Seven Days that Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science

by John C. Lennox

Yet Galileo, far from being an atheist, was driven by his deep inner conviction that the Creator, who had “endowed us with senses, reason and intellect,” intended us not to “forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”6 Galileo held that the laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the “language of mathematics”7 and that the “human mind is a work of God’s and one of the most excellent.”8

“And so I declare first of all, that it is a well-known fact that every statement in the Bible is to be understood in its literal sense except those that cannot be so construed for one of the following . . . reasons: it may for example, either be rejected by the observation of the senses . . . or else the literal sense may be negated by reason.”

The crucial thing about Christianity’s fundamental doctrines is that they are first and foremost to be understood in their natural, primary sense. The cross of Christ is not a metaphor. It involved an actual death. The resurrection is not a metaphor. It was a physical event: a “standing up again”5 of a body that had died. However, we know from the Gospels that people listening to Jesus sometimes took him literally when he was speaking metaphorically (in John 6:51, for instance).

Next, in many places a literal understanding will not work. Let’s take first an example from everyday speech. We all understand what a person means when they say: “The car was flying down the road.” The car and the road are very literal, but “flying” is a metaphor. It stands for something real that we could express more literally as “driving fast.” Just because a sentence contains a metaphor doesn’t mean it is not referring to something real. Indeed, metaphors in general do stand for something real. For a biblical example, take Jesus’ statement “I am the door” (John 10:9). It is clearly not meant to be understood in the primary, literal sense of a door made of wood or any other material. It is intended metaphorically. But notice, again, that the metaphor stands for something real: Jesus is a real means of access into an actual, and therefore very literal, experience of salvation and eternal life. We should also note that the reason we do not take this statement literally has to do with our experience of the world. We know about doors, and our experience with them tells us that Jesus is using a metaphor.

But there is another snag with Gould’s view. We cannot keep science and Scripture completely separate, for the simple reason that the Bible talks from time to time about some of the things that science talks about. And these are very important things, such as the origin of the universe and of life. They are also foundational to science, philosophy, and theology. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27) are statements about the objective physical universe and the status of human beings, with far-reaching implications for our understanding of the universe and of ourselves.

Indeed, one of the fascinating tasks we are encouraged to do in God’s universe is to find out many things for ourselves. For example, the great seventeenth-century Christian naturalist John Ray did precisely that. Remember, according to Genesis, it was God himself who told the first humans to name the animals; he was not going to do it for them (Genesis 2:19–20). That is important, because naming things is the very essence of science (we call it taxonomy). Indeed, naming things is an essential part of all intellectual disciplines. So we might say that it was God who started science off! It was for this reason that the brilliant scientist James Clerk Maxwell had the words of Psalm 111:2 (KJV) engraved on the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge: “The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.” God loves an enquiring mind, a fact that has been a great encouragement to me in my study of mathematics and the history and philosophy of science – and everything else.

Augustine (AD 354–430) had already had the same thought a thousand years before Calvin: “Nowhere in the Gospel do we read that the Lord said: ‘I am sending you a Paraclete16 who will teach you about the course of the sun and the moon.’ For he wanted to make Christians, not mathematicians.”

We therefore can see that the words foundations and pillars are used in a metaphorical sense. However, it needs to be emphasized once more that the metaphors stand for realities. God the Creator has built certain very real stabilities into the planetary system that will guarantee its existence so long as is necessary to fulfil his purposes.

Basil also believed that vegetation was created before the sun in order to show that it was not dependent on sunlight, and so the sun should not be worshipped!

The narrative does indeed tell us that light was created by God . . . But what kind of light that was, and with what alternating movement the distinction was made, and what was the nature of this evening and this morning; these are questions beyond the scope of our sensible experience.

Jesus told parables about farming, building, and fishing, not about factories, aviation, and jungle exploration. And yet his parables are accessible to anyone in any age.

“the genius of the Bible is that it transcends time and history and speaks to the human soul,”

We must admit that reality is more complex than we think or imagine, and no matter what interpretation we adopt, the important thing, of course, is that it is a real being, Satan, who does the tempting.

The woodpecker has astonishingly powerful muscles in its neck to enable it to peck out insects. Some snakes secrete poisons, and some fish can launch bolts of electricity that stun their prey. Furthermore, many animals and fish have camouflage systems to avoid predation. There are insects that look poisonous to birds, even though they aren’t actually poisonous. If there was no death of any kind before the first human sin (and therefore no predation), did these exquisitely complex neck muscles, poison sacs, electrical organs, and camouflage systems come into existence as a result of that sin? If that is so, would it not make that sin the trigger of an extensive creation process – a feature that seems very unlikely, and one on which the Bible is silent? Or did God foresee the change, build the mechanisms into the creatures in advance, and then do something to set them in operation? I begin to think that Occam’s razor30 may need to be applied at this point in order to restrict the multiplication of unnecessary hypotheses – that is, if the theological problem arises from going beyond what Paul actually says.

Paul Davies’s testimony is again helpful: “I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate . . . We are truly meant to be here.”

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.12

As a scientist I must confess that I find their attitude very strange. After giving a lecture on “Science and God” to a large group of scientists at a major research establishment, I was (pleasantly) accosted by a physicist, who said, “I deduce from your lecture that you not only believe in God, but you are a Christian. You are therefore obliged to believe that Jesus Christ was simultaneously God and human. How can you, as a scientist, explain that?” My reaction was to ask him a question as a quid pro quo. And as I regarded it as a simpler question, I suggested he answer first. “Agreed,” he said. “What is consciousness?” I asked. “We don’t really know,” he responded. “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s try something even simpler. What is energy?” “Well,” he replied, “we have equations governing it. We can measure it and use it.” “That wasn’t my question! What is energy?” After some thought, he said (as I knew he would), “We don’t really know.” I then said, “Do you believe in consciousness and in energy?” “Yes,” he said. “So you believe in them, and you do not know what they are? Should I write you off as a physicist?” “Please don’t,” he pleaded. I responded, “Yet you were prepared to write me off as a scientist unless I could explain something vastly more complex than consciousness or energy – the nature of God himself. Tell me,” I went on, “why do you believe in consciousness and energy even though you don’t understand what they are?” “Well, I suppose it is because these concept...

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”15

“Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him” (John 11:9–10,

But no scientist in his or her right mind would ever dream of claiming to be the light. Jesus did – and he gave evidence by his life, death, and resurrection that the claim was true.

Augustine of Hippo long ago traced the reason for this back to creation: “[O Lord,] You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”23

But the point he made that day has reverberated powerfully through our married life. It was based on the first four words of his text: “In the beginning, God . . .” A wedding was a new beginning, he said, and there would be many other new beginnings in the future. The foundation for every new beginning was that God should be in on it. We have proved him right. What would a beginning be without God? The universe itself couldn’t have started without him.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” These magnificent opening words of the Bible have been much studied.