. “However, I would not do it myself. Instead, I choose to put my body between the machine and the innocent victim.”Faith In The SystemMeanwhile, others in the prolife movement hailed the June 29 Supreme Court decision in Bowen v. Kendrick (see p. 54) as evidence that working through the legislative process is the most effective way to make abortion illegal, even though the case is only indirectly related to abortion. “In the past 15 years we have seen the Court move from 7 to 2 in favor of abortion to a probable 5 to 4 opposed,” said Jack Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). The nation’s largest prolife organization, the NRLC has consistently opposed illegal activity.Willke was careful not to criticize those who break laws to fight abortion, but he said he feels their actions are misguided. The NRLC advocates working within the law as the quickest route to reversing Roe v. Wade, the historic 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Willke cites a string of legislative victories that have cut federal funds for abortion.“Moral Calculus”Although both groups agree that the ultimate goal is to change the law, convictions about how to do it are firm on both sides. “If we believe abortion is murder, the logical response is physical intervention, not writing letters to congressmen,” says Operation Rescue’s Terry. “We’ve been working on a political solution for 15 years, and it’s failed. Our ranks are growing because people are realizing we have missed the boat. Instead of trying to fill the halls of Congress, we should have been filling the abortion clinics with people who want to stop the killing.”Willke, however, questions the wisdom of breaking the law. “We will want people to obey the new abortion law we are working for, so it is important we let the nation know we are responsible people ourselves.” Willke is especially critical of violence. “We will not win with violence. That is the tactic of the abortionist.”Willke maintains further that proponents of illegal activities may actually be postponing the reversal of Roe v. Wade. “Generally, the kind of publicity they receive when they demonstrate is bad for the movement. In the sixties, the media were behind the civil rights movement. They are not behind the prolife movement. They portray those demonstrators as a bunch of kooks, religious fanatics.”Wilke said the sit-ins may stop a few babies from being killed, “but if it postpones the reversal of Roe v. Wade for just one day by turning people off to the cause, that’s 4,000 babies.”The debate over strategy is a question of what Michigan prolife activist Charles White says is referred to by ethicists as “moral calculus.” White asks, “Do you close or destroy an abortion clinic to stop the killing for a short time, or do you use the legislative process to try and stop it forever?” In White’s view, prolifers face the same decision faced by European Christians sympathetic with Jews facing the Holocaust: “Is it right to blow up a bridge to stop the train carrying Jews to the gas chambers?”Cease-Fire?Willke maintains that the time and energy of demonstrators would be better spent campaigning for George Bush. “There are three old men on the Supreme Court who will probably be replaced by the next President,” he said. “If George Bush is elected, he will replace them with constitutional constructionists who will almost certainly reverse Roe v. Wade. If Michael Dukakis is elected, he will almost certainly replace them with young, proabortion judicial activists.”But Terry indicates there is little chance that his branch of the prolife movement will alter its course. “Our numbers are increasing, especially among evangelicals,” he said. “The National Right to Life Committee does not represent the whole prolife movement. We want a new law too, but in the meantime, we can no longer stand by while babies are being killed.”By Lyn Cryderman in Philadelphia.Studying birth data from 2001 to 2021, Pew found that Christians in India have maintained a natural sex ratio of 105 or below, while Muslims have a ratio of 106, down from 109 in the 2011 census. Hindus have dropped from 112 to 109, while Sikhs have dropped from 121 to 110.
Binita Behera, a Christian sociologist in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of the eastern state of Odisha (formerly Orissa), focuses on female feticide and works with SALT, a department of the Evangelical Fellowship of India focused on issues of gender equality. She credited the healthy sex ratio for Christians to the teaching that “children are a gift from God.” She also noted that “not worrying about giving dowry in a daughter’s marriage is a big relief for Christians.”
Among Indian women ages 15–49, the share of Christians who want more sons than daughters has dropped over the past two decades from 20 percent to 12 percent. By comparison, Muslims have dropped from 34 percent to 19 percent, Hindus have dropped from 34 percent to 15 percent, and Sikhs have dropped from 30 percent to 9 percent.
Meanwhile, Indian Christians have the highest preference for more daughters, both in share (7 percent) and change (up two percentage points). And only 49 percent of Christian women with no living sons want to have more children, close to the 43 percent with no living daughters who want the same.
Yet Christian fertility rates have also declined over the past two decades, from 2.4 by 1999 to 1.9 by 2020. So have rates for all faiths: from 3.6 to 2.4 for Muslims, from 2.8 to 1.9 for Hindus, and from 2.3 to 1.6 for Sikhs.
Based on the available data on births to Christians (see sidebar below), Pew estimates:
- 12% of Indian Christian women want more sons than daughters
- 7% want more daughters than sons
- The fertility rate for Indian Christians is 1.9
- 52% of Indian Christian children are boys
“Christians know from the Bible that God created humankind as male and female and that he values them both. This is what shapes their worldview,” said Vidush Bhandari, principal of Doon Bible College in Dehradun, Uttarakhand in Northern India.
“The Bible affirms that male and female are created equal, gifted equally, and both are called by God to make his glory known in the world.”
Pew noted its report is the first to estimate “missing” girls in India by religious group. But researchers also noted that differences in sex ratios at birth are not solely due to religion.
After all, the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, insisted that women deserve the same treatment as men, and Sikh holy scriptures emphasize equal rights for men and women. Meanwhile, Hindus worship divinity in female form as Shakti, as well as many female deities and consorts of male gods.
The skewed sex ratios are predominantly due to social and not only religious reasons, said Bhandari.
Pew noted that demographic factors such as wealth, education, and urbanness also play a role. So does caste.
Christians comprise 47 percent of Indian adults with 10 years of schooling, 26 percent of Indian households in the top wealth quintile, and 39 percent of Indian households in urban areas. Meanwhile, a previous Pew survey of 30,000 Indians found that 3 in 4 Christian households “belong to a historically disadvantaged caste, including 22 percent who say they are members of a Scheduled Caste.”
Pew explained:
Of India’s four major religious groups, Sikhs on average are the wealthiest, by a wide margin. Approximately six-inten Sikh households fall in the highest wealth quintile, according to the NFHS wealth index, which includes measures such as whether a household has certain appliances and where it obtains drinking water. This may be tied to their geographic concentration in India’s northwest, which is home to a disproportionately high share of wealthy households. But even within regions, Sikhs tend to be more affluent than other religious groups.
According to NFHS data, Christians are the second wealthiest group, with a quarter of Christian households (26%) in the top wealth quintile, followed by roughly one-in-five Hindus and Muslims. Although nearly half of India’s Christians are concentrated in the affluent South, the remainder reside mainly in the relatively impoverished Northeast and East, so Christians overall lag far behind Sikhs.
Christians and Muslims tend to be more urban than Hindus and Sikhs. About four-in-ten Christian and Muslim households are in urban areas, compared with roughly three-in-ten Hindu and Sikh households. Cities usually offer more advanced hospitals, public transportation and other essential facilities. However, Muslims who live in cities tend to be concentrated in poorer urban areas with limited access to basic services such as water, health care, education and sanitation. The same is true of other socially disadvantaged groups, such as Dalits and tribal communities.
Premjeet Titus, pastor of Ekklesia Christian Fellowship in Mohali, Punjab, believes that dowry culture is the primary reason for female feticide.
“The moment a girl child is born, poor parents start to think about somehow arranging for 10,00,000 rupees [USD 12,500] for her marriage,” he said. “… They don’t spend on the education of their children but instead start to save for the marriage. Because it is so hard, it’s easier for them to kill the girl child in the womb.”
A dowry prohibition act has existed since 1961, but is not enforced. Titus thinks the government should enforce it, while churches should educate their members and create opportunities for equality.
“The church has a vital role to play. The church has to go out,” said Titus. “Let’s not wait for a crowd; 1-on-1 conversation has a greater effect.”
Lack of education is a major factor maintaining the societal bias against female offspring, said Rajan Baby, senior pastor of Indian Christian Assembly in Chandigarh, the joint capital of the northern states of Punjab and Haryana. After leading his church for 40 years, he believes awareness campaigns and intentional effort on the part of the society can overcome the gap.
“Children are a gift of God, and must be treated as such,” he said. “Life is sacred and should not be snuffed out in this manner.”
“We grow up to be what we have observed while growing up,” said Behera. She noted how in the Northeast both men and women cook, unlike in other parts of India. “When a boy grows up watching his dad help his mom in the kitchen, he grows to become a man who knows that work is not gender sensitive.”
Behera believes Christians can aid gender equality. “We must continue to reiterate—in all our retreats, youth programs, seminars, and Sunday school events—and to practice gender equality conduct.” For example, at a youth retreat assigning the responsibility of buying vegetables to the boys and sweeping to the girls. “By bringing gender equality in our churches, we will be giving rise to a different practice.”
The Indian government has been running a massive advertising campaign urging parents to “save the girl child.” In December 2021, the Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women reported the flagship BBBP campaign—“Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao,” or “Save the girl child, educate the girl child”—launched in 2015 had spent 80 percent of its funds only on media advocacy, according to The Hindu newspaper.
Pew’s methodology and analysis rely mostly on India’s last census, which dates to 2011 because a 2021 update was delayed, and its government-supported National Family Health Survey (NFHS), most recently conducted from 2019 to 2021.
“Aborting females may have consequences that reverberate beyond the families making the choice,” noted Tong. “International research shows that societies with high rates of sex-selective abortions typically suffer within a couple of decades from a shortage of marriageable women and a surplus of men seeking brides. This ‘marriage squeeze’ can trigger a variety of social problems, such as increases in sex-related violence and crimes and trafficking of women.
“Even if India’s sex ratio at birth continues to normalize, the large number of girls ‘missing’ from its population could continue to have profound consequences on Indian society for decades to come.”
What is the creation account trying to tell us?Evangelicals agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And they reject in unison any approach that treats Scripture with a profound skepticism regarding its historical credibility. Yet when they read Genesis 1:1–2:3, there is anything but unanimity.While there seems to be great variety of opinion, we can generally divide evangelical scholars who study the early chapters of Genesis into two groups: concordists and nonconcordists.The concordists try to harmonize (or find concord between) Genesis 1:1–2:3 and scientific descriptions of Earth’s origins. Some (called scientific creationists) harmonize science with their straightforward reading of the Bible. Others (called creation scientists) harmonize the Bible with science.The creation scientists, in turn, are composed of various subgroups: progressives (who construe the “days” of Genesis as immense periods of time) and re-creationists (who reckon with more than one creation). In addition, there are transformationalists, who argue for a pre-Genesis Earth and time. They may belong to either kind of concordist. Re-creationists and transformationalists reject the traditional reading of Genesis 1:1–3, which understands those verses to describe the beginning of Earth-time, when God created the Earth from nothing.The second group, nonconcordists, may disagree about the meaning of “days” and the syntax of Genesis 1:1–3. But they agree that Genesis teaches neither straightforward history nor science, and needs no reconciliation with the kind of history and science devoted exclusively to what can be observed and measured.Which of these groups you find yourself in depends on how you answer three big questions about the biblical Creation account:• What kind of literature is Genesis 1:1–2:3?• What does the author mean by the word day?• How are the phrases and sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 related?Let us examine them in reverse order.How Is Genesis 1:1–3 Put Together?Knowing how the various parts of a statement are related can make a big difference in our understanding. For instance, I might write: “I went to my office today. The telephone system wasn’t working right. I felt discouraged. I went home early.” That is rather inelegant writing, in part because I did not explicitly connect the ideas with words that showed time relationships or cause-and-effect patterns. You would probably read some relationships into that passage—that the malfunctioning telephones caused my discouragement—and you might be right; but you might be wrong.Likewise, the first few sentences of Genesis are not connected in a clear way. Thus, scholars suggest relationships between the sentences and come to different understandings of the text.• One group of scholars sees Genesis 1:2 as contemporaneous with Genesis 1:1. This is a traditional view in which 1:1 recounts God’s original creation of the Earth, and 1:2 gives us three situations belonging to the same time period: (a) the Earth was “formless and empty”; (b) there was “darkness over the surface of the deep”; and (c) “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” Following this line of thought, Calvin commented: “For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at its commencement …”All schools of thought see God’s activity of 1:3 (“Let there be light”) as later than the situation in 1:2. But this school sees all of 1:1–5 (from “In the beginning” right through the end of the first day’s creation) belonging to the same chronological grouping.In its favor, this view has the support of the classic Hebrew grammar, Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley. And theologians prefer it to a transformational theory that reads God’s “In the beginning” creation of 1:1 as earlier creation attempts than the one described in the six days recounted in the rest of the chapter.But there are insurmountable problems with this traditional interpretation. This passage contains pairs of words called syntagmes, words that occur together in various contexts to denote one unique notion. One scholar explained it this way: “In language, as in chemistry, a compound may be found to possess qualities absent from its constituent elements. For example, anyone who does not know what ‘broadcast’ denotes, will not be able to guess the connotation of the word from its separate elements ‘broad’ and ‘cast’ ” (U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis).Let us take the word-pair heaven and earth. Like our phrase night and day, it is a statement of opposites to indicate totality. Night and day means “all the time.” Likewise, heaven and earth signifies “the entire organized universe” or “the cosmos.” Brevard Childs of Yale Divinity School concludes that this syntagme never stands for disorderly chaos, but always for an ordered world. And John Skinner says it “is a Hebrew designation of the universe as a whole … the organized universe, not the chaotic material out of which it was formed.”Next let us look at empty and formless. This word pair (which reads tohu wabohu in Hebrew) is a rhyming syntagme, something like the English phrase hanky-panky. It stands for “chaos,” and it is the antithesis of the “cosmos” of verse 1. Logically, the disorderly chaos and the orderly cosmos cannot be applied to the same thing and the same time—and thus verses 1 and 2 simply cannot be contemporaneous.• Another way to understand the relationship between the sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 is to see verse 2 as following verse 1 in time.According to re-creationists, verse 2 tells of a second Creation that happened after the original Creation recorded in verse 1. The first Creation, they say, may have occurred millions of years ago but was reduced to chaos by divine judgment on disobedient spiritual beings; and the second Creation happened around 4000 B.C. According to this so-called gap theory, most fossils are relics of the first Creation.Although it was the Scofield Reference Bible that popularized and sanctioned this view in 1909, it has its roots in early Jewish tradition and has been held throughout the history of the church. Moreover, the verb translated “was” in verse 2 may mean “became”—“The earth became formless and empty.” Finally, the condition “formless and empty,” when it occurs in other Old Testament contexts (Jer. 4:23, Isa. 34:1), is the result of divine judgment.But this interpretation faces an insurmountable problem: the “and” that introduces the “formless and empty” description of verse 2 does not imply a subsequent situation (unlike the “and” introducing verse 3: “And [then] God said: ‘Let there be light’ ”). Also, although the formlessness and emptiness in Isaiah and Jeremiah result from God’s fury, it is not logically necessary (or even likely) that this chaos arises from his wrath. Peter knows of only two divine judgments on the whole Earth: a past flood and a future fire (2 Peter 3:5–7).• A third way to understand the relationship between the Bible’s first sentences is to see verse 1 as a dependent clause, with verse 2 as either a parenthesis or the principal clause—as in several recent translations:When God began to create the heaven and the earth—the earth being unformed and void …—God said …(Jewish Publication Society, 1962)In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland.… Then God said …(New American Bible, 1970)In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void.… God said …(New English Bible, 1970)All three endorse a transformational view of Creation, entailing a pre-Genesis time and chaotic space.The eminent scholar of Hebrew Scriptures, Harry Orlinsky, argued that the cumulative evidence—from the study of lexicons, syntax, context, and comparable Near Eastern stories of how the universe began—favors this interpretation. Indeed, no lexical or grammatical objections can be raised against it. But the context and the comparisons with other Near Eastern creation stories favors the next view we shall examine. Moreover, with two notable exceptions, Jewish and Christian traditions have understood verse 1 as an independent clause.• A fourth way of understanding the relationships in these verses (and perhaps the best way) is to see verse 1 as a summary statement that matches the concluding summary statement of Genesis 2:1: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed”; and to see verse 2 as a circumstantial clause modifying verse 3.Thus understood, Genesis 1:1–3 could be translated: “In the beginning God created the cosmos. Now [this is how it happened]. The earth was chaotic …, and then God said …” Like the third option, this reading also entails a pre-Genesis time and Earth.Read this way, Genesis 1:1–3 would be similar in structure to the introduction of the other Creation story in Genesis 2:4–7, as well as with other ancient Near Eastern tales of how it all began.An obvious theological objection will be raised against this transformationalist view. Where did the negative conditions originate? The question is best answered with another question: Where did Satan originate? The origins of both moral evil and natural evils (like tornadoes and malaria) remain a mystery in monotheism, and Genesis offers a relative beginning with respect to each. Nevertheless, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, transformationalists should conclude that both evil and matter are temporal in contrast to the eternal (see Jer. 10:16; John 1:3; Col. 1:16).Since Genesis seems to presume pre-existent matter and time, scientific creationists would do better to argue for an old Earth rather than a young one.How Long Are The “Days” Of Genesis?Part of the problem science poses for the interpreter of Genesis is the long periods of time required to lay down the fossil record. Obviously, those who wish to harmonize Bible and science must in some way read the seven days of Creation as something other than 24-hour days.Progressive creationists—who tend to minimize divine, special intervention and to maximize the operation of natural law—make room for the long ages in two ways:First, some interpret the days of Genesis as successive days on which God revealed his creative process to Moses. Back in the last century, J. H. Kurtz wrote that God revealed to his prophet, Moses, through visions seven progressive scenes of pre-Adamite creation. And in 1936, P. J. Wiseman suggested that God told Moses the story over six days. In this approach, the six visions are presented in logical, but not strictly chronological, order. Wiseman embellishes the theory by noting that Babylonian Creation accounts were customarily put on six tablets with a concluding colophon. And so in Genesis, he alleges, there was a day of revelation for each tablet followed by “the colophon of Genesis 2:4.”This interpretation of “day” faces the objection that it adds to Scripture. Genesis 1:1–2:3 contains nothing comparable to the introduction in Genesis 15:1: “And the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.” And in any case, the verb “made” cannot be changed into “showed” in Genesis 2:2: “And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day.”Second, some progressive creationists interpret the days as ages, which they correlate with the successive epochs recorded in the geological column. These advocates of the “day age” theory (which W. B. Riley called, “The Devil’s Counterfeit”) argue that the Hebrew word yom can have other meanings than “a 24-hour period.” For example, in Genesis 2:4, we find the phrase “in the day,” referring to the whole creative process recorded in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Gleason Archer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School also argues cogently that the events recorded in 2:4–25 (the making of Adam, the planting of the garden, the naming of the animals, and the gift of a bride) cannot be squeezed into a sixth 24-hour period.This view, however, satisfies neither the text nor science. Terence E. Fretheim of Lutheran Northwestern Theological Seminary linguistically validates the assertion that the author of Genesis intended to write of 24-hour days. And Robert C. Newman of Biblical Theological Seminary shows that they were intended to be chronologically successive. Moreover, in Genesis, against scientific understanding, plants precede marine organisms and even the sun, and birds precede insects. Problems, such as the chronological tension of so much happening on the sixth day, are better explained by an artistic-literary approach.What Kind Of Literature Is Genesis 1:1–2:3?The strongest evidence that Genesis 1:1–2:3 should be read as a historically and scientifically accurate narrative is that this traditional interpretation seems to be the plain, normal sense of the passage. When the fourth commandment gives God’s six days of creation and one day of rest as a pattern for human work and Sabbath, it seems to clinch the argument (Exod. 20:11).But there are two acute contradictions between Genesis and normative science about terrestrial origins: How long the process took, and in what order events took place. These contradictions have driven some biblical scholars to suspect that the passage was not intended to be taken in so straightforward a manner. They have asked just what kind of literature it is, and have compared and contrasted their own preunderstandings with those of the biblical writers. Even if the prodigious research, debates, and diligent publications of the scientific creationists should fully harmonize science with Genesis, Bible scholars can never again read the text through uncorrected lenses.Former Barrington College President Charles Hummel noted that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is unlike science in these ways:• Its subject is God, not the forces of nature;• Its language is everyday speech, not mathematics and technical jargon;• It is prescriptive (answering the questions who, why, and what ought to be), not descriptive (answering the questions what, how, and what is);• It is written for the covenant community and is validated by the Spirit, not for a scientific community or validated by empirical evidence.To pit the biblical claim of Ultimate Cause (“God created the heavens and the earth”) against scientific claims of immediate causes is as mischievous as pitting David’s theological assertion “You created my inmost being” (Ps. 139:13) against genetics. The Bible shows a marked disinterest in the mechanics of Creation (compare the one chapter devoted to the origins of the Earth and life to the numerous detailed chapters in Exodus, Leviticus, Chronicles, and Ezekiel devoted to recounting the formation of Israel’s formal worship system). And certainly science cannot answer questions of the creation’s purpose or value.In addition, nonconcordists say Genesis 1 conflicts with the aims of modern historians, who exclude ultimate cause and stress brute fact. In contrast to that kind of history writing, the Bible editorializes to the point that it rearranges the order of events in order to make theological points. For example, D. J. A. Clines of Sheffield University shows that the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (which must chronologically follow the scrambling of languages at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11) was dischronologized for theological reasons: The author wants to present mankind under God’s blessing to be fruitful and to fill the Earth. And while Exodus (7:14–11:10) reports that God inflicted ten plagues on Egypt, beginning with blood, the poet-theologian of Psalm 105 (vv. 28–41) feels free to reduce the number to seven and begin with darkness (to contrast with God’s three miracles in the desert that begin with light). Similar rearrangements of events in the synoptic Gospels are well known.Ronald Youngblood of Bethel Seminary West has demonstrated that Genesis 1:1–2:3 has also been dischronologized. In brute history, he argues, it seems unlikely that God created light and “separated light from darkness” on the first day, and then created luminaries as the means “to separate light from darkness” on the fourth day, or that evening and morning existed on the first three days before he created the heavenly lights to mark off days.These obvious incongruities in the text suggest to more and more evangelicals that a literary reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3 is called for. Systematic theologian Henri Blocher of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique labels the genre as “historico-artistic.” According to him, the interpreter should understand “the form of the week attributed to the work of creation to be an artistic arrangement … not to be taken literally.” “It is possible,” he adds, “that the logical order [the author] has chosen coincides broadly with the actual sequence of events of the facts of cosmogony; but that does not interest him. He wishes to bring out certain themes and provide a theology of the sabbath.” This approach not only relieves tensions within the narrative itself and with science, but also with the second Creation story (Genesis 2:4–25).Australian scholar N. Weeks offers a plausible objection: “There is no logical reason why the presence of a structure should prove that a passage is not to be taken literally.” But Weeks fails to address the tensions within the text as well as the figurative elements we shall note later. And Blocher argues against this objection by applying the philosophical principle that prefers simple solutions to multiplied hypotheses.R. Clyde McCone, professor of anthropology and linguistics at California State University, also objects to a literary approach. He complains, with some justification, that literary theories shift the focus of study away from God to the text and “present little substantive revelation of God.” This may be true of many literary approaches, but it certainly is not necessary.Even as exegetes call for a literary rereading of the text as an artistic achievement, theologians, professional and self-taught, are calling for a figurative approach. Howard Van Till of Calvin College notes that God’s actions in Creation “are presented in highly figurative and anthropomorphic language.” Even the eminently conservative commentator E. J. Young points to the repeated formulae, “God said,” and “God called,” and reminds us that “God did not speak with physical organs of speech nor did he utter words in the Hebrew language.” These expressions and others portray the transcendent God and his activity in human forms so that earthlings may understand him. So nonconcordists ask: In the light of these obvious and numerous anthropomorphisms, is it not plausible to suppose that the first week is also an anthropomorphic representation of the Creator’s work and rest, so that the covenant people could bear witness to him and imitate his pattern?If Moses did not intend to write a straightforward history, but an artistic literary account in anthropomorphic language (so that God’s people might imitate him), this would also give us a clue to the meaning of the fourth commandment.While calling Genesis 1:1–2:3 a literary work, nonconcordists shy away from using the word myth. For most people, that slippery term implies a fanciful, untrue story. Besides, there is actually very little similarity between this story and pagan accounts of the beginning and ordering of the universe. Indeed, some have pointed out that Genesis 1:1–2:3 reads like a polemic against pagan cosmogonies.Having surveyed the answers to the three big questions, we can draw some conclusions. Perhaps it is best to regard Genesis 1:1–2:3 as a creation story in torah (“instruction”), which is a majestic, artistic achievement, employing anthropomorphic language. As H. J. Sørenson said in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: “The basic purpose is to instruct men on the ultimate realities that have an immediate bearing on daily life and on how to engage vitally in these realities to live successfully. It contains ‘truths to live by’ rather than ‘theology to speculate on.’ ”Moses intended no distinction between historical data and its theological shaping, and Bible students should resist the temptation to separate the two. Historical critics evaporate history, but nonconcordist evangelicals must take history seriously and compare Scripture with Scripture, a task that some accomplish better than others: In Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, for example, Westminster Theological Seminary’s Tremper Longman helps readers walk gingerly between the promise and pitfalls of the literary approach to the Old Testament. In The Fourth Day, however, Howard Van Till seems to lose his balance when he writes that the primeval history in Genesis 1–11 is not concerned with whether the events actually happened.This literary approach may unsettle some who cling to the Reformers’ claim that Scripture is perspicuous. But note: The literary approach to Genesis 1:1–2:3 changes no doctrine of the church while it helps us to see some of them more clearly.Bruce Waltke is professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia. He is coauthor of the newly published Obadiah, Jonah, Micah volume in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series (InterVarsity Press).
Additional reporting by CT editors. Pew’s specific analysis of Christians is posted below:
What is the creation account trying to tell us?Evangelicals agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And they reject in unison any approach that treats Scripture with a profound skepticism regarding its historical credibility. Yet when they read Genesis 1:1–2:3, there is anything but unanimity.While there seems to be great variety of opinion, we can generally divide evangelical scholars who study the early chapters of Genesis into two groups: concordists and nonconcordists.The concordists try to harmonize (or find concord between) Genesis 1:1–2:3 and scientific descriptions of Earth’s origins. Some (called scientific creationists) harmonize science with their straightforward reading of the Bible. Others (called creation scientists) harmonize the Bible with science.The creation scientists, in turn, are composed of various subgroups: progressives (who construe the “days” of Genesis as immense periods of time) and re-creationists (who reckon with more than one creation). In addition, there are transformationalists, who argue for a pre-Genesis Earth and time. They may belong to either kind of concordist. Re-creationists and transformationalists reject the traditional reading of Genesis 1:1–3, which understands those verses to describe the beginning of Earth-time, when God created the Earth from nothing.The second group, nonconcordists, may disagree about the meaning of “days” and the syntax of Genesis 1:1–3. But they agree that Genesis teaches neither straightforward history nor science, and needs no reconciliation with the kind of history and science devoted exclusively to what can be observed and measured.Which of these groups you find yourself in depends on how you answer three big questions about the biblical Creation account:• What kind of literature is Genesis 1:1–2:3?• What does the author mean by the word day?• How are the phrases and sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 related?Let us examine them in reverse order.How Is Genesis 1:1–3 Put Together?Knowing how the various parts of a statement are related can make a big difference in our understanding. For instance, I might write: “I went to my office today. The telephone system wasn’t working right. I felt discouraged. I went home early.” That is rather inelegant writing, in part because I did not explicitly connect the ideas with words that showed time relationships or cause-and-effect patterns. You would probably read some relationships into that passage—that the malfunctioning telephones caused my discouragement—and you might be right; but you might be wrong.Likewise, the first few sentences of Genesis are not connected in a clear way. Thus, scholars suggest relationships between the sentences and come to different understandings of the text.• One group of scholars sees Genesis 1:2 as contemporaneous with Genesis 1:1. This is a traditional view in which 1:1 recounts God’s original creation of the Earth, and 1:2 gives us three situations belonging to the same time period: (a) the Earth was “formless and empty”; (b) there was “darkness over the surface of the deep”; and (c) “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” Following this line of thought, Calvin commented: “For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at its commencement …”All schools of thought see God’s activity of 1:3 (“Let there be light”) as later than the situation in 1:2. But this school sees all of 1:1–5 (from “In the beginning” right through the end of the first day’s creation) belonging to the same chronological grouping.In its favor, this view has the support of the classic Hebrew grammar, Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley. And theologians prefer it to a transformational theory that reads God’s “In the beginning” creation of 1:1 as earlier creation attempts than the one described in the six days recounted in the rest of the chapter.But there are insurmountable problems with this traditional interpretation. This passage contains pairs of words called syntagmes, words that occur together in various contexts to denote one unique notion. One scholar explained it this way: “In language, as in chemistry, a compound may be found to possess qualities absent from its constituent elements. For example, anyone who does not know what ‘broadcast’ denotes, will not be able to guess the connotation of the word from its separate elements ‘broad’ and ‘cast’ ” (U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis).Let us take the word-pair heaven and earth. Like our phrase night and day, it is a statement of opposites to indicate totality. Night and day means “all the time.” Likewise, heaven and earth signifies “the entire organized universe” or “the cosmos.” Brevard Childs of Yale Divinity School concludes that this syntagme never stands for disorderly chaos, but always for an ordered world. And John Skinner says it “is a Hebrew designation of the universe as a whole … the organized universe, not the chaotic material out of which it was formed.”Next let us look at empty and formless. This word pair (which reads tohu wabohu in Hebrew) is a rhyming syntagme, something like the English phrase hanky-panky. It stands for “chaos,” and it is the antithesis of the “cosmos” of verse 1. Logically, the disorderly chaos and the orderly cosmos cannot be applied to the same thing and the same time—and thus verses 1 and 2 simply cannot be contemporaneous.• Another way to understand the relationship between the sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 is to see verse 2 as following verse 1 in time.According to re-creationists, verse 2 tells of a second Creation that happened after the original Creation recorded in verse 1. The first Creation, they say, may have occurred millions of years ago but was reduced to chaos by divine judgment on disobedient spiritual beings; and the second Creation happened around 4000 B.C. According to this so-called gap theory, most fossils are relics of the first Creation.Although it was the Scofield Reference Bible that popularized and sanctioned this view in 1909, it has its roots in early Jewish tradition and has been held throughout the history of the church. Moreover, the verb translated “was” in verse 2 may mean “became”—“The earth became formless and empty.” Finally, the condition “formless and empty,” when it occurs in other Old Testament contexts (Jer. 4:23, Isa. 34:1), is the result of divine judgment.But this interpretation faces an insurmountable problem: the “and” that introduces the “formless and empty” description of verse 2 does not imply a subsequent situation (unlike the “and” introducing verse 3: “And [then] God said: ‘Let there be light’ ”). Also, although the formlessness and emptiness in Isaiah and Jeremiah result from God’s fury, it is not logically necessary (or even likely) that this chaos arises from his wrath. Peter knows of only two divine judgments on the whole Earth: a past flood and a future fire (2 Peter 3:5–7).• A third way to understand the relationship between the Bible’s first sentences is to see verse 1 as a dependent clause, with verse 2 as either a parenthesis or the principal clause—as in several recent translations:When God began to create the heaven and the earth—the earth being unformed and void …—God said …(Jewish Publication Society, 1962)In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland.… Then God said …(New American Bible, 1970)In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void.… God said …(New English Bible, 1970)All three endorse a transformational view of Creation, entailing a pre-Genesis time and chaotic space.The eminent scholar of Hebrew Scriptures, Harry Orlinsky, argued that the cumulative evidence—from the study of lexicons, syntax, context, and comparable Near Eastern stories of how the universe began—favors this interpretation. Indeed, no lexical or grammatical objections can be raised against it. But the context and the comparisons with other Near Eastern creation stories favors the next view we shall examine. Moreover, with two notable exceptions, Jewish and Christian traditions have understood verse 1 as an independent clause.• A fourth way of understanding the relationships in these verses (and perhaps the best way) is to see verse 1 as a summary statement that matches the concluding summary statement of Genesis 2:1: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed”; and to see verse 2 as a circumstantial clause modifying verse 3.Thus understood, Genesis 1:1–3 could be translated: “In the beginning God created the cosmos. Now [this is how it happened]. The earth was chaotic …, and then God said …” Like the third option, this reading also entails a pre-Genesis time and Earth.Read this way, Genesis 1:1–3 would be similar in structure to the introduction of the other Creation story in Genesis 2:4–7, as well as with other ancient Near Eastern tales of how it all began.An obvious theological objection will be raised against this transformationalist view. Where did the negative conditions originate? The question is best answered with another question: Where did Satan originate? The origins of both moral evil and natural evils (like tornadoes and malaria) remain a mystery in monotheism, and Genesis offers a relative beginning with respect to each. Nevertheless, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, transformationalists should conclude that both evil and matter are temporal in contrast to the eternal (see Jer. 10:16; John 1:3; Col. 1:16).Since Genesis seems to presume pre-existent matter and time, scientific creationists would do better to argue for an old Earth rather than a young one.How Long Are The “Days” Of Genesis?Part of the problem science poses for the interpreter of Genesis is the long periods of time required to lay down the fossil record. Obviously, those who wish to harmonize Bible and science must in some way read the seven days of Creation as something other than 24-hour days.Progressive creationists—who tend to minimize divine, special intervention and to maximize the operation of natural law—make room for the long ages in two ways:First, some interpret the days of Genesis as successive days on which God revealed his creative process to Moses. Back in the last century, J. H. Kurtz wrote that God revealed to his prophet, Moses, through visions seven progressive scenes of pre-Adamite creation. And in 1936, P. J. Wiseman suggested that God told Moses the story over six days. In this approach, the six visions are presented in logical, but not strictly chronological, order. Wiseman embellishes the theory by noting that Babylonian Creation accounts were customarily put on six tablets with a concluding colophon. And so in Genesis, he alleges, there was a day of revelation for each tablet followed by “the colophon of Genesis 2:4.”This interpretation of “day” faces the objection that it adds to Scripture. Genesis 1:1–2:3 contains nothing comparable to the introduction in Genesis 15:1: “And the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.” And in any case, the verb “made” cannot be changed into “showed” in Genesis 2:2: “And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day.”Second, some progressive creationists interpret the days as ages, which they correlate with the successive epochs recorded in the geological column. These advocates of the “day age” theory (which W. B. Riley called, “The Devil’s Counterfeit”) argue that the Hebrew word yom can have other meanings than “a 24-hour period.” For example, in Genesis 2:4, we find the phrase “in the day,” referring to the whole creative process recorded in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Gleason Archer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School also argues cogently that the events recorded in 2:4–25 (the making of Adam, the planting of the garden, the naming of the animals, and the gift of a bride) cannot be squeezed into a sixth 24-hour period.This view, however, satisfies neither the text nor science. Terence E. Fretheim of Lutheran Northwestern Theological Seminary linguistically validates the assertion that the author of Genesis intended to write of 24-hour days. And Robert C. Newman of Biblical Theological Seminary shows that they were intended to be chronologically successive. Moreover, in Genesis, against scientific understanding, plants precede marine organisms and even the sun, and birds precede insects. Problems, such as the chronological tension of so much happening on the sixth day, are better explained by an artistic-literary approach.What Kind Of Literature Is Genesis 1:1–2:3?The strongest evidence that Genesis 1:1–2:3 should be read as a historically and scientifically accurate narrative is that this traditional interpretation seems to be the plain, normal sense of the passage. When the fourth commandment gives God’s six days of creation and one day of rest as a pattern for human work and Sabbath, it seems to clinch the argument (Exod. 20:11).But there are two acute contradictions between Genesis and normative science about terrestrial origins: How long the process took, and in what order events took place. These contradictions have driven some biblical scholars to suspect that the passage was not intended to be taken in so straightforward a manner. They have asked just what kind of literature it is, and have compared and contrasted their own preunderstandings with those of the biblical writers. Even if the prodigious research, debates, and diligent publications of the scientific creationists should fully harmonize science with Genesis, Bible scholars can never again read the text through uncorrected lenses.Former Barrington College President Charles Hummel noted that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is unlike science in these ways:• Its subject is God, not the forces of nature;• Its language is everyday speech, not mathematics and technical jargon;• It is prescriptive (answering the questions who, why, and what ought to be), not descriptive (answering the questions what, how, and what is);• It is written for the covenant community and is validated by the Spirit, not for a scientific community or validated by empirical evidence.To pit the biblical claim of Ultimate Cause (“God created the heavens and the earth”) against scientific claims of immediate causes is as mischievous as pitting David’s theological assertion “You created my inmost being” (Ps. 139:13) against genetics. The Bible shows a marked disinterest in the mechanics of Creation (compare the one chapter devoted to the origins of the Earth and life to the numerous detailed chapters in Exodus, Leviticus, Chronicles, and Ezekiel devoted to recounting the formation of Israel’s formal worship system). And certainly science cannot answer questions of the creation’s purpose or value.In addition, nonconcordists say Genesis 1 conflicts with the aims of modern historians, who exclude ultimate cause and stress brute fact. In contrast to that kind of history writing, the Bible editorializes to the point that it rearranges the order of events in order to make theological points. For example, D. J. A. Clines of Sheffield University shows that the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (which must chronologically follow the scrambling of languages at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11) was dischronologized for theological reasons: The author wants to present mankind under God’s blessing to be fruitful and to fill the Earth. And while Exodus (7:14–11:10) reports that God inflicted ten plagues on Egypt, beginning with blood, the poet-theologian of Psalm 105 (vv. 28–41) feels free to reduce the number to seven and begin with darkness (to contrast with God’s three miracles in the desert that begin with light). Similar rearrangements of events in the synoptic Gospels are well known.Ronald Youngblood of Bethel Seminary West has demonstrated that Genesis 1:1–2:3 has also been dischronologized. In brute history, he argues, it seems unlikely that God created light and “separated light from darkness” on the first day, and then created luminaries as the means “to separate light from darkness” on the fourth day, or that evening and morning existed on the first three days before he created the heavenly lights to mark off days.These obvious incongruities in the text suggest to more and more evangelicals that a literary reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3 is called for. Systematic theologian Henri Blocher of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique labels the genre as “historico-artistic.” According to him, the interpreter should understand “the form of the week attributed to the work of creation to be an artistic arrangement … not to be taken literally.” “It is possible,” he adds, “that the logical order [the author] has chosen coincides broadly with the actual sequence of events of the facts of cosmogony; but that does not interest him. He wishes to bring out certain themes and provide a theology of the sabbath.” This approach not only relieves tensions within the narrative itself and with science, but also with the second Creation story (Genesis 2:4–25).Australian scholar N. Weeks offers a plausible objection: “There is no logical reason why the presence of a structure should prove that a passage is not to be taken literally.” But Weeks fails to address the tensions within the text as well as the figurative elements we shall note later. And Blocher argues against this objection by applying the philosophical principle that prefers simple solutions to multiplied hypotheses.R. Clyde McCone, professor of anthropology and linguistics at California State University, also objects to a literary approach. He complains, with some justification, that literary theories shift the focus of study away from God to the text and “present little substantive revelation of God.” This may be true of many literary approaches, but it certainly is not necessary.Even as exegetes call for a literary rereading of the text as an artistic achievement, theologians, professional and self-taught, are calling for a figurative approach. Howard Van Till of Calvin College notes that God’s actions in Creation “are presented in highly figurative and anthropomorphic language.” Even the eminently conservative commentator E. J. Young points to the repeated formulae, “God said,” and “God called,” and reminds us that “God did not speak with physical organs of speech nor did he utter words in the Hebrew language.” These expressions and others portray the transcendent God and his activity in human forms so that earthlings may understand him. So nonconcordists ask: In the light of these obvious and numerous anthropomorphisms, is it not plausible to suppose that the first week is also an anthropomorphic representation of the Creator’s work and rest, so that the covenant people could bear witness to him and imitate his pattern?If Moses did not intend to write a straightforward history, but an artistic literary account in anthropomorphic language (so that God’s people might imitate him), this would also give us a clue to the meaning of the fourth commandment.While calling Genesis 1:1–2:3 a literary work, nonconcordists shy away from using the word myth. For most people, that slippery term implies a fanciful, untrue story. Besides, there is actually very little similarity between this story and pagan accounts of the beginning and ordering of the universe. Indeed, some have pointed out that Genesis 1:1–2:3 reads like a polemic against pagan cosmogonies.Having surveyed the answers to the three big questions, we can draw some conclusions. Perhaps it is best to regard Genesis 1:1–2:3 as a creation story in torah (“instruction”), which is a majestic, artistic achievement, employing anthropomorphic language. As H. J. Sørenson said in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: “The basic purpose is to instruct men on the ultimate realities that have an immediate bearing on daily life and on how to engage vitally in these realities to live successfully. It contains ‘truths to live by’ rather than ‘theology to speculate on.’ ”Moses intended no distinction between historical data and its theological shaping, and Bible students should resist the temptation to separate the two. Historical critics evaporate history, but nonconcordist evangelicals must take history seriously and compare Scripture with Scripture, a task that some accomplish better than others: In Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, for example, Westminster Theological Seminary’s Tremper Longman helps readers walk gingerly between the promise and pitfalls of the literary approach to the Old Testament. In The Fourth Day, however, Howard Van Till seems to lose his balance when he writes that the primeval history in Genesis 1–11 is not concerned with whether the events actually happened.This literary approach may unsettle some who cling to the Reformers’ claim that Scripture is perspicuous. But note: The literary approach to Genesis 1:1–2:3 changes no doctrine of the church while it helps us to see some of them more clearly.Bruce Waltke is professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia. He is coauthor of the newly published Obadiah, Jonah, Micah volume in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series (InterVarsity Press).
NEWSABORTIONProlife activists are at odds over the best strategy for bringing about a change in abortion law.Two events this summer crystallize the differences between factions within the prolife movement. Both sides say they are working toward the same goal: making abortion illegal. In Philadelphia, more than 800 demonstrators were arrested last month for blocking the entrances to two abortion clinics. They believe social upheaval is necessary to effect change.Barely a week earlier, the Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing religious groups that receive federal funds to continue counseling teenagers to seek alternatives to abortion. The traditional prolife movement, shunning illegal demonstrations, regards this victory as evidence that working within the law will eventually bear the desired fruit.Protest 80S Style“No babies were killed at this clinic today,” Randall Terry shouted to the remaining demonstrators in front of Philadelphia’s Northeast Women’s Center. The founder of Operation Rescue, which to date has sponsored “rescues” in three major cities, Terry believes the prolife movement must add civil disobedience to its arsenal in order to win its battle against abortion.Unlike the sit-ins of the sixties, which often drew violent responses from police, leaders of last month’s effort worked closely with the Philadelphia police to ensure an orderly protest. The predominantly white, evangelical demonstrators sat in 100-degree heat, some for nine hours, waiting to be arrested. Leaders used bullhorns to urge protesters to delay the arrest process so the clinic would stay closed as long as possible. After a short bus ride to a makeshift processing center, demonstrators were charged with trespassing (a misdemeanor), then released.“Every major political change in our society has been preceded by social upheaval,” explained Terry. “The prolife movement has failed to learn the lessons of history, which show how the labor movement, the civil rights movement, Vietnam protest, and gay liberation all occurred because a group of people created social tension.”Operation Rescue represents a growing segment of the prolife movement unwilling to wait for politicians to change abortion laws. They say they must obey God’s law when it conflicts with earthly law, which for them means breaking U.S. laws to prevent abortions.Though abortion clinic protesters usually face only a small fine, some pay the price of freedom. From a telephone in the District of Columbia jail, ChristyAnne Collins, director of Sanctity of Life, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY of being arrested, handcuffed, and sentenced to nine months for refusing to leave a public hallway in front of an abortion clinic. “I may be released early with the provision I refrain from further activities outside abortion clinics,” she said, “but I cannot do that. I’ll use whatever nonviolent means I can to help save the babies.”Some, however, go further than Collins. “Philosophically, blowing up an abortion machine can’t be wrong, because it’s a machine used for killing innocent human beings,” said Richard Traynor, an attorney and president of New Jersey Right to Life. “However, I would not do it myself. Instead, I choose to put my body between the machine and the innocent victim.”Faith In The SystemMeanwhile, others in the prolife movement hailed the June 29 Supreme Court decision in Bowen v. Kendrick (see p. 54) as evidence that working through the legislative process is the most effective way to make abortion illegal, even though the case is only indirectly related to abortion. “In the past 15 years we have seen the Court move from 7 to 2 in favor of abortion to a probable 5 to 4 opposed,” said Jack Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). The nation’s largest prolife organization, the NRLC has consistently opposed illegal activity.Willke was careful not to criticize those who break laws to fight abortion, but he said he feels their actions are misguided. The NRLC advocates working within the law as the quickest route to reversing Roe v. Wade, the historic 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Willke cites a string of legislative victories that have cut federal funds for abortion.“Moral Calculus”Although both groups agree that the ultimate goal is to change the law, convictions about how to do it are firm on both sides. “If we believe abortion is murder, the logical response is physical intervention, not writing letters to congressmen,” says Operation Rescue’s Terry. “We’ve been working on a political solution for 15 years, and it’s failed. Our ranks are growing because people are realizing we have missed the boat. Instead of trying to fill the halls of Congress, we should have been filling the abortion clinics with people who want to stop the killing.”Willke, however, questions the wisdom of breaking the law. “We will want people to obey the new abortion law we are working for, so it is important we let the nation know we are responsible people ourselves.” Willke is especially critical of violence. “We will not win with violence. That is the tactic of the abortionist.”Willke maintains further that proponents of illegal activities may actually be postponing the reversal of Roe v. Wade. “Generally, the kind of publicity they receive when they demonstrate is bad for the movement. In the sixties, the media were behind the civil rights movement. They are not behind the prolife movement. They portray those demonstrators as a bunch of kooks, religious fanatics.”Wilke said the sit-ins may stop a few babies from being killed, “but if it postpones the reversal of Roe v. Wade for just one day by turning people off to the cause, that’s 4,000 babies.”The debate over strategy is a question of what Michigan prolife activist Charles White says is referred to by ethicists as “moral calculus.” White asks, “Do you close or destroy an abortion clinic to stop the killing for a short time, or do you use the legislative process to try and stop it forever?” In White’s view, prolifers face the same decision faced by European Christians sympathetic with Jews facing the Holocaust: “Is it right to blow up a bridge to stop the train carrying Jews to the gas chambers?”Cease-Fire?Willke maintains that the time and energy of demonstrators would be better spent campaigning for George Bush. “There are three old men on the Supreme Court who will probably be replaced by the next President,” he said. “If George Bush is elected, he will replace them with constitutional constructionists who will almost certainly reverse Roe v. Wade. If Michael Dukakis is elected, he will almost certainly replace them with young, proabortion judicial activists.”But Terry indicates there is little chance that his branch of the prolife movement will alter its course. “Our numbers are increasing, especially among evangelicals,” he said. “The National Right to Life Committee does not represent the whole prolife movement. We want a new law too, but in the meantime, we can no longer stand by while babies are being killed.”By Lyn Cryderman in Philadelphia.
Classic and contemporary excerpts.Forget the numbersThere never has been a power so dramatically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude [people] with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that truth lies in the single individual.—Søren Kierkegaard in Purity of Heart Is to Will One ThingWhat if God is ugly?The question “What if God is ugly?” has been going through my brain for about a year. The more I think about it the more sense it makes to me. Whenever we see something we think is beautiful (based on our own concept of beauty), we think of God. But we all have a different (cultural, individual) sense of beauty. So in heaven a lot of people will be disappointed.…In my creativity class, students have to make a list of ugly and beautiful items. And the lists always surprise me. Under the heading “ugly” I will find the words “spider” and “feet”! How can they claim these are ugly?… What we call ugly is only our appraisal. My lifelong sermon message has been to acknowledge life wherever you are and whatever it is. For the ordinary is special.—Reinhold Piper Marxhau in a letter to Martin Marty (Christian Century, March 23–30, 1988)What’s the difference?The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that very often the person who tries to practice spiritual disciplines in everyday life is looked upon with disapproval by a large portion of the Church. And for the most part, the followers of Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the world, and so like it in almost every respect, that to a casual observer, there is no difference between the Christian and the pagan.—Hannah Whitall Smith in The Christian’s Secret of a Happy LifeA losing raceTechnology is so far ahead of human relations! As for the latter, we are still in the Stone Age. Why do we human beings learn so much, so soon, about technology, and so little, so late, about loving one another?—Henri Nouwen in New Oxford Review (June 1987)God and the mediaIt could not possibly be the case that something men have invented, like the media, could never be serviceable to God.… For instance, once when I was standing waiting for a train in an underground station, a little man … came up to me and asked permission to shake my hand. I gladly, and rather absentmindly, extended a hand.… As we shook hands, he remarked that some words of mine in a radio program had prevented him from commiting suicide. The humbling thing was that I couldn’t remember the particular program he had in mind; doubtless some panel or another, to me buffoonery, and yet a human life had hung on it.—Malcolm Muggeridge in Christ and the MediaAPSALMON TWA FLIGHT 81High above the cloudssix miles over earthI think of Timeand Lifenot timeless lifeof coffee tea or milknot living waterbread of lifeof landingon hard concrete stripnot flying on to meetYou.I guess I fear that.Earthbound in theheavensLord not heavenbound.Lord have mercy.—Joseph Bayly inPsalms of My Life:Calligraphy by Tim Botts
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