How to read the Bible

1. Introduction
For the person who wants to get to grips with a large and ancient book that has been read by millions of people over thousands of years, there must be a better way than just starting at the beginning and reading to the end. A better way, that is, of getting the main message, before you read it right through.

The Bible is not just a ‘book’. It is a collection of 66 separate documents. Some we’d call books today. Others are collections of songs, there are letters, some to groups of people, others to friends, and some unusual forms of literature that are most like ‘calls to action’ that sometimes might be made today in speeches or pamphlets.

Some of the more book-like ‘books’ in the Bible are historical accounts, or compilations. These are not like our modern history books, where an author looks back to the past and composes his work, but they are more usually reports prepared at or near the time of the events of interest and brought together into the form in which we now have them.

With a conventional book, one tends to read from start to finish, because this is how the author would expect it to be read. As the Bible was not written by one author at one time (it has dozens of authors who wrote over a period of more than a thousand year), it was arranged according to a general historical logic: the first few books are in rough historical order of their subject, but then there are other books that don’t fit this: Psalms, Proverbs, the prophets, for example. In some cases the books are simply arranged in order of size, with the larger first. The letters of Paul in the New Testament are the best example.

There are two major divisions in the Bible: the Old Testament, with 39 works written BC, or before the birth of Christ (BCE, or ‘before common era’ as some people say), and the New Testament, which is 27 works written AD, or after the birth of Christ, in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar was the Roman emperor just before this period, with these documents written during the first decades of the era (CE, or ‘common era’).

The whole set of books in the Bible is listed and described here. [link]

2. Reading in 5 Easy Steps

It first occurred to me that a ‘method’ of reading the Bible for a new reader could be helpful when I had read a guide by Thomas Merton to reading Augustine’s “The City of God”. Not that I used the guide, I’m a ‘start to finish’ reader myself. But I liked Merton’s idea.

So, here’s how I’d suggest a newcomer read the Bible, so as to get the overall feel.

Before you start, there’s one more thing to know about the Bible’s organisation. Each book is broken into chapters, which are not always logical divisions, and each chapter is divided into verses, again, not always logically. The verses roughly equate to short paragraphs. These divisions were assigned in the Middle Ages as a means of easily referencing specific passages, and are still used for that today. However, when they were written, the books of the Bible were written as continuous prose (or songs) to be read as such. For instance, no one writes a letter and expects people to read a couple of sentences each day. No, the normal thing is to read right through the letter, usually in one sitting.

I’ve set out three alternative reading plans for people with (a) little, (b) some, and (c) more time that they can devote to reading.

1. The Beginning
The reader’s normal instinct, to start at the beginning, is sound here, as it mostly is. The opening of the Bible sets the scene for all that unfolds, showing us the ‘realness’ of the created universe, which is the setting of God’s relationship with us, both as creature, and as friend (the friendship was rapidly betrayed by humanity; the rest of the Bible tells of God restoring the friendship).

(a) Genesis chapters 1-11
The first eleven chapters provide the foundation for the Bible’s entire history, taking us up to the formation of the people of Israel, with Abram’s ‘call’. They also provide the foundation for our universal history and relate the events that underpin all human culture and its physical setting.

(b) Genesis complete
Genesis is the ‘book of beginnings’ and thus the book of orientation: it orients us to our world and relationships with each other and God. It also orients us to the commencement of God’s saving us from alienation from himself. On the historical level, it reads as a great saga (not undercutting its historicity) with a magnificent narrative sweep of huge scope: from the creation of all that is, to the formation of the people through whom God will bring re-creation and restoration of harmony between us and him.

(c) Genesis-Deuteronomy (the entire Pentateuch, or Torah, being the first five books.)
These books include long lists (Numbers) and law codes (Leviticus) which can get dull for a modern reader, but the information is important to allow you to understand the structure of Israel’s society and politico-religious system.

2. Troubles
After its great start, Israel, like most other human groups, had a tendency to run off the rails. People came along speaking for God. They were called prophets, and their job was to warn Israel of the danger and difficulty they were courting, urging them to turn from that path to one that would return them to companionship with God.

(a) Hosea and Joel
As a pair these books show God’s efforts to lead his people back to relationship with him, and the ultimate result of restoration, in Joel.

(b) Isaiah
Isaiah is a great prophesy that points to the messiah, the rescuer appointed by God to retrieve his people, and open the way to the new creation.

(c) Isaiah and Joel.

3. Israel’s contemplative life
The ‘devotional’ works form a set of books that consists of ‘wisdom’ literature, songs (referred to as ‘poetry’ today) and related works. It provides an insight into the devotional life of Israel, and the frankness with which God is approached.

(a) A selection from the ‘messianic’ Psalms: 2, 8, 16, 22, 45, 72, 89, 110, 118, 132 and 23.

(b) Add to (a) Psalms 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14; add 119, to go a little further.

(c) Add the Song of Solomon and Proverbs chapters 2-6; to go further add the book of Job.

4. The Beginning of the New
The Old Testament shows us the long path from the Fall, where God’s creatures rejected his friendship, to God’s restoration of that relationship through his entering our world in Jesus of Nazareth (it is important to note, for Old Testament symbolism, that ‘Jesus’ is the Greek version of the Hebrew name we usually translate as ‘Joshua’). Jesus heralds the new relationship between God and man, and its culmination in the “new creation” which is introduced through the New Testament and given final unveiling in the book of Revelation.

(a) Mark’s account of Jesus’ work.
Mark gives the shortest and most directly written account of Jesus work. Not a biography in our sense, as it is less about the person, and concentrates on his mission.

(b) Luke’s account of Jesus’ work.
Luke’s is probably the most historically rigorous of the four gospels, written to a gentile, and so probably more in tune with our Western mind set than the others.

(c) Luke’s and John’s accounts of Jesus’ work.
Together these two accounts give both historical and spiritual perspectives to the work of Jesus. John’s account is regarded as more the philosophical, or spiritual of the gospels.

5. Into the New
The next readings cover the history of the foundation of the Christian community from the end of Jesus’ mission with his ascension to heaven to the conclusion of the great missionary efforts of Paul the apostle (which means ‘messenger’). They show the significance for us of Jesus’ work in that we now can approach God, because God has ‘stooped’ down to us to re-found the relationships between him and us.

(a) Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letter to the Galatians
Acts is an historical sketch of the foundation of the Christian community, and Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians is a summary of the profoundly radical Christian theology that Paul brought to the ancient world.

(b) Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Ephesians
Adding Ephesians to the selection at 5(a) provides additional spiritual material with its practical outworking in our everyday lives

(c) Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letter to the Romans
Romans, as it is usually called, is Paul’s ‘tour de force’ and sets out his theology in its full force and its grand cosmic and eternal scope, running from the brokenness of this world, the source of that brokenness, and its being made good in the world to come. It is unparalleled.

Conclusion
The final book, Revelation, shows us, in sometimes extravagant picture language for us moderns, the culmination of God’s restoration in the ‘new creation’ despite all the adversity that can be thrown at his plan.

(a) Revelation 19-22
The end of it all is not the end, but the new beginning; the new creation where there is renewed relationship with God, the creator.

(b) Revelation 5 and 6, then 19-22.


(c) Revelation complete.

Summary Table of the three reading plans

Evolution and Gravity

Amusing blog by Seth that uses gravity and evolution to talk about marketing. Some nice side lights on both.

Study 4: Truly Human (Gen 2:4-25)

First, the passage:

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven.
5 Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.
11 The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12 The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.
13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.
14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
20The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper corresponding to him.
21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
22The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23The man said,
This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man."
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed

.


We start the study with a ‘dorothy dixer’: “Is work part of God’s good intention for us?”
Mr Adam, the member for Eden “Mr speaker, I’m glad my honourable colleague asked that question…” and so on.

Q: What are we to make of this ‘new’ account of creation? How does it follow from Genesis 1.

A: It is a mistake of enduring popularity that there are two creation accounts in the Bible, that the silly redactor just lumped together, not noticing what he’d done! Sometimes I wonder about the thinking that Wellhausen brought to his hypothesis…well, all the time, actually!

It’s clear to me that Gen 1 tells us about the grand setting of creation, placing earth and its denizens in their place, both genetically and astro-spatially and the making of earth to be a place of habitation. Then Gen 2 takes us into day six to instruct us in the detail of the system of dependent relationships that are formed for our sustenance and delight on that day.

Consider Gen 1:1 and Gen 2:4

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...."

and

"These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created."

The former heads the grand setting of creation, the latter talks about the people as individuals.

The point has also been made that providing two ‘forks’ to an account is not an uncommon literary approach in ANE literature. I refer to two interesting articles on this by Shea: The Unity of the Creation Account and Literary Structural Parallels Between Genesis 1 and 2.

And there are ‘secular’ examples of this, for instance, in the beginning of the Gebel Barkla Stela, there are general terms describing royal supremacy, and immediately following is a restatement that specifically elaborates on the triumphs in Syria-Palestine. In another example, the royal inscriptions from Urartu have the initial paragraph attributing the defeat of certain lands to the god Haldi and then the same victories are repeated in detail as achieved by the king.

Q: Why were there no shrubs or plants originally? How did God fix this?

A: I immediately think of Kline’s article ‘Because it had not rained’ and Futato’s similar work and smell a literary hermeneutic rat. So let’s scotch that straight away.

Grudem does a good job of it:

Genesis 2:5 does not really say that plants were not on the earth because the earth was too dry to support them... If we adopt that reasoning we would also have to say there were no plants because 'there was no man to till the ground' (Gen.2:5), for that is the second half of the comment about no rain coming on the earth. Moreover, the remainder of the sentence says that the earth was the opposite of being too dry to support plants: 'streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground' (Gen.2:6 NIV). The statement in Genesis 2:5 is simply to be understood as an explanation of the general time frame in which God created man. Genesis 2:4-6 sets the stage,... The statements about lack of rain and no man to till the ground do not give the physical reason why there were no plants, but only explain that God's work of creation was not complete. This introduction puts us back into the first six days of creation as a general setting -- into 'the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens' (Gen.2:4). Then in that setting it abruptly introduces the main point of chapter 2 -- the creation of man.

The other considerations that I’d bring are that Ge. 2 is about man in his sphere: the plants mentioned are some of the plants, the animals mentioned are some of the animals; in both cases they are the plants and animals that man lives most closely with; particularly for food (I’m thinking milk and eggs here, not steak and chicken legs); if there is a discussion about the operation of normal providence or not, it must be had against the background of the special events of creation, and the orderly building of the successive relational dependencies that characterises the creative sequence. Kline wants to say that normal providence is operating (throughout all creation, mind you, which is simply crazy on textual as well as logical grounds); but to maintain this he has to disregard the connection of chapter 2 with chapter 1 and deny that chapter two is taking us into day 6 in detail. Thanks Meredith, but no thanks!

Finally, I quote Noel Weeks:

There is nothing which clearly indicates that normal providence was functioning during the creation period. Whereas rain is mentioned as the normal way in which vegetation is watered, in 2:6 the earth is watered by the going up of a mist. We cannot infer from 2:5 that there had been a long period prior to the situation reported in that verse during which the earth had become dry. Rather it fits into the framework of God first providing the environmental necessity (water) and then making the plants. Certainly springs do continue as one of the ways in which the earth has been watered since creation but the concern of the verse is the way it first began. The actual beginning does not assume the operation of normal providence.

I like Noel’s insights because, unusual amongst theologians, he has a degree in biology. Also I enjoyed his talks at a house party about 25 years ago (my, aren’t we all growing old).

Q: In what ways is the creation of man unique? How does this add to the account of Genesis 1?

A: One of the stark differences between Judeo-Christian tradition and others is the very earthiness, the physicality of creation being brought into ‘religious’ focus. Man-made religions have a tendency to deny the material world as somehow not worthy of our elevated spiritual capacities. Bollocks to that! We’re made of dust, and it’s very good. But we are also blessed with God-breathed life: our life is of a different order to mere dust arrangements; even the animals bear a difference and are ‘living’. The life we are given however renders us in Gods image; I don’t think any man-made religion has anything like this in combination with the sheer dusty-groundedness that we have in the Bible!

The whole passage is an amplification of the events of day 6, and expands upon the summary of man’s creation and activity given in Gen 1: 26f.

Q: What does v.9a tell us about God’s design for creation and perhaps his very character?

A: A little acknowledged fact of God’s work is that it does good: it is for Stoics and other types of pagan that pleasure ranks low. For Christians (Jews too) pleasure is a major good and enjoying the creation is part of that. I look around me in the wilds, or I consider the sheer deliciousness of a nashi or blood orange: how wonderfully excessively sumptuous they are: they don’t need to be *that* good; half as good would do the trick, but no, God has made them, even though fallen, to be stunningly good. I could go on about other aspects of our life in the same vein but I won’t: how come it’s *so* very good? Well, God’s like that: he overflows with delights for his creatures.

Q: Vs 10-14 almost form an interruption in the text (it would read fine if they were removed). Why are they here? What is the significance of the rivers?

A: Detail goes to verisimilitude. And so it is here. These rivers no longer exist (the flood fixed that) but that they are recorded makes the creation to have been something that has the earth as its setting. The rivers and the other facts of this passage speak of real place and objects. They have no other function, as far as I can see.

Further, one of the characteristics of mythic or legendary language is the lack of specificity as to verifiable details: whether regarding time (date) or place. This detail may therefore be a pre-emptive counter-mythic move by the author, or simply a natural relation of detail that inter alia goes to the historicity of the account.

Q: Would you say the theme in vs. 4-17 is one of provision or prohibition [leading question counsel]?

A: I guess they want a discussion, not the choice of one of the words, but the word I choose is ‘provision’.

Q: What is the tree of knowledge of good and evil? What does it ‘give’ humans if they eat of it?

A: At first blush it seems a surprising, if not almost cynical move on God’s part to sow the seeds of destruction in his very good creation…just when it was all getting along so well, to, and all to do with a tree.

So, on the assumption that neither the author nor God is an idiot, let’s consider the text.

Taking that it was an actual tree with a time and space location (I think it was a durian, not an apple; eat a durian, and you really do get to know of evil…its smell, anyway) how would eating fruit consign creation to the road to perdition?

I don’t think the problem was the fruit itself, unless it was a durian, of course, but the act that was in question.

The point of man being in God’s image is that his moral judgements have actual significance and real outcomes will flow from them; thus he is fully capable in his relationships: capable that is to undo, which means that his doing truly ‘does’: that relationships can be undone means that good relationships have true value and are not mere hollow images of relationships.

The tree is God’s great risk. He shows to man that man has moral capability and really is ‘ruler’ of this creation; it is not just a game but a great ‘honouring’ of man. The risk is obvious; man might choose to ‘know’ evil. Eating the tree doesn’t just impart a theoretical knowledge, but the act gives the experience of turning from God. Turning from God gives directly the experience of rejection of God, because awayness from God is towardness to ‘not-God’ or the denial of God, which can only be evil: the negation of life and love.

Did God know what man would do? I’ll leave the question hanging, but suffice to say, that man’s choice was man’s responsibility; that was why creation was as it was, with man being in God’s image to make decisions with a real effect.

Q: Gen 2: 18-25. What does this passage tell us about the importance of human community?

A: Alone=bad; companionship=good. And that about sums it up.

Q: What is the significance of the active role that man takes here?

A: Adam does a couple of things in naming the animals: the difference between the ruled creation and his requirement for companion are clearly made; companionship does not involve ruling, but brings a ‘joint-ruler’ by implication. It shows that his aloneness is for one of his own kind, not other kinds. It shows that he cannot by himself meet his need for aloneness: we are creatures that need companionship above all else, and no amount of cattle will substitute. Just ask the Masai.

Q: How does this passage help us [to] understand how we were created to be in relation to God, nature and other people?

A: It shows us the system of relationships: we stand on one part of the creation (the earth) we study and husband another part (beasts and birds) and we are in companionship with each other as the ‘steward’ part. Each part is separated from each other part in ontological ordering and our movement to each is different: we will not treat our companion like we would treat our cattle or our land, as Adam’s hymn (Gen 2:23) makes clear.

Blessings and Curses

The curses in Genesis 3 are sometimes regarded, in my experience, as having an element of arbitrariness to them. Not so, in my view.

The curses systematically deracinate all the identified benefits mentioned in Gen 1 and 2 as attending life in the very good creation. They are all inverted as death is the invert of life and rejection of love brings alienation not fellowship. However, they are not merely the detriments that flow, as adverse as they are; but are markers of the grand turning from God and its result in death: I think they are all about ‘dying you will die’ as the result of taking the fruit (rejecting God). They thus underline the ‘deathliness’ of life that seeks to be against God. To contemplate, against this, that any death might have preceded the fall (required by any scheme of interpretation that denies the timing of Genesis 1) demonstrates a hermeneutic of rejection that ironically parallels the act of Adam.

1
Gen 1: 28
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…”

VSS

Gen 3:16a
To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children;

> Being fruitful and multiplying will be attended with suffering.

2
Gen 1:26-28
Then God said, "Let Us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…”

AND

Ge 2:23-24
“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man."
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

VSS

Gen 3:16b
Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

> Instead of unity, we have a contest; ‘one fleshness’ gives way to competition and rivalry.

3
Gen 2:15-17
Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

VSS

Gen 3:17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it';

> Listening to Eve instead of God, all the trees ‘free to eat’ including, presumably, the ‘tree of life’; but access to that is cut off by partaking of the tree of rejecting God. There’s one tree we can’t eat: either it is the tree of death, or the tree of life: they are mutually exclusive.

4
Gen 1:29
Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;

VSS

Gen 3:17
Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.

> From the garden of delights (Gen 2:9a), to the thorn ground of sweat.

5
Gen 2:15-16
Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely…”

VSS

Gen 3:18-19
"Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return."

> Instead of trees leading to life, sweat ends in death; with return to the dust from which we were taken; [but in Christ, we live on, as he will crush the serpent’s head: God bringing his good end from our bad beginning; working all things together for good].

Sermon 7: Genesis 3: The Fall.

There was a lot to like about this sermon, in my view. It started off dealing with the common detraction from the Christian gospel about suffering and the ‘God of love’. Of course, Genesis 3 tells us why we and indeed the whole creation suffer. The greater question for the detractor is, to my mind, why their question has any significance at all. If there is no God, then it’s hard to see how any transcendent values can exist, yet the question pre-supposes them. Confusingly, the question also seems to imply a universal reduction to material, which is void of values of any type.

Nor do I see any alternative to materialism upon denial of God. If an alternative entertains the ‘spiritual’ in some way, it ends up as a type of theism (for which the question of death is maintained).

I suppose one retort from the detractor would be that they don’t regard the question as significant, but they see in it a possible defeater for Christian theism. However, my point stands. If there is no God, then the question of values, upon which the question hinges, is entirely irrelevant in every way! Assertions to the contrary eventually fall into the lap of the theist construct, and undo themselves. If there were no god, how could any question about Christian beliefs, or any beliefs have any interest, because they would all be part of the same soup of randomness.

But, back to the topic:

The outcome of the fall was first seen in Adam and Eve seeking to hide from God (Gen 3:8), rather than embrace him: they seeing in their behaviour the undoing of what they had; the beauty of their friendship undone most profoundly, and shockingly for God, him seeing that now he had to seek man, rather than man being in community with him. The image is rendered corrupt and no longer constituted as the basis for communion and fellowship between God and man.

God seeking man is the first picture of God’s other-directed-ness towards man and his love showing in seeking the lost. God seeks man; God will bring the ‘serpent crusher’ (Gen 3: 15) and God covers man’s new vulnerability (Gen 3:20).

The great and moving irony of this is that as A&E seek to become ‘like God’ and know good and evil: right from wrong, God from not-God; they betray a base lack of trust in God and seek to be like him originating in a motivation that is contrary to him: seeking self, instead of the other-directedness that characterises the God who is love.

Overturning what God has provided, they have partaken in the antithesis of the image they bear, and it all falls apart. In verse 22 of Gen 3, I think God’s statement that they know good and evil, is not one of envy, or jealousy, but of sadness; that they have met that which will kill them: standing for self, cutting them off from life, by having opposed the image they bear. They know good and evil, not as being the creator who in self knowledge knows what he is not, but by participating in evil: knowing by doing, and discovering what is not worth discovering. They may no longer take from the tree of life, because the tree is in the garden of delight. They are now in the land of sweat and curse because they have rejected the delight. To live forever in evil would be perdition. God in his mercy cuts that off to instead bring redemption.

Predictably the idea of Adam listening to Eve per se was regarded as being Adam’s error (Gen 3:17). This was stated as ‘the failure of godly leadership’ as though this is anywhere discernable in chapters 1 and 2. It is not, in my view.

A&E are to be ‘one flesh’ a unity, together and beside each other; there is no ‘leadership’ in marriage, because it is a partnership of love, equals coming into a ‘one fleshness’. The creation of priority within the couple is the result of the fall (Gen 3:16c) because A&E are joint rulers over all living creation (Gen 1:26-28). It is only after the fall that a ‘ruling’ of any kind would occur between the couple; and this was a curse! In fact, Adam’s error was in listening to Eve in preference to God (vs 17c). As I stated in the blog on the study , Eve had primacy in the exchange with the serpent and in the presence of Adam (Gen 3:6b) *pre-fall*. There was no problem with this; the problem was with (a) Adam making no contribution to the situation, and (b) putting aside God’s word to him in preference to the exchange he’d witnessed between Eve and the serpent. Noting that Adam’s setting aside God’s command was in the face of the command being given to Adam directly by God, whereas Eve would have had it second hand.

Nevertheless I was pleased that the sermon reminded us that the Bible slates home sin to Adam, and not Eve, unlike the mistake of Christendom for much of its history. Paul also reminds us of this episode in 1 Tim 2:9ff, his reminder being, I take it, that Eve gave wrong teaching, not teaching per se: Adam listened to wrong teaching, Eve’s sex was irrelevant, according to Gen 3:17c.

The curse couplet in Gen 3:16c was properly explained as being a doublet of inversion: the two who were to be ‘one flesh’, a unity, would now be in a struggle of dissension: she would desire to overwhelm (him) (as sin for Cain: Gen 4:7), he would desire to rule (her) as appointed only for non-image-bearing creatures in Gen 1: nothing good in either direction. Restoration begins with redemption, of course, where the curse is opposed on the way to being undone in the new creation.

An interesting point about the curse is that every element of it undoes a specific aspect of the ‘very good’. See this blog entry for a quick look at this potentially fascinating comparison.

I was pleased to hear the sermon mention the significance of the genealogies in the Bible; from early Genesis to the New Testament, they take us along the path to the ‘serpent crusher’, culminating in Luke’s genealogy that takes us from Adam to Christ, who undoes that basic of fears; the fear of death.

Because the Bible is about real events and people, the genealogies are essential to underline the connection: this is not some myth off in the land of the imagination; but it is here and now. The dust is the stuff that clings to our shoes.

I would also add that the ‘chrono-genealogies’ add historical structure to the lists of names. Firstly, the names are important, because they establish the soteriological trace through real people. The dates (ages at sons’ births) root the lists in history; the history contiguous with our historical experience of God.

Study 3: Man, Ecology and the Environment (Gen 1:27-2:3)

The passage:

Ge 1:27-2:3

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

NASU

As I was not at the study group meeting for Study 3, I’ll just go through the study…

Once I’ve got the ‘official’ answers for the study, I’ll comment on them too, as the occasion takes me.

1. What does the Bible tell us about…

- our world (Gen 1:31, and see Gen 3:17-19, Roms 8:21-22):

In brief: was very good, was marred and awaits its redemption. These three way posts on the route to interpretation tells not only about the spiritual or moral world, or the human ‘world picture’, which is what must, I think, be the result of a de-reification of the creation account; and what Paul caps off opposition to in the Romans reference; but about the world that we’re standing in. We are separated from the ‘very good’ of God’s pristine creation by the ‘very bad’ of a world cursed as its vicegerent rejected relationship with the creator and wanted to know good and evil (know I take it here includes ‘have direct experience of’ the antithesis of God, the author of the ‘very good’).

- the abundance of our world (Gen 1:29, 9:1-3, Ps 145:15-17):

Plants were given for food (and therefore, not animals, in at least the pre-fall state); after the flood, the food range was increased to animals, which were now resistant to man’s care; nevertheless, in its fallen condition, marred and reflective of what God is not like, God provides for us.

- Humanity’s relationship to and responsibility for the creation (Gen 1:27, 28):

At base, to ‘subdue’ it. Detractors claim that this gives licence for exploitation, and wonton waste of the earth’s bounty; but not so. In a pre-fall condition, it would have man doing for the creation consistently with God’s very-good declaration; that this is a precious thing, to be maintained in harmony and for the sustenance of the interlocking system of benefits that the ‘very-good’ would produce. It would be like a king ruling his kingdom not to destroy and lay waste, but to build up and improve as his home giving to his heirs something that they will thank him for.

2. What does it mean to ‘subdue’ and ‘rule over’ the earth?

See above, but lets look at the references given:

Gen 2:15
Look after the garden

Gen 2:19-20
Husband the animals. This is the passage where Adam names the animals; as the first act of ‘ruling’ them he must understand them. Incidentally, against what idealist theologians say, that Genesis is ‘not a scientific’ text book, this is the ideal counter. It shows Adam doing something that is precisely scientific (referring to the study of the real world to seek knowledge of the creation. Pagans would call it ‘natural’ science), examining the animals, perhaps classifying and describing them (required for ‘naming’ in ANE cultures) and identifying them, to create knowledge about them.
QED, Genesis 1 is a ‘science textbook’.

Ex 23:29-30
The Promised Land is conquered carefully so it does not fall to waste and ruin.

Le 25:3-4
Even rules are given to allow the land to lie fallow and rest, with a system of fallow years being described: the people of Israel’s slogan could be ‘Still managing the land, still caring’.

De 20:19
Caring for the land extends to protecting productive trees for those who would come after!

Pr 12:10
Caring includes caring for animals: there we have it, modern ecological concern and animal liberation predated by just a few thousand years and in the Bible too!

Of course, the ‘kicker’ comes with the spoiling effect of sin: alienation from the source of life and love.

4. What are the effects of human sin [is there any other kind?] on our environment?

Luke 12:15
Greed is to be guarded against. In the end it adds nothing to our lives.

James 4:1-3
And, of course, greed arises from self-obsession, which ends, ultimately, as well as morally, in murder, as we put self before others.

The end of the study consisted with ‘getting practical’ [I can’t think of much more practical than the foregoing, myself]

Q: As Christians, how should we respond to global warning?

A: Start off by not ‘shoulding’ on each other with Pharisaic casuistry! [Often one has to correct the question in Bible studies]. A better question would be: “what considerations arise from the scriptures when we consider the state of our planet?”

As to ‘global warming’ of course, there is no response, unless we can somehow change the sun’s output. But what would we bring to questions such as pollution and land degradation: why, opposition, of course, but seeking a staged correction of careless ways to avoid destroying people’s livelihoods (workers, that is). We might also be modest in our demands on the environment; the benefit is release of funds for mission and other service. Imagine how much money would be so released if all Christian families avoided private schools, operated one car (structuring their lives to use public transport), avoided ‘prestige’ cars, and took modest holidays: lots, is my answer.

Q: What would you say to the Christian who says “The Earth is going to be destroyed one day, so what does it matter if we make a mess of it first?”

A: a) not an attitude consistent with seeking to care for things, b) ‘one day’ but let’s act as if we might leave things better for our children, and theirs; otherwise, we may be leaving a mess for generations while the Lord tarries, c) our basic demeanour is to seek the benefit of others, so depredation would be avoided as we seek positives for our fellows and heirs, d) we are called to create and care, not destroy and despoil.

Q: Are Christians supposed to ‘save the planet”?

A: To the extent that this would be an outcome from living to care, seeking the betterment of others, soberly and with delight in the shards of ‘very good’ that persist against the fall, yes, but not as an object in itself. This needs to be balanced with providing food, homes, and enjoyment for all.

In some ways, not a lot of controversy in this study; but, my refrain for any series of studies in the early chapters of Genesis is this: if the idealists are right, and Genesis provides some sort of picture, but something other ‘really’ happened, then it’s a house of cards that collapses, as the ‘other’ would provide the basis for informing our take on the ‘real’; any action that would be motivated by understanding Genesis would be essentially predicated on its relating events and facts that are consistent with and stand in train, indeed are commensurate with our experience of the world, against the shared framework of time, space and causal delimiters.

Study 6: Sin and God’s Response (Gen. 3)

Our Bible studies often start with some form of ‘icebreaker,’ this one was “Reflection: From where does evil come?” The biblical answer, of course, is “trees”.

But enough of that!

This is a magnificent chapter. It shows us that evil: the antithesis of God, is not ontologically basic. It is not part of what is ‘really real’. This is close to Augustine’s view that evil is constituted by deficit; (if I recall his work correctly) but different in that the absence is not metaphysical: evil is existentially real and consists of real events that bring the reverse of benefit, but it represents the absence of love, and is constituted as the Bible sharply puts it, as the work of the murderer (John 8:44). It emerges in actions taken in relationship that come from a denial of the ‘imageness’ of God in us. So evil is the outworking of the ‘image of God’ undone.

The study goes on to weave the basket of deception, half-truths and manipulation that characterises evil: the practice of the rejection of God, love and life; and their substitute in self obsession, pride and lust for self benefit by loss for others.

‘Sin’ is popularly regarded as somehow ‘fun’ or for innocent pleasure; but it is not and profoundly so, as 1 John 2:15ff tells. This reminds me of a great phrase spoken by a Roman Catholic monk in a sermon I heard many years ago at St Finbar’s church at Glenbrook, NSW: he referred to the ‘glamour of sin’ in a sermon that exposed the glamour as entirely hollow and like a mirage turning to nothing as it’s grasped. And so it is, the core of sin being its alignment with death and detachment from God. As one of the study group put it “living our own way, not God’s”.

I saw a poster recently that asked why limit sins to seven (the ‘seven deadly sins’), and felt somewhat perturbed: sin is about anti-love, rejection and dissolution; for some reason (the blandishments of the evil one) it is thought to represent the best fun. But it does not; it represents the worst sadness that comes from a marred and sullied ‘very good’ creation. It ends in the dust of death, not the glow of life.

The great hope in this chapter of the Bible is that while their world crumbles around them as God is pushed away from them and his creation, God nevertheless limits the damage and shows shimmers of hope at every turn: the seed will crush the serpent’s head, God saves A&E from their exposed embarrassment and provides animal skins (the first death in the fallen world is used in an act, the first act heralding God’s mission of rescue).

I wonder if another act of love is God turfing A&E out of the garden of Eden, to prevent their coming to the tree of life: how sad to endure everlasting life mired in sin! Once again, God inverts our values and disasters and brings life…in this case our death is that which he will set aside in the Christ who is to crush the serpent’s head.

One little detail in this account that I like comes in Gen 3:6c, “and she gave also to her husband with her.” Do I see here that the whole episode in which Eve conducted the interaction with the serpent was done with Adam there? There is no hint in the pre-fall moment that Eve should make way for Adam, that Adam’s head-ness is betrayed by Eve’s exercise of her intelligence. Adam, of course failed to speak up, but God’s point of accusation against him has nothing to do with Eve speaking as a female, but as one speaking error, with him not testing the error and entering into a corrective dialogue. Male supremacy, if it is imagined elsewhere in the Bible, is certainly not a feature of the ‘very good’ creation. It is however, a result of the fall and represents brokenness, as does the woman’s corresponding (dominating?) desire for him. From a relationship of corresponding good, we have it collapse into a correspondence of exploitation.

A member of the group brought along a small book by Marcus Loane, where he supposes that chapter three is an extended allegory. I’m not sure if this is helpful. As with all points in these opening chapters, if they have the character of allegory or are symbolic, we are lost for a reference. Because they are ontologically basic, and we have no other knowledge of the matters exposed, we would be hard pressed to make any headway understanding them. I don’t think they have any real ‘work’ to do if they are not directly true to events that happened.

Does this then put me in the position of populating the genealogy of evil with talking snakes, and fruit that can either make or break? Maybe. Because we have no access to the pre-fall world, we must to some degree suspend analysis and seek in the text what we can learn, as though it refers to what really happened; otherwise we are in the dessert of reader-response hermeneutic going where we want to without check or balance.

Death in this chapter is brought upon us. The rest of the Bible is God’s action to undo its effects. Yet the consequence of interpretations that manipulate the direct meaning of the text in these opening chapters has the effect of sidelining the pivotal role of death in the relationship between God and creation (refer to Paul in Romans, where it is the whole creation that groans), because it puts death prior to the fall. Somehow this trivialises death, and makes it part of the ‘very good’, when we are told that it is the final enemy, with ramifications extending into animal life, Isaiah making peace between prey and predator a mark of the new creation.

Sermon 5: Men and Women

The MP3 link for the sermon is here.

I thought that there was much good in the sermon…that is to say, I found myself in less disagreement than I had found with the first two sermons. I particularly liked what was said about sex (about the good it is in marriage, and the frequent disaster it brings when detached from a mutually serving marriage relationship) and the overall relationship between male and female. I was singularly impressed when we were told that the Bible does not set out ‘sex roles’, which of course it doesn’t, but shows how responsibility is distributed between relating men and women (refer to 1 Corinthians 7:4, 11:11, Eph 4:32 and 5:21 as guide on this matter). Pity that such views are not amplified and given public voice; but then, those outside the church are rarely willing to concede that it has anything to say, then self-fullfillingly accuse it of saying nothing!

It was very helpful for the sermon to touch on the damage between men and women that the fall brought, and how this is not normative, but aberrant, and for correction, not reinforcement.

There were some points of emphasis in the sermon that I would have preferred adjusted, but in the main, nothing major…except…

the topic of ‘headship;’ a notion invented in conservative denominations to foster their shameless adoption of a cultural imbalance in both marriage and ecclesiastical relationships between men and women.

There’s no denying that a number of relationships in the Bible have one of the parties as ‘head’ to the other. However, this simple statement of relational derivation cannot within the confines of the Bible be transformed into the state of ‘headship,’ particularly when this is defined in the Australian Oxford Dictionary as “the position of chief or leader…” As my blog on the related study to this sermon discusses, the concept is not in the Bible.

The very point of my disagreement with the sermon was that the relationship of the husband to the wife was labelled, after some reasonably helpful and biblical discussion on the operational dimensions of being ‘head,’ as that of “servant-leadership.”

This is a pretty popular phrase in Sydney (Diocese of) that attempts to soften the importation from the unredeemed culture of the exploitative and hierarchical aspects of ‘leadership’ as it is comprised in that culture.

To be a ‘leader’ is to be the more important; viz the recent popularity of ‘leadership’ in popular (junk?) business literature (although, I recommend the work of Ron Heifetz and James Collins on this subject). However, the softening, in my view is cynical, as it serves to allow the priority of ‘leader’ to be asserted in line with denominational structure, but in distinction from the Bible’s usage, against which it makes a poor fit. The concept of ‘leader’ in the Bible is very rarely employed in respect of church whereas the concept of ‘servant’ in isolation is far more extensively used. I would be much encouraged if the denomination de-emphasised its arbitrary structures in favour of a biblical approach and stopped using the faux humble term of ‘servant-leader’.

But in our immediate context, it fails completely! There is no ‘leader-led’ in the marriage relationship! Even if the pretence of ‘servant-leader’ is used. The Genesis passage excludes it completely.

Of course, this comes to us from the obdurate unbiblicality of the notion of ‘head’ as ‘authority over’ or ‘commander’ (or, one shudders to say ‘leader’, c.f. for instance Matt 20:25 and 23:10, Luke 22:26,27); careful regard for 1 Corinthians 11:3ff and Eph 4:15,16 can throw light here) which is a consequence of reading the structures of the Roman church (read, the Roman Empire) back into the church as the body of Christ. Simply not on!

On ‘head’ I refer to an article by Gilbert Bilezikian.
On the creation, I refer to an article by Carlson-Thies

But, all that aside, I found the sermon to be encouraging and to contain a number of helpful insights. It’s just a pity that the sermon ‘form’ doesn’t lend itself to the transformational benefits of discussion and reflection within the audience. See here, for a resource on this, and here for another.

Unfortunately, the sermon stopped short of the practical. What, for instance, does a man do as head of woman operationally; how do we put it into practice: take a job that demands less of family forbearance? Knock around the house instead of the golf course? The list could go on with dramatic and society changing consequences…are we brave enough?

Study 5: Men and Women in Relationship (Gen 2:18-25)

I missed the past two studies due to being away on holidays. I’ll prepare some notes, as time permits, based on the study book and the sermons when I get to listen to the MP3s.

The subject text: Ge 2:18-3:1

18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." 19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. 23 The man said,
" This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.(NASB)

The first question referred us back to Gen 1:26:28 and asked about it in relation to “men, women and marriage”.

Just to remind, that passage is:

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, " Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."NASB

This is one of the truly confronting and radical passages in the Bible, in my view! Considering what we know of the status of women in the ANE, this puts men and women on equal footing, and for no social reason, as far as I can see (even if one accepts the late date of this passage being a ‘priestly’ composition, or even more so, perhaps). I like Brunner’s remarks, reported by Von Rad in his commentary on Genesis: “That is the immense double statement, of a lapidary simplicity, so simple indeed that we hardly realise that with it a vast world of myth and Gnostic speculation, of cynicism and asceticism, of the deification of sexuality and fear of sex completely disappears.”

But, of course, it is more that this; man and woman are not just presented as equal (as the parish’s study notes declared with a limp flourish), which is certainly included here, as far as these words go, but far more. The image of God rests upon man as a collective, and male and female conjointly (and not just on paired men and women, in my view, but upon mankind in community): the image cannot be sundered apart by the sexual nature of our being which suggests a unity in image-bearing, but not one that is exhausted by the individual, per se or even as an exemplar. The lame jokes directed against women fall, by this passage, into a theological abyss, where they belong.

[An aside on this: against my better judgement I attended a ‘Katoomba Men’s Convention’ a few years ago. When I heard from the platform the first snide joke at the expense of women, I got the impression that this would mark the tone of the day. I decided to keep a count of this example of puerility. Unsurprisingly, on this one day I noted 8 such ‘jokes’. So much for men who’d taken upon themselves to ‘teach’ their brothers demonstrating an understanding of the nature of male and female as created! This is consistent, however with a) the widespread disregard for the direct meaning of Genesis 1 in the Anglican church, and b) the unbiblical view of women afoot in this diocese and represented in their exclusion from a number of man-made ‘offices’ in the diocese (you know the drill: ‘rector’; ‘bishop’, ‘archbishop’.)]

I was very pleased to see a comment in the study book on woman’s status as ‘helper’ of man. The author rightly pointed out that women are ‘helpers’ to men as God is ‘helper’ to Israel: that is, as one with superior endowment going to repair a deficiency in the other! The precise point of helping is of course that Adam needed help at the precise point of his alone-ness! The help was the companionship of an equal, at least!

Q. 3 “What does the passage teach us about men, women and marriage?” (2:18-25 that is).

The largest part of this passage concerns itself with the naming of animals (restricted to the beasts of field and birds of sky; incidentally notable against the ‘framework’ hypothesis that both avian and terrestrial animals are made from the ground, amplifying the confusion of its artificial tripartite mirroring scheme); so I wonder what we may draw from this.

I think an idea worth exploring is that Adam ‘names’ consistently with the mandate to rule. He identifies these creatures’ relationships to him and, perhaps, to each other and the creation. The naming reinforces the subjection of these creatures to him. Now, it gets interesting when he meets Eve. He doesn’t assign her a name as I infer from the passage he does with the animals, but recognises a creature astonishingly different from both them (in obvious morphology) and him (in refinement, she being made of his flesh, not of dust). Adam’s exclamation is of wonder: she is of him, with him and they are intimately in relationship (as flows from the joint image-bearing). He goes on not to name her, in the manner of animals, but describes her derivation that bespeaks an intimacy and equality that is shared by no other creature. It certainly comes over from Adam’s short hymn (v. 23) that he is not ‘over-above’ the woman in any sense, but an admirer of her as one like him and his companion.

This drives home the point of the special relationship between man and woman, and by extension, between men and women; it is not merely a reproductive relationship as would be obvious between the sexes in animals, but has a moral and spiritual dimension that is completely lacking in animals and flows from ‘image-bearing’ into a community of delight and purpose.

What does this go on to teach us about marriage?

It is a conjugate unity with the parties acting jointly because they are one family. It creates companionship that is marked by dynamic intimacy at all levels, and a depth of mutuality and respect that is notable in its absence since the fall!

In the study group we chatted about this for some time; with a couple of group members, at the end of discussions admitting: ‘but we know that the man is the head of the family.’

The illustration both of them gave (one a man, the other a woman) was the need in a business for a ‘final’ decision maker. Now, a married couple is not a business, and the decisions are personal not commercial!

I pointed out that the idea of a ‘final decision-maker’ and the man as ‘head of the family’ was not in the least biblical; much to their consternation. In a conjugate relationship it is the joint parties that are together the final decision maker. If there is to be any dispute, I would hope the godly direction of dispute would be each attempting to find the other’s best interest (Eph 5:21). Darn near impossible to live out, in my humble experience!

Naturally, we next went to the question of ‘head’, with a reference to 1 Cor 11:3. Knowing Sydney Diocese’s view of men, women, and heads, this was bound to come up. I am suspicious that it came up with more than a trace of tendentiousness.

Certainly Paul tells us in this verse that there are a number of ‘heads’. But he does so in a way that carefully avoids any implication of order to imply hierarchy (compare, for instance, the order in 1 Cor 12:28). This is a simple statement of relationship pairs; indeed, ‘source-response’ pairs, with the point being, I think, the validity of sexual difference and, by reference to Genesis 1 and 2, the lack of spiritual differentiation between male and female!

OK, so “how is male ‘headship’ [no such thing, of course, in the Bible] expressed in the context of the marriage relationship?”

The real question is: "what is it, then for a man to be 'head' in his relationships with women, particularly his wife?"

The answer is found by reflecting on Eph 4:15-16: the head serves the other as Christ served the church: to the promot the other's benefit to the point of sacrifice of the head.

An interesting little note struck about marriage in the Genesis 2 passage is that it is the man who leaves his originating family to assign his commitments to his wife. I wonder if there is any implication for women in their not being stated as leaving their family?

Singleness.

This took a heading in the study book. Just a brief remark here: “the New Testament shows us that a marriage relationship is not for everyone”. Yet I am told that singleness can be problematic if you seek ordination as an unmarried man and are confirmed in your desire to remain so. I know that we are built for sexual relationship, but some are gifted to, or choose to remain single (Matt 19:12); my Anglo-catholic friends would suggest that this scriptural fact is not always given the credibility it deserves in the Sydney diocese.

I wait with some interest the sermon on this passage on Sunday (23 Nov 8).

Genesis Links

I've added links to sites that have topics that overlap with this blog. Naturally, while I find these sites interesting and helpful, I don't necessarily agree with everything on them.

The Genesis sermons are from Christ Reformed Baptist Church, in the USA; Tom Chantry is the minister.

Comments on Sermon 2: Creation-Evolution

Second open letter reviewing a sermon on Genesis:

Dear M.

I’ve been thinking about your sermon on Sunday, but am not yet ready to set out my thoughts in detail. However, rather than delay, I'd like to give you this sketch of the topics and hope to provide a fuller discussion later.

1. The matter of Galileo’s treatment by the Church of Rome usually gets an airing when biblical origins are discussed. The airing usually addressees the converse of what happened. The problem Galileo encountered was that the church was wedded to the science of the day: Aristotelian in base, and had difficulty untangling this from what Galileo was doing. It was not a conflict between the Scripture and ‘science’ but between the church’s insufficient doctrine of creation being grafted onto Aristotle’s ideas.

The church is doing the same today, largely wed to evolutionary ideas, it seems reluctant to develop a theology of creation that sits squarely on the word of God (in terms consistent with the Bible, rather than borrowed extra-biblically, as per my previous letter) but instead seeks to read Genesis in worldly terms. A useful page on this is here.

2. If I heard you correctly, and please forgive me if I am wrong on this, you allowed that the spectrum of theological responses to Genesis 1 from historic creationism (i.e. ‘young earth creationism’, but I find that term inelegant and neglectful of the history of theology) to theistic evolution are valid.

Logically, at least three of the views have to be wrong; that is, not representative of real events; or indeed real theological meaning. If theistic evolution occurred, then the other alternatives did not.

What is important is how we come to a conclusion on what the text says; I quake in my boots when I read Kline’s wanting to adjust exegesis to the requirements of modern ‘science’. Here comes the church doing a Galileo again, I think, conforming its exegesis to the ideas of the day.

3. I would not think that there is adequate textual support for ‘apparent age’, ‘gap’, or indeed the ‘day-age’ view that you presented, let alone theistic evolution, which must step past so much of the text of Genesis 1 as to make it irrelevant. At a grab: Gn 1 tells us that creatures reproduced after their kind but evolution tells us that they don’t and that one kind has given rise to all other kinds (many people, including, for example, Pannenberg make the mistake of conflating ‘kind’ and ‘species’; but this attempts to read back into the text a modern concept that doesn't have the breadth of ‘kind’; this then invites the error of ‘fixity of species’, a notion used as a point of criticism by evolutionists, typically, but this comes by the influence of….our sponsor, Aristotle!). Hebrews 11:3 tells us that what is seen was not made out of what was visible, but evolution has it precisely opposite. I suppose it could be argued that the ‘big bang’ was putatively formed out of what is not visible, but the rest of the evolutionary scenario has it that everything was formed out of what is seen.

As an aside, the ‘apparent age’ notion comes up from time to time, but it ironically does so on the assumption that the pagan history of the cosmos is correct, negating the possible truthfulness of the word of God; for instance, it is said that the stars look as though they were placed billions of years ago because of the time light takes to travel. This makes an assumption about the absoluteness of time, which we know is not so, and that our physical understanding cannot be informed by revelation (and thus to the role of the Bible and the question of science…)

4. I think there is a lot of value in discussing the purposes of the Bible and science with respect to origins. I think I would differ with the purposes you canvassed, and for theological and philosophical reasons, however, I’ve got to think this through a little more; its along the lines of the Biblical revelation being bound to the terms and location of our experience, and this for theological reasons: it establishes the setting and terms of the covenant. If reality is ‘bent’ to do this, then the basis of the covenant is problematical and the real-ness of the relationship between God and man undone; if not ‘paganized’.

5. My thinking about the day-age idea ramifies along a number of lines. The one I find most interesting is the question of time.

First off the mechanism of creation we are told, repeatedly throughout the Bible, is that God spoke and it happened. There’s an immediacy to this by direct implication: the utterance of a word has immediate effect: one speaks, another hears; a law is commenced by proclamation, it commences, etc. I understand that the grammar of Genesis 1 is also the grammar of historical sequence, so inserting great undefined gaps between the days, or regarding the days as ‘pictures’ would be difficult, I’m told. The ‘pace’ of events in the text, and their structural configuration is congruent with the direct reading’s result: there’s a powerful rhythm of cause and effect that moves with an unremitting rationality and matter of fact-ness that also, on literary grounds, speaks of the dramatic rapid succession indicated by the cascade of ‘and it was so.’

This particularly comes together in the making of man. The sequence runs together: formed, breathed (2:7, but as the two passages go together, (refer for example to this article) I think this passage is germane); there are no logical gaps in the volition-to-outcome stream that I can see.

The critical context for consideration of the impact of ‘long durations’ is that, as far as I know, the Judaeo-Christian cosmology is the only one with short durations: all pagan cosmologies, including those that would have been known at the time in the ANE, that I’m aware of, have very long durations for earth or cosmic existence, which itself is a telling matter, I think. Now we have, in the last couple of hundred years a resurgence of the pagan-originated long ages.

Long durations have a couple of effects: they either would provide the time for chance to operate on matter; or they for practical purposes would remove the question of our maker’s identity and relationship with us from our consideration: it happened so long ago as to not matter. Time is the great ‘existential removalist’. Great periods speak of uninterest on the part of a creator who removed himself so far in time. Time is also the great existential coupler: in a relationship, we join in time, not in denial of time and temporal proximity is paramount.

In modern times, long periods serve to eliminate a creator, at least as we know him. Hutton, for instance, was driven explicitly by his deism and belief in eternal matter and cyclical history to propose what has become geological time. Nothing scientific about that! Long ages being indicative of random physical processes operating successfully is that they eliminate will, that is, the will of a person. The converse of course is that speedy action is a mark of the operation of will, given capability, and certainly if the operation is by spoken word, with its unavoidable immediacy. As a comparison, there’s an old saw amongst engineers that anyone can build a bridge, but an engineer will do it quickly and cheaply. That is, will, in the form of intelligence in this case, will do it faster than lack thereof.

I think one of the limbs of the polemic strength of the creation account (against origin fictions) is not only that it sets out what happened, in opposition to what did not happen, and thus gives us our foundation, not our myth, but its speed eliminates alternatives. Deny the speed, and alternative are invited with the possibility created of time providing a generative means when it in fact has none.

‘Long ages’ creates a dependency of our knowledge of God upon matter and how it works, rather than on God and his revelation. It allows the mistaking of the creation for the creator, and accommodates lines of thinking that deny a creator.

Study 2: Genesis 1:26-31

We had this study in our home group last Wednesday evening (29 Oct 2008). A much less complex study than Study 1, and so not half as much fun or grist for discussion.
Still, worth having rather than not.

An aspect of our studies I do not like is that they often amount to comprehension tests, and do not seem to be structured to promote reflection or any depth of consideration of the subject passage; one can take the questions as far as one likes, of course, but for most, they can tend to produce less than penetrating discussion.

"In God's image" did promote some lively conversation; with one person thinking that it meant that we looked physically like God! Imageness has attending it something of a communion of capability and epistemological confidence, I think, in that to the extent of the 'image-ness' we can have a high level of certainty that our rationality will be a conduit for truth, truth about our setting (the world we are in, with much relief to empiricists), and truth as a reliable result, at least potentially, of our thinking. Naturally there are limits to this, particularly introduced by the Fall, but I think we are given access to thinking 'true' thoughts, and thoughts that correspond with the external 'truth' of what is about us. Our thinking might not produce a thorough veracity, but to the extent that it does take us toward that destination, it does so genuinely.

We had a bit of a laugh over the question of 'rule' in vs. 28: ruling over the fish? Fish, for goodness sake!! How do we 'rule' over fish?

We then discussed 'subdue' a fair bit; noting that the scene was that of God forming a set of interdependent relationships with mankind a participant in those relationships, this being the circumscription for 'subdue'. Therefore not 'subdue' as in exploit and demean the very good that God had created, but serve it for its prosperity (and therefore ours) but in a non consumerist and deeply enjoyable and sustainable manner.

Of course the great rent in history, the Fall, changed all that with its besmirching of the 'very good'; and we live with the results of that brokenness to this day.

Naturally, the 'divine command for vegetarianism' came up. The answers here surprised me, with some people taking this as either a serious or not serious 'command' and not seeing it in the 'flow of biblical history' to adopt Schaeffer's term. Rather than a command, it is simply a statement. If there was no death of living beings, as death came with the fall, then animals were not for food (except stuff like milk, and wool too, if that could be eaten :-)! ). Its a pretty obvious 'rule' of textual construction that if something is specifically given, then the things not given are excluded. We then talked about the 'rule' being overturned in Gen 9:1-4, where the fall's effect on all life had an end result for the relationship between man and animal.

God's 'very good' of all his work on the preceeding days was regarded by all of us as a kind of summation of satisfaction; and an indicator of completion, given the 'mere' 'goods' preceeding.

The final question was an effort to get some practical use out of the study: what would it mean to reflect the image of the creator in the coming week?

Well, as were are made in the image, marred as it is by the Fall, there's not much we can do but reflect it. We will think, communicate, reason and love, and organise and create inevitably throughout the week; we will also act as though we can truly know things, within our cognitive limits and as though truth is at least a possibility in our discourse and thought lives. We will also act as though our mental lives are congruent with a truely 'there' external world. How could we do otherwise?

Some people wanted to put a moral tint on the notion of 'image' and while that is certainly there, it does not exhaust the concept, IMO. I rashly asserted that even Hitler (why do we always choose him, and not the greater mass murderers of Stalin or Mao?) reflected the image of the creator! Just not completely!!

Pannenberg on Creation

From Pannenberg “Theology of Creation and Natural Science” The Ashbury Theological Journal v. 50 n. 1 1995

Half a century ago Karl Barth wrote in the preface to his treatment of creation in his Church Dogmatics (III/I, 1945), that there are “absolutely no scientific questions, objections or supports concerning what Scripture and the Christian Church understand to be God’s work of Creation.” Such a restriction of the theology of creation to a “retelling” of what the Bible tells us about this subject, has its price and the price to be paid here was that it could no longer be made clear, in how far the biblical faith in creation means the same world that the human race now inhabits and that is described by modern science. The affirmation that the God of the Bible created the world degenerates in to an empty formula, and the biblical God himself becomes a powerless phantom, if he can no longer be understood as the one who originates and completes the world as it is given to our experience.

It follows that the decision has to be made as to where the connection between what the examination of the creation (the 'natural' world) finds and the revelation of creation as historical event is to be made. Further in the same article, Pannenberg discusses the intersection of philosophical ideas and scientific proposals. At this juncture too there seems to be opportunity for critical analysis. Pannenberg finds the area wanting, and offers theology as the 'step in'. I'd agree (I'm sure P. would be impressed by that!!), but would urge that the ideological commitments are clarified before any such work is done.

Creation and Evolution, or 'the forced choice?'

Sermon outline.

Go here for the mp3 of the sermon.

Forced to choose between 2 mutually exclusive alternatives?

'Young Earth" creationism --- Atheisic evolution

How do we approach this issue?

+ the role of the Bible

+ the place - and limits - of Science

Between the Extremes

+ apparent age

+ 'gap' theory

+ day-age creationism

+ theistic evolution

Genesis 1

+ who? why? & what? (not how?)

+ the 'apologetics' of creation

Our Response?

Sermon 2: On Creation and Evolution

In his reply to my letter on his first sermon, my minister stated that I should await his resolution of a number of points that attracted my criticism of his 'literary-literal' divide in the second (this) sermon.

I will post a more detailed review of it in the next few days, d.v., but for now will give a rough response.

In some ways, overall, not too bad a treatment of the question; but in the end, unsatisfactory, theologically, IMO.

The minister started out discussing the poles of the debate: so called 'young earth' creationist (perhaps this should be called Historical Creationist, reflecting that it was the majority view of the church up until the mid 19th century) on the one side and 'atheistic evolutionist' on the other. He identified Richard Dawkins as a prominent representative of the latter, and rightly criticised Dawkins' portrayal of the debate as one between two alternatives; however I don't agree that the Bible allows a spectrum of equally valid views between the two poles.

He then went on to identify a number of alternative views, most the classical compromises that seek to harmonise the Bible and the conclusions of modern materialism. At least he mentioned the excesses of 'science' that transmogrify deplorably into 'scientism' where there is an excess of unrecognised ideology masked, and probably to its proponents as much as anyone else, as science!

The views he mentioned were the apparent age theroy, 'gap' theory, the day-age theory and theistic evolution. I think the day-age theory that he espouses is a sort of irrational 'stepped' evolution, so effectively a variant of theistic evolution, but without the full blown attempted melding of God's work as revealed and that of the created world's as imagined.

Many old war horses were trotted out during the sermon; such as science tells us not why, but how, that the Bible tells us why but not how, but failing to pick out the philosophical issues that lie beneath both; which I will attempt in my longer response.

At the end of the service, the compare ('reader' in Anglican terms), wanted us to put aside 'side issues' such as creation vs. evolution, and concentrate on Christ...this is a frequently heard comment amongst certain evangelicals, but it is a comment that betrays a narrow, and I think, impoverished theology...more on this later; but for now, just think on John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11 and the tension Paul teaches between sin, by implication the pre-fall creation, and the new creation.

In the end I thought it was an opportunity missed, both for the cause of Biblical understanding, and for that of God's relation to the world as both creator and covenenter. But more of this later.

Study 1: Genesis 1:1-25

To people who have had some exposure to the discussion on Genesis 1 in the context of views of origins, many of the terms of the debate are well known, and are used with a type of 'in-game' shorthand. So it was a surprise to discuss the passage in my Home Group (a small group of people from my church that meet one evening a week to reflect on a Bible passage and pray), and find that the terms usually encountered in origins discussion were completely alien! I was quite surprised by the uproar that some of the 'suggested' answers given by the minister, I assume, attracted, as well as the perpexity that some of the questions caused.

Some people didn't understand the term 'worldview' and thought that it meant the view held by 'the world' as opposed to a biblical view, for example.

The suggested answers made reference to 'Enuma elish', 'genre', 'polemic' etc. Because these were so out of context for my fellow members, they were quite affronted by their introduction into a Bible study; the theological assumptions in the study: both questions and suggested answers, were overwhelming for most. Indeed, the questions themselves; and I'll post them up some time, left most group members puzzled, and unable to form an answer, let alone discuss a view. Needless to say, discussion drifted all over the place; but heart-warmingly, seeking to respond to the passage and do so with Christ in mind.

I liked the answer of one elderly man, who when confronted by the questions attempting to lead us down the literary path said something like: "it says God made it bang, bang, bang," with hand taps on the table for emphasis.

Interesting how the obvious and the contrived can be so far apart.

The contrast to the 'studies' we were used to; which simply stimulated discussion about the meaning of the passage in its own terms and for our Christian practice, was 'deep and meaningless'. It tendentiously intended to second guess a particular, I think, unhelpful, approach to the text, rather than help people apply it to their view of God.

Funny, in a way, but sad.

Dinosaurs

At the service last Sunday, when the sermon on Genesis 1 was given, the Reader for the service, who is a teacher at a secondary school, mentioned his experience of the religious ed. studies that he gives.

He said something like, he can talk about Jesus and his sacrifice till the cows come home, but then his students will ask about how the dinosaurs fit in.

It seems that children have a firmer view of the need for resolution of the quesitions that emerge between the Bible and modern atheistic-derived views of our history: the world takes its history back to dust, the Bible takes ours back to the one who made the dust: a person, not innanimate matter.

Now, the concerning thing is this: people looking for answers to real questions, that are framed with an appreciation of the concreteness of this world, and therefore that must attend to its history, are given answers that neglect the real world, and instead escape into a nonexistent land of myth and fantasy, that we never touch, in 'real' life.

Then I look at Paul's sermon in Acts 17 and wonder why the church has not learnt from his connecting the gospel to God as creator...maybe that's the 'connect' that Connect09 should be making!

Sermon on Genesis 1: Outline

Outline of the sermon my previous blog responded to.

In the Beginning…(Gen 1)

Introduction: Asking the Wrong Question

1. Recognising Genesis 1 as a Literary (not Literal) Account

Foming______________Filling
1. light & darkness______4. heavenly bodies of day & night
2. water & sky_________5. creatures of water & sky
3. land & vegetation_____6. creatures upon the land
__________7. DAY OF REST

2. Recognising Genesis 1 as a “mythbuster”

- Rival stories of creation
- Rival deities?
- Cf. One God—purposeful—man the pinnacle—good

3. Recognising Genesis 1 as a Theological Account

- Our Sovereign Creator
- Order from chaos
- Created by a powerful word (and Spirit)
- Good…good…good…very good (1:31)

Our Response?

Response to Sermon on Genesis 1

Letter to my minister on a sermon he gave this week.

I was pleased that your series on Genesis commenced with theological questions. Too often consideration of Genesis 1 sets out initially to grapple with various concordist challenges to the detriment of its central message.

Without wanting to throw a spanner in the works, the notional separation of a literary and a literal take on Genesis 1 is problematical on a number of fronts, in my estimation.

At the outset the distinction seems artificial, as anything intentionally written is by virtue of this fact literature and will be marked by literary devices of various sorts. The question of genre, and the framing of a hermeneutic approach from this is pertinent; but whence our conclusions about genre? From two directions, I think. The overarching 'meta-genre' of the containing unit of text has to be one determinant, with the other responsively being the lexical-grammatical forms and micro-structure of the subject text.

Of course, the meta-genre that Genesis 1 forms a part of is largely historical; about 20% of Genesis 1-11 is concerned with passing time, denoted with a high level of specificity – and I am aware of some of the debates here, but it is inescapable that a large number of verses are to do with historical flow denominated with what would appear to be precise date references; furthermore a similar proportion of Genesis 1 has a similar characteristic.

Undeniably, there are various forms of literature within the Pentateuch, including a snippet of poetry in Genesis 1, and elsewhere, legal codes (compare Ex 20:11, for example), and lists. Blocher refers to Genesis 1 as a 'list' and its form seemingly lines up nicely with Numbers 7. Indeed, the regularity of the treatment in Genesis 1 reminds me more of a computer data structure than anything else: a fabulous means of communicating a sequence in an economical and unambiguous manner; with particular reinforcement of the flow. In fact, in Genesis 1, the author is emphatic about chronological flow.

But, the critical question for the so-called 'Framework Hypothesis', is does the passage allow the six days to fall into paired triads? First raised, to my knowledge, by Herder, in the 19th C. then debunked by Keil and Delitzsch, revived by Noordzij, rebutted by Young, given fresh air by Kline, as the doyen of contemporary frameworkers, then criticised by Pipa and McCabe (and McCabe part 2), amongst others. It's had its latest day out to my knowledge with John D at an ISCAST seminar a few years ago at UNSW.

All said and done, though, it doesn't work! The correspondence proposed appears to hold at first blush, but when the detail is brought to the table, any coherence evaporates. Heavenly bodies of D4 are placed in the firmament of D2, not D1. Birds of D5 breed on the ground of D3 and they are not in the firmament, but on its face; the creatures of water of D5 live in the oceans of D3. The land for D6 has its first mention by implication on D1, in the earth's wilderness state. No line up at all! The point has often been made in the literature, but the frameworkers have failed to deal with it.

The 'forming-filling' analysis seems interesting, but I think also falls short of the mark. In not properly handling the cascade of dependencies that build in complexity as a network of relationships are woven through the six days; days of organising and distributing with increasing refinement. Acknowledging this provides a sounder basis for developing a theology of creation than the comparative aridity of the 'forming-filling' model, in my view.

Then, one has to ask, what would be the purpose of a 'framework,' if there was one, or even of the 6 days if purely a literary stylism? I've not read anything that convincingly sets out a purpose that is proximately connected with the content of the text and not 'puff'. There are 'purposes' proposed, but they are distant from the text's references, and being distant, do not make a connection with what is related in the terms related. They are not consistent with the relational intimacy that the Bible speaks of between God and mankind, and so, in concept, depart from the text and do not support its central message of relationship and dependency. I actually asked John D. how Genesis taught what is commonly claimed if it wasn't true to life. He gave no answer (but that could just be John being John).

Similarly to the approach you discussed, the abstracted theology that is presented as being the point of the revelation ends merely with a form of propaganda for God's being an orderly creator, we being his dependent creatures or in symbolic contests with competing myths: polemical 'mythbusting' as you put it. No adequate explanation is ever given in these contexts as to how a mere arrangement of words, without any real world referent that corresponds to those words, busts any myth? It's merely an unproductive case of 'my myth vs your myth,' reminiscent of the old Goon Show joke "give up, or I'll show you a photograph of a gun"

God's formation and his re-formations of his relationship with his creation, then his particular people is always based on his acts (initiated by his word), not just words empty of concrete effect; facts, not fiction; acts grounded in a realist encounter. Consider, for example, the competition with Baal and the wet wood.

Genesis 1 stands at the commencement of a great trajectory of history that will culminate in the (real) new heavens and the new earth; the incarnational trajectory is similarly historical, with the Son of Man doing what the Son of God (Adam, referring to Luke's genealogy) failed to do. The two trajectories are coupled ontologically; if one is undermined they both collapse.

My fundamental concern with the direction taken in your sermon is that it was not sufficiently free from the dualist shackles that dog us in both theology and culture. For example, if God brings order from chaos, the question immediately springs as to the origin of the chaos. It would seem peculiar to make a problem in order to solve it, and just for rhetorical reasons. Or it may invite reference to a sort of 'counter-demiurge' to do the initial 'chaos making'. Either way, inconsistent, I would think, with Genesis 1 which has its focus the steady and grand unfolding from initial conditions.

Assigning to Genesis 1 the status of a purely theological account of origins also steps through the idealist portal and invites us to run a kind of OT docetism. The disconnection of theology from the real world runs counter to the Bible's pattern of theology being embedded in real world events: that is, events bounded by our 'earth frame of reference' and the horizon of the categories of human experience: what is in relation to God and in this world of his making is coupled, not disarticulated.

Nowhere in the Bible is there such a disjunct between what God reveals and what he does as the 'literary' theology of creation requires. Moreover, to make such a separation immediately undermines any attempt at a polemic not rooted in actuality. Doubly ironic for the creation account in that it sets the terms of its perspective very forcefully: by making it's only referents the categories of our life: place, time and relationships all which are within the terms of our experience, and in material terms; how peculiar if the revelation of creation is very 'this-worldly' in terms and categories, but intends to reveal something 'unworldly' (that is, something else really happened, not this, but the 'other' is more significant that what is conveyed)! Thus it raises the question of the truth-value of Genesis 1, if it is only true 'theologically'. The 'idealist (or, even worse, dualist) on the premises' alarm bells start ringing because 'theology' is itself not 'real'. Theology is our discourse about God and from his revelation and that alone. To say that Genesis 1 is only a theological truth is exactly what we would avoid in theologising about the Incarnation, for instance, and should be what we would avoid with any part of the revelation, particularly where the question of genre interfering with an historical appreciation is typically answered tendentiously. No, it is only possible to do theology with Genesis 1 because it is put in the same 'historical realist' frame as all God's dealings under his covenants and the only frame of our experience of God. The history of relationships is earthily historical; to think that Israel invited Babylonian or other pagan myth-making to underpin its very personal and concrete religion is surprising, to say the least.

Overall, it would be interesting to contemplate how we might know that Genesis 1 is not true to actual events circumscribed by our spatial-temporal frame and so establish that it makes only a 'theological' play, and not a realist one. Would we refer, or defer, to the conclusions of a worldview that starts with the assumption that there is no God? Would this not have us jettison the worldview that emerged from Genesis—from taking Genesis seriously, and literally, I might add—and, as you rightly mentioned, formed the basis for modern science, as Jaki, Harrison and others have described?

The final word I think which unhinges the dualism of Genesis 1 as a 'theological' account, but not an historical-realist account is the remark that M. made at the end of the service, He said something to the effect that he would now be able to discuss the 'unreal story' [of creation] with his classes but not imply an 'unreal God'. To the contrary! If the origin is an 'unreal' story, then we must look elsewhere for who we really are: the God who cannot found a relationship in actual events is probably not a god that can maintain any relationship with temporal creatures…as holds much of the New Age movement. I'm sure most of his students will see the unreality of a god who only attaches to us through a non-story that tells of things that didn't happen. Literary or not: a God we cannot meet.