Is the Cosmic Physics Hermeneutic of Genesis 1 theologically sound?

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Nov 18, 2021
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By a universally normal everyday reading, the first 12 verses of Genesis 1 constitute explicit information on the Earth as a life-supporting ecology. Thus, even vs. 1-2 plainly and directly refer to the beginning of that Earth.

But Henry Morris popularized the idea that vs. 1-3, instead of constituting such life-affirming information, refers directly to the fact that God created space, matter and energy.

I call this kind of idea the Cosmic Physics Hermeneutic, or the CPH.

Many CPH models of the account have been proposed since Morris proposed his. Some of those models claim all first eight verses for the CPH.

Basically, the CPH rejects the Earth-first reading as informationally and metaphysically inferior. This is because modern Secular skeptics think that the most objective and valuable way to understand origins is to begin by understanding cosmic physics. So the CPH joins that 'club', by tacking God on as the Creator of a blandly secular conception of cosmic physics:

  • 'In the absolute chronological beginning of creating, God created space and matter.'

This may be true enough as far as it goes. But it is just a 'creationary' secular bit of information on cosmic physics: from the 'bottom, up'. This is because the deep reality of cosmic physics is not that space and matter are created, but, rather, that they are finely tuned for water-based life and for the Earth's cosmically unique role in supporting that life. In other words, the deep reality of cosmic physics is that it reflects God's own values. He is, after all, the Living God, not some 'wooden boy' version of a Creator who only sometimes is pleased to be a 'real boy'.

Indeed, not one CPH model of Genesis 1 so much as broaches the possibility that the Creation account might maximally address that very value of the Earth. For, it would take many more words to (a) tell of the greatest values of Creation from the 'bottom, up' than to (b) tell of those values from the 'center, outward'.

It is not wrong to do (a). Nevertheless, Genesis 1 itself must be (b). It surely can be (b) within a universally normal everyday reading.

The CPH is not just 'bottom, up'. It thereby fails to distinguish just what sort of Creator is being referred to: What does He most care about? Is He the 'creator' according to Deists? Is He some pagan deity? The CPH has no hope of making clear what is His relationship to us.

----Actually, the CPH does make that clear, but not for any good. It suggests only that the Creator is some 'physics' snob, Carl Sagan wannabe, who wants to join the Secularist Club regarding 'what cosmic physics is'.

In short, so what that the Biblical Creator created space and matter? So, what?

To think that 'cosmic physics' is how Genesis 1 explicitly begins and proceeds is comparable to a 'physics first' way of verbally introducing a specially made wedding dress to the hopeful guests at a wedding. Specifically, it is like thinking that the ideal way to introduce them to the dress, and to the mastery of its tailor, is by not even mentioning the dress until after 'gloriously' telling them that 'everything ultimately is made of the same blandly secular constituents as everything else.'

This is not to say that Genesis 1 implies nothing about cosmic physics. On the contrary.

Nevertheless, as Apostle Paul reminded the Early Church, the mark of paganism, secularism, and atheism is the denial of the universally self-evident life-affirming Divine Design (Romans 1:20-23) of the whole Creation.

So the best that the CPH accomplishes is to try to win a race by ever only 'keeping even' with the opponent's refusal to get anywhere near the finish line. Worse, it renders the Biblical Creator and Redeemer as a 'physics' snob.

CPH models of Genesis 1 are logically possible only because of the grammatical ambiguity of its first verses. But, for too many readers, this begs the question of why does Genesis 1 involve ambiguity? To answer this, we need to realize just how Natural Language works.

Consider our own every statements on self-evident and valuable topics. Such statements involve a lot of ambiguity. But that ambiguity is not there to allow our meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on our parts, to be sure that many in our audience twist our meaning due to many of our terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity in our normal language efforts is simply a 'side effect' of our addressing our audience 1) on a less or more known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

So the ambiguity in Genesis 1 is not there to allow its meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on the part of the account's author, to be sure that many of us twist its meaning due to many of its terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity is simply a 'side effect' of its addressing us 1) on a universally known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

The topic is so naturally evident to us that the author lets that be the main guide to our interpreting it. And it is a forwardly-building flow of information. And it is touched only with whatever emphases that serve its topic, including even sequences of mention.

So it is that Genesis 1 reflects the nature of our own everyday simple sets of statements on a single natural valuable topic. To think otherwise of any part of the account is to admit that it either (X) is a flawed effort at plain communication or (Y) is a less or more esoteric body of...whatever.
 
Mar 4, 2020
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#2
By a universally normal everyday reading, the first 12 verses of Genesis 1 constitute explicit information on the Earth as a life-supporting ecology. Thus, even vs. 1-2 plainly and directly refer to the beginning of that Earth.

But Henry Morris popularized the idea that vs. 1-3, instead of constituting such life-affirming information, refers directly to the fact that God created space, matter and energy.

I call this kind of idea the Cosmic Physics Hermeneutic, or the CPH.

Many CPH models of the account have been proposed since Morris proposed his. Some of those models claim all first eight verses for the CPH.

Basically, the CPH rejects the Earth-first reading as informationally and metaphysically inferior. This is because modern Secular skeptics think that the most objective and valuable way to understand origins is to begin by understanding cosmic physics. So the CPH joins that 'club', by tacking God on as the Creator of a blandly secular conception of cosmic physics:

  • 'In the absolute chronological beginning of creating, God created space and matter.'

This may be true enough as far as it goes. But it is just a 'creationary' secular bit of information on cosmic physics: from the 'bottom, up'. This is because the deep reality of cosmic physics is not that space and matter are created, but, rather, that they are finely tuned for water-based life and for the Earth's cosmically unique role in supporting that life. In other words, the deep reality of cosmic physics is that it reflects God's own values. He is, after all, the Living God, not some 'wooden boy' version of a Creator who only sometimes is pleased to be a 'real boy'.

Indeed, not one CPH model of Genesis 1 so much as broaches the possibility that the Creation account might maximally address that very value of the Earth. For, it would take many more words to (a) tell of the greatest values of Creation from the 'bottom, up' than to (b) tell of those values from the 'center, outward'.

It is not wrong to do (a). Nevertheless, Genesis 1 itself must be (b). It surely can be (b) within a universally normal everyday reading.

The CPH is not just 'bottom, up'. It thereby fails to distinguish just what sort of Creator is being referred to: What does He most care about? Is He the 'creator' according to Deists? Is He some pagan deity? The CPH has no hope of making clear what is His relationship to us.

----Actually, the CPH does make that clear, but not for any good. It suggests only that the Creator is some 'physics' snob, Carl Sagan wannabe, who wants to join the Secularist Club regarding 'what cosmic physics is'.

In short, so what that the Biblical Creator created space and matter? So, what?

To think that 'cosmic physics' is how Genesis 1 explicitly begins and proceeds is comparable to a 'physics first' way of verbally introducing a specially made wedding dress to the hopeful guests at a wedding. Specifically, it is like thinking that the ideal way to introduce them to the dress, and to the mastery of its tailor, is by not even mentioning the dress until after 'gloriously' telling them that 'everything ultimately is made of the same blandly secular constituents as everything else.'

This is not to say that Genesis 1 implies nothing about cosmic physics. On the contrary.

Nevertheless, as Apostle Paul reminded the Early Church, the mark of paganism, secularism, and atheism is the denial of the universally self-evident life-affirming Divine Design (Romans 1:20-23) of the whole Creation.

So the best that the CPH accomplishes is to try to win a race by ever only 'keeping even' with the opponent's refusal to get anywhere near the finish line. Worse, it renders the Biblical Creator and Redeemer as a 'physics' snob.

CPH models of Genesis 1 are logically possible only because of the grammatical ambiguity of its first verses. But, for too many readers, this begs the question of why does Genesis 1 involve ambiguity? To answer this, we need to realize just how Natural Language works.

Consider our own every statements on self-evident and valuable topics. Such statements involve a lot of ambiguity. But that ambiguity is not there to allow our meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on our parts, to be sure that many in our audience twist our meaning due to many of our terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity in our normal language efforts is simply a 'side effect' of our addressing our audience 1) on a less or more known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

So the ambiguity in Genesis 1 is not there to allow its meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on the part of the account's author, to be sure that many of us twist its meaning due to many of its terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity is simply a 'side effect' of its addressing us 1) on a universally known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

The topic is so naturally evident to us that the author lets that be the main guide to our interpreting it. And it is a forwardly-building flow of information. And it is touched only with whatever emphases that serve its topic, including even sequences of mention.

So it is that Genesis 1 reflects the nature of our own everyday simple sets of statements on a single natural valuable topic. To think otherwise of any part of the account is to admit that it either (X) is a flawed effort at plain communication or (Y) is a less or more esoteric body of...whatever.
They cited only space, matter, and energy, but they forgot time in their citing of Genesis 1:1-3, meaning their model is flawed.

Genesis 1:1-3
1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Time - "In the beginning..."
Space - "...the heaven..."
Matter/energy - "...the earth..."

I would also add that matter is energry that contains mass, as opposed to light energy that has no mass, but it is not pure energy since it has properties other than energy. Fundamentally, matter is just protons and neutrons with a cloud of electrons and light is just photons; that's what the energy is.

The CPH also seems to neglect that since God created space, time, matter/energy then God exists outside of the known universe. This is evident because a Being whole is capable of creating space, time, matter/energy isn't effected by the same laws that govern those things and is, Himself, not composed of space, time, and matter/energy.

This is consistent with the Genesis 1:1-3's description of God as being a Spirit.
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#3
They cited only space, matter, and energy, but they forgot time in their citing of Genesis 1:1-3, meaning their model is flawed.
Advocates of the CPH fully allow that time is implied in the text, just as is allowed by all Calendar Day creationists (myself am one). This is just like they allow that a wide range of basics of cosmic physic are merely implied (i.e. gravity, atomic subatomic particles). So I doubt they would agree with you that their CPH models are flawed due to those models' not finding all these basics spelled out in the account.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#4
Is the Cosmic Physics Hermeneutic of Genesis 1 theologically sound?
Depends on how one receives, interprets, analyzes, and perceives Scriptural data. As we say way back in boonies, " God is His own best interpreter."

I like to just take Him at His Word and let teh Spirit do the crunchin' n' munchin' for me. :geek::D(y)
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#5
their model is flawed.
Whelp, ain't models made to jus be blowed up anzyways???:geek:

:giggle::giggle:***** BOOOOMMMM !! ******:eek::eek:o_O:giggle::giggle:

Sorry fellas, I'm just one of those literalists who does not feel the need to regurgitate and re-chew the Greek work that was done for me long ago by men whose minds could have been given understanding just as easily as my own. It seems so straight forwards and clear as it is. God does not have to adjust reality to fit into 2021 man's gooobed up models. It is your confusion and excessive hairsplitting that boggles me.
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#6
Dead and dry religion is a poor substitute for spiritual things. Come, taste, and see that the Lord is good.
- Psalm 34

Yes, and His goodness is not an abstraction. It is bound up with the Earth and us on it:

Imagine a version of humanity that, from the beginning unto now, has lived bound inside a Star Trek-like space ship stranded far away from any galaxy:

This ship would have Star Trek-like artificial systems for all factors humans require to 'biologically' survive and 'flourish'. And, just like the Starship Enterprise, all those systems would require maintenance and the associated toil and technological expertise.

So there are two main differences from the Star Trek Universe in this space ship scenario.

One difference is that this purely space-ship version of humanity would have no natural knowledge of anything but that which this ship and its extragalactic strandedness allows. Even the ship's ambient thermal systems are separate from its lighting systems, the latter producing nearly no heat, and the former producing none of the kind of light by which humans see. Its inhabitants, despite having all the perfectly synthesized food they could ever need or desire, would know nothing of flora, much less of a water-based, planet-based, large mass-based system of life support. In other words, this ship affords nothing but a purely Space Ship Cosmology.

The other main difference which this Space Ship Cosmology has to the Star Trek Universe is that, by being bound in this stranded ship from the beginning, its inhabitants would know nothing but to be compelled to toil just to keep every one of its life-support systems functioning. The ship could include an automated system for increased size to accommodate increases in population. But this system would require maintenance and the associated toil and expertise. No such toil or expertise is required for humans just to survive on the Earth. And, unlike the ship's systems for air pressure and air quality, just living daily on the Earth provides these two factors for free. Then there's the ship's system for artificial gravity, which, just like all of the ship's other systems, requires careful, highly technical maintenance.

Such a high-tech-bound, non-terrestrial 'way of life' does not provide for any of humans' most crucially deep kinds of natural needs. It can keep them biologically alive, but only by contorting their sense of metaphysics and ethics.

So this Space Ship version of humanity would be precluded making any true sense of most of Genesis 1. 'What', they would wonder, 'is all this about water? How can water be more important than atmospheric pressure, the latter of which this strange account does not even mention? It doesn't even resemble reality. It even goes on about things it calls 'land', 'sea' 'flora', 'birds', 'fish', and 'land animals'. It does not once point out the universal need for sealed outer bulkheads. What a stupid arbitrary account. It surely is fantasy, and a weird fantasy at that.'
 
Mar 4, 2020
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#7
Advocates of the CPH fully allow that time is implied in the text, just as is allowed by all Calendar Day creationists (myself am one). This is just like they allow that a wide range of basics of cosmic physic are merely implied (i.e. gravity, atomic subatomic particles). So I doubt they would agree with you that their CPH models are flawed due to those models' not finding all these basics spelled out in the account.
Not to quibble, but if the CPH model doesn't atleast contain the the most basic and relevant points then it isn't an accurate model. If they can't even include time, but rather assume their readers know it's implied, an often faulty assumption, then that leaves it open to interpretation.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#8
Did you remember to plug orbital decay into the equation?:geek:
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#9
if the CPH model doesn't at least contain the the most basic and relevant points then it isn't an accurate model. If they can't even include time, but rather assume their readers know it's implied, an often faulty assumption, then that leaves it open to interpretation.
I'm not sure what you mean.

First, let's say that the statement, 'God made everything' has a universally normal interpretation, and that that universally normal interpretation is that God made only every proper life-affirming thing. Catching cold is not life-affirming, so we then could say that, while God made the original microorganisms that catching cold involves, this does not have to mean that God made anyone's case of catching cold. Catching cold is just an instance of disorder, not the original and necessary effect of those original microorganisms.

By analogy, one can have macroscopic accidents, such as having a tree fall on you and kill you. But, obviously, trees are not made for the purpose of killing you. It's an accident. Similarly, the bugs that we call 'bedbugs' were not originally blood sucking pests. And, according to the ideally benevolent reading of Genesis 1, there originally was no carnivory.

My point is, just because an interpretive model of Genesis 1 does not find spelled out in the text every last kind of thing that God created, such as electromagnetism, that in no way makes that model flawed. It may be flawed for some other reasons, but not for that reason.

Otherwise, the account itself would, by definition, be horribly flawed, because it does not spell out every last thing that any one thinks it rightly implies. This would be the case even if the account is only allegory, or what-have-you. For, it does not spell out that it is allegory. Much less does it spell out the details of such a pure allegory that it may be supposed to intend.
 
Mar 4, 2020
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#10
I'm not sure what you mean.

First, let's say that the statement, 'God made everything' has a universally normal interpretation, and that that universally normal interpretation is that God made only every proper life-affirming thing. Catching cold is not life-affirming, so we then could say that, while God made the original microorganisms that catching cold involves, this does not have to mean that God made anyone's case of catching cold. Catching cold is just an instance of disorder, not the original and necessary effect of those original microorganisms.

By analogy, one can have macroscopic accidents, such as having a tree fall on you and kill you. But, obviously, trees are not made for the purpose of killing you. It's an accident. Similarly, the bugs that we call 'bedbugs' were not originally blood sucking pests. And, according to the ideally benevolent reading of Genesis 1, there originally was no carnivory.

My point is, just because an interpretive model of Genesis 1 does not find spelled out in the text every last kind of thing that God created, such as electromagnetism, that in no way makes that model flawed. It may be flawed for some other reasons, but not for that reason.

Otherwise, the account itself would, by definition, be horribly flawed, because it does not spell out every last thing that any one thinks it rightly implies. This would be the case even if the account is only allegory, or what-have-you. For, it does not spell out that it is allegory. Much less does it spell out the details of such a pure allegory that it may be supposed to intend.
It doesn't need to be exhaustive or detailed by any means, but they have no business quoting Genesis 1:1-3 if they refuse to talk about how "In the beginning..." is a reference to time. I do not think that is asking for too much to include in the model because it's literally in the verses they quoted. Do you see that?
 
Jan 14, 2021
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#11
By a universally normal everyday reading, the first 12 verses of Genesis 1 constitute explicit information on the Earth as a life-supporting ecology. Thus, even vs. 1-2 plainly and directly refer to the beginning of that Earth.

But Henry Morris popularized the idea that vs. 1-3, instead of constituting such life-affirming information, refers directly to the fact that God created space, matter and energy.

I call this kind of idea the Cosmic Physics Hermeneutic, or the CPH.

Many CPH models of the account have been proposed since Morris proposed his. Some of those models claim all first eight verses for the CPH.

Basically, the CPH rejects the Earth-first reading as informationally and metaphysically inferior. This is because modern Secular skeptics think that the most objective and valuable way to understand origins is to begin by understanding cosmic physics. So the CPH joins that 'club', by tacking God on as the Creator of a blandly secular conception of cosmic physics:

  • 'In the absolute chronological beginning of creating, God created space and matter.'

This may be true enough as far as it goes. But it is just a 'creationary' secular bit of information on cosmic physics: from the 'bottom, up'. This is because the deep reality of cosmic physics is not that space and matter are created, but, rather, that they are finely tuned for water-based life and for the Earth's cosmically unique role in supporting that life. In other words, the deep reality of cosmic physics is that it reflects God's own values. He is, after all, the Living God, not some 'wooden boy' version of a Creator who only sometimes is pleased to be a 'real boy'.

Indeed, not one CPH model of Genesis 1 so much as broaches the possibility that the Creation account might maximally address that very value of the Earth. For, it would take many more words to (a) tell of the greatest values of Creation from the 'bottom, up' than to (b) tell of those values from the 'center, outward'.

It is not wrong to do (a). Nevertheless, Genesis 1 itself must be (b). It surely can be (b) within a universally normal everyday reading.

The CPH is not just 'bottom, up'. It thereby fails to distinguish just what sort of Creator is being referred to: What does He most care about? Is He the 'creator' according to Deists? Is He some pagan deity? The CPH has no hope of making clear what is His relationship to us.

----Actually, the CPH does make that clear, but not for any good. It suggests only that the Creator is some 'physics' snob, Carl Sagan wannabe, who wants to join the Secularist Club regarding 'what cosmic physics is'.

In short, so what that the Biblical Creator created space and matter? So, what?

To think that 'cosmic physics' is how Genesis 1 explicitly begins and proceeds is comparable to a 'physics first' way of verbally introducing a specially made wedding dress to the hopeful guests at a wedding. Specifically, it is like thinking that the ideal way to introduce them to the dress, and to the mastery of its tailor, is by not even mentioning the dress until after 'gloriously' telling them that 'everything ultimately is made of the same blandly secular constituents as everything else.'

This is not to say that Genesis 1 implies nothing about cosmic physics. On the contrary.

Nevertheless, as Apostle Paul reminded the Early Church, the mark of paganism, secularism, and atheism is the denial of the universally self-evident life-affirming Divine Design (Romans 1:20-23) of the whole Creation.

So the best that the CPH accomplishes is to try to win a race by ever only 'keeping even' with the opponent's refusal to get anywhere near the finish line. Worse, it renders the Biblical Creator and Redeemer as a 'physics' snob.

CPH models of Genesis 1 are logically possible only because of the grammatical ambiguity of its first verses. But, for too many readers, this begs the question of why does Genesis 1 involve ambiguity? To answer this, we need to realize just how Natural Language works.

Consider our own every statements on self-evident and valuable topics. Such statements involve a lot of ambiguity. But that ambiguity is not there to allow our meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on our parts, to be sure that many in our audience twist our meaning due to many of our terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity in our normal language efforts is simply a 'side effect' of our addressing our audience 1) on a less or more known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

So the ambiguity in Genesis 1 is not there to allow its meaning to be obscure. Much less is that ambiguity an effort, on the part of the account's author, to be sure that many of us twist its meaning due to many of its terms' equivocal nature. The ambiguity is simply a 'side effect' of its addressing us 1) on a universally known topic 2) in a powerfully brief, and natural values-centered, way.

The topic is so naturally evident to us that the author lets that be the main guide to our interpreting it. And it is a forwardly-building flow of information. And it is touched only with whatever emphases that serve its topic, including even sequences of mention.

So it is that Genesis 1 reflects the nature of our own everyday simple sets of statements on a single natural valuable topic. To think otherwise of any part of the account is to admit that it either (X) is a flawed effort at plain communication or (Y) is a less or more esoteric body of...whatever.
This particular model you call CPH is a lot to unpack. There are generally two approaches for the creation stories in Genesis, Psalm 104, and Job 38-40. Either we approach the descriptions literally (such as young earth creationism) or we approach the descriptions figuratively (such that descriptions point to a deeper concept than could not have been possibly conveyed with the language at the time).

The short story is that both approaches are valid so long as the resulting interpretation is consistent with scripture in each case.

The perception of a "snobbish" author is unnecessary as parables and other metaphors are often used throughout scripture in which parables are themselves figurative by nature. This also speaks to your perception that a literal account has more utility than a figurative one, as parables through their ambiguity can offer greater descriptive utility than direct, literal accounts. If those were your only sticking points for dismissing a figurative account of creation, I don't agree with your conclusion.

I don't think the specifics of creation is a terribly important topic in the grand scheme of things, but for the sake of friendly discussion, if your CPH model is what I think it is (that the creation stories are figurative accounts), I believe it is defensible.
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#12
It doesn't need to be exhaustive or detailed by any means, but they have no business quoting Genesis 1:1-3 if they refuse to talk about how "In the beginning..." is a reference to time. I do not think that is asking for too much to include in the model because it's literally in the verses they quoted. Do you see that?
...Maybe I did not make it clear as to just what the CPH is. Its advocates do (do) invoke time as a factor. They are not rejecting time from their equation. They just do not find that the account can be construed as spelling out time by any simple term. This is just like they do not find that the account can be construed as spelling out gravity and such. For example, there just is no term in the account that can be equated strictly with 'gravity'.

...Ok, maybe many advocates of the CPH do think that time is spelled out in the account. Maybe I've been misrepresenting them in this regard. But to me, I've been assuming that the account does not directly address any concept of time. Maybe I'm mistaken on that.

So, maybe we have been talking past each other.

I think the CPH is flawed. Nevertheless, for any hermeneutic that sees the account as addressing physical origins I do not think that not finding such things as 'gravity' and 'electromagnetism' spelled out in the account constitutes a flaw.

In case you have missed my central point in all this, the CPH is not equivalent to 'all hermeneutics that see the account as addressing physical origins.' The CPH is an exegetical, apologetical, and metaphysical demotion of a life-centric reading of any or all of the first eight verses. For example, according to a CPH reading of vs. 1-3, these verses do not explicitly concern the actual Earth. Instead, they explicitly concern mere matter, the mere physical spatial dimension, and mere physical energy.

Any modern, 'science'-worshiping atheist grants that space, and matter and such are real. What they do not grant is intentional life-affirming design (Psalm 19; Romans 1:20). So the CPH really amounts only to a modern-centric, 'creationary' 'gotcha' against such atheists. It may confirm the Creationist's belief that God did create space, matter, and such. But it confirms this at the expense of the account's potential to roundly affirm Divine Design. In other words, given the fact that Divine Design is a direct blessing to all humans, the CPH reduces the value of any verse to which the CPH is applied.
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#13
The perception of a "snobbish" author is unnecessary as parables and other metaphors are often used throughout scripture in which parables are themselves figurative by nature. This also speaks to your perception that a literal account has more utility than a figurative one, as parables through their ambiguity can offer greater descriptive utility than direct, literal accounts. If those were your only sticking points for dismissing a figurative account of creation, I don't agree with your conclusion.
I see no mutual exlusion between literal and figurative readings of Genesis 1. Rather, I see each of these two readings like a marriage. They each are distinct, but they each mutually imply the other. Like male and female.
 
Nov 18, 2021
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#14
I don't think the specifics of creation is a terribly important topic in the grand scheme of things, but for the sake of friendly discussion, if your CPH model is what I think it is (that the creation stories are figurative accounts), I believe it is defensible.
What? Did you not read the OP (the opening post of this thread)?

I reject the CPH. But one's rejection of the CPH in no way necessitates that one rejects any and all literal views of the account. I'm a literal Calendar Day creationist.

But the CPH is mainly the product of the literal Calendar Day creationist camp. Hugh Ross, a Day Ager who heads up ReasonsToBelieve.org, rejects the CPH for all but v. 1. And his CPH reading of v. 1 is not anything like the CPH readings of v. 1 that are espoused by the particular literal Calendar Day creationists who advocate the CPH. For example, mentioned in the OP is Henry Morris, whose CPH reading of v. 1 reduces the verse essentially to:

In the absolute chronological beginning of creating, God created (1) the physical spatial dimension and (2) matter.

Ross, by contrast, sees the term 'the heaven' in v. 1 as saying essentially,

'God created the completed extraterrestrial bulk of the cosmos, for however long God took to do this, and involving every one of the distinct factors of cosmic physics.'

That is, Ross sees v. 1 as beginning with a distinctly 'cosmic' 'frame of reference', and that v. 2 constitutes a complete 'shift' to a terrestrial 'frame of reference'.

Morris, on the other hand, sees the entire first three verses as being strictly concerned for God's creating mere 'space', 'matter', and 'energy', (with---incredibly---liquid water prior to the introduction of energy).

Clearly, then, Morris's CPH reading is a reduction of the value of the first three verses to that of a blandly generic creation of mere 'space', 'matter', and 'energy'. In other words, Morris sees these verses as God's beginning creating from the absolute 'bottom, up'. He does not see these verses as being concerned for the life-affirming fine-tuning of these three blandly reduced 'basic building blocks' of everything. To Morris, the most foundational thing of Creation is these 'blocks' unto themselves, and that God created them. Morris does not care quite as deeply about the Divine reality of the actual cosmic phsyics in their being fine tuned to favor water-based life. His own CPH reading oddly allows actual liquid water, but misses the point of such water.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#16
I believe in a literal 6 day, mature-creation week consisting of literal day and night cycles, just like the context makes clear.