Science and theology are not mutually exclusive realms, as is popularly thought. They overlap at significant points. Therefore, it is possible for theology to correct science, but it is also possible for science to correct theology. One example of science correcting theology is the Copernican revolution. Once upon a time, the Church held to a geocentric view of the universe. Copernicus challenged this perspective, originally proposed by the pagan astronomer Ptolemy, which constituted the “pop” Christian theology of the day.

Ptolemy had posited endless epicycles to account for the non-circularity of the planets’ orbits. Copernicus explained that putting the sun at the center of the solar system instead of the earth made the math work much more simply and eliminated the ad hoc epicycles. Technological advances (such as the telescope) enabled subsequent researchers to empirically verify Copernicus’ theory. Hence, science corrected theology.

On the other hand, in the realm of political science, theology provided a significant corrective. In ancient days, only the king or the Pharaoh was thought to be in the image of God. This thought lingered into the medieval era as political theorists proclaimed the Divine Right of Kings. However, biblical theology, liberated by the reformation, democratized the image of God to all men, providing the basis for human equality under the law, limited republican government, and political freedom. Therefore, we should hold to our theological and scientific theories humbly, open to correctives from either when appropriate. God has provided a dual revelation, one in the Bible, and the other in nature, and we must take them both equally seriously.

Today, the theological position known as recent creationism has come under withering assault from legitimate and persuasive scientific evidence demonstrating that the universe and the earth are very old, in fact, billions of years old. Must we reject this evidence and continue in spite of it to insist that the Bible teaches the opposite? Must we tenaciously cling to recent creationism in order to protect the infallibility of God’s word? We should only if our creationist theology is itself infallible, that is, if the biblical text itself is completely recalcitrant to anything but a recent creationist interpretation. On the other hand, if the text itself may be legitimately interpreted in a manner that frees us to consider another point of view, then we need not fear the findings of science concerning the ages of the universe and the earth. So let’s approach Genesis Chapter 1 and those troublesome “days” by means of a different lens and see what we find.

First of all, Genesis 1 is neither a scientific statement nor a philosophical treatise. It is essentially a religious argument. Moses lived in a day when cultures were steeped in religion. His work is a corrective to the false religions of the ancient near east that believed gods who emerged out of a primordial, preexistent chaos and whose superiority to human nature was only a matter of degree, not kind. Therefore, Moses’ work is an apologetic one, aimed at establishing the God of Israel as the Creator of all that is and superior in every way to man. Before YHWH, there was nothing, not even a primordial chaos, and men are made in God’s image, not the other way around. So Moses is teaching us what really happened in the beginning (YHWH created everything) and who it really is that made this happen (YHWH alone). That is all.