In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth. This central claim is based on a mix of faith, biblical revelation and rational deduction. But science is the sole means by which we ascertain how he did it.

If Christians cannot respect science and its deductions on matters of origins, then we drive a fatal wedge between these two knowledge systems that are gifted to us by our Creator. The consequences can be dreadful for young Christians and, for ourselves, we risk building our beliefs on a lie.

On the question of origins there are many things that remain open and some that are unquestionably established. The age of the universe and planet Earth is in the latter category. It is no good advancing doubts about radioactive dating techniques because there is a broad suite of many other independent methods that all arrive at the same result – our planet is billions of years old, 4.6 billion to be precise. Scientists are not stupid as some of your correspondents would suggest. Neither do they have a secret atheistic agenda. In fact they generally exhibit an exceptional honesty and a probing, healthy scepticism in their approach to scientific challenges. We must learn to trust them.

In my previous letter I suggested, on a textual basis, that six literal days were not tenable in a proper reading of Genesis 1 and 2. And certainly they are not scientifically tenable. Wayne Robinson and N.L. Burgess both advance the criticism that the matter is settled by the use of the terms “evening and morning, day one” etc. – thus implying literal 24 hour days comprising an evening, a night, a morning and an afternoon.

But commentators have for nearly 2000 years disagreed on what this curious language “evening and morning, a day” actually means. Unless there is a good reason (e.g. keeping lamps burning from evening to morning) they always occur elsewhere in the Bible in the reverse order.

The one exception, and the only other place in the Bible where “evening” and “morning” and “day” are combined in this way is in Daniel 8:14, 26. And here, contrary to all our translations, they are singular – one evening and one morning associated with an extended time period (probably of 2300 days, but perhaps 2300 years) rather than a literal 24 hour day.

This is just what I and many others have proposed for Genesis 1. Some have read the phrase in question as “chaos, order, period one.” Alternatively, and probably more safely, we can take Genesis 1 as a poem of profound affirmation as to God’s sovereign role in creation, without reading anything scientific at all. After all, we do not take Psalm 18:13 literally where it equates God’s voice with thunder.

I will argue as emphatically as anyone for the accurate literal precision of the Bible where it deals with historical assertions. But it clearly speaks metaphorically or poetically in places. We therefore have the sober task to discern between these various modes of expression. Science can surely be a guide in that discernment just as the other disciplines of history, archaeology and astronomy have enriched our understanding of the Bible.

– Dr Jeff Tallon
Mt Albert, Auckland