Wanna take the creation narrative as a metaphor? Sure, go for it

Ask a church receptionist #7

Welcome to another installment of Ask a church receptionist, a monthly column where I answer your questions about the Bible, Christianity, and whether disco is truly dead (never).

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Dear church receptionist,

I enjoyed your “Is there a hell?” piece. The follow-up question that immediately came to my mind was “How about Adam and Eve and the global flood?” Is there any room for those stories to be metaphorical—parables, if you will—or are we looking at a literal fiat creation six-thousandish-years ago with a very young earth and little to no evolution?

—Brock

Dear second-manliest name ever (the first being “Maximus,” obviously),

I’m going to focus on the creation account here, mainly to keep the length down, but everything I’m about to say has applications to Noah’s flood as well. (If someone wants me to write about the flood specifically, feel free to drop me a note.)

Let me start by saying that, to the extent that a “creation vs. evolution” debate exists,¹ I don’t see myself as having a dog (intelligently designed or otherwise) in the fight. It’s one of those “culture war bullshit” things that strike me as being motivated more by contempt for the “other side” than by any real desire for truth or wisdom, and it seems to dramatically lower the IQ of everyone who touches it. (For proof, go watch that decade-old debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, and then come back here and punch me in the face for wasting three hours of your life.) There is, of course, infinitely more fame and money to be gained by milking the culture wars than by staying out of them, but I happen to serve a God who had some pretty harsh words for those who seek to gain the whole world at the expense of their souls, so I tend to steer clear of that nonsense.

All that being said, if you’re looking for an excuse to take the first few chapters of Genesis metaphorically rather than literally, I’m happy to hook you up, right after the break:

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There’s actually a long tradition of taking Genesis 1 figuratively, dating back to the earliest days of Christianity—even among some of the faith’s biggest poster boys. Early theologian Origen of Alexandria (c. A.D. 185–253), for instance, was pretty committed to the idea that the biblical creation account was metaphorical, writing,

For who that has understanding will sup­pose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, ex­isted without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indi­cate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.

Origen was no revolutionary, either; his thinking was right in line with the exegetical approach of his alma mater, the School of Alexandria, which was arguably the first important Christian seminary (and was allegedly founded by St. Mark the Evangelist himself). The Alexandrian approach to Scripture maintained that every Old Testament passage had at least four meanings:

• the literal meaning;

• the typological meaning (how it points forward to Christ);

• the tropological, or moral, meaning,

• and the anagogic, or prophetic, meaning (what future events it predicted).

Of those four, the literal meaning would seem to be the least important, at least in terms of practical application. After all, the Bible’s authors didn’t include their stories simply because they happened—there are all sorts of things that happened, but aren’t in the Bible. What’s there is there for moral and theological instruction, so asking whether it’s literally true, while not entirely irrelevant, at least partially misses the point.

If you look, you’ll find all sorts of understandings of Genesis among the Church Fathers and other ancient theologians, some of which have been collected here and here, for anyone interested. There was certainly a subset who preferred a literal six-day creation, but there were also plenty who preferred to take the passage metaphorically, including none other than St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354–430), probably the most revered theologian among both Catholics and Protestants to this day, and who was thoroughly convinced that creation occurred instantaneously.

I’m pointing this out not to prove that Genesis 1 is definitely metaphorical or poetic; I’m just trying to demonstrate that taking it that way isn’t some retcon introduced by modernist theologians trying to impress their cool, Darwin-loving atheist friends. How to understand the passage has always been at least somewhat controversial, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. There are many valuable questions that the early chapters of Genesis answer (“Is the universe divine, or a creation of the divine?” “What do we owe to God, each other, and the rest of creation?” “Why do we so often fail at fulfilling those duties?”), and of them, “How old is the universe, and how many hours did it take to make it?” strikes me as the least important one.

I know a guy—a Lutheran pastor, baptized one of my kiddos—who was raised irreligious, earned a master’s in geology, and came to the Christian faith late in life partly because he became convinced of young-earth creationism. An unusual path, to be sure, and one that a lot of people, including me, will take exception to—but he’s also a lot smarter and better educated than I’ll ever be, so, eh. As you can imagine, a literal reading of Genesis is pretty important to him, but when I interviewed him about it, he shrugged and told me, “Listen, this creation stuff? It’s a sideshow. It’s not that important. I’m here to tell people about Jesus, not to tell them the earth is 6,000 years old.”

And that—if you’re looking for my personal opinion—is where I land on this stuff. Like…does it matter if Genesis 1 is a metaphor or a literal history? If I could prove it to you, one way or the other, beyond a shadow of a doubt…would it change how you live your life or practice your faith? And if so…why? Is it possible that you’re obsessing over this stuff just to “trigger the libs” or “annoy the fundies” or whatever?

As St. Paul tells us, “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” If your preferred reading of Genesis 1 is making it harder for you to do that…you’re doing it wrong, bro.

Always evolving from dust to dust,

—the church receptionist 🕹🌙🧸

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1. This was actually a huge issue about twenty years ago, back when Bush-era conservatives were pushing hard to put “intelligent design” instruction in schools; from what I can tell, no one has thought even a little bit about it in at least a decade, which really speaks to how irrelevant fundamentalism and evangelicalism have managed to make themselves in the cultural conversation.