The Lost World of Genesis One

The Lost World of Genesis One
John H. Walton
Inter-Varsity Press 2009

John Walton is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, one of the leading Christian liberal arts colleges in the United States. He has written a number of books including a commentary on Genesis in the well-respected NIV Application Commentary series.

The Lost World of Genesis One is a controversial book, no doubt about that. If it's claims are correct, Christians have had one of our most central doctrines wrong for the best part of the last two thousand years.

Walton's argument is that our normal way of reading Genesis as an account of the material creation of the universe is wrong. According to Walton, Genesis One has nothing to say about what could broadly be called the scientific view of origins, or how matter came into existence, or how life came into existence. Instead, Walton says that Genesis One operates within a very different worldview. Walton says that Genesis One describes functional creation. It is about how God assigned functions to things that were already in material existence, and how God fits them into the created order he has created, which is focused on the practical matter of an environment suitable for human beings to inhabit and thrive in. To give just one example, how the sun was materially created is nothing to do with Genesis One, whereas the text teaches that God functionally assigned the sun to mark times and seasons and give light during the day.

Walton argues for his interpretation on the basis of comparisons with other ancient creation accounts, evidence of the worldview of people in Old Testament times, and analysis of the Hebrew text. He is adamant that it is anachronistic and invalid to read our modern concerns, with our modern worldview, back into the Genesis text.

Walton's argument is clearly laid out in 18 propositions (one per chapter) that link up and build on each other.
 

Walton's view seems to strike many similar notes to the framework hypothesis. In one of the chapters he points out that much of what he says could easily be incorporated into the framework view and I think this is correct. However, I still have a problem with Walton's central idea that Genesis One has nothing to do with material origins. I think the evidence he puts forward for this is not as convincing to me as it is to Walton himself. I'm no Old Testament professor of course, but I find it hard to jettison centuries of exegesis on the evidence he puts forward.

I remain more comfortable with the view I hold that Genesis One is a polemical, didactic and analogical framework. In other words, I still think Genesis is a literary account of material origins and their functionality, rather than a literal account of functionality only. This means that Walton has many useful things to say, but I cannot see this view being accepted in the mainstream of evangelicalism any time soon.