A Christian author seeks to reconcile the divide between religion and science in this examination of the biblical Creation story.

In this book, Hinrichs, a retired software engineer, challenges fundamentalist and conservative interpretations that reduce the Creation story of Genesis to a straightforward rendition of humanity’s origins. Rather than repeating religious platitudes, Hinrichs warns his Christian target audience that the book “will try to challenge you to defend your thinking about your faith.” The author offers a lay Christian perspective on Creation that manages to eschew the jargon of theological doctrine. Scholars may look askance at its lack of academic citations, but this is balanced by a straightforwardly logical, inquisitive approach. Primarily, this concise book argues that a literalist interpretation of Genesis ignores not only scientific consensus on evolution, the Big Bang, and Earth’s geological age, but also fails to distinguish the difference between truth and fact. In other words, it effectively posits that Genesis can offer theological insights into truths of God’s purpose in creating the Earth without providing a factual description of the scientific processes by which it was created. This is a nuanced work, one that urges religious readers to acknowledge their “built-in blinders” as it surveys contemporary scientific findings on life’s beginnings and contextualizes the origins of Abrahamic religions in ancient Mesopotamia. For instance, the author provides an intriguing comparison of the story of Genesis and the creation stories of other Near Eastern religions. Additional commentary urges fellow Christians to think critically about the canonization process for biblical books and rejects the demands of many denominations for dogmatic purity, noting that “no single Christian body owns all of Truth.” Nearly a quarter of the book’s pages are found in its appendices, which explore references to Genesis in the New Testament, provide a scientifically informed timeline of the universe from the Big Bang through the evolution of Homo sapiens, and offers other ancillary material that undergirds the author’s mission to bridge the divide between science and faith.

A well-argued reinterpretation of Genesis.