K. H. Letter Ritchie Way March 2009

GENESIS ONE AND EVOLUTION
Dear Ritchie
The debate and views put forward by GNU magazine have made me reflect on my beliefs about the date of creation. I have come to the conclusion that there is no room for evolution in the Bible. There is none implied and none revealed. We, as humans, tend to need concrete proof and we overly complicate things and can’t see the forest for the trees. So to simplify this issue, it’s not how God could have created the universe, but how he said he did. How much clearer does he need to be? The summary in Genesis 2:6 says: ‘By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.’ Exodus 20:11 says: ‘For in six days the Lord made the heav ens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.’ The Lord our God has stated it twice. He does not take it back and did not elaborate. That’s good enough for me. [Letter abbreviated.]
K. H.

Hi K
Many thanks for the article accompanying your letter. You’ve put a lot of time and thought into it.
I wish to state, first of all, that neither I, nor any other of the GNU staff, support Darwinian evolution. Nor have we ever supported it.
While scientific evidence overwhelmingly reveals that life has been on Earth for aeons, there is no unequivocal evidence of macro-evolution. Ancient fossils reveal that all creatures were fully formed from their first appearance, and no genuine intermediary species have been found among them. Even archaeopteryx, which was upheld as a prime example of a missing link, was quietly retired from that role when it was discovered to be nothing more than an ancient bird. The sudden appearance of fully-formed creatures in the fossil record supports the biblical position that they were all created.
The real question for Christians is how to interpret Genesis chapter one. If you think about it carefully you will realise that the genre of Genesis one is not the prose of history, like the story of Joseph being sold into slavery, or Paul on his way to Rome for his Supreme Court trial. Instead, the first chapter of Genesis is a poem—written in two parallel stanzas, each with three parts—and which concludes with a seventh stanza on perfect rest. The focal point of this ‘poem’ is not the creation but the Creator. Its purpose is to teach that there is only one God who created all things. The belief that the first chapter of Genesis is about creation, misses the point of what God was trying to teach the Hebrews who had worshipped many gods in Egypt (Eze. 20:6-8).
The message of Genesis one is that there is only one creator God, and he created everything in the world as the Hebrews then understood it. He is the only divine being; there is no other god besides him. And he gave man the seventh day as a rest day—a covenant sign that would testify to our belief in him as the one and only God who created all things.
Ritchie.