The Confusion of Walton's View of Genesis One

Location

University of Northwestern - St. Paul

3003 Snelling Ave N, Roseville, MN 55113

Building: Totino Fine Arts Center, also called the Beverly & John Lord Knight Performance Hall

Room: # F2106 (which is next to the auditorium & across from the Ticket Office)

We are at the red star on the UNW campus map: https://www.unwsp.edu/admissions/visit-us/campus-map-directions/

About the Event

Framing Genesis one in elusive concepts from the ANE world that Genesis refutes, John Walton has created a “Lost World” in which the Creator, Genesis and truth are lost in a deep, dark, chaotic void of speculation. His self-styled “explorations” in Genesis one unfold an evolving mythology shaped in a context he has created by “tracking” the text through that ANE world. In his talk, Drake will discuss how Walton describes formulating this new cultural perspective, how he imposes it on what is probably the largest corpus of literature available from the period, and how this confusingly and misleadingly reframes the God, the text, the purpose and the meaning of Genesis one.

Walton’s Genesis one unveils a God who, without accommodating himself to their alien and diverse conceptual world, is unable to speak to people he is supposed to have evolved. It proposes an account of God’s failure to establish order from the disorder with which Walton asserts God started. It portrays God as delegating that disordered world to mankind’s ongoing failure to establish a better order. Walton’s Genesis one offers no hope to its readers for life or human endeavour – including in the field of science – in a world in which God is silenced by the mythologies of lost ancient cultures.

In contrast to this, Drake will draw attention to how the text of Genesis one, the God it reveals, the creation account it gives, and the place of mankind in that creation, are each distinctly different from Walton’s “Lost World” and the ANE conceptual world in which his explorations are lost. Genesis one will be shown to be God’s history of his making out of nothing the heavens and the earth and everything in them, including mankind, in six days.

Drake will explain how Genesis one reveals God speaking with clarity to bring an ordered creation into being with life and purpose. He will show how in this introductory chapter and foundation to the Bible, God speaks with the same clarity in a reliable verbal revelation to mankind about what God wants his creatures to know about himself, his works and his call to serve him as Creator. God’s Genesis one offers hope to his readers for life and human endeavour – including in the field of science – in a world in which mankind’s commission to serve an unlost God is revealed through a text by which God speaks truth to the people of every culture. 

Check out Ross Olson's review of "The Misted World of Genesis One" by Michael Drake

Zoom Link

Coming soon!

YouTube Recordings

https://www.youtube.com/c/TCCSATwinCitiesCreationScienceAssociation

Unable to join? The recording will be posted permanently on our YouTube channel after the meeting.