Six Days and a Science Test
Mark, 16, is in his first year at a Maltese Sixth Form and has chosen Religious Knowledge as an optional subject. His biology teacher opened a lesson on evolution by saying that Genesis is 'just a myth', while his grandmother insists that the six days of creation are literally twenty-four hours and that the world is about six thousand years old. Mark has to write a 1,000-word essay for the school's Faith and Science week and tells his parish catechist, Ms Camilleri, that he no longer knows what to believe. The catechist has a 45-minute session with a group of twelve teenagers; some are strict literalists, others are sceptical, and one has already asked whether the Church 'has finally admitted it was wrong'. The parish priest has asked for a one-page handout that explains how Catholics read Genesis 1–2 without either dismissing science or flattening the text. Ms Camilleri has a Bible, the text of Dei Verbum, and no projector.
1. Identify the literary forms and structures of Genesis 1:1–2:4a and Genesis 2:4b–25. Why does recognising genre matter for deciding what kind of truth the text claims?
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Step 1 - Describe the two units. Genesis 1:1–2:4a is a structured, liturgical-style account: a seven-day framework, repeated refrains (“evening and morning”, “God saw that it was good”), a symmetrical pattern of separations and fillings, and a climax in the Sabbath. Genesis 2:4b–25 is a different kind of narrative: a single continuous story, anthropomorphic imagery (God moulds dust, plants a garden), wordplay on adam and adamah, and etiological concerns - why marriage, why work, why pain.
Step 2 - Name the genres. The first is best described as a theological-poetic creation account shaped by priestly liturgy; the second as a Yahwistic narrative of origins. Neither is a modern chronicle or a laboratory report.
Step 3 - Explain why genre matters. Genre tells the reader what kind of truth-claim to expect. A poem can be true without being a photograph. The Genesis texts claim that God alone creates, that creation is good, that humanity is made in God's image and given a vocation, and that Sabbath rest is built into the order of things. They do not claim to give the age of the earth or the mechanism of speciation. Recognising genre therefore protects both the text and science: it stops us from turning a theological poem into a bad geology textbook, and it stops us from dismissing the text because it is not one.
2. How should Ms Camilleri answer the grandmother and the biology teacher in a way that is both faithful and pastoral?
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The grandmother. She is not silly; she is reading the text with modern expectations of literal chronology. Point out that the 'day' is a literary frame: the sun is not created until day four, so the frame cannot be a simple sundial. The Church has never defined six twenty-four-hour days as doctrine. Augustine and Origen already warned against crude literalism; Dei Verbum 11–13 says the sacred writers used the literary forms of their time and that the truth of Scripture is the truth God wished to communicate for our salvation. Her instinct - that God really is Creator - is right and should be affirmed.
The biology teacher. If 'myth' means 'a story that conveys deep truth', the teacher is using the word correctly, though he may not know it. If he means 'a false story', he is making a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. Science describes how the universe works; Genesis asks why there is anything at all and what human beings are for. That is not a gap into which God is squeezed; it is a different order of question. Ms Camilleri should not set up a competition. She can say: the Church welcomes evolution as a description of created processes, while denying that the universe is self-explanatory.
The handout. One side: two columns, 'what Genesis claims' and 'what Genesis does not claim'; a short quotation from Dei Verbum; a warning against both concordism and fundamentalism. The aim is not to win, but to show that faith and science are not two rival answers to one question.
3. A student asks: 'If Adam wasn't a real person, was Jesus wrong to mention him?' How should the catechist respond?
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The question behind the question. The student thinks that if Adam is not a historical individual, then Jesus and Paul were mistaken, and the doctrine of original sin collapses. That is a real worry and should not be brushed aside.
What the New Testament does. Paul contrasts Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. This is a typological reading: Adam is the representative head of old humanity, Christ of new humanity. Jesus refers to 'the beginning' in his teaching on marriage; he is not giving a date. The literary genre of Genesis 2 does not settle whether there was one first human pair, and the Church has not defined the scientific details.
What the Church actually teaches. The essential doctrine is that sin is universal, that it is not merely private, and that it is overcome by grace in Christ. That claim does not depend on a scientific reconstruction of human origins. Catholics are free to hold a range of views about the historical Adam, but not free to deny the reality of sin and redemption.
How to answer. Say: 'The Bible is not wrong; we were reading it as if it were a newspaper. The truth it teaches is deeper and more important.' Then show how the Adam–Christ parallel works. Avoid both 'it's all a myth' and 'the Bible is a science book'. Ask the student what they think would be lost if Adam were a symbol; the answer often reveals a shaky doctrine of Scripture rather than a settled unbelief.