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Betwixt Text and Nature, God and Evolution 151
billions of years of development may be fit into a “day” of the
Genesis 1* account. (Interestingly, this interpretative strategy is
rejected by staff at the Creation Museum, since it is at odds with
their literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account/s).
However, this apologist strategy (namely to salvage the
credibility of Genesis 1* for a scientific age) never quite
satisfies—apart from the fact that the “fit” between nature and text
soon becomes forced, with a regular “aha!”-experience on
rhetorical display (to reinterpret here somewhat the psychological
dimensions of this phenomenon by, originally, Bühler 44 ): the
ancient contextually argumentative intent of the Genesis 1* text,
namely as a priestly, that is, Israelite confession over against the
Babylonian Enuma Elish creation account, is never taken into
consideration. Genesis 1* as ancient, historically datable literature
of religious type is turned into a contemporary kind of naturalscientific
report. Moreover, rather than a concrete ancient Near
Eastern confession with clearly traceable and comprehensible
intertextual play, Genesis 1* now becomes a magical document,
with the “real” (= natural-scientific) creation events as its “hidden”
meaning (the mode of the mystic or of the Gnostic interpreter), to
be unlocked only now, by means of the most modern insights from
a completely unrelated source (the mode of the allegorist, or the
heretic), namely natural science. The “key and lock” do not
match. 45
The nature of the text is distorted when viewed through such
modernist lenses. 46 While both science and religion offer
understanding, the former relates this to knowledge; the latter, to
44
See K. Bühler, Tatsache und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der
Denkvorgänge. Über Gedanken (Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 9;
Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1907), 14.
45 See H. W. de Knijff, Sleutel en Slot: Beknopte Geschiedenis van de Bijbelse
Hermeneutiek (Kampen: Kok, 1980); so, too, Du Toit, “The Contribution of
Arthur Peacocke to the Science-Theology Debate,” 90–91.
46 Van Dyk, “Evolusie: die Misverstand tussen Teologie en Biologie,” 286–88.