In Defense of John Walton (Pt. 1): Setting the Stage
A spirited defense of the cosmology, theology, and exegesis of John Walton, beginning with a presentation of his views.
For those who don’t know him, John H. Walton is a scholar of the Old Testament who has been working in the field for over four decades. He is recognized as one of academia’s greatest authorities on the Old Testament, up there with Walter Brueggemann, William Albright, Daniel Block, Vern Poythress, the late Michael Heiser, and other notable titans. I myself own several of his books and have absorbed much of his scholarship, my own theology and exegesis being heavily influenced by him.1 While we are all allowed to disagree with each other, of course (and in reason), we are not allowed to be foolish, and I know it to be foolish to deny the depth and impact of Walton’s scholarship.
One of Walton’s most revolutionary contributions to Christian theology is his understanding of Creation. From what I can tell, beginning with his commentary on Genesis,2 he began propounding the view that, in contrast to tradition, Genesis 1 doesn’t refer to the material origins of the Cosmos. More precisely, what was in view in the Genesis Creation narrative was how God ordered the world, how He put together various functions like the rain cycle, the mechanics of the heavens, day and night, etc. (Walton also understands this cosmology to be primarily concerned with how these things function with regards to human civilization). The material form of these functionaries are not in focus, although it is implied that God did create all these in the past, but this is just not what’s in focus. Walton’s cosmology makes sense of the seemingly out-of-order sequence of Genesis 1 (light existing before the Sun and stars), makes sure the key words of the narrative (e.g., bara and ṯōhū wāḇōhū) are properly understood, and points out fascinating correspondences with the ancient world.
Of course, not everyone is on board. This is fine in principle, don’t get me wrong. We should all subject our fallible human ideas to scrutiny to make sure they are true expressions of reality.3 Only God alone is infallible and omniscient, we must toil to get anywhere near His level. Open dialogue, critical thinking, and constructive criticism help us find what (is) truth (is). In practice, however, dialogue and criticism can be immature, misleading, divisive, and corrosive. Dialogue and criticism itself must be subject to conditions and scrutiny to make sure either party is playing fair and using proper rhetoric.
Walton’s cosmology has received scrutiny from all angles, from constructive colleagues to, most notably, disbelieving creationists. The creationists, particularly the Young Earth types (the Old Earthers are far more fond of Dr. Walton), don’t like this model, especially since they are the biggest promoters of the traditional material cosmology, that Genesis 1 refers to God historically creating the physical Universe in a dateable and recent (>6,000-year) past. Since I find Walton to be a convincing, intelligent, and refreshing scholar, and since I’m not one easily impressed by the Young Earth crowd,4 I want to defend him against the pushback he’s received.5 Therefore, with this article I commence a series that responds to objections raised by authors from Answers In Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and associated outlets against Walton’s cosmology. These are likely going to be my longest articles yet as a result, so, please, do prepare yourself for the long haul!
Before I get into it, however, I want to focus primarily in this article on laying the groundwork for Walton’s views. If you’ve never heard of Walton until now you won’t really know what exactly I’m talking about when I defend his views. I will therefore be dedicating the rest of this article to developing two concepts: first, the case for “cognitive environment criticism,” i.e., interpreting the Bible with its ancient context in mind; second, the case for Walton’s functional cosmology (which overlaps greatly with the ancient context). After this, you can move to the following parts of this series that directly address the case against Walton.
The conviction that underlies the importance of interpreting the Bible contextually is summarized in the motto, “The Bible is for us, but not to us,” a motto which became the title of a festschrift in Walton’s honor. Many don’t know what to make of this statement. They say it and teach it to others, but their acceptance of it seems to be insincere, as even though they affirm the ancient nature of Scripture they still read it as if its message is floating atop the surface of the text and can be picked right up. But if the text is ancient then its message is ancient just as its language (the medium for that message) is ancient. The logic of interpreting the Bible through its ancient context is intuitively obvious, especially in light of several observations:
Languages are fundamentally encoded with culture. People in a certain culture must communicate with others in the same culture, and what they say must be able to convey their values, beliefs, presuppositions, histories, etc. Language is cultural. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, meaning it is encoded with Hebrew and (Jewish) Greek culture.
There is the clear presence of ancient cultural customs in the Bible, many of which are tied up with the theology and which we must therefore make sense of to make sense of the theology. Circumcision, tearing one’s clothes, a system of animal sacrifices, using sackcloth and ashes, washing the feet of guests, and many others are all cultural customs from and shared by the ancient world.
The language of the Bible is on many occasions clearly derived from the ancient world. God’s name of Elohim derives from the Semitic word eloah/’el, from which the main vocabulary for gods in the Semitic world is derived from. Elohim, too, is a cognate of El, the supreme god of Ugarit.6
Speaking of El, we can also discuss the undeniable presence of ancient mythology/literature in the Bible. Parts of the Bible such as Psalms 29 and 68, Job, Isaiah 19 and 27, Genesis 1-11, and plenty of others contain clear references to ancient pagan literature, such as the Baal Cycle, Atra-Hasis, the Sumerian King Lists, and others. Whole books (some multivolume) have been written to catalog all these allusions, borrowings, and recastings. William Brown describes the nature of the Israelites’ borrowings, saying, “Instead of creating their accounts ex nihilo, the composers of Scripture developed their traditions in dialogue with some of the great religious traditions of the surrounding cultures, particularly those originating from Mesopotamia and Egypt, as well as those of their more immediate Canaanite neighbors.”7
These points, and other minor ones, bear manifold witness to the undeniable fact that the Bible was written in, influenced by, and should be interpreted in light of the ancient Near Eastern (and, to include the New Testament, Second Temple Jewish and Greco-Roman) world. Terry Mortenson, a creationist writer, scoffs at the idea of using “demonically influenced, sinfully distorted writings of ANE pagans” to understand Scripture, yet, the Israelites were ancient Near Eastern pagans (e.g., Gen. 12:1-9; Deut. 29:25-28; Josh. 24:2; Ezek. 16:3-5; cf. Ex. 32; Ezek. 16) and these demonic, sinful, distorted, pagan texts are undeniably used by the biblical authors (as stated above).8 If Dr. Mortensen has a problem with this he can schedule a roundtable discussion with the Holy Spirit about it. Joel Anderson, an instructor in the Old Testament at the University of North Alabama, makes a wonderful counterpoint to Mortensen by highlighting that “he has just publicly stated that he doesn’t think it is important to understand the original inspired message God has revealed to us in the Bible.” This is because (for the third time!) these devilish and terrible pagan texts appear in the Scripture, which means Dr. Mortensen wants us to toss out the baby (Bible) with the bathwater (proper exegesis). Yes, certainly these are pagan, uninspired, in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-mere-drivel texts but the fact is they have been incorporated into the biblical corpus which means, while on their own they might be mere pagan ramblings, they receive a transcendent significance because they are now part of the eternal word of God. The culture must be preserved and understood because the culture finds its way into our own theology.
But the Bible is clear and easy to understand! Cries the creationist (literalist/fundamentalist/evangelical/anyone I disagree with). God wouldn’t subject us to all this confusion about pagan poems and Canaanite demons, the Bible says what it means and means what it says! Anderson easily disposes of this by showing a picture of the Hebrew Bible (see below) and presenting Mortensen and Co. with a challenge: “Here you go! How clear is this for you?”
Certainly, Scripture was clear 3,000 years ago to the ancient Israelites whose cultural, linguistic, and historical background Scripture was created for, but the modern American 9-5 middle-class evangelical is as far removed from the ancient Israelite as the end of infinity is from 1. I’m sorry, but you can’t study the Bible nor understand it without realizing it’s an ancient document written in an ancient language and to an ancient culture. You need to get your hands dirty and dive deep into the Bible (Bible reading isn’t Bible studying). Having done so myself I can tell you that in-depth and disciplined study is incredibly fun, since hundreds of passages will begin to click, come together, make sense, point towards Jesus more clearly, and begin to create a beautiful scriptural mosaic. The Bible only has a plain reading in English, which Mortensen is using to affirm his views, and I take it as a nigh-sacrilegious insult to refer to God’s word as plain. The audacity! If the Bible is the greatest thing in history, more beautiful than Rembrandt and with more narrative than Tolkien, then it cannot be anything close to plain. It must be nuanced, enthralling, sophisticated, and full of insight. Not only does its antiquity provide that, but so does the richness of its cultural background.
This is just a summative, passionate case for cognitive environment criticism (i.e., studying the ancient cultural background of the Bible). Yet, it does the job, because one simply can't deny that the Bible wasn’t produced in a vacuum, dropped bound in gold from Heaven like the manna, and that there aren’t clear signs of external influence upon it. It is this concept that serves as the foundation for John Walton’s theology, and in particular his cosmology. It is said cosmology that we turn to now, in the final segment of this article.9
I believe the best place to begin would be in discussing how Genesis 1 itself describes the beginning state of the universe.10 This is as “without shape and empty,” (NET) more commonly remembered as “without form and void” (KJV). In the usual understanding this phrase indicates that the universe had not been materially crafted, and thus we get the usual translations that focus on the material attributes of Creation (its shape or form and that they were empty or void). Is this a proper understanding of the word or are we interpreting through tradition more than we are through proper exegesis? The main way to understand what a word means in an other language is to see how its used and study its context.11 When it comes to ṯōhū wāḇōhū, this phrase only occurs one other time, which doesn’t provide us with enough data. However, ṯōhū occurs nineteen other times, which is much better. We find that ṯōhū, most notably, is used to refer to:
Wastelands/wilderness (Deut. 32:10; Job 12:24; Ps. 107:40; Isa. 45:18, 19).
Pagan idols (1 Sam. 12:21; Isa. 44:9).
A desolate city (Isa. 24:10).
The nations of the Earth (Isa. 40:17, 23).
What sense do we get of the meaning of ṯōhū from these uses? Well, if you guessed “they refer to functionality” you’d be right (how’d you guess that, in an article about John Walton?). Let us look closer at each of these four examples to bring home that point. Wastelands and deserts, they bring forth no crops, no livestock can graze upon them, humans perish easily within them, and altogether they serve no purpose. Pagan idols, before Lord Yahweh of Israel they are meaningless, they are not the source of righteousness or salvation, and serving them is useless. The desolate city is inert, it does nothing, for there are no people within it, there is no commerce, no law, no culture, nothing. The nations of the Earth, at least those described in Isaiah 40, are useless and serve no purpose for God, and the LORD alone is great and worthy (this is especially driven home by vv. 12-17). In each of these instances we find that ṯōhū is describing something that is purposeless, meaningless, nonfunctional. The desolate city has a material form, it’s not described as having been erased from the face of the earth. Similarly, pagan idols have a form (they’re idols), and so does the wilderness, but what all of these things do lack is a function. It is no wonder, then, that David Tsumura, after an extensive study of ṯōhū, concluded that it would be best translated as “unproductive.”12 Ṯōhū things serve no purpose/have no function.
Another interesting line of evidence is the verb that is employed to describe God’s creative activity, bara’.13 Walton’s suggestion is that the verb could refer to the ordaining of functions rather than the creation of material form, or at least it could be ambiguous, meaning (depending on context) either to ordain or to form (like how context will tell us if “to run” means "to activate a computer program" or "for a liquid to run down a surface"). Based on several instances of the verb Walton accepts it as also describing function:
Rivers are created to meet the needs of humans and to testify to the great works of God (Isa. 41:17-20, esp. v. 20).
Jerusalem is created to be a source of joy (Isa. 65:18).
The blacksmith is created to fan the coals and forge weapons (Isa. 54:16).
These all concern something being given a role to perform. Rivers are made to meet needs, Jerusalem is created to be a source of joy, and the blacksmith is created to forge weapons. The emphasis in these uses of bara’ is not on whatever form the subject takes but rather what role/function the subject has. Yes, there are instances where bara’ does refer to material form (e.g., Josh. 17:15, 18; 1 Sam. 2:29; Isa. 42:5), but as I’ve said bara’ is an ambiguous verb and based on context its meaning becomes clear, whether it means to bara’ functions or to bara’ matter. That bara’ is used in a functional sense in Genesis 1 is indicated by its complimentary with the functional term ṯōhū wāḇōhū and with the literary structure of the Creation narrative itself, which is the third and final element of Walton’s cosmology we will turn to.
Many Christians, leaders and laity alike, have been perplexed by the order of Creation. How does light and the Earth exist before the Sun (Gen. 1:2, 3 vs. 16)? This has been questioned many times throughout history. Now, savvy concordists have come up with interesting answers based on science: the Old Earthers say that this refers to “a dense layer of clouds and gasses which would have made it dark at its surface” and so the stars did exist in Genesis 1:1-13, but in vv. 14-19 what’s being described is this “translucent cloud layer [being] removed so that the sun, moon and stars shown through” and since they are now visible their purpose can be given;14 the Young Earthers rightfully dispute the scriptural basis of such a belief and actually affirm what Scripture says, that the stars were made on Day Four, although to the effect that this is a literal order.15 “To the effect that this is a literal order” suggests what I’m going to say about the Creation narrative. For just as long as Christians have been questioning the sequence of events in Genesis 1, Christians have been noting the unique design of the events. Augustine of Hippo, for example, noted that “these seven days of our time, although like the same days of creation in name and in numbering, follow one another in succession and mark off the division of time, but those first six days occurred in a form unfamiliar to us as intrinsic principles within things created.”16 Origen, Athanasius, Bede, and other eminent Christian theologians of antiquity and the Middle Ages followed in Augustine’s footsteps, endorsing what is known today as the “framework interpretation” of Genesis 1, a close relative of Walton’s own cosmology. As Walton sees it, the six days of Creation aren’t in a literal order but are rather in a literary order, the first and last three paralleling each other, as demonstrated below:17
Now, sure, maybe these days mirror each other, but how are these functional?18 Well, as Walton sees it, the first three days of Creation establish functions and the last three days of Creation establish functionaries. Day One/Four is not just “light” or “the heavens,” but it’s time (hence the light, daytime, being separated from the dark, nighttime; cf. v. 5); Day Two/Five is not “the skies” but it’s the weather system;19 Day Three/Six is not “the land” but is the food chain or where mankind gets our sustenance from. Therefore, the sequence of Creation makes sense. It's not that it's out of order, but rather it's a framework, one that represents the ordaining of cosmic functions and the fashioning of their functionaries.
Walton’s cosmology also comports with ancient cosmology, which is generally functional in its focus.20 It’s not hard to understand why the ancients would value functions over materials. To use the analogy of a business (which Walton himself employs), even if you have your office built, all the chairs and cubicles set up, all the water coolers full, none of this matters if you don't start functioning. Even though the business materially exists, until its in business it just sits there, collecting dust; actually doing business defines the business, not whether it has a material form. Genesis 1 describes God setting up His business, getting His office all put together, and getting ready to open its doors to the public. Again, this emphasis on functions is indeed found in the ancient world. For example, in the ancient Babylonian myth Enuma Elish (which certainly influenced the Genesis narrative), the chief god Marduk engages in various creative acts such as setting up the stars, the phases of the moons, and constellations (cf. Day One/Four of Creaton), the harnessing of Tiamat’s waters to provide irrigation (cf. Day Three/Six of Creation), and the making of the wind and rain (cf. Day Two/Five of Creation).21
We now understand the two cornerstones of Walton’s thinking, cognitive environment criticism and functional cosmology. Since we now have a sense of what we’re talking about we can engage with critiques of the concepts developed above and see if we can defend them. So, in part two, we will begin picking apart some of the articles written to dispute the validity of Walton’s theology.
I’d also like to mention that I interacted with Walton in the past, bringing to him some questions I had after finishing some of his books, and he got back to me very quickly and answered very thoroughly (a fully formatted response, too, with my comments in one color and his in another!). Any scholar who takes the time to interact with layfolk (even lay theologians) I consider superb.
Although I’m certain there are prototypes and precursors present in his earlier works I just haven’t noticed.
A sentiment I believe is captured in 2 Pet. 1:20 (among other scriptures).
Not to say I totally disparage them, but I simply realize that they are devout concordists more driven by tradition than by the text (at times). I am fully convinced of Michael Heiser’s rules for Bible study: there is no substitute for close attention to the biblical text, be a slave to the text, the Bible must be interpreted in context and that context isn’t your own or that of your theological tradition, etc.
Frankly, it’s odd why the YEC crowd is so adamant in their refusal, considering Walton states repeatedly that his model is completely consistent with any view of creationism, so long as they forfeit Genesis 1 as a prooftext, but I’m sure there’s a deep-seated (read: eisegetical) reason why.
Discussions of these words and their relationships can be found in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (2nd ed.), eds., K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. van der Horst, 274-80, 285-88, 352-65.
Seven Pillars of Creation, p. 21. For a survey of these catalogs, for the Old Testament, see James Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating To The Old Testament (3rd ed.); John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament; idem, Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology; Bill Arnold and Bryan Beyer, eds., Readings from the Ancient Near East; Mark Chavalas and Lawson Younger, eds., Mesopotamia and the Bible. For the New Testament see Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament; Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple; Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity; James Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era. Parallel to these more explicitly background/context-oriented studies is the incredibly sophisticated, more theological, 4-volume (and still ongoing) Christian Origins and the Question of God by N.T. Wright. Since the New Testament is also heavily inspired by the Old Testament, and thus incorporates some of the passages that possess an ancient context, it would also be prudent to name works that study the use of the Old in the New. See G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, eds., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament; G.K. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament; Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels; idem, Reading Backwards.
In fact, these texts/contexts are also utilized by Answers In Genesis to make some of their own arguments. Examples of this double standard are documented in the video by Ben Stanhope that I link to in the next footnote.
As we conclude with this discussion of the legitimacy of cognitive environment criticism I want to give a few resources for further study, namely free online resources in contrast to the shopping list given in fn. 5. First, the “Ancient Cosmology” podcast series from The Bible Project; second, Joseph Lam’s “The Biblical Creation in its Ancient Near Eastern Context” from BioLogos; third, the YouTube video “Answers in Genesis and the Refusal to Interpret the Bible in its Ancient Context” by Ben Stanhope; and Michael Heiser’s “Taking the Bible’s Own Context Seriously” from his Naked Bible Podcast.
Walton discusses this in The Lost World of Genesis One, ch. 4.
For example, if you didn’t know what the word “red” meant (provided you knew every other word in English) you’d look at sentences in which it is used, and you’d deduce from sentences such as “The house is red,” “I have red hair,” and, “When you place metal over fire it becomes red hot,” that red is a color and an adjective describing that color.
The study appears in his Creation and Destruction, ch. 1.
This comes from Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One, ch. 3.
Taken from Rich Deem’s “Does Genesis One Conflict with Science? Day-Age Interpretation.”
Taken from good ol’ Terry Mortensen’s “Critique of Hugh Ross's Creation Story.”
On Augustine and his views on Creation see Gavin Ortlund, “Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally?” and Davis Young, “The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine’s View of Creation.”
BibleProject also discusses this in their visual commentary on Genesis 1.
Walton’s discussion of the sequence of Creation and how it relates to his cosmology occurs in The Lost World of Genesis One, chs. 5-6.
It might be asked, “Well, how are birds ‘functionaries’ of the weather?” You must remember what I’ve said, that to Walton the significance of the functionality of the cosmos was not that they merely functioned but that they functioned for humans. So, time functions when it has lights to serve as “signs to indicate seasons and days and years.” The functionaries are not for the function, they’re for the humans.
We now turn to ch. 2 of The Lost World of Genesis One; cf. Walton, Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology.
Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One, 31-2.