While we're on this subject I want to mention a pet peeve of mine — a phrase frequently employed by Al Mohler and other proponents of creation-ism. It's a phrase that bothers me as a lover of the Bible and of stories and of words.
That phrase is "the creation account" or "the creation account in Genesis."
The book of Genesis offers no such account. It provides a creation story — more than one, in fact, the first 11 chapters are nothing but origin stories. But it most decidedly does not provide an account of creation.
An account is testimony, witnesses telling what they have seen. The speaker or writer — the one giving the account — does not need to be a direct witness herself. She may be a journalist or a historian compiling the testimony of others. But without some basis in such testimony from actual witnesses we haven't got what we can call an account.
When I point this out — that the story in Genesis 1 is not an "account" — the creation-ists get upset with me, as though I were attacking the book of Genesis. But I'm not attacking it, I'm defending it. Genesis 1 does not itself claim to be an account. It does not present itself as such and it does not willingly comply with those who would treat it as such. To read the story as it is, in the way that it presents itself, cannot be an attack. It's far more hostile to the text to declare, with no basis from the text itself, that it must be read as something it does not and cannot claim to be.
In the vast and diverse library of books we call the Bible, we can find many actual accounts. Luke-Acts presents itself as an account — as a compilation of testimony from those who saw and experienced the events it describes.
Here is the beginning of the Gospel of Luke:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you …
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what an account looks like.
Genesis 1 is not that. It's a very different kind of story from that and confusing the two different kinds of stories can only lead to further confusion. Contrast Luke's promise of an "orderly account" based on the testimony of "eyewitnesses" and a careful investigation of events that happened "among us" with what we read in the opening verses of Genesis 1.
In the beginning God created the heaven 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.
This is not a story "handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses." There are no eyewitnesses. Eyes haven't been invented yet. There are no humans who could provide such testimony until we get almost to the end of this story, and in any case there's nothing here to suggest or allow for this to be Adam or Eve's account. Nor, to be clear, is this God's own account — God is a character in this story, not the narrator giving testimony.
This story is not anyone's account because it's not an account at all. It's an origin story. And that's a very different thing, with a very different purpose. To treat it as something it's not — as an "account" — is to miss that purpose, to miss the point.
Missing the point is not a good thing.
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