Book Review: Seven Days that Divide the World by John C. Lennox

The subtitle of this work by esteemed philosopher and professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford is “The beginning according to Genesis and science.” So many people in the raging debate throughout Christianity seem to miss the second part of that, the “and.” This book splits its focus more or less evenly, though it takes less of a word-study approach to the Genesis passage and more of a philosophically balanced look at what it could be trying to say. There are only five chapters to this short work by Professor Lennox, but arguably there is more important and weighty material in the five appendixes that are a must-read. The introduction gives the goal of the book. Professor Lennox once encountered a brilliant professor from an eastern country who had been completely put off Christianity because she was taught, “‘… that the Bible starts with a very silly, unscientific story of how the world was made in seven days.’ … This book is written for people like her, who have been putting off even considering the Christian faith for this kind of reason.”

The first chapter is, to this writer, amazingly brilliant. I would have never thought to compare these two ideas and when Prof. Lennox does so, it struck me as the most brilliant comparison to make in this context. Prof. Lennox compares the argument concerning the age of the earth with the argument concerning the Copernican model of the earth and solar system. Prof. Lennox writes of how, if he had been writing about science and faith in the sixteenth century, he would have probably been addressing the argument about whether or not the earth was fixed in space or if it moved. The Scriptures seem to teach that the earth is immobile and fixed in space, but science teaches very differently. How does one approach this breakthrough scientific discovery (at that time) with what the Bible teaches? There are multiple verses that seem to say that not only is the earth fixed in space but that the sun moves! Which is correct, the Bible or Copernicus/Galileo/science? We have since accepted the heliocentric model of the solar system despite what the Bible seems to say about the matter. We can apply similar concepts to the age of the earth.

While chapter one was about the history of the fixed earth debate, chapter two goes into more about how to understand the Bible in light of these two controversies. How do we read the Bible? It is a work of literature, with multiple books and multiple types of books. One cannot expect to apply the same understanding to every book and every word of the Bible. What is normal and what we should be going for, is a “natural understanding” of a passage. We know that there are multiple ways to understand some passages that are still perfectly natural. Another issue is how we understand even individual words in a phrase. Such as the example, “The car was flying down the road.” The car and the road are definitely literal things, but clearly, the one word in the sentence that is not literal can make all the difference to the statement. He applies the same idea to Jesus’ statement that He was a door. Clearly, Jesus was real, and doors are real, but just as obviously, Jesus does not mean to say that He is literally a door. In fact, Professor Lennox refers to a trend of not using the word “literal” to mean this because there are too many different levels of literal meanings. “Literal” leads to confusion, so we ought to use the word “literalistic.” A literalistic view of, “the car was flying down the road,” would mean actually flying (off the ground). Everyone, including scientists, commonly use metaphors to describe things that cannot easily be understood otherwise, why would we be surprised if God should use metaphors in the creation narrative or elsewhere in the Bible? Also, the Bible is not a science textbook and does not use modern scientific terminology, but the Bible does talk about various things that are very important to science. Professor Lennox says of a quote from Augustine about Christians speaking nonsensically about science, “The take-home message from Augustine is, rather, that, if my views on something not fundamental to the gospel, on which equally convinced Christians disagree, attract ridicule and therefore disinclined my hearers to listen to anything I have to say about the Christian message, then I should be prepared to entertain the possibility that it might be my interpretation that is at fault.” One could understand the biblical text as supporting a fixed earth, but there is a reasonable alternative that makes more sense in light of our understanding of the solar system.

Chapter three really gets into the meat of the issue and starts looking at the actual issue at hand, the age of the earth. Professor Lennox admits that though many Early Church writers took a literal 24-hour day creation view (a young-earth creationist view), some ancient writers disagreed, including Philo of Alexandria (10 BC-AD 50), who was a Jewish writer at the time of Christ. There are several others mentioned, but really this is not a time for counting noses. Here Professor Lennox also lays out the three main views. The 24-hour view: the days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis are literally seven days. The day-age view: the days are in order but are an unspecified length of time. And the framework view: the days mean a logical progression rather than a chronological order. There is a short section devoted to the meaning of the word “day” in Hebrew (yom). There are multiple uses of the word even in the first couple chapters of Genesis, and the different uses may indicate that the writer does not intend for the word to be solely used for literal 24-hour days. We can also get the impression from the wording of Genesis 1:1 that “the beginning” was before the “first day.” The Genesis account could be interpreted as six, literal 24-hour days, it does not have to be interpreted that way without compromising the authority and primacy of the Scriptures.

This review is running out of room because there are so many things packed into such a short text. Chapter four is dedicated to whether or not human beings were a special creation. The framework view and the day-age view call into question the literal story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the significance of humans as created in God’s image. This chapter tackles a couple other issues with an old-earth view. But, unfortunately it cannot address everything.

Chapter five is the last of the regular chapters but one would be at a loss if one stopped here. The appendices are just as interesting. Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the debate within the Christian community about the age of the earth. It is an encouragement to old-earth creationists that one can hold that view and hold a high view of scripture and that the Christian need not fear anything that science may discover about humans, the earth, or the rest of the universe. The same God that inspired the Scriptures laid the foundations of the Earth and spread out the heavens above.