Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER XII.

_METH­ODS OF IN­TER­PRET­ING THE NAR­RA­TIVE--AS­SUMP­TIONS OF MEAN­ING TO CER­TAIN TERMS._

Re­turn­ing, then, to the nar­ra­tive in the Book of Gen­esis, I think we may take it as clear that the pas­sage stands in such a con­cise and con­densed form, that it is ob­vi­ous­ly open to _be in­ter­pret­ed_. Fur­ther, that we should not be sur­prised if the in­ter­pre­ta­tion at the present day, with our vast­ly in­creased knowl­edge of Na­ture, is dif­fer­ent from what it was in ear­li­er times.

I make no apol­ogy for re­peat­ing this so of­ten, be­cause it is re­al­ly amaz­ing to see the way in which “an­ti-​the­olog­ical” writ­ers at­tack what _they sup­pose_ to be the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the nar­ra­tive, or what some one else sup­pos­es to be such, and seem to be sat­is­fied that in so do­ing they have de­mol­ished the cred­ibil­ity of the nar­ra­tive it­self.

If you choose to as­sume that Cre­ation as spo­ken of by the sa­cred writ­er means some par­tic­ular thing, or even if the mass of un­ed­ucat­ed or un­re­flect­ing peo­ple as­sume it and you fol­low them, I grant at once that the nar­ra­tive can be read­ily made out to be wrong.

Per­mit me, then, to re­peat once more, that the nar­ra­tive is in hu­man lan­guage, and us­es the hu­man terms “cre­at­ed,” “made,” and “formed,” and that these terms _do_ (as a mat­ter of fact which there is no gain­say­ing) bear a mean­ing which is not in­vari­able. Hence, with­out any gloss­ing or “tor­tur­ing” of the nar­ra­tive, we are un­der the plain obli­ga­tion to seek to as­sign to these terms a true mean­ing _with all the light that mod­ern knowl­edge_ can af­ford.

Now (hav­ing al­ready con­sid­ered the school of in­ter­pre­ta­tion which de­clines to at­tend to the ex­act terms) we can con­fine our at­ten­tion to two class­es of in­ter­preters. One ex­plains the term “days” to mean long pe­ri­ods of time; the oth­er ac­cepts the word in its or­di­nary and most nat­ural sense, and en­deav­ours to elim­inate the long course of de­vel­op­men­tal work made known to us by palaeon­to­log­ical sci­ence, and sup­pos­es all that to have been passed over in si­lence; and ar­gues that a fi­nal prepa­ra­tion for the ad­vent of the man Adam was made in a spe­cial work of six days.

All the well-​known at­tempts at ex­pla­na­tion, such as those of Pye-​Smith, Chalmers, H. Miller, Pratt, and the or­di­nary com­men­taries, can be placed in one or oth­er of these cat­egories.

Now, as re­gards both, I re­cur to the cu­ri­ous fact (al­ready not­ed) that it seems nev­er to en­ter in­to the con­cep­tion of ei­ther school to in­quire for a mo­ment what the sa­cred writ­er meant by “cre­at­ed”--God “cre­at­ed”--God said “let there be.” It _is_ cu­ri­ous, be­cause no one can rea­son­ably say “these terms are ob­vi­ous, they bear their own mean­ing on the sur­face;” a mo­ment's anal­ysis will scat­ter such an idea to the winds. Yet the terms _are_ passed by. The com­men­ta­tors set them­selves right earnest­ly to com­pare and to col­late, to ar­gue and to analo­gize, on the mean­ing of the term “days;” the oth­er term “cre­at­ed” they take for grant­ed with­out--as far as I am aware--sin­gle line of ex­pla­na­tion, or so much as a doubt whether they know what it re­al­ly means!

The in­ter­pre­ta­tion that I would pro­pose to the judg­ment of the Church is just the very op­po­site. It seems to me that the word _day_ as used in the nar­ra­tive needs no ex­pla­na­tion; it seems to me that the oth­er does. As re­gards the term “day,” it is sure­ly a rule of sound crit­icism nev­er to give an “ex­traor­di­nary” mean­ing to a word, when the “or­di­nary” one will give good and in­tel­li­gi­ble sense to a pas­sage. And look­ing to the fact that, af­ter all, when the days of Gen­esis _are_ ex­plained to mean pe­ri­ods of very un­equal but pos­si­bly enor­mous du­ra­tion, that ex­pla­na­tion is not on­ly quite use­less, but rais­es greater dif­fi­cul­ties than ev­er, I should think it most like­ly that the “day” of the nar­ra­tive should be tak­en in the or­di­nary sense. But of this here­after.

On the oth­er hand, with re­gard to the terms “cre­ation,[1]” “cre­at­ed,” “Let there be,” and so forth, I find am­ple room for the most care­ful con­sid­er­ation and for de­tailed study be­fore we can say what is meant. Even then there re­mains a feel­ing of pro­found mys­tery. For at the very be­gin­ning of ev­ery train of re­flec­tion and rea­son­ing on the sub­ject, we are just brought up dead at this won­der­ful fact, the ex­is­tence of _mat­ter_ where pre­vi­ous­ly there had been _noth­ing_. The phrase “cre­at­ed _out of_ noth­ing” is of course a pure­ly con­ven­tion­al one, and, strict­ly speak­ing, has no mean­ing; but we adopt it use­ful­ly enough to in­di­cate our ul­ti­mate fact--the ap­pear­ance of mat­ter where pre­vi­ous­ly there had been noth­ing. Nor is the dif­fi­cul­ty re­al­ly sur­mount­ed by al­leg­ing such a mere _phrase_ as “mat­ter is eter­nal,” for we have just as lit­tle men­tal con­cep­tion of self-​ex­is­tent, al­ways--and _with­out be­gin­ning_--ex­is­tent mat­ter, as we have of “cre­ation out of noth­ing.”

[Foot­note 1: The en­tire si­lence of com­men­ta­tors re­gard­ing the doubt­ful mean­ing of “cre­ation” is so sur­pris­ing, that I have had the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty in per­suad­ing my­self that the ex­pla­na­tion I pro­pose is new. Yet cer­tain­ly I have nev­er come across it any­where.]

The hu­man mind has al­ways a dif­fi­cul­ty when it is brought face to face with some­thing that is be­yond the scope not on­ly of its own prac­ti­cal, but, even of its the­oret­ical or po­ten­tial abil­ity.

The “cre­ation,” there­fore, of mat­ter by a Di­vine Pow­er is mat­ter of _faith_, as I en­deav­oured to set forth in the ear­li­er pages of this lit­tle work; but it is _rea­son­able_ faith, be­cause it can be sup­port­ed by sound rea­son­ing from anal­ogy and strong prob­abil­ity.

All our at­ten­tion, then, I sub­mit, should be di­rect­ed to un­der­stand­ing what is “cre­ation” in the sa­cred nar­ra­tive.