arguing from them that the accounts in Genesis 1–3 are about the origins
of functions and roles, not about material origins. Therefore, he defi nitely
uses literature as a primary context for the meaning of these chapters.
However, Walton also evinces some characteristics of reality-centered
approaches, in that he argues that Adam and Eve were real, specifi c, his-
torical humans, and of culture-centered approaches, in that he emphasizes
the shared cultural beliefs of the original author and audience.
Regarding theology–science paradigms, Walton’s claims would place
him as a Complementarist, stating as he does that “The authority and iner-
rancy of the text is, and has traditionally been, attached to what it affi rms.
Those affi rmations are not of a scientifi c nature.” 47 However, he also states
that “If the communication of the text adopts the ‘science’ and the ideas
that everyone in the ancient world believed...then we would not consider
that [to be an] authoritative revelation or an affi rmation of the text.” 48
Thus, when a biblical text makes statements derived from ancient science,
Walton, like Lamoureux, uses any disagreement with modern scientifi c
fi ndings to disqualify those statements of the biblical text from being an
“authoritative revelation or an affi rmation of the text.” 49 Hermeneutically,
this is essentially a confl ict model with science prevailing.
A third example can be found in Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong’s
Spirit and Creation. 50 In this work, Yong adopts a “pneumatological the-
ology of emergence” 51 as a hermeneutical strategy based on and extend-
ing the emergence approaches of Harold Morowitz, Nancey Murphy, and
Philip Clayton, and oriented eschatologically and teleologically toward the
work of the Spirit. 52 His approach posits that the natural sciences validly
describe events and structures and allows for the possibility of “[discern-
ing] the mighty acts of God in the world precisely through the Spirit’s
illumination of the grand narrative culminating in the eschatological king-
dom.” 53 In addition, he dialogues with Charles Peirce’s “triadic meta-
physics and theory of natural laws as habitual, dynamic, and general,”
arriving at a “view of divine action that sees the Holy Spirit as working
in and through nature and its laws, but also proleptically and continually
transforming such in anticipation of the general shape of the coming king-
dom.” 54 This emergentist approach allows him to reconcile science not
only with the biblical origins accounts 55 but also with the biblical accounts
of miracles and spiritual gifts, 56 angels, 57 demons, 58 other “principalities
and powers,” 59 along with contemporary Pentecostal beliefs (in some
parts of the world) in ancestral, animal, and territorial spirits, 60 and with
other experiences of the paranormal. 61
288 M. TENNESON ET AL.