Review: The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I actually started reading few pages of Walton's other book on Genesis 2 and 3 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23055095-the-lost-world-of-adam-and-eve) and enjoyed how thought provoking it was. It was then I decided that I had read this very title first since it's about Genesis one!

At first glance you'd think that weighing in at less than 200 pages, it would provide a simple and easy read. But on the contrary, the target audience is rather a more scholarly (or at the very least bible literate) type! Furthermore, as a seminary student, this book would undoubtedly be a reference material that would prove to be a useful resource in time to come!

I felt that the first part of the book was utterly brilliant and thought-provoking. Walton first lays down the outline and method - that we allow the ancient text (biblical and extra-biblical) to inform our modern understanding of how the world was created. As I read on, I did not feel that the rest of the book was as engaging as the start of the title. Perhaps I should not be surprised that the ancient world was not so very interesting to a millennial living in the twenty-first century!

Nonetheless I was left with plenty of food for thought; the evidence of my cognitive dissonance and intellectual struggle perhaps is testimony to how good (and methodically) an argument he had made. New terms are explained brilliantly, utilising modern analogies and illustrations - and yet at the same time explaining how our modern concepts are so very different from what the words originally meant. Each new segment was methodically introduced and developed upon in an easy to read manner - yet at the same time my postmodern mind struggled to cope with how much of my worldviews and presuppositions were being challenged.

Two big takeaways for me was how Walton suggests that the cosmos was God's temple and also how a biblical view of God as creator did not require a forced dichotomy between "natural" and "supernatural." From what I understand, it appears that Walton is proposing a fascinating view that advanced science need not be in conflict with the notion of a Creative and actively working God, who can be work in the processes of embryology and meteorology. This substantive is built upon the foundation that Genesis 1 presents an account of functional origins rather than material origins (read the first few chapters of the book to understand what this means).

I am still however unable to state that I am fully convinced by and agree completely with his insights and conclusions (as this is the first book of its type that I am reading). But if one day I were to affirm what Walton defines as teleological evolution -"accept[ing] biological evolution as providing a descriptive mechanism putatively describing how God carried out his purposes" (p152) - then it would be a most wonderful thing to see "people of faith cease trying to impose their own teleological mandates on public science education; and people who are skeptical of faith cease trying to impose their own dysteleological mandates on public science education (p160).

I received this book from IVP Academic for the purposes of providing an unbiased review. All views are my own.

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