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I have been quite pleased with the relatively recent spate of books that have been released by scientists who are quite and proudly adamant that a serious and intellectually minded Christian can be without cognitive dissonance between his faith and his view of science. Authors such as Kenneth Miller, Denis Lamoureux, Darrel Falk, and Francis Collins have demonstrated that one can be a good Christian while accepting good science. Entering onto this stage full of lab coats is now eminent Old Testament scholar John Walton who brings his expertise as a contextually informed exegete to the table. I had something of a hint that we would see a book of this nature after reading his thoughts on the first few chapters of Genesis in his commentary some time back. Happily there is no more need for waiting. In this work Walton's thesis consists of a series of propositions that culminate with the contention that the creation account of Genesis is a description of the universe's construction as a temple of God. Throughout the course of the book Walton makes a couple of salient points that relate to the "Origins Debate". First of all, we should keep in mind that there is little if no basis in thinking that God would intend to communicate "scientifically correct" statements via the creation account. For (1) there is no statement in the Bible that conveys a scientific truth that the biblical writers would not have already known. (2) There are statements in the Bible that convey cosmological and physiological notions that simply do not comport with science. "Domed cosmology" and the additional notions it contained is clearly without scientific merit. Another example Walton cites is that some of the words translated as "mind" in English actually mean entrails in the Hebrew. Why? Because people in those days simply thought that emotions and feelings derived from these parts of the body. As Walton points out, God obviously didn't correct them on the matter, and no one today would try to argue that we should seek to justify or explain that the source of our emotions is the digestive tract (granted I feel quite miserable when I've eaten something that does not agree with me)! And yet this is exactly how people approach the creation account. Secondly, Walton demonstrates that the ontology of the creation account is not material but functional. He explains the difference between these two senses by comparing a chair and a corporation. He notes that the former is typically considered to be brought into existence (or created) by the nature of its material status. But as the example of the corporation shows, something can also be created in the sense that it is given a certain function. In his words, "In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system rather than giving it material property" (26). Of course the entities created in the creation account are material entities, so it is often presumed that Genesis must be manifesting material ontology. Yet as Walton goes on to explain with the contextual evidence of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, and through an assessment of Hebrew words like "bara", such an assumption is, in the end, spurious. This book should be required reading for anyone, whatever their predispositions in the origins debate, who wishes to understand the true meaning of Genesis one. If there are any criticisms to be proffered, it is that on rare occasion it does not seems that Walton himself avoids slipping into residual, quasi-concordist tendencies by seeking to apply the story of Genesis one to "what really happened". In the FAQ, for example, he proffers the possibility that dinosaurs and fossils existed in the prefunctional cosmos stage of Genesis one (169). This is a trivial criticism, however, and on the whole he is otherwise quite clear in saying that to ask "what really happened" in the historical and scientific sense is to ask something of the text it cannot provide. To be sure there is a bit of irony in all of this. If Walton's scholarship is right, and I think it more or less is, we are forced to say that all sides have been wrong in taking the scalpel to the text and seeking to justify their view because of this or that word, or this or that phrase. It can no longer be about the definition of "yom" and how much time you can or cannot fit into it. And it can no longer be about finding a scientific cosmology that allows the day and night to exist before the sun in some convenient fashion. And although many of us who have worked hard to travel such roads will find it hard to turn around and go back, it is time for us to accept that they lead to false destinations. It is time to change our perspectives and see that Genesis speaks to its intended audience on an entirely different wavelength than what we are accustomed or want it to. It is time to accept the Bible on its own terms.