A Brief History of Interpreting Genesis
Few conversations create more tension in modern Christianity than discussions about Genesis. Questions surrounding creation, Adam and Eve, evolution, science, history, and biblical authority have become deeply polarised, particularly within evangelicalism. For many Christians, moving away from a strictly literal reading of Genesis can feel like the first step toward abandoning Scripture altogether.
Modern discussions about Genesis often assume there has always been one obvious and faithful way to read the text: as straightforward literal history. According to this view, ancient Jews, Jesus, the apostles, and the early Church all approached Genesis in essentially the same way many modern literalists do today.
Historically, however, the picture is far more complex.
When we begin examining Scripture itself, we quickly discover that the biblical tradition already contains layers of interpretation, symbolism, theological rereading, and poetic reflection. Later biblical authors regularly revisit earlier texts and themes, expanding and reapplying them in new theological contexts. The Bible does not always interpret itself in a flat or simplistic manner.
This becomes especially important when discussing Genesis. Ancient Jewish and Christian interpreters often approached the opening chapters of Scripture with multiple layers of meaning operating simultaneously. Genesis could be historical and symbolic, theological and cosmological, moral and spiritual, all at once.
This is partly because ancient readers were often asking different questions than modern readers. Genesis emerged from the ancient Near Eastern world, not the modern scientific world. Its primary concern was not material mechanism or empirical precision, but theological meaning: who created the world, what it means to bear God’s image, why humanity is alienated, and what relationship humanity is meant to have with God, one another, and creation itself.
This does not mean ancient interpreters believed Genesis was false or merely symbolic. Most believed Genesis communicated real truth about God, humanity, and creation. The issue was not whether Genesis was true, but what kind of truth Genesis was intending to communicate.
As we move through Scripture, the early Church, the medieval and Reformation traditions, and into modern debates, a consistent pattern emerges: Genesis was rarely approached as a simple modern literal account alone. Instead, it became a theological wellspring through which Jews and Christians reflected on creation, wisdom, covenant, exile, worship, Christ, and the renewal of all things.
Even the Old Testament Reinterprets Earlier Scripture
One of the most overlooked realities in modern discussions about Genesis is that the Bible itself already models interpretive flexibility. Long before the Church Fathers, long before rabbinic Judaism, and long before modern debates about science and creation, later biblical authors were already rereading, reapplying, expanding, and theologising earlier Scripture.
The biblical tradition is not static. Scripture frequently reflects on earlier Scripture in fresh ways.
This matters for Genesis. Modern readers often approach Genesis as though its meaning must remain fixed at the most immediate surface level of the text. Yet throughout the Old Testament, Genesis imagery, themes, symbols, and theological ideas are continually revisited and developed in new contexts. The creation narrative becomes theological language through which Israel reflects on worship, wisdom, exile, kingship, covenant, justice, and the human condition itself.
Even within Genesis, interpretive complexity already exists. Many modern Christians read Genesis 1 and 2 as a single unified account, with Genesis 2 simply narrowing its focus onto humanity after the broader creation narrative of Genesis 1. That reading remains common and understandable.
At the same time, many biblical scholars argue that Genesis 1 and 2 display meaningful literary and theological distinctions. The chapters differ in structure, emphasis, vocabulary, divine names, order of presentation, and literary style (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One; Collins, Genesis 1–4; Longman, How to Read Genesis).
Genesis 1 presents creation within a highly structured, cosmic, and liturgical framework that moves toward divine rest. Humanity appears within the broader ordering of creation as male and female together, bearing the image of God and commissioned to rule within creation (Genesis 1:26–28).
Genesis 2 narrows the focus dramatically. The narrative becomes earthy, relational, and anthropological. Attention shifts toward the formation of the human from dust, the garden, vocation, companionship, moral freedom, and intimacy between humanity and God. The divine name also shifts from “God” (Elohim) in Genesis 1 to “Lord God” (YHWH Elohim) throughout Genesis 2.
For many scholars, these distinctions suggest that Genesis is less concerned with providing a modern chronological reconstruction of material origins and more concerned with exploring different theological dimensions of creation and humanity (Collins, Genesis 1–4).
Ancient Jewish interpreters noticed these tensions long before modern biblical scholarship emerged. Rabbinic discussions often reflected on the differences between the creation narratives, asking why humanity appears differently across the chapters and what theological meaning might be found in the variation. Rather than seeing interpretive tension as a threat to Scripture, ancient readers often treated it as an invitation to deeper reflection.
Later Old Testament writers continue this process of theological reflection.
Psalm 104 reimagines creation through poetry and worship. The creation story becomes doxology. The natural world is portrayed as sustained by the breath and presence of God, with creation itself participating in praise and dependence (Psalm 104:1–35). The goal is not scientific description, but theological wonder.
Similarly, Proverbs personifies divine Wisdom as present alongside God during creation itself (Proverbs 8:22–31). Genesis is no longer merely an account of origins. It becomes a framework for reflecting on wisdom, order, morality, and humanity’s place within creation (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).
The imagery of Eden also develops throughout the Old Testament in symbolic and theological ways. In Ezekiel 28, the prophet uses Edenic imagery to describe the pride and downfall of the king of Tyre. The garden becomes more than a location in the distant past. It becomes a symbolic portrait of human rebellion, corruption, beauty, exile, and lost communion with God (Ezekiel 28:11–19).
Likewise, the prophets repeatedly use creation language to describe Israel’s restoration, future hope, and covenant renewal. Creation itself becomes a pattern through which God’s ongoing relationship with the world is understood. Themes of chaos, wilderness, water, breath, dust, and life are constantly revisited and reapplied throughout the Hebrew Scriptures (Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology).
This reveals something fundamental about how ancient biblical authors approached Scripture itself. They were not merely preserving earlier texts as static historical records. They were meditating on them, expanding them, poetically reusing them, and uncovering deeper theological significance.
None of this means the Old Testament authors believed Genesis was meaningless, fictional, or detached from reality. It means biblical interpretation was already layered, dynamic, and theologically rich within Scripture itself. The categories of “literal” and “symbolic” do not map neatly onto the way ancient Jewish authors handled the biblical text.
Before we ever arrive at the rabbis, the apostles, or the Church Fathers, the Old Testament has already shown us that Genesis was never functioning as a modern scientific account alone. It was a theological wellspring through which Israel understood God, creation, humanity, covenant, worship, exile, and hope.
The Early Church Fathers Were Deeply Diverse
By the time we arrive at the early Church Fathers, it becomes impossible to speak of “the early Christian reading of Genesis” as though there was only one approach. The Church inherited the Hebrew Scriptures as Christian Scripture, but it did not read them in a flat or uniform way. Early Christian interpreters approached Genesis through the lenses of creation, Christ, sin, death, resurrection, anthropology, sacrament, spiritual formation, and the final restoration of all things.
The figures considered here are not fringe voices. They are some of the most influential theologians, pastors, bishops, and biblical interpreters in Christian history. Their differences do not weaken the tradition. They reveal its depth.
Origen of Alexandria: The Great Biblical Interpreter
Origen of Alexandria was a third-century theologian, biblical scholar, and one of the most influential interpreters of Scripture in the early Church. Although some of his later speculative ideas were contested, his influence on Christian exegesis and spiritual interpretation is enormous.
Origen gives us one of the clearest examples of a Father questioning a straightforward surface reading of the creation days. Genesis repeatedly speaks of “evening and morning”, yet the sun, moon, and stars are not created until the fourth day. Origen presses directly on that tension:
“For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without sun, moon, and stars?” (Origen, On First Principles 4.3.1)
He then moves from the days of creation to the garden itself:
“Who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden?” (Origen, On First Principles 4.3.1)
And when Scripture says God walked in the garden and Adam hid beneath a tree, Origen says these things “figuratively indicate certain mysteries” (Origen, On First Principles 4.3.1).
Origen’s point was not that Genesis was false. His point was that some details in Genesis resist a crude surface reading and invite the reader into deeper theological interpretation. For Origen, the difficulty within the text itself was often a doorway into spiritual meaning.
Basil of Caesarea: The Defender of Nicene Orthodoxy
Basil of Caesarea, also known as Basil the Great, was a fourth-century bishop, defender of Nicene orthodoxy, and one of the Cappadocian Fathers. He is honoured as a saint in both Eastern and Western Christianity and remains one of the great theological voices of the early Church.
Basil gives us a very different example. In his Hexaemeron, a series of homilies on the six days of creation, Basil often resists excessive allegory and urges his hearers to receive the text plainly. At one point, he says:
“For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense” (Basil, Hexaemeron 9.1).
This prevents us from pretending that all the Fathers were allegorical readers. They were not. Basil clearly leans toward a plainer reading of Genesis.
Yet even Basil’s “plain reading” does not map neatly onto modern literalism. A good example is his treatment of the firmament and the waters above the firmament in Genesis 1:6–7. Basil does not turn this into allegory. He takes the division of the waters seriously and reasons within the cosmology available to him. He describes the firmament as:
“a firm substance, capable of retaining the fluid and unstable element water” (Basil, Hexaemeron 3.4).
Very few modern literalists would describe the physical universe this way. Basil is reading Genesis plainly, but his plain reading assumes an ancient cosmological framework involving a firmament, waters above, and the architecture of heaven. His literalism is ancient, theological, and cosmological. It is not modern scientific literalism.
Basil is not defending Genesis against Darwin, geology, or contemporary cosmology. He is preaching creation as a theological reality. His concern is worship, wonder, divine wisdom, and the goodness of the created order. Even one of the Church’s more literal readers does not fit neatly into the categories of modern creation debates.
Augustine of Hippo: The Giant of Western Theology
Augustine of Hippo was a fourth and fifth-century bishop, theologian, philosopher, and one of the most influential figures in Western Christianity. His writings shaped Christian thought on grace, sin, Scripture, the Church, and the life of God for more than fifteen centuries.
Augustine gives perhaps the strongest example. Genesis plainly presents creation across six days, followed by God’s rest on the seventh. Yet Augustine did not think faithfulness to Genesis required believing that creation unfolded over six ordinary solar days.
In The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine argues that God created all things simultaneously, and that the six days describe an ordered presentation of creation rather than a normal sequence of time. He writes:
“All things were created together, but not all together appear in this narrative” (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis 4.33.52).
This is significant because Augustine’s work is literally called The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Yet by “literal”, Augustine does not mean what many modern readers mean. He is seeking the text’s true meaning, not forcing it into a modern chronological framework.
Augustine’s famous warning about Christians and the natural world is also worth hearing. Speaking about Christians who make ignorant claims about creation in the name of Scripture, he writes:
“It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian… talking nonsense on these topics” (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.19.39).
Augustine’s concern was pastoral and apologetic. If Christians speak foolishly about the natural order while claiming biblical authority, they discredit the very Scriptures they are trying to defend.
Augustine is not a marginal figure. He is one of the most important theologians in Christian history. Yet he could affirm Genesis as true, authoritative, and divinely inspired while rejecting an ordinary six-day chronology.
Gregory of Nyssa: The Theologian of the Image of God
Gregory of Nyssa was a fourth-century bishop, theologian, Cappadocian Father, and major defender of Nicene Christianity. He is especially important for Christian theology of the image of God, spiritual ascent, divine infinity, and the transformation of the human person.
Gregory is not doing exactly the same thing as Origen or Augustine with the creation days, but he still shows little interest in treating the six days as a simple modern chronology. In On the Making of Man, he reflects on the unusual nature of the first day and asks how the term “day” should be understood before ordinary temporal measurements are fully in place. Like Origen, Gregory notices that Genesis itself creates interpretive pressure around what kind of “days” these are.
His larger contribution lies in theological anthropology. Gregory reads Genesis not merely as an account of material origins, but as a revelation of what humanity is before God. Reflecting on the creation of humanity in the image of God, Gregory writes that in the first creation “all humanity is included”, and that “our whole nature extending from the first to the last is one image of Him Who is” (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 16).
In simpler terms, Gregory does not read “the image of God” as a private possession given only to one isolated individual named Adam. He sees Adam as representing the whole human race. When Genesis speaks of humanity made in God’s image, Gregory hears a claim about all of us. Every human person, from first to last, is gathered into that divine image. Genesis is therefore not only telling us about the beginning of human life but also about the meaning, dignity, and destiny of humanity itself.
Gregory’s example should not be forced to prove more than it does. Many modern literal readers would also affirm that Genesis contains deep theological meaning. But Gregory still matters because he shows the breadth of patristic interpretation. For him, Genesis is not exhausted by questions of sequence, material origins, or historical reconstruction. It reveals what humanity is, what we were made for, and how our created nature relates to God.
The Tradition Is More Diverse Than the Slogan
Taken together, Origen, Basil, Augustine, and Gregory show the diversity of early Christian interpretation. Origen directly questions a surface reading of the first three creation days. Basil leans toward a plainer reading, yet still within an ancient cosmological world. Augustine insists on the literal meaning while rejecting the ordinary six-day chronology. Gregory notices interpretive complexity around the creation days while reading Genesis primarily as theological anthropology and spiritual formation.
This should make us cautious about claiming that “the early Church read Genesis literally” in one simple modern sense. The Fathers certainly believed Genesis was Scripture. They believed it spoke truthfully about God, creation, humanity, sin, and redemption. But they did not all read it the same way, and they did not usually ask the same questions that dominate modern debates.
For the early Church, Genesis was not merely a record of how things began. It was a revelation of what creation is, who humanity is, why death and corruption haunt the world, and how all things are gathered up and renewed in Christ.
Medieval and Reformation Readings of Genesis
The diversity we find among the Church Fathers did not disappear in the medieval period. In fact, medieval Christianity developed one of the most explicit frameworks for reading Scripture with multiple layers of meaning. This was often described as the fourfold sense of Scripture: the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses.
The literal sense asked what the text said according to its basic meaning. The allegorical sense asked how the text pointed to Christ and the mysteries of faith. The moral sense asked how the text formed the soul in virtue. The anagogical sense asked how the text directed the reader toward final hope, heaven, and the consummation of all things (Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis).
Hugh of Saint Victor, one of the great teachers of Scripture in the twelfth century, shows how seriously medieval interpreters took the literal and historical sense. He wrote:
“The foundation and principle of sacred learning is history” (Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 6.3).
Medieval readers were not simply floating away into symbolism. They usually began with the text’s history, grammar, and narrative shape. But they did not end there. For Hugh and others in the medieval tradition, Scripture also formed belief, virtue, prayer, contemplation, and hope. The literal sense mattered, but it did not exhaust the Word of God.
Thomas Aquinas is especially helpful here. Aquinas was not a marginal or speculative outsider. He is one of the most important theologians in Christian history, honoured especially in the Roman Catholic tradition but influential far beyond it. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that Scripture can have several senses because God is its ultimate author:
“The author of Holy Writ is God” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.10).
For Aquinas, human authors use words to signify things, but God can also use the realities those words describe to signify deeper realities. He writes:
“That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.10).
For Aquinas, the literal sense is foundational, but “literal” does not mean modern literalism. It means the meaning intended by the author. Since God is the divine author of Scripture, the text can carry depths of meaning that go beyond the immediate surface of the words without becoming false or arbitrary. Aquinas also insists that the spiritual senses are founded on the literal sense, not detached from it (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.10).
This gave medieval interpretation both discipline and depth. Scripture could speak historically, theologically, morally, and spiritually at once.
Nor should we pretend medieval interpreters were all non-literal readers. Bede, the early medieval English monk, historian, and biblical commentator, read the creation days more plainly than Augustine. Commenting on “evening and morning” in Genesis 1, Bede says it is “without a doubt a day of twenty-four hours” (Bede, On Genesis, 75).
Bede keeps the discussion honest. The Christian tradition has always included plainer readings of Genesis. The point is not that all premodern Christians read Genesis symbolically. The point is that the tradition was never as uniform as modern slogans often suggest.
Later, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln in the thirteenth century, wrote a Hexaemeron on the six days of creation. Grosseteste was not merely repeating biblical phrases. He brought Genesis into conversation with theology, light, cosmology, and natural philosophy. His work shows that medieval readers were not avoiding questions about the natural world. They were asking those questions within a different intellectual and theological framework (Robert Grosseteste, Hexaemeron).
Medieval spiritual interpretation also kept Genesis alive as a text about transformation. Eden was not only remembered as the garden of the beginning. It became an image of communion with God, the lost paradise of the soul, and the destiny toward which grace draws creation. The fall was not merely an event behind us, but a pattern of disordered desire, exile, and estrangement that every human being recognises within themselves.
Writers in the spiritual tradition often read biblical places as spiritually significant realities. Paradise, wilderness, mountain, garden, darkness, and light all became part of the geography of the soul. This does not mean they denied the text. It means they believed Scripture was written to bring the reader into wisdom, repentance, communion with God, and transformation. Genesis was not merely information about the past. It was an invitation into restored communion.
This way of reading appears in writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Bonaventure, who interpreted Scripture as a path of love, purification, wisdom, and union with God (Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs; Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God). While these writers are not always commenting directly on Genesis as Augustine or Basil did, they represent a broader medieval instinct: Scripture is not only given to inform the mind but also to form the whole person.
The Reformation changed the discussion, but not in the simplistic way often assumed. Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin were often suspicious of excessive allegory. They wanted Scripture to be read according to its grammatical and historical sense rather than being pulled into uncontrolled symbolic speculation. In that respect, they often moved closer to a plainer reading of Genesis.
But even the Reformers did not read the Bible as though it were a modern scientific text.
Calvin is especially important. In his commentary on Genesis, Calvin repeatedly appeals to divine accommodation. God speaks to human beings in ways suited to our limited capacity. Scripture does not reveal God in abstract, technical language, nor does it always speak with the precision of natural philosophy. It speaks as God stooping to be understood by ordinary people.
This becomes clear in Calvin’s comments on the moon. Genesis calls the sun and moon the “two great lights”, but Calvin knew astronomers considered Saturn larger than the moon. Rather than forcing Genesis into technical astronomy, Calvin writes:
“Moses wrote in a popular style things which without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand” (Calvin, Commentary on Genesis 1:16).
Calvin is not trying to make Moses into a modern astronomer. He is saying that Scripture speaks according to ordinary human perception because its purpose is theological revelation, not technical scientific precision.
Calvin could affirm creation, providence, Adam, sin, and the authority of Scripture while also recognising that biblical language is accommodated to human understanding. When Genesis speaks of the heavens, the firmament, the waters, the lights, and the order of creation, Calvin reads it as God’s revelation given in ordinary human language.
So the medieval and Reformation periods do not give us one single answer. Medieval interpreters often emphasised the layered senses of Scripture. Bede read the days more plainly. Grosseteste brought Genesis into conversation with natural philosophy. Aquinas gave a theological account of Scripture’s multiple senses. Reformers such as Calvin resisted excessive allegory while still recognising divine accommodation.
The older Christian tradition was usually more spacious than our current arguments. It could affirm the truth of Genesis without reducing that truth to material chronology. It could cherish the literal sense without denying allegory, moral formation, spiritual interpretation, or theological depth. And it could speak of Scripture as authoritative without requiring it to function as a modern scientific account of origins.
Modernity, Certainty, and Inerrancy
If the previous sections show interpretive diversity across the Christian tradition, then we need to ask why modern debates about Genesis often feel so narrow.
Part of the answer is that modern readers have inherited a different set of assumptions about truth, history, science, certainty, and Scripture.
This does not mean belief in creation, Adam and Eve, or the historicity of Genesis is modern. Ancient Jews and Christians often believed Genesis spoke about real creation, real humanity, real rebellion, and real divine action. The modern element is the assumption that Genesis must function like scientific or historical reportage in order to be true.
That way of thinking became especially powerful after the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment encouraged historical study, scientific observation, and rational enquiry. It also trained the Western imagination to think of truth primarily in terms of what can be measured, verified, categorised, and proven according to modern standards of evidence. Over time, this reshaped the way many people approached the Bible.
In that setting, Genesis increasingly became a text that people felt they had to defend or dismiss in light of modern scientific expectations.
For sceptics, Genesis could be rejected because it did not appear to match modern cosmology, geology, or biology. For many conservative Christians, Genesis had to be defended by showing that it did match those things, or at least could be made to match them. Strangely, both sides often accepted the same basic assumption: Genesis is only true if it works as a modern account of material origins.
This is where it is worth briefly mentioning foundationalism. Foundationalism is the idea that knowledge rests on secure basic beliefs that support everything else we claim to know. The instinct dates back to ancient philosophy, but it became especially influential in modern Western thought after René Descartes in the seventeenth century, as philosophers sought certainty in the wake of religious conflict, scepticism, and the rise of modern science.
In simple terms, foundationalism imagines knowledge like a building: if the foundation is unstable, everything built on top of it is at risk.
In some modern Christian settings, Scripture came to function in this way. The Bible was defended as the unshakeable foundation for faith, which is understandable. But under modern pressure, that defence sometimes shifted. Biblical authority became tied not simply to God’s self-revelation through Scripture, but to the claim that every biblical statement must be demonstrably precise according to modern standards of factual exactness. If any apparent tension appeared, the whole structure felt threatened.
In that environment, Genesis becomes enormously important. If the first chapters of the Bible are treated as the foundation of the foundation, then any non-literal reading can feel like the whole Christian faith is beginning to crack. This helps explain why debates about Genesis can become so emotionally charged.
This is also where the modern doctrine of inerrancy enters the story. Christians have always confessed that Scripture is truthful and trustworthy because God is truthful and trustworthy. Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin all held extremely high views of Scripture. But inerrancy as a carefully defined modern Protestant doctrine became especially prominent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as conservative Christians responded to biblical criticism, theological liberalism, and challenges from modern science.
Strictly speaking, inerrancy means that Scripture is true in all that it affirms. That definition is narrower and more careful than many popular uses of the term. It does not mean every sentence must be interpreted with wooden literalism. It does not erase genre, poetry, metaphor, symbolism, accommodation, ordinary observational language, or ancient ways of speaking. A Psalm can say that trees clap their hands without affirming botany. Jesus can call Herod a fox without making a zoological claim. Genesis can speak truthfully without functioning as modern scientific reportage.
The difficulty is that inerrancy is often carried further than its careful definition allows. In some settings, it becomes fused with a particular modern reading of Genesis, as though biblical authority depends on the opening chapters affirming a specific scientific chronology or model of material origins. But that is not merely a doctrine of Scripture. It is an interpretation of Genesis being treated as though it were identical with faithfulness to Scripture itself.
Older Protestant confessions already held together a high view of Scripture and the need for interpretation. The Westminster Confession says that the whole counsel of God is either “expressly set down in Scripture” or deduced by “good and necessary consequence” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6). It also says that “the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.9). Reformed confessional theology does not treat biblical authority as the enemy of interpretation. It assumes interpretation is necessary.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, written in 1978, became one of the most influential modern evangelical attempts to define inerrancy. It did not replace older confessional statements such as Westminster, but it did show how twentieth-century evangelicals tried to defend Scripture’s truthfulness in a modern context shaped by scepticism, science, and biblical criticism.
Even the Chicago Statement warns against judging Scripture by “standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose”. It also says inerrancy is not negated by “a lack of modern technical precision”, “observational descriptions of nature”, “hyperbole and round numbers”, or “the topical arrangement of material” (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article XIII). The later Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics says Scripture should be interpreted by taking account of “all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text” (Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, Article XV).
A high view of Scripture does not remove the need for careful interpretation. It requires it.
Evolution, Evolutionism, and Modern Literalism
Before moving further, we need to clarify the history of “evolution” and “evolutionism”. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859 and proposed natural selection as a mechanism for biological development. But almost immediately, evolution became more than a biological theory in the public imagination. Thinkers such as Herbert Spencer applied evolutionary language to society, ethics, economics, and human progress. Spencer popularised the phrase “survival of the fittest” in this broader intellectual world (Spencer, Principles of Biology; Darwin Correspondence Project).
This meant Christians were often responding to more than one thing at once. On the one hand, there was biological evolution: the claim that living creatures developed and diversified over time through natural processes. On the other hand, there was evolutionism: the larger philosophical story that treated evolution as a total account of reality, often tied to materialism, progress, competition, and the idea that nature is a closed system without divine purpose.
Those are not the same claim.
A Christian may reject materialism completely while still asking whether God could use natural processes within creation. The real theological issue is not simply whether living creatures developed over time, but whether creation is understood as gift, providence, and divine purpose, or as a closed system of matter, time, and chance.
This helps explain why some conservative Christians were more open to an old earth, evolutionary development, or non-literal readings of Genesis without abandoning belief in creation. They were not necessarily accepting evolutionism as a godless worldview. They were asking whether evolutionary processes, if true, might be understood as part of God’s providential ordering of creation.
Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth-century Baptist preacher often called the “Prince of Preachers”, did not fit neatly into later young-earth categories. In an 1855 sermon on the Holy Spirit, Spurgeon said:
“We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be, certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam.”
He then added that different kinds of creatures had lived on the earth before humanity appeared, “all of which have been fashioned by God” (Spurgeon, “The Power of the Holy Ghost”, 1855). Spurgeon was not arguing for Darwinian evolution. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species would not be published until 1859. But his comfort with an ancient earth shows that old-earth readings were not simply inventions of late modern liberalism.
B. B. Warfield is another important example. Warfield was one of the great Old Princeton theologians and among the most significant defenders of biblical inspiration and inerrancy in modern Protestant history. Yet he does not fit neatly into the later creationist binary. His relationship to evolution is debated, and he was not an uncritical Darwinist. Still, his own language shows a more nuanced position than later slogans often allow. In one discussion, Warfield wrote:
“Evolution cannot act as a substitute for creation, but at best can supply only a theory of the method of the divine providence” (Warfield, cited in Livingstone and Noll, B. B. Warfield: Evolution, Science, and Scripture).
Warfield rejects evolution as a replacement for creation. Evolution cannot become a godless explanation of existence itself. But he leaves room for evolution to be understood as a possible method of divine providence. In simpler terms, Warfield could reject materialist evolutionism while still considering whether evolutionary development might be one of the processes God uses within creation.
C. S. Lewis also complicates the story. Lewis was not a modern creationist in the young-earth sense, but neither was he an evolutionist in the materialist sense. He distinguished sharply between biological evolution and what he called “Evolutionism” or “Developmentalism” as a grand myth of inevitable progress. In “The Funeral of a Great Myth”, Lewis wrote:
“We must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism, which is certainly a Myth.”
Biological evolution, he argued, “makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements” (Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth”). In other words, Lewis rejected evolution when it was turned into a total worldview. Evolution could not tell us why anything exists, what humanity is for, whether sin is real, or where history is going. But he was more open to evolution as a biological process within a created world.
That helps explain how Lewis speaks about the fall in The Problem of Pain. He does not treat Genesis as a disposable symbol, but neither does he reduce it to a strict reconstruction of biological origins. He describes humanity as “a spoiled species” and writes that “man, as a species, spoiled himself” (Lewis, The Problem of Pain, ch. 5). For Lewis, the essential claim is theological: humanity has turned from God into self-will, pride, and alienation. However one understands the biological process, the fall names the rupture in communion between humanity and God.
These examples do not prove that old-earth readings, evolutionary creation, or non-literal readings of Genesis are automatically correct. They simply show that the modern landscape has always been more diverse than the slogan suggests. A high view of Scripture has not always required one particular modern literalist account of Genesis.
The rise of fundamentalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries narrowed the debate further. Conservative Protestants were responding not only to Darwin but also to biblical criticism, theological liberalism, and the perceived erosion of historic Christian doctrine. In that context, defending the “plain meaning” of Genesis became a way of defending the trustworthiness of the whole Bible (Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).
The modern Young Earth creationist movement became especially organised in the twentieth century. A key moment was the publication of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris’ The Genesis Flood in 1961, which helped popularise “flood geology” as an explanation for the geological record. Morris later helped found the Institute for Creation Research and is widely recognised as one of the key architects of the modern creation science movement. The Institute itself says Morris “wrote extensively in defence of a literal interpretation” of Genesis, especially Genesis 1 to 11 (Institute for Creation Research, “Dr. Henry M. Morris”).
This is where the language of concordism becomes useful. Concordism is the attempt to make Scripture correspond directly with modern scientific claims. In Genesis debates, this often means arguing that the biblical text, when properly understood, aligns with modern geology, biology, cosmology, or an alternative scientific model.
Young Earth creationism is one form of concordism. It does not usually reject science as such. Rather, it tries to construct a different science, one that will vindicate a particular reading of Genesis. Flood geology is a clear example. The geological record is reinterpreted through the lens of a global flood because Genesis is assumed to be giving a scientifically and historically precise account of early Earth history.
The impulse is understandable. Christians want to affirm that Scripture is true and that God’s world does not ultimately contradict God’s Word. But concordism can still leave us trapped inside the same modern framework. It assumes that Genesis is most defensible when we can show that it aligns with scientific explanations, whether mainstream or alternative.
The problem is not that Scripture and science are enemies. The problem is asking Genesis to speak in categories it was not written to address. Genesis is not a coded scientific account waiting for modern readers to unlock it. It is ancient theological Scripture. It speaks truly, but it speaks in the language, imagery, and cosmological world of ancient Israel.
In that sense, organisations like Answers in Genesis are not an accidental development. They are a natural fruit of concordist instincts. If Genesis must function as a scientifically precise account of material origins, then one must either make Genesis fit mainstream science or construct an alternative science that fits a particular reading of Genesis.
Answers in Genesis intensified and popularised that approach for a wider audience. Ken Ham co-founded AiG in 1994 with the stated purpose of “upholding the authority of the Bible from the very first verse” and “sharing the gospel beginning in Genesis” (Answers in Genesis, “Ken Ham”). That language explains why AiG has been so effective. It does not present Young Earth creationism as one possible interpretation among faithful Christians. It presents it as the front line of biblical authority itself.
This movement had an enormous influence on modern evangelicalism, especially in the English-speaking West. It shaped Sunday school curricula, homeschool materials, apologetics ministries, youth group teaching, Christian school science resources, museum exhibits, conference circuits, and online debates. Over time, many Christians absorbed the assumption that “creationist” simply meant Young Earth creationist, and that any other reading of Genesis was already a compromise with secularism.
This is where my concern becomes sharper. The problem is not that Young Earth creationists care deeply about Scripture. That concern is admirable. Nor is the problem that they read Genesis differently from me. Christians have disagreed about Genesis for a very long time. The problem is that many Young Earth organisations frame their interpretation as the only faithful reading, then use highly contested scientific claims to defend it. In practice, this can train Christians to see geology, biology, cosmology, and biblical scholarship as threats rather than gifts.
That has had real pastoral consequences. Many Christians raised within that framework later discover that the scientific arguments are far more contested than they were told, or that faithful Christians throughout history have read Genesis in more than one way. When that happens, the whole faith can feel fragile. Not because Genesis has failed, but because Genesis was made to carry a burden it was never meant to carry.
That is not a reason to mock Young Earth creationists. Many are sincere Christians trying to honour Scripture. But sincerity does not make an interpretation immune to critique. If defending Genesis requires dismissing mainstream science, ignoring the diversity of Christian interpretation, or treating every alternative reading as compromise, then we should at least ask whether we are defending Scripture or defending a modern system built around Scripture.
The irony is that modern scepticism and modern fundamentalism can sometimes share the same flattened view of Scripture. The sceptic says, “Genesis is not scientifically accurate, therefore it is false.” The fundamentalist replies, “Genesis is true, therefore it must be scientifically accurate.” Both assume that scientific accuracy is the primary category by which Genesis must stand or fall.
Ancient readers often had a larger imagination.
For them, Genesis could speak truly as sacred theology, cosmic temple text, moral anthropology, liturgical pattern, wisdom reflection, typology, and history. It could reveal who God is, what creation is, what humanity is for, why death and corruption grieve the world, and how God intends to restore all things.
Modern literalism often narrows that rich field of meaning. It asks Genesis to answer questions the text may not be trying to answer in the way we expect.
This is not an argument against the truth of Genesis. It is an argument for reading Genesis according to its own ancient literary, theological, and canonical shape.
The question is not whether Genesis is true.
The better question is: what kind of truth is Genesis giving us?
Modern Scholarship and Ancient Genesis
Modern scholarship has not simply invented non-literal readings of Genesis. At its best, it has helped recover the ancient world in which Genesis was written and first heard.
That matters because Genesis did not drop into a modern scientific debate. It emerged within the world of the ancient Near East, where people thought about creation, order, chaos, temples, divine rule, humanity, land, waters, heavens, image, and vocation in ways quite different from modern Western readers.
John Walton is especially important here. Walton is an Old Testament scholar whose work on Genesis 1 has drawn attention to the ancient Near Eastern world behind the text. In The Lost World of Genesis One, he argues that Genesis 1 is primarily concerned with God ordering creation as a functioning cosmos, rather than giving a modern account of material manufacture. In his own words:
“We need not think of this origins account as a material account because the text consistently supports an ordering/functional view” (Walton, “Material or Function in Genesis 1?”).
Walton’s point is not that God did not create the material world. He explicitly affirms God as Creator. His argument is that Genesis 1 itself focuses on God assigning function, order, and sacred purpose to creation. The seven-day structure is therefore not simply a timeline of material production. Walton reads it as temple-shaped: creation is ordered as God’s cosmic temple, and the seventh day is the climax, when God rests as king within his ordered creation (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).
This changes the question. Instead of asking only, “How long did creation take?” Walton asks, “What kind of world is Genesis describing?” His answer is that Genesis presents creation as an ordered sacred space, made for God’s presence and human vocation.
Tremper Longman III is also useful because he represents careful evangelical Old Testament scholarship. Longman does not treat Genesis as modern scientific prose, but neither does he empty it of theological truth. He describes Genesis 1-11 as “theological history”: a narrative concerned with the past, but told through highly figurative and theological language. In one summary of his position, Genesis 1 is not best understood as God creating in six ordinary twenty-four-hour days, but as using the analogy of the six-day workweek to describe creation (Longman, How to Read Genesis).
Longman’s approach refuses the false choice between “literal scientific report” and “meaningless myth”. Genesis can be theological history. It can speak truly about God, humanity, sin, judgment, blessing, and covenant without operating as a modern scientific description.
C. John Collins gives us another careful evangelical voice. Collins is an Old Testament scholar, not to be confused with Francis Collins, the geneticist. His work is helpful because he takes Genesis seriously as truthful Scripture while resisting wooden literalism. In Genesis 1–4, Collins describes Genesis 1 as “exalted prose narrative” rather than ordinary prose or simple poetry. A review of Collins’ work notes that he invites readers to sit “lightly” on the need for strict sequence between the creation days and argues that the “nature and lengths of the days of creation are not the main communicative interest of the text” (Collins, Genesis 1–4).
That is a useful middle path. Collins is not saying Genesis is false. He is saying we need to ask what the text is actually trying to communicate. If Genesis 1 is exalted prose narrative, then its form, structure, repetition, patterning, and theological purpose matter. Reading it well means paying attention to the kind of literature it is, not forcing it into a modern genre it never claimed to be.
Collins makes a similar point in Reading Genesis Well. He writes that the biblical authors were “aiming to tell the truth about the story”, and that faithful readers have historically believed they achieved that aim (Collins, Reading Genesis Well, 89). But the key question is what kind of truth the authors were aiming to tell, and how the text communicates that truth.
N. T. Wright helps frame the larger theological issue. Wright is not primarily a Genesis specialist, but he is invaluable for reading Genesis canonically, within the whole biblical story. For Wright, Genesis launches the narrative of creation, vocation, rebellion, covenant, Christ, and new creation. The image of God is not merely a static quality humans possess, but a vocation. Humanity is called to reflect God’s wise rule into creation and gather creation’s worship back to God.
That framing helps us see why Genesis matters so much. Genesis is not merely an answer to the modern question, “How did the material world begin?” It is telling us what creation is, who humanity is, what vocation we have been given, why the world is fractured, and why the rest of Scripture must move toward covenant, incarnation, cross, resurrection, and new creation.
Taken together, Walton, Longman, Collins, and Wright show that modern scholarship does not force us to abandon Genesis. It can help us read Genesis more anciently, more canonically, and more theologically. It asks us to pay attention to genre, ancient cosmology, literary structure, temple imagery, theological purpose, and the way later Scripture itself reuses Genesis.
Of course, modern scholarship is not infallible. Scholars disagree. Some readings are stronger than others. Christians should not simply replace modern literalism with academic fashion. But neither should we dismiss scholarship whenever it unsettles familiar assumptions.
The best scholarship can help us see what was always there: Genesis is not a flat modern textbook. It is a profound theological account of God, creation, humanity, vocation, sin, exile, and hope. It is ancient Scripture, and it should be read as ancient Scripture.
So How Should We Read Genesis?
After tracing this brief history of Genesis interpretation, where does that leave us?
For me, it leaves us with a more ancient, more theological, and more faithful way of reading the opening chapters of Scripture. I have written elsewhere that Genesis 1–11 is best read as theological history told through mythic and literary forms. By “mythic”, I do not mean fictional. I mean that Genesis uses story, symbolism, archetype, structure, and ancient ways of speaking to communicate reality at a deep theological level. In that earlier piece, I argued that Genesis 1–11 tells the story of the world’s beginnings in order to reveal divine purpose, not modern scientific detail: Genesis 1–11 Part I: Authorship, Context and Genre.
That is still where I land.
I believe Genesis is true. I believe God is the Creator of heaven and earth. I believe humanity is made in the image of God. I believe sin, exile, alienation, death, judgment, and hope are real. I believe the opening chapters of Genesis reveal something devastatingly honest about the human condition. We are creatures made for communion with God, one another, and creation itself. Yet we grasp, hide, blame, fracture, and exile ourselves from the life we were made for.
But I do not believe Genesis needs to function as modern scientific reportage in order to tell the truth.
That is the thread running through this whole history. The question is not simply whether Genesis is “literal” or “symbolic”, as though those are the only options. The better question is: what kind of text is Genesis, and what kind of truth is it giving us?
Genesis is ancient Scripture. It should be read with attention to its ancient context, literary form, theological purpose, and canonical role. It is not less true because it uses symbol, pattern, and archetype. In many ways, that is precisely how it tells the truth. It reaches beneath mere chronology into the deep structure of reality: God creates, God orders, God blesses, humanity is called to image God, creation is good, sin is catastrophic, and exile is not the final word.
This means I am not interested in forcing Genesis into either of the narrow options often offered in modern debates. I do not want to flatten it into fundamentalist literalism, as though its value depends on answering modern scientific questions in modern scientific terms. But neither do I want to dismiss it as primitive mythology, as though ancient symbolic literature cannot communicate truth.
Genesis is doing something far richer.
It is giving us the grammar of the whole biblical story. Creation, image, blessing, vocation, Sabbath, land, temple, wisdom, rebellion, exile, promise, covenant, Christ, and new creation all begin here. The rest of Scripture keeps returning to these opening movements because Genesis is not merely about what happened long ago. It is about what has always been true of God, creation, and humanity.
So did ancient Jews and Christians read Genesis literally?
Sometimes, in some ways. Many believed Genesis spoke of real creation, real humanity, real sin, and real divine action. But as this brief history shows, Genesis has also been read symbolically, theologically, morally, typologically, spiritually, canonically, devotionally, and philosophically. The history of interpretation is far more textured than the modern slogan allows.
That is the kind of reading I find most compelling. Not a reading that makes Genesis less than true, but one that allows Genesis to be true in the way Scripture itself seems to invite.
