In today’s episode, in fact, in the next few episodes, I’ll be talking about the origins of life, especially about how life began as recorded in Genesis chapter one, the first chapter of the Bible.

Now, just to be clear, I am not a scientist. I know very little about the scientific explanation for how life began. I am a Christian theologian, and I approach the subject of how and when life began from a biblical perspective. So, if you’re looking for a scientific explanation of the origin of life, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Yet even though I am not a scientist, I do have a love for scientific investigation. I love to study astronomy, geology, and anthropology, and in my pursuit of the truth, I blend my love for science with my love for God and his word, always keeping God’s word, the Bible, as the arbiter and supreme authority of truth. God’s word must be the final word when it comes to finding the truth.

The next important consideration about the origin of life is the issue of interpretation. There is no end to the way the Bible has been interpreted, especially when it comes to Genesis chapter one and how Genesis one records how God created the universe. Because there are so many interpretations, I think it will be helpful to have some guidelines and rules for how to read the Bible. The first rule is that the Bible is God’s revelation of himself and his dealings with humankind. In the Bible, God reveals who he is and who you and I are. Without the Bible, we would not know that God is holy and loving. Without the Bible, we would not know that we were made in the image of God.

In addition to being God’s revelation of himself and his dealings with humankind, the Bible is also filled with tons of human observations about life. Through the characters in the Bible, we learn a lot about how people perceive and experience life, which brings us to the next important rule: without divine guidance, human observation is limited. Unless the Bible specifically says that someone is being guided by divine revelation, then those observations about life are simply his or her perspective and opinion. For example, when Balaam’s donkey refuses to cooperate, Balaam believes his donkey is just being stubborn. Not until God reveals the angel who stands in his path, does Balaam know the truth (Numbers 22:21-31).

Let me give another example. Joshua 10:13 says: “The sun stood still, and the moon stopped.” Apparently, the ancient Israelites to whom this was written believed that the sun was going around the earth. Most people in the ancient world, including those to whom the Bible was written, believed in a geocentric solar system, a solar system where the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets revolved around the earth.

That belief is an example of a mistaken human perspective. It’s not that the Bible is wrong. It’s simply a way to describe the world in ways that made sense to people who didn’t know otherwise. Not until Copernicus proved that the earth revolves around the sun did people know the truth.

The belief that the sun revolves around the earth wasn’t the only wrong view that people had during Bible times. Many ancient people believed that the moon and the stars were godlike beings that governed the lives and destinies of people on Earth. The Bible even warns the ancient Hebrews not to worship the celestial bodies. Deuteronomy 4:19 says,

Beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them.

Today, we know that the moon and stars are not powerful spiritual beings who control our lives.

What does all this have to do with the origins of life? It means that when we read the story of creation in the Bible, we must enter an ancient worldview. We must read the Bible in its historical context. We must try to understand what the creation story meant to the original audience because, although the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us. It was written to men and women who lived thousands of years ago who didn’t know the things we know today.

Now, I need to make a disclaimer. God’s word has much to say about morality and ethics. The Bible talks about topics like slavery, abortion, and homosexuality. Here too, we must read the Bible in its historical context, but we cannot confuse description forprescription. The Bible gives lots of descriptions about the world and human behavior, but most of these descriptions are from a human perspective. For example, the Bible describes the Israelites having slaves:

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. (Exodus 12:43-44)

If the ancient Israelites owned slaves, does this mean that we can own slaves today? Obviously not. This passage describes a practice in ancient Israel. It is not prescribing a practice for us today.

When it comes to sin, however, we are dealing with divine revelation in the form of prescription. God is giving us instructions and rules to live by. So, when God says that homosexuality is a sin, we cannot say it was only a sin in the days of the Bible, but now we know better.

God’s commands concerning ethics and morality are not bound by culture. They are intercultural. In other words, God’s commands against lying, murder, stealing, and all the other commands concerning morality are for every age and every culture.

Bible interpretation involves a lot of thought. We can’t just pick up the Bible and say, “God said it, I believe it.” We can read what it says, but the crucial step is what does it mean? First, what did it mean to the people to whom it was written thousands of years ago, and second, what does it mean to me today?

In our next episode of the Attic Fables podcast, I’ll continue our study of what the Bible says about the origins of life.