I came across a discussion on whether understanding the Biblical Creation account as literal or non-literal, affects our knowledge of the nature of sin? The focus was on Creation (chapters 1-3) with some reaching into the topics discussed in chapters 4-11. It was very interesting, and it began with the following:

"..One must first demonstrate from the given text that the author did not intend for anyone to read his words as a literal historical account. Any assertion that states that a non-literal reading is the most appropriate reading must provide evidence of specific figurative indicators in the text such as metaphors, similes allegories, hyperbole, symbolism and such. Any discussion on whether or not a non-literal approach affects doctrine is essentially dead in the water IF justification of a non-literal approach cannot textually demonstrated.

It is further argued that a non-literal approach, at least the non-literal approach suggested by PA, is a significant issue doctrinally, as the entire book Genesis is the seedbed for all of the theology that follows. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a system of progressive revelation that builds upon itself. Meaning that Abraham had more light than Noah, Moses had more light than Abraham, David had more light Moses, Isaiah had more light than David, and the apostles had more than the prophets of the Old Testament. Thus, what was said in earlier parts of the Bible forms the foundation upon which more light was revealed to later generations. ..'We will' examine how succeeding generations of those who were used by God has His human authors of Scripture, saw the creation account. Did Moses, Jesus, David, or any of the prophets or apostles view the Creation account in Genesis as a non-literal account?

The Bible is set up in such a manner that there is no single verse, passage, chapter or book that contains all of the truth on a given matter. In this way, God designed the Bible to be studied and searched out. More to the point, He designed it so that all of the doctrines of Scripture are interlocked with each other. The same passage that is talking about the Holy Spirit may also shed light on other doctrines and so one cannot do violence to a single subject in a single passage without the effects of that act radiating into other areas of Scripture. That is one reason why our interpretive approach must always be consistent.

The Bible is always good at letting us know when figurative language is being used. It tells when something is a vision, allegory or parable, symbol or metaphor. It does not leave it up to us to guess. Absent those textual indicators, the default understanding of any given text in Scripture is literal.... "Literal" means that a text is understood within the framework the author intends. It means to read the text with the object that the author has in view and not to assign any values to the text on our own. A non-literal approach makes the text subject to the whims of the reader and erodes the authority of the author.

...a non-literal approach to Genesis 1-11 devalues the authority of Word of God as final arbiter on all matters of Christian faith and practice. The Bible says that God magnifies His Word above His own Name (Ps. 138:2) and so He places a high premium on His Word and to devalue its authority is, by extension, to devalue the authority of God, Himself. This is no trivial, "take-it or-leave-it matter." God takes His Word very seriously, and so should we....

'Some state'.. that Genesis 1 is not an historical approach to how God created the world. This is false. It is historical and that is the only way to describe it in literary terms. A more accurate way of putting it would be that it is not a “scientific” approach..."

As you can see, if Genesis is not literal then the Creator is diminished, the Sabbath is more Moses imprint than Gods, and sin was about a snake that charm a woman.

The literal account of Biblical creation IS the first angel's message. It makes perfect sense that Satan would violently attack this through the statements of so called experts.

On this point I disagree. As Jesus said, "He that hath an ear, let him hear." The Bible may not always give us ready clues.

Creation is actually both literal and figurative. It is rich with symbolism.

Look at the story of the Good Samaritan: Was it literal or figurative? An honest response is to recognize that the story was both of the above. It was not an either/or. So it is with Creation. It literally took place, but it was rich with symbols.

Abraham literally went through the motions to kill his son Isaac. But the story was not merely literal, nor was it merely a figure of speech. It was both. The story is rich with symbols and types.

If we try to put the Bible in a box and say that "only the clearly prophetic books should be interpreted as symbolic" (referring to Daniel and Revelation), or say that the Bible will always be clear, we are only fooling ourselves. There are no such boxes that can properly contain the Word of God. True, the Bible is of no "private interpretation." However, "spiritual things are spiritually discerned," which puts some of the interpretation back into the court of the one doing the interpreting. If one is led of God's Spirit, the Bible can be better understood. Even then, truth is not always clear. It has taken this planet centuries of scholars to begin to understand the last book in the Bible--and yet it is a book which claims to be a "revelation" and not a "secret."

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

I have faith in Ellen White's statements that the Genesis account is literal. I'm unwilling to sell out because of the worldly "experts".

I am a bit curious what part of the Genesis account is thought to not be literal? The time period, sequence of events, the act of creation, or the events themselves?

I do agree that scripture is often dualistic, being literal and containing symbolic meaning.

If you are referring to my comments (as it appears), you seem unsure of the fact that I affirmed that Creation is literal. It just happens to also be prophetic and symbolic.

Being literal and being symbolic, or prophetic, or figurative are not mutually exclusive. Joseph just so happens to have been the literal savior of Egypt and of his family through his wise governance before and during the famine. Nevertheless, his role in this literal drama was a type for Christ, the Savior of the world. Thus we have both literal and figurative nicely melded together. Far from being mutually exclusive, they are mutually complementary.

Regarding my understanding of the prophetic side to Creation Week, if you have access to the New Light forum, then you may find it there. Look for the thread titled "The Longest Time Prophecy in Scripture."

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

O.K. We're on the same page now. After being on the Spectrum forum for some time, I've become very cautious of others view points.

I am in full agreement


If the creation account is not literal, then
1. the Sabbath is not literal,
2. sin becomes the creator (even when the non-literalists say God was involved in creation it just took years of development not done in six literal days) because then the development of intelligent life becomes the result of evolution of "survival of the fittest".
3. we really don't need a Savior, we just need to evolve a little more.

But how does one convince somebody that the account in Genesis 1 and 2 is literal?


Very interesting guide lines!

1. What in these verses in Genesis one and two make them literal?
Evening and morning were the first day
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Evening and morning were the second day -- etc. Repeated for all six days!

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night:

Sounds very literal -- actually it is quite forcefully stressing the literal aspect of Creation.

2. Do we see a lot of metaphors, similes, allegories, symbolism here?
It doesn't say "it was dark as night", -- no.
It doesn't say "there was a lessor light that looked like the moon" -- no.
It's not a "like as" account. It is straight forward and clear.

3. The passage is literal and needs to be accepted as such before attributing any symbolic value to it. .

The creation account is literal in that God created everything in six days. That doesn't mean there was no purpose or deep meaning to everything He did. Indeed Creation shows the vast wisdom and Creative power of God. True we can and need to draw spiritual lessons FROM the literal facts. But if the first exposure is filed as symbolic, then symbolism is totally meaningless as there is nothing real to refer back to. All symbols tend to be based on something literal. There needs to be a foundational object of reality, literalism, or we just float into nebulous ideas


The Sabbath is a prime example.
It was a literal day, the seventh day, the day that God blessed and sanctified.

Gen. 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:

The emphases on DAY (evening and morning) (light and dark) (Sun by day, moon by night)
And THREE mentions of Day in the two verses about seventh day. in Gen. 2:2-3.

It is really emphasizing that these are literal days.
Does this literal Sabbath seventh day have spiritual lessons and symbolic value? Of course! It's what makes the day special, but things it stands for does not in the lest detract from the fact it is a literal day, a Day God blessed and sanctified and asks us to remember because He created the world in six literal days.

I guess I always get puzzled when I hear some of those philosophical reasoning sessions, that try to put everything into boxes then use deductive reasoning to dismiss the obvious in order to promote some strange point. (Not saying anyone here is doing that, but I do run across that type of talk, please no one take this personally) But there are whole websites trying to say "literal" means you can't attach any further meaning to a literal event, if you consider it literal. As soon as one attaches a symbolic lesson to learn from a literal event, it supposedly shows that nothing is literal, that the event itself wasn't really literal????
But that is not correct. Literal events depicted in the Bible are for our example and instruction, that does not make them any less literal events.
A symbol NEEDS a literal foundation to be meaningful.

Why does it have to be EITHER one or the other??? I'm sorry but the text could well be both. Yes, there were the waters --symbol of chaos... which had lead some of our theologians to see that there was something here so that God could work long with Lucifer and the other created beings. What ever it was that God gave them to work with, it ended up in total chaos, and the two sides of the great controversy had formed. Once the two sides formed from evidence and built on faith alone, then God stepped in to give some proof with hovering over the chaotic mess and creating it into a new world in a special 7 literal days.

The layout of the days are in a poetic chiasm or parallelism. Day 1 light, day 4, the sun/moon/stars are visible from earth (does NOT say that they were created that day.) Day 2 the atmosphere and seas Day 5 life in the seas. Day 3 the land, day 6 life on the land.

The details were explained in an answer to the false creation myths of the ancient world. Someday, God will help us see the details in a way to answer the false creation myth of our time in history when we see the new heaven and new earth, the new creation week. But for now God has given us the details that were needed against the ancient false creation stories.

Jacques Doukhan points out that there are a minimum of 3 different creations in this story. There is the story of creation of the universe as a whole, the creation of the great controversy (The "Whale" in the KJV for day 5 is actually the ancient world's understanding of the devil. They believed this creature was a god. Genesis makes Lucifer/Satan just a part of creation, nothing more. But how many of us would say that Lucifer was literally created on the 5th day? Just like with the sun, moon and that the same God who was doing all this creating is the same God who made the stars also.) and the third layer is the creation of this world and that special creation week. This special week is where the attention is focused, but all three (at least) creation stories at least three layers of thought are all condensed into an economy of words in these chapters.

Yet understanding begins with the concrete, it's all fine and good to look at more abstract ideas to find deeper understanding.

But if the foundation is eroded all the rest kind of falls into that sea of chaos.


Possibly, but that is still speculation. I realize there are numerous theories involving the earth prior to creation, but it's all speculation built on half a verse.
For Adventists in particular some see the "war" between Lucifer and his angels against Christ and His angels as a physical war in which planets were damaged. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter has captivated the imaginations of science fiction authors and bible students as once being a planet that was destroyed. The other planets in our solar system are rather a chaotic unlivable environment as well.

But again it's speculation -- maybe something like that happened early on before creation, but it is not concrete Biblically supported historical fact.
Speculation is interesting, but it doesn't replace Biblical facts (the literal foundation relevant to us, for our relationship with God, and Salvation) which need to stand head and shoulders above things we think may have happened.

Is the water in Genesis 1:2 symbolic? I believe it was literal. While other planets are engulfed with gases, (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all "gas giants." covered with mixtures of hydrogen and helium with possible land somewhere beneath) Maybe this Earth planet was covered with Hydrogen and Oxygen, and other gases as well in preparation for Creation. On the first day, God's hovering presence over the "deep" combining the H2O? And dispelling the darkness with light. All we know was there was lots of water and no land to be seen, and God changed that the third day when He brought the land to the surface. No need really to speculate, it was literal water -- Peter in his epistles says the land (earth) was standing out of the water and in the water, but during Noah's flood the water flooded the world.

2 Peter 3:5-6 the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
The flood in Noah's time reversed day three of Creation. when God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.
Planet earth has a lot of water, as our oceans testify.

There's so many things we don't know as why planets are the way they are.
Basically we tread on speculative ground when we try to find symbolism concerning the things created at creation.
.
One thing I believe -- in the last days, creation will be undone and the earth will once again be without form or void (the words match the "bottomless pit" of Rev.20) for 1000 years. But it won't be covered in water. Literal water is needed for life.
We don't have to make the water symbolic to realize the planet was "without form and void", before the six day creation, Genesis 1:2 says it in plain words. And it will again be without form and void before the new earth is created after the millennium.

The chiasm
The chiastic "poetic picture" doesn't change the literal reality of Creation. Just shows the first three days the LORD literally prepared the earth for life, and the last three days, He filled the earth with literal life.

3 different creations in this story

Genesis is the book of beginnings. Yes, many things have their beginnings in Genesis.
But just because there are references to several beginnings makes them neither symbolic nor does it downplay the literal aspect of the creation in six days as the main focal point in Genesis first two chapters.



The story of the beginning of sin on this planet is depicted in Genesis chapter 3. and doesn't go into any details as to where this evil came from.

The snake was not a symbol when it enters the narrative in Genesis 3,

Of course, Lucifer was not created on the 5th day, he's a fallen angel, and angels were created before this world was created. But he used a literal snake (a beautiful flying snake) to entice Eve. We know it was a literal snake because it lost it's wings and has to crawl on the ground eating dirt. (Gen 3:14) That's true of literal snakes.
By using the snake, Satan chose it as his symbol, that's why we recognize it now as a symbol of satan, it became a revered symbol of Satan and of self exaltation that can be found all over the earth, in pretty much every culture, the symbol of a false god. The snake as a symbol is identified in Rev. 12:9. But the snake in Eden was a literal snake, over which satan took possession.



So in conclusion --
I see Genesis 1 and 2 as a literal six days of creation of this planet, with literal air, plants, fish, birds, people as the main point of those chapters.

This literal foundation can serve as a spring board into further and wider study. That's not the issue.
The issue is that there are many in this world who spiritualize much of the account, putting in so many symbols and allusions that the true message that God is our Creator, Who created a perfect world, gets buried in the elevation of symbolism.