Of Sundials, Clocks, and Humans

What is an analog? Though an analog resembles something else, like a copy of an original, regrettably the concept of an analog has become obscured if not lost for most people. In recent generations, this may be due to engineers’ antithetical placement of analog versus digital technology with the latter viewed as superior to the former. As used by technologists, analog entails an output that resembles the input contrary to digital wherein the output bears no evident correlation with the binary code entered.

Thus, analog, as a technological concept, has been displaced not only as outdated but as the opposite of digital technology. Consequently, vinyl records with recorded grooves that resemble input sound waves or mechanical clocks with moving hands that point to numbers on a face entail analogical technology that does not function based on the input of a binary code. More plainly expressed, an analog such as a mechanical clock with moveable hands is a simple form of technology that resembles what it represents, the passage of time. A mechanical clock is itself an analog, a resemblance of the Roman sundial which analogically represents the earth’s relation to the sun by casting the moving shadow along a calibrated dial that represents time’s passing. The stationary gnomon of a sundial casts its moving shadow onto the dial plate with its numbered hour markers. Thus, from sunrise to sunset the sundial analogically represents the passage of time by using the gnomon’s shadow representatively to trace the earth’s relation to the sun. A mechanical clock analogically resembles the sundial but redirects the movement of the gnomon’s shadow internal to the clock itself so that the hour hand mechanically sweeps across its face to represent the passage of time by simulating the earth’s correlation to the sun. The great advantage of a mechanical clock over the sundial is that it is not dependent upon the sun’s light to cast a moving shadow on the clock’s face. Whether night or day the mechanical analog methodically shows the passage of time.

Technology’s advancement that has displaced the analog clock with digital technology is disadvantageous for a more important reason than any of the five mentioned here. The digital clock’s most significant disadvantage is its obscuring of the passing of time which is integral to our earth-boundedness as creatures, God’s earthly analogs who inhabit a world that is analogously correlated to God’s Kingdom. An analog clock constrains us to discern time’s passing by the hands continuously progressing along the graduated hour-marking numbers. By way of contrast, a digital clock obscures the passage of time with a numeric display that removes the timepiece from any analogous correlation to the divinely given markers of time’s passing, morning and evening, which entails first the shortening and then the lengthening of shadows due to the relationship of the earth to the sun.

Now, you may wonder what sundials and mechanical clocks have to do with being human. Recall from my last two blog entries (Part 1 & Part 2) the discussion of God’s accommodation or condescension to span the disparate Creator-creature chasm concerning his eternal being and omniscience and our creaturely derived existence and knowledge, both subject to the lethal effects of sinfulness. As his creatures, we are God’s earthly analogs for he made us after his own likeness to resemble our Creator with qualities and attributes that he gave to us. Consequently, God makes himself known by condescending to us in our likeness as if he wears both our form and passions when truthfully, we wear his but with all the restrictions of creatureliness.

Thus, God who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4) stooped to accomplish his work of creating the heavens, the earth, and everything that fills them within the span of six solar days just as Genesis 1 tells us. In other words, when God created the heavens and the earth, he brought into existence material that occupies both space and a time into which the Creator, who is not bounded by space or time, condescended to enter space and time. Why is it vital that we acknowledge this? The simple and direct answer is: God’s Holy Word asserts it. Therefore, we are obliged to believe it and to confess it. Why did God take six days when he could have brought everything into existence in an instant? Again, God’s Holy Word tells us that he set a pattern for us, his creatures. The daily pattern is (1) Purposeful work; (2) Accomplishment of work; (3) Satisfaction with work; and (4) Rest from work.

Equally noteworthy for us, who are God’s earthly analogs, are both the daily pattern concerning the propriety of the work-rest cycle (purposeful; accomplished, satisfied, and rest) and the sanctity of one day out of seven for the cessation of ordinary labors. God who created the heavens and the earth in six days “rested on the seventh day from all his work” (Genesis 2:2). That the Creator condescends to act within our space and timeframe to do his creative work in six solar days and then cease from that work on the seventh hardly suggests that the Creator becomes weary from his creative work as we, his creatures, need rest and refreshment. We creatures are not the determinative reference point. Rather, Scripture orients the analogous relationship between Creator and creature so that the referential point is God. Thus, attached to the Fourth Commandment is this explanation: “For the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy” (cf. Exodus 20:11). God establishes the sabbath as the sign of the Sinai Covenant. As a sign, the sabbath points away from itself to the original, to God’s eternal rest implied by the absence of the temporal boundary, “evening came and then morning, the seventh day.” God hallowed the seventh day to foreshadow the climax of his redemptive work in the last day.

Indeed, when God created all things, he condescended to accommodate the day-night cycle of light and darkness to which the humans he would make on the sixth day would be subject. Trust in evolutionary scientists’ claims that their interpretation of geological evidence requires that the universe is 13.8 billion earth years incites distrust of Scripture’s account of creation. So, many presume that the six cycles of creating during the day and suspending creative acts in the evening until the next morning to resume creation cannot refer to solar days. Accommodation of evolution prompts them to adjust the God-authorized account of creation to fit their preferred version governed by evolutionary science as they assert, “If scientific results seem to conflict with a given reading of the Bible, careful consideration should be given to the possibility that a somewhat different way of understanding the Bible might be more appropriate” (Carlson and Longman 2010, 125-26). Popular among biblical scholars is the claim that God’s authorized account of creation in Genesis 1-2 accommodates the Israelites’ erroneous ancient science. So, Denis Lamoureux asserts: “Holy Scripture makes statements about how God created the heavens that in fact never happened. . . . Holy Scripture makes statements about how God created living organisms that in fact never happened” (“No Historical Adam: Evolutionary Creation View,” Four Views on the Historical Adam, 54, 56; emphasis original).

Others who yield to evolution’s temptations are not as blatant but more cautious concerning their explanation of the six days in Genesis 1. For example, many contend that even though the six days of creation consist of six sequential 24-hour cycles of solar days, no one should think that God’s creative acts took place during the span of those six days. Instead, we are told that we should realize that the six days function only as a Literary Framework within which God presents his creative work. In other words, advocates of this Literary Framework view believe that God’s creative acts narrated by the author of Genesis 1 took place over long eons of earth’s history but God saw to it that the author of Genesis recorded the Creator’s activity within a Literary Framework of six solar days to accommodate our human perspective. Those six days are not the actual timeframe within which the Creator accomplished his creative acts. Instead, the six days provide only a Literary Framework by which humans are to understand God’s creative acts that spanned many eons of time (cf. Gentry & Butler, Yea, Hath God Said? for a rebuttal of this theory). This explanation of Genesis 1 is not what reputable Christian theologians throughout church history have meant when they speak of divine accommodation of humans. It does not account for Scripture’s straightforward portrayal of God condescending to take specific purposeful actions on each of six sequential solar days. The eternal God is pleased to condescend to enter into the spatial setting and timeframe of his own creation. He portrays himself as taking on the human form and likeness which he would give to Adam on the sixth day, the form and likeness he took on later as he would walk the earth with Adam and Eve (cf. Genesis 3:8).

Christian theology begins with the distinction between God and his creation. And crucial to this distinction between Creator and creature is the acknowledgment that God condescends to reveal himself to us, and this condescension is of the essence of God’s authorized account of his creation of all things. If we uncompromisingly embrace God’s authorized account of his creative work we will rightly affirm the antithesis between belief and unbelief. Belief and unbelief are diametrically opposed to one another. Thus, any compromise of our belief of revealed truth corrodes our Christian affirmations and the teachings that we pass on to the next generation.

We are our Creator’s earthly analogs because we bear his image and likeness. Therefore, because God creates, we create. None of our creative activity is original with us. Every bit of our creativity is but a poor copy, a plagiarism of what God has achieved. Pagans, perhaps the Greeks first and then the Romans, imitated their Creator by developing the sundial, an analogical time-marking device which eventually became imitated by mechanical clocks. Because God works, we work. To work is to imitate God; it honors God. Because God condescended to accomplish his creative work during the day and ceased from his labors as evening fell, so we do the same. These cycles are not due to God’s curse for human sin. They are integral to God’s created order over which he spoke these words: “Very good.” God’s condescension to accommodate the spatial and temporal framework where his humans live makes clear the Creator’s blessing of his creation for our enjoyment and delight in our working, our playing, our resting, and our worshiping the Creator.

The highest heavens belong to the LORD,
but the earth he has given to mankind (Psalm 115:16).

Select Bibliography

Caneday, Ardel B. “Genesis, Interpretation of Chapters 1 and 2 – Factual View,” Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 320-324.
____________. “The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel,” SBJT 15.1 (2011): 26-59.
____________. Review of Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes! Books at a Glance.
____________. “Veiled Glory: God’s Self-Revelation in Human Likeness–A Biblical Theology of God’s Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure,” Beyond the Bounds: (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 149-199.
Carlson, Richard, and Tremper Longman III. Science, Creation, and the Bible: Reconciling Rival Theories of Origins (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010).
Gentry, Kenneth L. & Butler, Michael R. Yea, Hath God Said? The Framework Hypothesis/Six-Day Creation Debate (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002.