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    Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science
    Unavailable
    Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science
    Unavailable
    Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science
    Ebook213 pages3 hours

    Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science

    By John C. Lennox

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    What did the writer of Genesis mean by “the first day”? Is it a literal week or a series of time periods? If I believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, am I denying the authority of Scripture? In response to the continuing controversy over the interpretation of the creation narrative in Genesis, John Lennox proposes a succinct method of reading and interpreting the first chapters of Genesis without discounting either science or Scripture. With examples from history, a brief but thorough exploration of the major interpretations, and a look into the particular significance of the creation of human beings, Lennox suggests that Christians can heed modern scientific knowledge while staying faithful to the biblical narrative. He moves beyond a simple response to the controversy, insisting that Genesis teaches us far more about the God of Jesus Christ and about God’s intention for creation than it does about the age of the earth. With this book, Lennox offers a careful yet accessible introduction to a scientifically-savvy, theologically-astute, and Scripturally faithful interpretation of Genesis.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateAug 23, 2011
    ISBN9780310492191
    Unavailable
    Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science
    Author

    John C. Lennox

    John C. Lennox (MA MMath. MA (Bioethics) PhD, DPhil, DSc, FISSR) is Professor of Mathematics (Emeritus) at the University of Oxford and (Emeritus) Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is author of a number of books on the interface between science, philosophy, and theology, including, God and Stephen Hawking, Determined to Believe, Can Science Explain Everything? and Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix? Prof. Lennox is a widely recognized public intellectual who has engaged in numerous debates with public figures such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ruse, and Peter Atkins on questions at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion.

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    Reviews for Seven Days That Divide the World

    3.5/5

    11 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great book, I loved his explanation on interpretation.
    • 4/5
      As a serious student of both technology and the Bible, I am always looking for good books that attempt to understand the connections and apparent contradictions between the two. In this book, Lennox looks at the issues of creation as outlined in Genesis versus science. People like Stephen Jay Gould argued (in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life) that religion and the Bible are non-overlapping magisteria and as such have nothing to do with each other and no attempt should be made to reconcile them. Lennox in this book does not agree with that and does a generally good job at looking at the Bible and creation. He raises a number of good questions and brings up some excellent points about how at different periods in time people have fervently believed the Bible stated something regarding science that we no longer think it does. He talks about how passages in the Bible refer to the earth as unmoving (such as 1 Chronicles 16:30 and Psalms 93:1) and others that the sun did move (such as Ecclesiastes). These verses and others were used to refute Copernicus’s heliocentric view that the earth revolves around the sun. Luther and Calvin both disagreed with this view. Of course, we now view those passages as being poetic or metaphoric, not literal. It is an important cautionary tale for how we should approach the creation account in Genesis.Although I found the book very interesting and well worth reading, it was difficult to tell where the author was going. He raises many good points, but did not actually resolve them. He does, however, a decent job of pointing out what is essential, such as that fact that God was in control of creation, not random chance. I actually found the appendices, especially the final one, as interesting as the rest of book to me. I consider this book well worth the time it took to read for anyone interested in a Biblical perspective on creation and science.
    • 2/5
      This was lent me by a friend, but turned out not to address with any clarity the issues I thought it was going to be about. (I had never even heard of "the Cosmic Temple View" and, as I skipped that Appendix, I am still blissfully unaware of that theory). I am confused as to how the author does indeed square his beliefs with scientific discoveries to date: if Adam and Eve were two actual people, made from dust, from whom the whole human race is descended, what are we to make of the existence of other "Neolithic farmers" alive around them? (I should say that I know very little about the currently theorized timeline of evolution, but I did not trust the author to present it fairly by the time I got to chapter 4). I started skimming from chapter 3 onwards, but for me this book raised questions and then shot them down if they did not agree with a fairly literal reading of Genesis chapters 1-3. As another reviewer has pointed out, an Appendix describes the language of Genesis 1 as "exalted, semi-poetical" language, but the author chooses to regard the text as poetry (or perhaps semi-poetry) describing "nonpoetic factual statements about the creation and organization of the physical universe itself". He says this is "clear". The author also uses far too many exclamation marks.
    • 1/5
      As much as I like Lennox, he's dead wrong about the Bible teaching the long ages of evolution in any way. God created everything in 6 literal days, and rested from His work on the 7th day. This is why God gave us the Ten Commandments that tells us to do the same... work 6 days and rest on the 7th day. It's very literal.

      Science and the Bible does not war against each other. But, the pseudoscience of evolution and the Bible DOES war against the Bible.