Tool Alpha
Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
Functional or material origins
Is Genesis 1 an account of things being made, or of things being given their place and purpose? This is the deepest split in the field.
Genesis 1:1-2:3, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: is Genesis 1 telling us how the stuff of the world was made, or how the world was set up to work? When was the stadium built? One answer gives the year the concrete was poured. Another gives the year the team played its first game there. Both are true answers; they answer different questions. Walton says Genesis 1 answers the second. Lennox says it answers both.
Walton's thesis is that the ancient world defined existence by function, not by material, and that Genesis 1 shares that outlook. If he is right, much of the modern argument about Genesis and science is beside the point, because the text was never answering the material question.
Walton marshals the textual case: bara takes objects that are hard to read materially; tohu describes the nonfunctional; "it was good" means functioning properly; three of the seven days create no material component at all; the expanse of day two is a solid dome nobody believes is there; days four and six describe their creatures by their roles. Lennox counters with the surface of the text: God speaks and things appear, step by step, toward a goal.
Lennox accepts Walton's starting observation, that we do not swim in the same cultural river as the first readers, and he accepts that describing the functions and ordering of the universe is one of the objectives of Genesis 1. He is sceptical that it is the only purpose and asks: why not both? He notes he is not alone, pointing to published critiques including Noel Weeks in the Westminster Theological Journal. And he draws on Andrew Parker, an evolutionary biologist with no faith commitment, who was struck by how closely the sequence of Genesis 1 tracks the scientific account of life's history.
Walton answers "why not both?" directly: a material element has to be demonstrated from the text, not retained because it is familiar. On his reading the material phase could have run through long ages before the seven days, with the sun shining, plants growing and animals present. Those ages were like rehearsals before a play: necessary, but not the play. The seven days are the opening night, when the cosmos becomes God's residence and people take up their role as his image.
Walton notes that framework readers can add the functional reading to their own without giving theirs up. Old-earth readers like Hugh Ross would not have to give up their scientific correlations, only stop treating them as what the text claims.
Walton's position asks readers to accept a premise about ancient ontology that most have never heard of, and to set aside a material reading of passages like day five, where creatures are made and bara is used. Lennox's "why not both" keeps the material reading but has to carry its costs: the sun on day four and a solid expanse that a material reading must either find or redefine. Lennox's appeal to Andrew Parker carries its own cost, which Lennox acknowledges: Parker's claim that the Genesis sequence matches the scientific one is hotly contested.
Not a denial that God made matter. Walton is explicit that God is fully responsible for material origins. His claim is about what Genesis 1 is describing, not about what God did.
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- Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009), propositions 2, 3, 4, 10
- Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World (2021), ch. 3
- Noel K. Weeks, "The Bible and the 'Universal' Ancient World: A Critique of John Walton," Westminster Theological Journal 78 (2016): 1-28, as cited by Lennox
- Andrew Parker, The Genesis Enigma (Dutton, 2009), as quoted in Lennox, ch. 3
