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There are two principal tenets of biblical cosmology:Footnote1(1) the physical universe had a beginning and (2) the physical universe was created ex nihilo. On this there is general agreement. On the remaining details of the Genesis creation narrative there have been many views and their remains much controversy. These controversies have their origin in the following issues:
• Literary genre of text: literal, allegorical, mythical
• Sequential order of events: chronological or topical
• Category of observation: noumenological or phenomenological
Attempts to interpret the text providing the primary description of creation as given in Genesis 1:1-31 have produced several schools of thought. These schools of thought are represented by the following views (some of which are incoherent but nevertheless included here for completeness).Footnote2
• The Purely Religious View - divorces the biblical account from scientific relevance or reconciliation.
• The Concordist View - the biblical account of creation when properly understood will exhibit a one-to-one correspondence with the correct scientific cosmology.Footnote3
• Pictorial Day and Moderate Concordism - regards the creation days in Genesis as pictorial representations of the major creative events. These events are coupled with progressive creationism but are not considered as a literal chronology of their occurrence.
• The Twenty-Four-Hour-Day View - holds that creation was effected in six literal twenty-four-hour days.
• The Age-Day View - the Hebrew word yôm translated as day is used both in the particular sense as a natural day or the general sense of a set span of time and so the latter usage is taken to mean a long span of time in the Genesis account of creation.
• The Gap Theory - postulates the creation in Genesis 1:1, followed by catastrophe in 1:2 succeeded by re-creation.
• Creation/Revelation - espouses the view of revelation of creation in six twenty-four-hour periods.
• Re-creation/Revelation - holds that Genesis 1:1-2 does not describe primeval creation but a much later refashioning of a judgement-ridden earth in preparation for a new order of creation (man) and the re-creation is described to man in six literal days.
• The Local Creation View - limits Genesis 1 to the re-creation of the general Middle Eastern World.
The motivation for development of certain of these viewsFootnote4 seems to have been merely attempts to answer problems produced by features in the geological record which had been interpreted to be contradictory to the earth history interpreted from descriptions given by the biblical record (e.g., conclusions regarding the relatively young age of the earth assumed from biblical genealogies and the occurrence of a diluvian flood). It is important to understand that some of these views of biblical cosmology are speculative and have no sound basis for their support.
For the purposes of this discussion we will adopt only the two principal tenets given at the beginning of this section as our basic statement of biblical cosmology. However there are several essential elements of biblical cosmology that are more philosophical statements than scientific representations of the origin of the universe. These elements of the traditional doctrine of creation fall in to three categories: temporal, ontological, and theological. The three categories make doctrinal statements about creation that are distinct from statements regarding the providential nature of God. The three important distinctions as identified by BarbourFootnote5 are:
(1) temporally, creation was God's initial act and providence referred to his subsequent acts;
(2) ontologically, creation ex nihilo was God's act alone, establishing the creaturely status of the whole world, whereas in providence he acts along with or through other existing causes to guide particular events;
(3) theologically, creation represented God's absolute sovereignty, transcendence, and freedom, whereas in the context of providence these attributes were qualified (in varying degrees) by recognition of human freedom, the lawfulness of nature, and divine immanence.
The New Bible Dictionary, 2nd Edition.
Unger's New Bible Dictionary.
For an in depth development of this view and its reconciliation with the standard modern cosmology theory see Hugh Ross's, The Creator and the Cosmos, Navpress, 1993, and The Fingerprint of God, Promise Publishing Co., 1991.
For example the local creation view.
Ian G.Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971.
Read on to the next section in "Cosmology"
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