More Pannenberg on Genesis 1-2

Excerpt from: Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol. II:116-119

A particularly striking example of a time-bound insight that we have now abandoned may be found in the idea of a separation of the waters of the primal flood by a firmament (Gen 1:6f).  This firmament explains mechanically why the waters beneath it, which cover the earth, retreat and gather together and thus let dry ground emerge, for no masses of water can now pour down upon them through the heavenly "bell" or vault (1:6, 9f).  The story of the flood tells us what happens when leaks in the vault occur and are not stopped.

The cosmology that finds expression in the idea of the firmament bears impressive testimony to the science of antiquity which rationally relates the order of the universe to human engineering.  For this reason it is a misunderstanding to try to base theology on the literal sense.  A theological doctrine of creation should follow where the biblical witness leads by claiming current knowledge of the world for a description of the divine work of creation, using the resources that are actually at hand.  Theology will not do justice to the authority of the biblical witness if it tries to preserve the time-bound ideas with which the biblical account of creation works instead of repeating in its own day the act of theologically appropriating contemporary knowledge.

Putting the creation of the stars on the fourth day is another example of a time-bound statement (Gen. 1:14ff).  Here it is not so much a matter of outdated cosmology as it is of outdated controversy.  In opposition to the Babylonian creation epic, which relates the creation of the stars to the formation of the firmament, the creation story puts first the dividing of land and sea (1:10) and the creation of plants (1:11f).  One might see here a result of the exactitude with which the mechanical of the firmament is described.  The erection of the vault of heaven means that the waters under it gather, and therefore in other places dry land appears (1:9) and vegetation can sprout (1:11).  The surprising later placing of the stars is meant to depreciate them in comparison with the divine rank that the stars had in the religious world around Israel, especially Babylon.  In the bible the stars simply have the lower function of lamps or signs for the seasons.  The controversy here as to the divinity or creatureliness of the stars is no longer relevant in modern thought.  But the interest of the story in an inner nexus in the sequence of individual acts of creation finds natural expression in a modern depiction of the world of creation.  This time, however, the formation of the earth comes after that of the stars and galaxies, and within the galaxies, the solar system.

More surprising than the difference in order at this point between science and the early Genesis story is the measure of material agreement, e.g., light at the beginning, humans at the end, light prior to the stars, plants springing forth from the earth, the function of vegetation as a presupposition for animal life, and the close relation between humans and land animals on the sixth day, as distant from fishes and birds on the fifth.  Even more astonishing than these detailed agreements is agreement in the basic idea of a sequence in the development of creaturely forms.  The sequence is different at some points, but science today has also arrived at its own idea of a sequence in its understanding of the world.

According to [Edmund] Schlink, the chief different between the sequence in the modern view and that in the Genesis story is that according to the biblical understanding the individual working of the creatures is accorded to concrete orders that are already set, whereas modern research has increasingly come to think that the orders proceed from the working.  The creation story itself is already acquainted with the idea of creaturely agencies sharing in the work of creation.  Thus the earth brings forth vegetation (1:11f) and land animals (1:24).  In this account, however, the thought of an ongoing development in the course of which different forms of creaturely reality arise out of those that precede is a totally alien one.  This is not because God's creative activity rules out creaturely participation ... 

[Rather it is] that in the Genesis account the initial creation established an order for all time so that each of the works of creation would have lasting duration.  Connected specifically with this concern is the fact that different creaturely forms and the species of living creatures received at the outset the lasting forms of their existence.  In this regard the first story has a different emphasis from the other biblical accounts, which do not limit God's creative activity to the beginning but see it as an ongoing activity that finds expression especially in the present acts in history.  If it is to do justice to the full biblical witness then, the doctrine of creation has the task of uniting interest of this account in the constancy of the order that God established once and for all with the concept of ongoing creative activity.  In the context of modern science the idea of a fixed and constant order no longer need imply an immutability of the divinely created forms in their different genera and species.  Though the story does not mention these, the idea of unbreakable natural laws does sufficient justice to the concern [for constancy].  The theory of evolution has given theology an opportunity to sees God's ongoing creative activity not merely in the preservation of a fixed order but in the constant bringing forth of new things.