“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." says the Lord in Isaiah 55:9. Whether one reads from the "Book of Nature" or "The Book of Scripture", there is an equal need for humility when it before locking onto one's final interpretation. Both books should inspire awe and a realization that we will never totally understand either of them. There are many examples of rash judgments when it comes to evolutionists reading from the "Book of Nature"; The Piltdown Man, The Nebraska Man, and Ernest Haeckel's Biogenic Law are the most obvious examples.
But when it comes to Christians interpreting Genesis Chapter One, St. Augustine's 5th-century words of caution are still apt. In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.
While I believe that the Bible is God's word, but the interpretation of Scripture is man's word. Foolishness may abound. Bishop James Ussher (1561-1656) calculated the date of the First Day of Creation: His credibility dropped as the precision of the calculation rose: the final date (drum roll please) was 4004 B.C. October 22nd, in the evening. This view, which ended up in the footnotes of a Bible published at that time, seems to be moored more to the good bishop's ego than to scriptural evidence.
I lean to St. Augustine's position as found in his work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine theorized instantaneous creation, not due to the scientific thinking of his day, but from to trying reconcile Genesis Chapter 0ne with other parts of the Bible such as Genesis 2:4-6 and Sirach 18:1. Also, the question of light before luminaries was particularly vexing to Augustine: morning and evening, as well as the creation of plants precede the creation of the sun and moon on the fourth day. Then the fact that God rests on the Seventh Day for Augustine meant that the language had to be taken analogically as God does not need to a rest. More on this here and here, from Protestant Christian apologist, Gavin Ortland. For Augustine, to read Genesis literally did not mean literalistic, it meant more historical. Thus, while that God created everything that exists is a definite historical event, the six days of creation may have had a poetic, figurative or allegorical meaning rather than being a God's recipe for creating universes.
"Scripture is a stream shallow enough that a lamb may wade in it and yet deep enough that an elephant may swim in it" observed Pope Gregory the Great (540-604 A.D) . I've seen this in my own life. As child hearing about the Six Days of Creation, voila!, I understood it. Now as an adult, hearing the same passage, I realize I am out of my depth, my feet don't touch don't touch the bottom. I'm like the elephant swimming in a deep flowing river. I also see the rich meaning in another Pope Gregory quote, "Holy Scripture by the manner of its language transcends every science, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes fact, it reveals mystery." But I suspect that as a child but most definitely as an adult, I would see "through a glass darkly" when reading Genesis 1 to 4. As Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.) wrote "It is one of the glories of the Scripture that it can embrace many meanings in a single passage." And to quote another church father, St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.) stated "It is not possible, I say it is not possible ever to exhaust the mind of scripture. It is a well which has no bottom."
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