1.1 On the Interpretation of the Creation Reports

Especially among devout Christians there is the attempt to equalize the  two creation stories and to smooth out their differences. But this takes  away the colorfulness and richness of the Bible. The author of Genesis,  whether Moses or a later one, already knew why he recorded both one  after the other. Both are to be read in their mutual relationship. The first  alone would be too easy to misunderstand idealistically, the second  alone too pessimistically. 

The first creation account deals with the one primal question of man:  Why is something at all and why is not nothing? The second deals with  the other primal question: Where does evil come from? 

The first creation account Gen. 1 – 2, 4a is generally attributed to the source P “Priestly writing” attributed. 

The beginning of the Bible is from the creation of Psalms (for example Ps. 8; 104; 136 or 148). First comes the praise of the wonderful Creator, the  amazement at how wonderfully the world is made and the gratitude for  my own life. Only then comes the theologically responsible account of  creation. The creation report is not least a disguised praise. Just as the  middle and the end of the Pentateuch with the two great Moselle songs are  a praise, so is the beginning. 

This realization should determine the interpretation. Faith in creation is  quality of life! Full of wonder at the miracle of creation, life becomes  richer. By the revealed glory of the creation looks faith through to the hidden glory of the Creator. 

It is very unwise to be defensive in the discussion of the creation  account. The creation account is rather offensive, radiating with joie de  vivre and believing optimism. The fear-mongering sidereal deities are  insulted and degraded as lamps, i.e. luminaries, and the onrushing flood,  symbol of the threatening chaos, is tamed. The Sabbath is the great gift of  God to Israel and to mankind. And man is made great. The God-likeness  is an almost unbelievable statement: “Man is created in the image of God. ”  (v.Rad, Theology I,159) 

Very few Germans are aware that the central value of the “Human dignity” in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany is  nothing other than the secular translation of the image of God in Genesis. It  has been consciously adopted as a value that the state has accepted as  given to it, ultimately therefore a content of faith. Whoever shakes it,  brings our entire order of values to collapse. 

The tiring discussions about the alleged contradiction between faith and  natural science in the creation story are an unfortunately too often  traveled wooden road that leads to nothing. Faith and natural science  cannot contradict each other. Only natural science, which becomes  encroaching and makes faith sentences from its available realizations,  can stand in contradiction to faith. The same applies also vice versa:  Only encroaching faith, which wants to derive scientific knowledge from  faith sentences, can stand in contradiction to natural science. For this  discussion the creation stories were not written. 

Also, the common devaluation of the creation stories today as being “Myth” does not do them justice at all. It is a blatant aberration to  “demythologize” the creation stories. On the contrary: The creation  stories are themselves the first demythologizers, in that God, for example,  simply “makes” the primeval flood and the celestial bodies, and in that the gods worshiped by them are dethroned with it. The belief in the creator God makes us free from all magical bonds. 

Yet the Bible speaks of God here in the most beautiful  anthropomorphisms, that is, humanly – all too humanly. Of course, the  author knew long ago that one must not actually say that God must rest  after the work of creation. Just the first creation report is everything else  than naive! Although he knows that one should not actually speak so of  God, he does it nevertheless. The more humanly he speaks of God and  his creation action, the closer he is to the truth. We cannot put God into  terms, because otherwise we would logically have to take a standpoint  above him. Or we would have to assert the opposite of the previous  statement about God in the very next sentence (according to Nikolaus von Kues). 

It is rather an expression of a so-called “second naivety”, with which also  an astronomer can (again) say: “The sun sets” or: “The moon has  risen”. The most beautiful examples of this 2nd naivety are also the  parables of Jesus, which are infinitely deep. Although they speak of God  in a very human way, they do not touch His holiness. 

The Jewish interpretation of Genesis has its difficulties with the plurals in  the prehistory, e.g.: 1, 26: Let us make man…, but also with the spirit of  God (1, 2). For us Christians these are of course vestigia trinitatis (traces  of the Trinity). 

Man is not the crown of creation, but the Sabbath (2:3)!