The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

Do they adapt their descriptions to the views and feelings of philosophers, or even the common people, in the nineteenth century, or to the state of knowledge and the prevalent opinions of a people but slightly removed from barbarism?

Do they write as if they meant to correct the notions of men on natural subjects, when they knew them to be wrong; or as if they did not mean to decide whether the popular opinion were true or false? These points have been examined with great skill and candor by a venerable clergyman of England, whose praise is in all the American churches, and whose skill in sacred philology, and profound acquaintance with the Bible, none will question, any more than they will his deep-toned piety and enlarged and liberal views of men and things. I refer to Dr. J. Pye Smith, lately at the head of the Homerton Divinity College, near London.[6]

He first examines the style in which the Old Testament describes the character and operations of Jehovah, and shows that it is done “in language borrowed from the bodily and mental constitution of man, and from those opinions concerning the works of God in the natural world, which were generally received by the people to whom the blessings of revelation were granted.” Constant reference is made to material images, and to human feelings and conduct, as if the people addressed were almost incapable of spiritual and abstract ideas. This, of course, gives a notion of God infinitely beneath the glories of his character; but to uncultivated minds it was the only representation of his character that would give them any idea of it. Nay, even in this enlightened age, such descriptions are far more impressive than any other upon the mass of mankind; while those, whose minds are more enlightened, find no difficulty in inculcating the pure truth respecting God from these comparatively gross descriptions.

Now, if, upon a point of such vast importance as the divine character, revelation, thus condescends to human weakness and ignorance, much more might we expect it, in regard to the less important subject of natural phenomena. We find, accordingly, that they are described as they appear to the common eye, and not in their real nature; or, in the language of Rosenmuller, the Scriptures speak “according to optical, and not physical truth.” They make no effort to correct even the grossest errors, on these subjects, that then prevailed.

The earth, as we have seen on a former occasion, is described as immovable, in the centre of the universe, and the heavenly bodies as revolving round it diurnally. The firmament over us is represented as a solid, extended substance, sustaining an ocean above it, with openings, or windows, through which the waters may descend. In respect to the human system, the Scriptures refer intellectual operations to the reins, or the region of the kidneys, and pain to the bones. In short, the descriptions of natural things are adapted to the very erroneous notions which prevailed in the earliest ages of society and among the common people. But it is as easy to interpret such descriptions in conformity to the present state of physical science, as it is to divest the scriptural representations of the Deity of their material dress, and make them conform to the spiritual views that now prevail. No one regards it as any objection to the Old Testament, that it gives a description of the divine character so much less spiritual than the views adopted by the theologians of the nineteenth century; why then should they regard it as derogatory to inspiration to adopt the same method as to natural objects?

These considerations will afford us some assistance in rightly interpreting the description of the creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, to which we will now turn our attention.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness, and the light he called day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The first question that arises, on reading this passage, is, whether the creation here described was a creation out of nothing, or out of preëxisting materials. The latter opinion has been maintained by some able, and generally judicious commentators and theologians, such as Doederlin and Dathe in Germany, Milton in England, and Bush and Schmucker in this country. They do not deny that the Bible, in other places, teaches distinctly the creation of the universe out of nothing. But they contend that the word translated to create, in the first verse of Genesis, teaches only a renovation, or remodelling, of the universe from matter already in existence.

That there is a degree of ambiguity in all languages, in the words that signify to create, to make, to form, and the like, cannot be doubted; that is, these words may be properly used to describe the production of a substance out of matter already in existence, as well as out of nothing; and, therefore, we must resort to the context, or the nature of the subject, to ascertain in which of those senses such words are used. The same word, for instance, (bawraw,) that is used in the first verse of Genesis, to describe the creation of the universe, is employed in the 27th verse of the same chapter, to describe the formation of man out of the dust of the earth. There was, however, no peculiar ambiguity in the use of the Hebrew words bawraw and awsaw, which correspond to our words create and make; and, therefore, it is not necessary to be an adept in Hebrew literature to judge of the question under consideration. We have only to determine whether the translation of the Mosaic account of the creation most reasonably teaches a production of the matter of the universe from nothing, or only its renovation, and we have decided what is taught in the original.

Now, there can hardly be a doubt but Moses intended to teach, in this passage, that the universe owed its origin to Jehovah, and not to the idols of the heathen; and since all acknowledge that other parts of Scripture teach, that, when the world was made, it was produced out of nothing, why should we not conclude that the same truth is taught in this passage? The language certainly will bear that meaning; indeed, it is almost as strong as language can be to express such a meaning; and does not the passage look like a distinct avowal of this great truth, at the very commencement of the inspired record, in order to refute the opinion, so prevalent in early times, that the world is eternal?