Updating Our Language of Genesis

Seven Glorious Days: An Interview with Karl Giberson

http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Seven-Glorious-Days-Jonathan-Fitzgerald-09-18-2012.html#.UFn9b6xAcMk.facebook

 

by Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

September 17, 2012

 

As a Christian, a scientist, and a firm believer that evolution doesn't contradict scripture, Giberson has become a hero for likeminded evangelicals.

 

Karl Giberson is no stranger to controversy. Though, if you choose to write to and for evangelicals in defense of science, you'd have to expect as much. As a scientist himself, and a firm believer that evolution doesn't contradict scripture, Giberson has become a hero for likeminded evangelicals. His work with Francis Collins in establishing BioLogos has gone far to institutionalize these views.

 

And yet, if you're on the other side, if you're a strict biblical literalist and a young earth creationist, Giberson and his views are a constant thorn in your side. In his various teaching positions—at Eastern Nazarene College for over twenty-five years, at Gordon College, and most recently at Stonehill College—and with the publication of each of his nine books, controversy has followed him.

 

This was perfectly illustrated in a recent Facebook post on the page of a group called "Concerned Nazarenes." A commenter on that page wrote of Giberson, "I am thankful he has left ENC, because he has spent years there poisoning the minds of many youth. He will have much to answer to the Lord unless he repents."

 

When Giberson reposted this note on his own Facebook page, it garnered over seventy-five responses in less than 24 hours from friends and fellow faculty, but mostly from students, thanking him for "poisoning" their minds.

 

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Giberson in the student center at Eastern Nazarene (where I began teaching after he left to pursue other opportunities) to talk about his latest book, Seven Glorious Days.

 

Tell me a bit of the story of this book. I understand it was initially planned as part of your book with Francis Collins.

 

The idea of the book is something that I always wanted to do. Many scholars feel that the way you have to look at Genesis is to keep apart the theology and the primitive science that's there. And the unwillingness of fundamentalists to do that simple hermeneutic exercise is what gives rise to the evangelical rejection of so much modern science.

 

So, at the very end of the book with Collins [The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions] I thought, let me do a simple creative exercise in which I take Genesis and transform the text into what I think it would look like if it was written today.

 

The exercise worked and I sent it to some scholars and everyone liked it. But in the final editorial stages of the process, my editor expressed a concern that though the book we had written had the potential to be influential among evangelicals—it was thoroughly orthodox, evangelical in its tone, and Collins and I were respected within the community—all the things that would be useful about it would be undermined by the last chapter. Readers would say, who do they think they are rewriting scripture.

 

I think this reflects the low value evangelicals place on art; what I was doing was a creative, not theological exercise, but I was inclined to cooperate with my editor. So I just took that out. I left in the story to some degree, but I didn't try to tie it to any rewrite of Genesis.

 

The book was successful and we were all happy with that, but I kind of had this project sitting around. So I approached Lil Copan who was an editor at Paraclete at the time and she liked it a lot. She suggested that I write a little short book—she described it as the kind of thing you do in a long weekend. She really liked the sample chapter a lot, and made some great suggestions and then brought it to the marketing people there. They said they wanted to publish it, but they liked it so much that they wanted to boost it from a 20,000-word book to 40-45,000. So they asked me to do that.

 

How should readers approach this book? How was the process of writing it different from your other books?

 

The book needs to be understood as a creative exercise. It's as if someone said, paint a picture of Jesus at Starbucks, or tell a story about Jesus going to Walmart. You have to give someone creative license to do that.

 

One of the first things I had to do was figure out how to divide the history of the universe from the big bang to the present into seven periods. And I'm not doing that because I want to suggest that the days of Genesis are 2 billion years long and if you just make that change everything will line up, but it's a way to keep it connected to the Genesis story. [In fact, the seven days are a literary idiom to help tell the story of creation and should not be viewed as a stepwise progression of evolution. - res2]

 

Also, we understand now that the creative processes that gave birth to the universe don't really stop, so I had to figure that out. That's quite different scientifically and theologically from most of Genesis.

Then, the modern scientific picture comes across as much more deistic than the biblical story does. So I had to think about how to handle that. We don't understand creation today as involving all kinds of divine interventions to do things, but as Christians we affirm that God's creative work is unfolding throughout history.

 

So those all involve making artistic decisions. I hope it will be read on those terms.

 

Is this book an effort to convince people who don't believe in evolution that it is, in fact, compatible with faith?

 

I used to be more idealistic and think all we needed to do is to get good arguments in circulation. But, I'm a lot more pessimistic now. I think that the people who oppose contemporary science are going to oppose it no matter what.

 

So this is really more of a book written for the faithful to let them enjoy their "liberal apostasy" in a way they couldn't before.

 

That said, it has the potential to be very convincing, especially for evangelicals who don't feel the need to be biblical literalists. They can buy into this and see that this is a grand story; there are a lot of people who think the secular origin story is quite wonderful. There's no reason why people can't be drawn to that position.

 

But I don't feel like you're going to get that many people to change their minds. I think we're at a cultural moment where people believe what they want and become immune to information. And they can always find some credentialed expert to tell them that they're right.

 

Paraclete is not one of the big evangelical publishers in the same way as some of the others you've worked with. How was that experience different?

 

The book is a reflection of my own spiritual journey. Like so many mid-career academics I share the feeling that evangelicalism has abandoned us, in a sense. It went somewhere over the course of our adult life and adopted a public face which is anti-intellectual and anti-science. It became very political and obsessed with a few social issues at the expense of the broader gospel. So I'm quite happy to say that I want to speak to audiences that have evolved past evangelicalism or were never in that community to begin with.

 

This is a book that an evangelical press might feel uneasy about because of the way it handles scripture. But a more Catholic-oriented press is a better place for it.

 

Though, I should say, Paraclete isn't really a Catholic press. I would describe them as a broadly Christian press. However, many of the emails I receive do come from sister this or sister that. I mean, my publicist is a nun.

 

So, I know you're teaching at Stonehill College and working on your tenth book. What's next for you?

 

I'm loving my position at Stonehill. I'm a professor of writing, which is the career transformation I've wanted and have been looking for for many years. I'm teaching writing intensive science and religion classes there.

 

Also, the American Scientific Affiliation is trying to launch a dramatically upgraded version of their magazine God and Nature, and they've asked me to be senior editor on that project.

 

And the Adam book. The working title is Saving Adam. Of course, I already have a book called Saving Darwin. I guess if I write a memoir it will probably be called Saving Karl.

 

Anyway, it's going to be a book that will try to illuminate the current controversy over whether Adam has to be understood as a historical figure or not. I'm going to look at how we got our ideas about Adam—when certain views became very important, and how the church has responded as evidence began to mount that Adam might not have been the first man.

 

Great. Thanks for your time. Anything else you want to mention?

 

Well, the book is out and people should buy it.

 

 

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald is the managing editor of Patrolmag.com, and writes on the various manifestations of Christianity in culture. Follow him on Twitter or at his website, www.jonathandfitzgerald.com.

 

Fitzgerald's column, "In Progress," is published every Wednesday on the Progressive Christian Portal. Subscribe via email or RSS.