Walton’s interpretation of Genesis 1 is essentially covered in his Propositions 1 through 9; the remaining 9 propositions are more theological and even political than exegetical. It seems to met that with the rest of the book Walton is attempting to shore up the traditional evangelical stance, making a case that his exegesis strengthens rather than weakens that stance. I suspect he’s right.

A few points that I think are worth noting:

Walton argues that God created the material universe even if Gen. 1 doesn’t deal with that topic. The few Scriptural verses he offers to justify this position aren’t compelling, inasmuch as they could be interpreted as referring to the creation of function. Would it be acceptable to Christians if God might have had nothing to do with material creation?

It’s possible to assign functions to objects that already exist. Someone can find a stone and use it as a hammer or as part of a wall or as raw material for a sculpture. Humans can’t create anything out of nothing and yet we’re adept and making use of what we find — one could argue that this is part of the “image and likeness” inherited from the Creator himself. Why then couldn’t God have simply arrived on the scene billions of years after the universe had taken shape and simply decided to “move in,” adapting it as his dwelling place?

The objects comprising the universe may have a set of functions relative to God’s dwelling place, but this need not exhaust their function. E.g., the sun might be useful for distinguishing day from night in God’s temple, but it might also be useful for keeping the earth from spinning out into space and for keeping it warm enough to live on. I.e., the same material object can serve more than one function. There’s no need to claim that the universe took the material shape it did specifically and exclusively that it might eventually serve God’s purpose as a home. Walton contends that God no longer uses the universe as his temple (though I’m not sure why). Nonetheless, the universe and its contents persist, serving all sorts of other functions.

Walton contends that God’s temple serves not just as his home, not just as his place to “rest,” but as his base of operations for running the universe. Part of God’s purported operations include keeping the material universe running, all the way down to holding individual molecules together. Again, I don’t see why that necessarily follows from the exegesis. If Genesis 1 makes no reference to material creation of the universe, why assume that running the material universe is implied? It’s certainly not stated.

In conclusion, Peter, I did enjoy the book a great deal. I find Walton’s interpretation of the Genesis 1 text quite compatible with my own. To quote the book I finished writing nearly 4 years ago now:

“Things aren’t real in and of themselves. They exist, they have substance, but they have no intrinsic meaning. They just are. Only things that have been made meaningful are real. The narrator of Genesis 1 describes how elohim created a reality – the heavens and the earth – by embedding all the stuff of the universe in a system of meanings.”

Replace the word “meaning” with “function” and this paragraph could be describing Walton’s position. I’m pleased that a credentialed evangelical Bible scholar arrived at a similar conclusion and managed to get his interpretation published. Maybe it’s actually true.