One of the most interesting questions raised by the average theistic evolutionist is that of the ‘method’ God employed in creating the cosmos and life within it. It is offered as an apparent challenge to the reading of Genesis 1 that takes the direct meaning of the text as substantiated, proposing, it would seem a flaw in the content that prevents the direct reading from credibly recounting events as they occurred. Or, in other words, it might be the truth, but it cannot be the whole truth. What is missing, the question implies, is information about the method by which God brought about his creation. Without a method, it seems, the text is not acceptable, can be set aside, in its detail, if not in its generality, and requires other information to lend it any credibility.
It appears that it is held, that in the face of Genesis 1, where no ‘method’ is evident to produce the creation, and the postulations of contemporary science (or what is accepted as contemporary science) which makes out that it has identified a method by which life was brought into the cosmos (which it has not, but that’s another matter and there’s plenty of material elsewhere on this, so I’ll not touch on it), there appears to be a need in some minds for a method of creation to be found or surmised for the creation account to gain our attention, and that method is supplied by the substantial materialist dogma of biological evolution.
It is said, in this line of thought, that because no method is evident in Genesis 1, one is needed, or must be assumed, or is possibly unstated allowing, in this instance, the introduction of a method from what is considered to be the conclusions of modern science to fill out the account in Genesis 1 and blend its lofty language, taken to be restricted to a theological sphere, with the concrete facts brought to us by science. Hey presto, the two are now one and together satisfy the questions of science and the demands of theology.
But, of course, this is a confused line of reasoning.
It confuses fact and idea, it considers theology to be like philosophy, or even like poetry or mythology (a striking confusion for Christians to encourage), it confuses science and philosophy, or even religion, and it confuses God with his creation.
I’ll elaborate my thoughts on the ‘four confusions’ later.
My interest in the question arises from the its supposing that there is a need to have a method underlay the bare words of Genesis 1. Similarly there is an occasional quest for the method behind the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues in Egypt. Oddly, there is less frequently a quest for the methods Jesus might have used in stilling the storm (although some might put this down to foresight, which is not quite what we are told in the gospels), walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick, or converting water to wine; his first recorded miracle. I have heard some explanations of the Cana miracle, but against the text they are lame.
In fact, it was a striking illustration depicting Jesus walking on water questioned by one of my children that leads to this short essay. Seeing the illustration for the first time lead to a spontaneous exclamation “What’s that?” in an amazed tone of voice. I explained what it was, and there followed a question “How did he do it?”, as though knowledge of method might enable replication; or it might have been a guileless enquiry as to how this act, so contrary to our experience could come about.
I think the only explanation, and the one that I used was that he wanted to, and what he wants to do he does without restraint.
Cana allows a similar observation. There is nothing special about water turning into wine: it is done frequently and the method is well known: plant vines, ensure they have adequate water, harvest grapes, crush them, extract juice, ferment it, and there we are: wine. What is special at Cana is that there was no ‘method’. It was the bare direct response of the creation to the will of the creator. If you want a method, it is the exercise of will and nothing more.
To propose that there are subsidiary methods underlying the exercise of will threatens the simplicity of God, making him a complex of parts and motions, of will and methods, one who must fabricate using fundamental components. If there were any such components to the exercise of will (or its expression in word, which amounts to the same thing: a direct extension of the will arising from the self-ness of God), they would have to be either already in God simply, and therefore having the same locus as the will, or be a complex within God (the possibility of which I have already disregarded), or external to God, and if not created by him (method rises its head again in a fatal infinite regress), then created by another, or self existent, and if so, God evaporates in a puff of logic. If something apart from God can be self-existent, then either it is God, and God whom we know is a creature, or there is no God at all. But we know of nothing self-existent that has a beginning, and all things we know, apart from God do have a beginning, so until this is unwound, the proposal fails.
The requirement that there be a method in creation underneath the account we have in Genesis 1 is to say that the account is not enough to explain the creation: God’s exercise of his will is not adequate for the questioner to understand that God willed, his will was his act, and his act brought forth the cosmos and life in the manner given in Genesis 1.
If there is something deficient in this, it is a deficiency in God who must rely on processes or parts external to himself to bring forth the cosmos and its contained life; or God is not capable to produce effects by will, and must rely on intermediaries. The intermediaries are either within him and so have the same origin, and are thus not necessary, or God is not simple but of parts and having variation within, and so is not the God of the Bible or he is not God at all and relies for the effect of his will on other things.
Whatever it is, the God of the Bible is denied by the requirement that a ‘method’ is required for the creation as set out in Genesis 1 that is additional to what we are told: that God spoke, it occurred and it was good, or very good. One might also refer to John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3.
Indeed, it could well be that one of the points that is made in Genesis 1 is that no ‘method’ was used or was necessary for God to achieve the object of his will, thus showing that the dynamic between creator and creation was unmediated.
Addendum on the four confusions.
1. Fact and idea
These two are confused because the idea of evolution is taken to be factual. In most formulations this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent writ large. That is: “life as we see it could be produced by evolution as we state it, therefore, because we see life evolution has occurred. However, the facticity of evolution must be established independently of the boosterism that normally accompanies it.
2. Theology and philosophy, or even poetry or myth
Theology seems to be given the status of philosophy at best, poetry or myth at worst. But philosophy is content with building an intellectual system on basic premises; it is derivative from our knowledge and thinking. Theology is the work of understanding the Bible and making its application to our life and experience. Philosophy starts within us and is developed through our chosen frame of view of the world; theology, while it is often influenced uncritically by philosophy, does not start with us, but with the objective content of the Bible. Any choice to set aside the objective content is a choice to move from theology to philosophy. This choice is often taken when materialism is substituted for theism in reading the Bible.
Even more contestably, is the confusion of theology with the art forms of poetry or myth, the later of which I take as a sort of culturally comforting story telling. This means that theology is less a reflection on the objective text of the Bible (the only job of theology), and takes the text on an impressionistic adventure that expresses the artistic urges of the ancient Hebrews and on a level with the dream time tales of Australian aboriginals.
3. Science and philosophy, or even religion
On the other hand, it confuses science and philosophy by conveniently overlooking the materialist bones of modern evolutionary thought (and, for that matter, of historical evolutionary thought in most cases) and thinking ‘science’, when reading ‘philosophy’; the materialist basis of much modern scientific discourse, particularly in this area where anything but the material is denied (reducing ideas to the level of material interactions, and no more), is ignored and the successes of modern science where it is doing its proper job are used to bolster its claims in this area, which is not a scientific area at all. Incidentally, modern science stands with feet firmly planted in an approach to the world that emerged from taking the creation account in Genesis seriously, and setting out for us that the world is objectively real and capable of reasonable investigation.
The science-religion confusion occurs where materialism has moved from being a philosophical matter to being a religious matter. It is an easy move to make, but I would call it a religious view rather than a philosophical one where, in Closer’s terms (The Myth of Religious Neutrality – Closer is ironically a theistic evolutionist!) the axioms of the system are taken to represent what is independently real: basic beliefs, and where those beliefs are isolated from critical evaluation. To adopt a metaphor from another context: philosophy is building a view of the world to think about; religion is when one is living by that view. A further irony here is that Christian belief is subject to intense critical scrutiny by its adherents, on the basis, I would surmise, of the apostle Paul saying that if the resurrection did not occur, we are deluded and of all men to be pitied. Try to catch a materialist making a similar observation.
4. God and his creation
The final confusion occurs when God is merged with his creation, and must use ‘method’, which only would be sought if his separateness from his creation were not understood. If this is the case, we don’t have a ‘god’ worth talking about and may as well, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, and dust is the end of us.
The big BUT is that no one lives as though their fate is dust. Most people live as though (their) life and others’ has a value that is independent of its material existence.
30 April 2009
27 April 2009
Fundamentalism
Not feeling a need to restrict this blog to matters strictly concerned with creation and its theology, I picked up this recently on Michael Jensen's website.
The blog by Michael seems to have attracted a lot of debate, and I added my two bits worth. Below for ease of reference.
"I note that there is a cross current of arguments about fundamentalism, but no real definition. Is the word used here as journalists typically use it: with a range from 'bible believing' to simply kooky, and melding all together, or is it used with reference aperjoratively to the set of books issued in the 1930s as a statement against modern North American liberalism of the fundamentals of christian faith; a set of propositions that largely, at the time, I understand, defined orthodox evangelicalism. See here.
If it's the latter, then I guess I'm a fundamentalist, but that does not mean that I fall for faith as the atheist would accuse me (believing with no evidence, which is not biblical faith at all), or that I see answers to everything in the Bible. What it does mean is that I take the Bible as definitonal of my view of the world and its relationships. It sets up a framework by which I attempt to construct understanding: these understandings I am wont to doubt, but their basis I am probably not.
So what is the argument between Sam, John and the others?
BTW, I would agree that orthodox Christianity provides a better position from which to doubt than atheism (and I think that modern atheism is a weird type of Christian heresy anyway) because at least it provides a basis for persons that extends validity beyond the merely material and elevates doubt to the level of meaningful, rather than the random."
I known it is not possible to read too much into blog posts, but it seems to me that there is something missing from the analysis implicit in Michael's blog. That is, our 'first motion of the intellect' is belief. We can get nowhere if we do not first believe...something. All else follows, but our beliefs will determine finally how we see the world and our place in it. So, in a sense, everyone has a religious position. Everyone bases their thought life on taking something as having an independent reality. For most of us, this is sub-articulate, that is, taken, but not stated.
Thus to accuse 'fundamentalists' such as myself, but with the definition, that I take the Bible to be inerrent and the inspired communication of God to humanity, and so the statement from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: "2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises."
I hope Michael had this in mind, and did not fall into the trap of taking the popular definition, that 'fundamentalists' are socially or politically militant or archly conservantive, or somehow hard against human frailties. Not so in my case, but I don't want to go to politics or social questions here.
My concern is that Michael seemed to allow himself a fairly uncritical engagement with the structure of theoretical thinking that must start with a belief position, and for Christians above all, that belief position has to be found in the Bible, and nowhere else. A number of statements in the Bible, by Paul and others, bolster this view. I think particularly of Col 2:8, and 2 Cor 10:5.
The blog by Michael seems to have attracted a lot of debate, and I added my two bits worth. Below for ease of reference.
"I note that there is a cross current of arguments about fundamentalism, but no real definition. Is the word used here as journalists typically use it: with a range from 'bible believing' to simply kooky, and melding all together, or is it used with reference aperjoratively to the set of books issued in the 1930s as a statement against modern North American liberalism of the fundamentals of christian faith; a set of propositions that largely, at the time, I understand, defined orthodox evangelicalism. See here.
If it's the latter, then I guess I'm a fundamentalist, but that does not mean that I fall for faith as the atheist would accuse me (believing with no evidence, which is not biblical faith at all), or that I see answers to everything in the Bible. What it does mean is that I take the Bible as definitonal of my view of the world and its relationships. It sets up a framework by which I attempt to construct understanding: these understandings I am wont to doubt, but their basis I am probably not.
So what is the argument between Sam, John and the others?
BTW, I would agree that orthodox Christianity provides a better position from which to doubt than atheism (and I think that modern atheism is a weird type of Christian heresy anyway) because at least it provides a basis for persons that extends validity beyond the merely material and elevates doubt to the level of meaningful, rather than the random."
I known it is not possible to read too much into blog posts, but it seems to me that there is something missing from the analysis implicit in Michael's blog. That is, our 'first motion of the intellect' is belief. We can get nowhere if we do not first believe...something. All else follows, but our beliefs will determine finally how we see the world and our place in it. So, in a sense, everyone has a religious position. Everyone bases their thought life on taking something as having an independent reality. For most of us, this is sub-articulate, that is, taken, but not stated.
Thus to accuse 'fundamentalists' such as myself, but with the definition, that I take the Bible to be inerrent and the inspired communication of God to humanity, and so the statement from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: "2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises."
I hope Michael had this in mind, and did not fall into the trap of taking the popular definition, that 'fundamentalists' are socially or politically militant or archly conservantive, or somehow hard against human frailties. Not so in my case, but I don't want to go to politics or social questions here.
My concern is that Michael seemed to allow himself a fairly uncritical engagement with the structure of theoretical thinking that must start with a belief position, and for Christians above all, that belief position has to be found in the Bible, and nowhere else. A number of statements in the Bible, by Paul and others, bolster this view. I think particularly of Col 2:8, and 2 Cor 10:5.
25 April 2009
The Loch Ness Monster
In an aside in a recent sermon (in our series on the theology of the atonement: March 2009), one of our ministers said something like “I can assure you that the Lock Ness monster is not a dinosaur left over from Noah’s ark, apologies to those who are upset by that.”
I can’t remember if he mentioned Noah’s ark, but if not, it logically underlays the statement.
Now, I couldn’t care less what any one thinks of the Lock Ness monster, or what it might be. The evidence is so unreliable as to leave any views in the realm of speculation; and as we all know, we can speculate until the cows come home and still know nothing.
What intrigued me is the incongruity of the remark and its internal baselessness. If this is an example of how theologians think, then no wonder we cannot communicate hope to a world without it!
The starting point is how did he ‘know’ that the Lock Ness monster (if it exists) is not any particular thing? He must have seen it to make that statement, and know what dinosaurs were at the time of Noah’s Ark. This is, of course, impossible.
I suppose if he was referring to some contemporary stories about the age and history of the biosphere, he might have thought that he could make that statement with confidence. He might even have a theological theory that would lend the statement some credibility. But, as none of this was stated, the remark was disingenuous, at worst, meaningless at best.
If he accepted contemporary stories, I suppose he would have structured his declamation on the basis that dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, long before mankind was created, and therefore there were no dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, irrespective of his beliefs about the ark and the flood.
But his is basing a claim on a set of assumptions that commence with the assumption that there is no God, or the softer, but still highly unchristian assumption, that God relates to his creation as deism describes. So he possibly attempts to overturn a view that could be a logical outworking of a view of the history of the world drawn from biblical data using views that reject the Bible. Nice!
On the other hand, he could be letting the deist basis of the modern chronology of the world sit to one side, while denying that the Bible has any content that relates to the world we are in, but only has content that is theological in character. But this amounts to arbitrarily imposing a filter on the scripture that doesn’t emerge from the scripture itself; a striking move when the Spirit very explicitly puts the covenant between God and man in its physical setting, so as to provide the ground of the covenant (pun intended) and the locus of the relationship.
As I’ve argued elsewhere in this blog, the soteriological arc extends from the initial conditions set out in Genesis 1. If it doesn’t, and the initial conditions are fictional, at some level, then we have theology that has become story-telling, in the fairy story sense of the phrase.
Not good!
I can’t remember if he mentioned Noah’s ark, but if not, it logically underlays the statement.
Now, I couldn’t care less what any one thinks of the Lock Ness monster, or what it might be. The evidence is so unreliable as to leave any views in the realm of speculation; and as we all know, we can speculate until the cows come home and still know nothing.
What intrigued me is the incongruity of the remark and its internal baselessness. If this is an example of how theologians think, then no wonder we cannot communicate hope to a world without it!
The starting point is how did he ‘know’ that the Lock Ness monster (if it exists) is not any particular thing? He must have seen it to make that statement, and know what dinosaurs were at the time of Noah’s Ark. This is, of course, impossible.
I suppose if he was referring to some contemporary stories about the age and history of the biosphere, he might have thought that he could make that statement with confidence. He might even have a theological theory that would lend the statement some credibility. But, as none of this was stated, the remark was disingenuous, at worst, meaningless at best.
If he accepted contemporary stories, I suppose he would have structured his declamation on the basis that dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, long before mankind was created, and therefore there were no dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, irrespective of his beliefs about the ark and the flood.
But his is basing a claim on a set of assumptions that commence with the assumption that there is no God, or the softer, but still highly unchristian assumption, that God relates to his creation as deism describes. So he possibly attempts to overturn a view that could be a logical outworking of a view of the history of the world drawn from biblical data using views that reject the Bible. Nice!
On the other hand, he could be letting the deist basis of the modern chronology of the world sit to one side, while denying that the Bible has any content that relates to the world we are in, but only has content that is theological in character. But this amounts to arbitrarily imposing a filter on the scripture that doesn’t emerge from the scripture itself; a striking move when the Spirit very explicitly puts the covenant between God and man in its physical setting, so as to provide the ground of the covenant (pun intended) and the locus of the relationship.
As I’ve argued elsewhere in this blog, the soteriological arc extends from the initial conditions set out in Genesis 1. If it doesn’t, and the initial conditions are fictional, at some level, then we have theology that has become story-telling, in the fairy story sense of the phrase.
Not good!
20 April 2009
Enuma elish
From time to time discussion of the status of Genesis 1 swings round to its alleged similarity with the Babylonia tale Enuma elish. I’ve seen such discussion on the Anglican Forum sponsored by the diocese, although ‘discussion’ is not the ideal description for the exchanges I’ve read, where the parties sometimes talk at cross purposes (particularly if they disagree with a point advanced) and without really attending to the points made by the other.
In that context, an article by Hasel, G. “The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis 1 in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Parallels” from 1971 is interesting.
I’ve included some pertinent excerpts from the paper here.
…[B]y the turn of the century and continuing into the twenties and thirties the idea of a direct connection of some kind between the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts of creation was taken for granted, with the general consensus of critical opinion that the Hebrew creation story depended on a Babylonian original.
…
[But] it is no longer scientifically sound to assume that all ideas originated in Mesopotamia and moved westward as H. Winckler's "pan-Babylonian" theory had claimed under the support of Friedrich Delitzsch and others. The cultural situation is extremely complex and diverse. Today we know that "a great variety of ideas circulated in ancient Mesopotamia…”
…
N. M. Sarna, who wrote one of the most comprehensive recent studies on the relationship between Gn and extra-biblical sources bearing on it, states: "... to ignore subtle differences [between Genesis and ancient Near Eastern parallels] is to present an unbalanced and untrue perspective and to pervert the scientific method." The importance of difference is, there- fore, just as crucial as the importance of similarity. Both must receive careful and studied attention in order to avoid a misreading of elements of one culture in terms of another, which produces gross distortion…
…
On this basis there is a growing consensus of opinion that the Biblical term tehom and the Babylonian Tiamat derive from a common Semitic root. This means that the use of the word of tehom in Gn 1:2 cannot be used as an argument for a direct dependence of Gn I on the Babylonian Enuma elish.
…
In contrast to the concept of the personified Tiamat, the mythical antagonist of the creator-god Marduk, the tehom in Gn 1:2 lacks any aspect of personification. It is clearly an inanimate part of the cosmos, simply a part of the created world. The "deep" does not offer any resistance to God's creative activity. In view of these observations it is un-sustainable to speak of a "demythologizing" of a mythical being in Gn 1:2. The term tehom as used in vs. 2 does not suggest that there is present in this usage the remnant of a latent conflict between a chaos monster and a creator god. The author of Gn 1 employs this term in a "depersonalized" and "non-mythical" way.
…
In short, the description of the depersonalized, undifferentiated, unorganized, and passive state of tehom in Gn 1:2 is not due to any influence from non-Israelite mythology but is motivated through the Hebrew conception of the world. In stating the conditions in which this earth existed before God commanded that light should spring forth, the author of Gn 1 rejected explicitly contemporary mythological notions.
…
These notable differences have led T. H. Gaster to suggest that "the writer [of Gn 1] has suppressed or expurgated older and cruder mythological fancies." But these differences are not so much due to suppressing or expurgating mythology. They rather indicate a radical break with the mythical cosmogony. We agree with C. Westermann that the Biblical author in explaining the creation of the firmament (expanse) "does not reflect in this act of creation the contemporary world-view, rather he overcomes it.
…
N. M. Sarna considers the similarity between the Egyptian notion of creation by word and the one in Gn 1 as "wholly superficial." In Egyptian thought the pronouncement of the right magical word, like the performance of the right magical action, is able to actualize the potentialities inherent in matter. The Gn concept of creation by divine fiat is not obscured by polytheistic and mantic-magic distortions.
…
With von Rad and others we may conclude that "the entire passage vs. 14-19 breathes a strongly antimythical pathos" or polemic. Living in the world of his day, the writer of Gn 1 was undoubtedly well acquainted with pagan astral worship, as were the readers for whom he wrote. The Hebrew account of the creation, function, and limitation of the luminaries demonstrates that he did not borrow his unique thoughts from the prevailing pagan mythical views. Rather he combats them while, at the same time, he portrays his own picture of the creatureliness of the luminaries and of their limitations.
…
But when it comes to defining the purpose of man's creation, he [the scriptural writer] makes a supremely significant advance upon the time-honored pagan view. In contrast to the doctrine enunciated in the Mesopotamian myths. .. , man is here represented, not as the menial of the gods, but as the ruler of the animal and vegetable kingdoms (1:28).
…
On the other hand, in Mesopotamian mythology the creation of man is almost incidental, presented as a kind of afterthought, where he is a menial of the gods to provide them with nourishment and to satisfy their physical needs. The author of Gn 1 presents an antithetical view. The very first communication between God and man comes in the form of a divine blessing.
Order of Creation
A comparison with Enuma elish indicates certain analogies in the order of creation: firmament, dry land, luminaries, and lastly man. These orders of creation certainly resemble each other in a remarkable way. But there are some rather significant differences which have been too often overlooked. (1) There is no explicit statement in Enuma elish that light was created before the creation of luminaries. Although scholars have in the past maintained that Enuma elish has the notion of light before the creation of the heavenly luminaries, such a view is based on dubious interpretations of certain phenomena. (2) There is no explicit reference in Enuma elish to the creation of the sun. To infer this from Marduk's character as a solar deity and from what is said about the creation of the moon in Tablet V is too precarious. (3) Missing also in Enuma elish is the creation of vegetation, although Marduk is known to be the "creator of grains and herbs." Even if the creation of vegetation were mentioned in the missing lines of Tablet V, its appearance would have been after the luminaries whereas in Gn it is before the luminaries. (4) Finally, Enuma elish knows nothing of the creation of any animal life in sea and sky or on earth. A comparison of creative processes and their order indicates the following: (1) Gn 1 outlines twice as many processes of creation as Enuma elish; and (2) there is only a general analogy between the order of creation in both accounts; it is not identical.
…
E. Wurthwein suggests that the placing of the creation accounts in Gn at the beginning of a linear history emphasizes a contrast to the cyclical nature of mythology, which is especially significant in view of the fact that creation in Gn 1 comes to a close within a certain non-repeatable period of creative time that closed with the seventh day. In his view this should be under- stood as a polemic which marks off, defends, and delimits against such mythical speculations that maintain a constantly repeating re-enactment of creation. Furthermore, it should not go unnoticed that the creation of the tanninim, "sea monsters," in Gn 1:21 reflects a deliberate effort to contradict the notion of creation in terms of a struggle, which is a key motif in the battle myth of pagan cosmogony. It also puts emphasis upon the creatureliness of the tanninim as being identical to that of other created animals
…
Gn cosmology as presented in Gn 1:1-2:4a appears thus basically different from the mythological cosmologies of the ancient Near East. It represents not only a "complete break" with the ancient Near Eastern mythological cosmologies but represents a parting of the spiritual ways which meant an undermining of the prevailing mythological cosmologies. This was brought about by the conscious and deliberate antimythical polemic that runs as a red thread through the entire Gn cosmology. The antimythical polemic has its roots in the Hebrew understanding of reality which is fundamentally opposed to the mythological one.
This is also mentioned in a paper on the St Mark's Avalon site.
In that context, an article by Hasel, G. “The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis 1 in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Parallels” from 1971 is interesting.
I’ve included some pertinent excerpts from the paper here.
…[B]y the turn of the century and continuing into the twenties and thirties the idea of a direct connection of some kind between the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts of creation was taken for granted, with the general consensus of critical opinion that the Hebrew creation story depended on a Babylonian original.
…
[But] it is no longer scientifically sound to assume that all ideas originated in Mesopotamia and moved westward as H. Winckler's "pan-Babylonian" theory had claimed under the support of Friedrich Delitzsch and others. The cultural situation is extremely complex and diverse. Today we know that "a great variety of ideas circulated in ancient Mesopotamia…”
…
N. M. Sarna, who wrote one of the most comprehensive recent studies on the relationship between Gn and extra-biblical sources bearing on it, states: "... to ignore subtle differences [between Genesis and ancient Near Eastern parallels] is to present an unbalanced and untrue perspective and to pervert the scientific method." The importance of difference is, there- fore, just as crucial as the importance of similarity. Both must receive careful and studied attention in order to avoid a misreading of elements of one culture in terms of another, which produces gross distortion…
…
On this basis there is a growing consensus of opinion that the Biblical term tehom and the Babylonian Tiamat derive from a common Semitic root. This means that the use of the word of tehom in Gn 1:2 cannot be used as an argument for a direct dependence of Gn I on the Babylonian Enuma elish.
…
In contrast to the concept of the personified Tiamat, the mythical antagonist of the creator-god Marduk, the tehom in Gn 1:2 lacks any aspect of personification. It is clearly an inanimate part of the cosmos, simply a part of the created world. The "deep" does not offer any resistance to God's creative activity. In view of these observations it is un-sustainable to speak of a "demythologizing" of a mythical being in Gn 1:2. The term tehom as used in vs. 2 does not suggest that there is present in this usage the remnant of a latent conflict between a chaos monster and a creator god. The author of Gn 1 employs this term in a "depersonalized" and "non-mythical" way.
…
In short, the description of the depersonalized, undifferentiated, unorganized, and passive state of tehom in Gn 1:2 is not due to any influence from non-Israelite mythology but is motivated through the Hebrew conception of the world. In stating the conditions in which this earth existed before God commanded that light should spring forth, the author of Gn 1 rejected explicitly contemporary mythological notions.
…
These notable differences have led T. H. Gaster to suggest that "the writer [of Gn 1] has suppressed or expurgated older and cruder mythological fancies." But these differences are not so much due to suppressing or expurgating mythology. They rather indicate a radical break with the mythical cosmogony. We agree with C. Westermann that the Biblical author in explaining the creation of the firmament (expanse) "does not reflect in this act of creation the contemporary world-view, rather he overcomes it.
…
N. M. Sarna considers the similarity between the Egyptian notion of creation by word and the one in Gn 1 as "wholly superficial." In Egyptian thought the pronouncement of the right magical word, like the performance of the right magical action, is able to actualize the potentialities inherent in matter. The Gn concept of creation by divine fiat is not obscured by polytheistic and mantic-magic distortions.
…
With von Rad and others we may conclude that "the entire passage vs. 14-19 breathes a strongly antimythical pathos" or polemic. Living in the world of his day, the writer of Gn 1 was undoubtedly well acquainted with pagan astral worship, as were the readers for whom he wrote. The Hebrew account of the creation, function, and limitation of the luminaries demonstrates that he did not borrow his unique thoughts from the prevailing pagan mythical views. Rather he combats them while, at the same time, he portrays his own picture of the creatureliness of the luminaries and of their limitations.
…
But when it comes to defining the purpose of man's creation, he [the scriptural writer] makes a supremely significant advance upon the time-honored pagan view. In contrast to the doctrine enunciated in the Mesopotamian myths. .. , man is here represented, not as the menial of the gods, but as the ruler of the animal and vegetable kingdoms (1:28).
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On the other hand, in Mesopotamian mythology the creation of man is almost incidental, presented as a kind of afterthought, where he is a menial of the gods to provide them with nourishment and to satisfy their physical needs. The author of Gn 1 presents an antithetical view. The very first communication between God and man comes in the form of a divine blessing.
Order of Creation
A comparison with Enuma elish indicates certain analogies in the order of creation: firmament, dry land, luminaries, and lastly man. These orders of creation certainly resemble each other in a remarkable way. But there are some rather significant differences which have been too often overlooked. (1) There is no explicit statement in Enuma elish that light was created before the creation of luminaries. Although scholars have in the past maintained that Enuma elish has the notion of light before the creation of the heavenly luminaries, such a view is based on dubious interpretations of certain phenomena. (2) There is no explicit reference in Enuma elish to the creation of the sun. To infer this from Marduk's character as a solar deity and from what is said about the creation of the moon in Tablet V is too precarious. (3) Missing also in Enuma elish is the creation of vegetation, although Marduk is known to be the "creator of grains and herbs." Even if the creation of vegetation were mentioned in the missing lines of Tablet V, its appearance would have been after the luminaries whereas in Gn it is before the luminaries. (4) Finally, Enuma elish knows nothing of the creation of any animal life in sea and sky or on earth. A comparison of creative processes and their order indicates the following: (1) Gn 1 outlines twice as many processes of creation as Enuma elish; and (2) there is only a general analogy between the order of creation in both accounts; it is not identical.
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E. Wurthwein suggests that the placing of the creation accounts in Gn at the beginning of a linear history emphasizes a contrast to the cyclical nature of mythology, which is especially significant in view of the fact that creation in Gn 1 comes to a close within a certain non-repeatable period of creative time that closed with the seventh day. In his view this should be under- stood as a polemic which marks off, defends, and delimits against such mythical speculations that maintain a constantly repeating re-enactment of creation. Furthermore, it should not go unnoticed that the creation of the tanninim, "sea monsters," in Gn 1:21 reflects a deliberate effort to contradict the notion of creation in terms of a struggle, which is a key motif in the battle myth of pagan cosmogony. It also puts emphasis upon the creatureliness of the tanninim as being identical to that of other created animals
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Gn cosmology as presented in Gn 1:1-2:4a appears thus basically different from the mythological cosmologies of the ancient Near East. It represents not only a "complete break" with the ancient Near Eastern mythological cosmologies but represents a parting of the spiritual ways which meant an undermining of the prevailing mythological cosmologies. This was brought about by the conscious and deliberate antimythical polemic that runs as a red thread through the entire Gn cosmology. The antimythical polemic has its roots in the Hebrew understanding of reality which is fundamentally opposed to the mythological one.
This is also mentioned in a paper on the St Mark's Avalon site.
16 April 2009
Men, Women and Genesis
Interesting couple of articles on the CBE website:
One, on the equality of men and women, argued from Genesis 1-3, and the other on the implications Paul draws from the new creation. Have a read.
Odd that my most conservative views about the creation go to my (for a conservative) somewhat 'radical' views about the relation between women and men, some would say. To that I say (nicely, I hope), go read your Bible.
One, on the equality of men and women, argued from Genesis 1-3, and the other on the implications Paul draws from the new creation. Have a read.
Odd that my most conservative views about the creation go to my (for a conservative) somewhat 'radical' views about the relation between women and men, some would say. To that I say (nicely, I hope), go read your Bible.
15 April 2009
Dinosaur photo.
Well, the title is just to get some attention…it’s a photo of a piece of graffiti about dinosaurs. It is on a tree in a car park near my local Uniting Church premises. I’ve walked past it for years without noticing until now.
If you’ve trouble reading it, it says: “Why aren’t dinosaurs in the Bible?”
Answer 1: The word ‘dinosaur’ was invented in the 19th century, so the word couldn’t be in writings composed prior to that date.
Answer 2: Given that the word was not used prior to the 19th century, we could look at descriptions of animals in the Bible.
For some commentators, the descriptions of leviathan and behemoth in Job are consistent with what we know of some dinosaurs from their fossils.
Job 40:15 describes an animal that is sometimes thought to be an elephant, but the description of the tail eliminates that possibility.
Job 41:1 describes a more unusual animal, sometimes thought to be a large crocodile, but that doesn’t fit, with description including: ‘outer armour’, ‘double mail’, ‘strong scales’, ‘out of his nostrils smoke goes forth’.
It is the inconclusiveness of these descriptions that lends verisimilitude, in my view. If a writer was trying to invent a creature, they would be more likely to give a thorough description to ensure their readers understood them. But here, because Job is referring to creatures that are known to his readers, his description can be effective in abbreviated form, simply brining to mind the aspects of the creatures he is interested in.
Similarly today, if we were talking of an elephant, we might only mention its trunk, or thick legs, or big torso, or little tail, not giving a comprehensive description, and we would all know what we were talking about. But to someone who had never encountered the animal it would not be adequate to give a mental impression of the animal’s appearance.
12 April 2009
Genealogy does...
Flicking through my notes on the sermon series that started this blog: that on Genesis, I had recorded the speaker's remark: the purpose of the genealogies is to find the 'serpent crusher', that mentioned in Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel."
Their work is to connect the arrival of the serpent crusher to the events that gave rise to the fall, curse and promise, and to direct us to undoing of our basic fear, that of death.
If there is no historical thread between the serpent crusher and Eve, that is, if the events of the garden are mere story...myth, then there is no point to the serpent crusher being in historical continuity with that which he will crush; and death is not undone, because death is in our historical context, not in a story world.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel."
Their work is to connect the arrival of the serpent crusher to the events that gave rise to the fall, curse and promise, and to direct us to undoing of our basic fear, that of death.
If there is no historical thread between the serpent crusher and Eve, that is, if the events of the garden are mere story...myth, then there is no point to the serpent crusher being in historical continuity with that which he will crush; and death is not undone, because death is in our historical context, not in a story world.
10 April 2009
Pre-eminence
In the passage below (Col 1:9-20-Green’s Literal Trans.), I think that some interesting cross lights are thrown on the relations between Jesus as redeemer, the father, his work as creator and his pre-eminence.
It seems that it would deflate Christ’s pre-eminence (v.18c) if all things created by him and for him included the death that he came to end, wresting us away from the accuser. Those who want to meld the revelation of creation in the Bible with materialist constructions and say that materialism gives us the ‘means’ while the Bible gives us the ends, fail, I think to see the dominance of means over ends, if the means includes the very destruction that the end puts away for ever. Given that this passage links together Christ as creator, sustainer, head of the Church, redeemer and the one who ends the reign of death their linking draws together these lines of thought within the Bible, including, obviously, the creation. The very point seems to be that death is an intruder, which we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Cor 15:26) and Christ’s victory over it is of vast significance. To have death within Christ seems ridiculous to the point of theological self-destruction.
The full passage:
For this cause also, from the day in which we heard, we do not cease praying on your behalf, and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 for you to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing into the full knowledge of God; 11 being empowered with all power according to the might of His glory, to all patience and longsuffering with joy;
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, 13 who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; 15 who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation. 16 For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and all things consist in Him. 18 And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He be preeminent in all things; 19 because all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, and through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.
It seems that it would deflate Christ’s pre-eminence (v.18c) if all things created by him and for him included the death that he came to end, wresting us away from the accuser. Those who want to meld the revelation of creation in the Bible with materialist constructions and say that materialism gives us the ‘means’ while the Bible gives us the ends, fail, I think to see the dominance of means over ends, if the means includes the very destruction that the end puts away for ever. Given that this passage links together Christ as creator, sustainer, head of the Church, redeemer and the one who ends the reign of death their linking draws together these lines of thought within the Bible, including, obviously, the creation. The very point seems to be that death is an intruder, which we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Cor 15:26) and Christ’s victory over it is of vast significance. To have death within Christ seems ridiculous to the point of theological self-destruction.
The full passage:
For this cause also, from the day in which we heard, we do not cease praying on your behalf, and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 for you to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing into the full knowledge of God; 11 being empowered with all power according to the might of His glory, to all patience and longsuffering with joy;
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, 13 who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; 15 who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation. 16 For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and all things consist in Him. 18 And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He be preeminent in all things; 19 because all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, and through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.
3 April 2009
A Question of Hope
Hope is one of the significant aspects of our relationship to God. Paul regards the pagans as being without hope because they are without God (Eph 2:12). Hope is the function of faith looking to what God promises on the basis of what God has done (Heb 6:19); it is universally contingent on God’s demonstration of his capability within history, both explicitly, and implicitly in the teaching of Jesus, and it is all referred back to God’s prime capability demonstrated in his creating this world that we experience and in which our relationship with God has its setting and is exhibited.
Hope comes to us, however, not only by action, but by God’s word encapsulating and communicating his actions. Without his word, if we were not historically located at the point of his action, we would not strictly be aware of it; although the flow of biblical history (to adopt a title of one of Schaeffer’s books) would give us some confidence in God’s actions by virtue of the logic of the historical flow.
Hope arises from the link between action and word, filling actions with content and reflexively pointing us back to God’s word as the originator of his actions.
This is demonstrated nowhere better than in the creation. The creation is brought by God’s word: he speaks, it happens. He is immediately (that is, with no mediation apart from Christ, q.v. John 1:3) the author of the place that we live in and we ourselves. His authorship and revelation give us sufficient information to understand God, ourselves, the world we are given into and the noetic engagement with that world provided (Adam's naming the animals is an indicator along this line). No agent stands between us and God, and no process separates us from God.
Our confidence in the word of God and our hope is built on the continuity of God’s demonstrated connection with us and the world he created for us as the place where relationship and covenant is brought into being and played out. The three critical points in this are creation, incarnation (death pointing back to sin, and the contrast thrown starkly against the ‘very good’ preceding it, resurrection pointing forward to the new creation which envelops, reflects and extends the 'very good' now marred) and in the future, the new creation itself.
To remove God from his creation, which occurs when there is any interjection in the creation account and its significance as an anchor point for the historical 'flow', that dilutes the presence of God or the effect of his word also historically detaches him from the horizon of our existential placement. It brings uncertainty rather than certainty, because God’s relation to this world becomes uncommunicated and unknown, perhaps unknowable; this pushes God away from what he says and demonstrates (if words have meaning) is his closeness to us.
In some views this goes hand in hand with God’s actions being regarded as not only not being by God, but coming about by some mediating process not mentioned by God (and the mystery thus thickened by the uncertainty and speculation required by this argument from silence), but far removed from us in time, as though time might introduce the very process that is unstated by God (!). The function of time in this scheme is not only to provide the ‘time’ for the unstated to mediate between God’s word and its result in our time-space experience, but to push the question beyond any hope we would have of coming to knowledge of the creation as God's work: the intellectual process at work seems to be, ‘first deny the event, then insert a speculative component to assert sense in the event, then remove the event from our historical horizon with the effect that God is no longer the God of the Bible (where chronological information is almost pedantically set out) but a deist God who is uninvolved, or a Gnostic God who cannot be involved. Either way, not the God who is in intimate covenantal relationship with us; denoted with consistent historical reference to the world we are in and endorsing that world as the world that is from God to and for us; the one that we experience by the same mental organs and system of representation and logic by which we can come to have experience of God.
The upshot of pushing God out of the stream of being that puts us in the creation that he created and he has recorded requires some other creation to have occurred, which makes it call some other ‘god’ and invoke some other intervention than the incarnation of the creator amongst his creation.
Hope comes to us, however, not only by action, but by God’s word encapsulating and communicating his actions. Without his word, if we were not historically located at the point of his action, we would not strictly be aware of it; although the flow of biblical history (to adopt a title of one of Schaeffer’s books) would give us some confidence in God’s actions by virtue of the logic of the historical flow.
Hope arises from the link between action and word, filling actions with content and reflexively pointing us back to God’s word as the originator of his actions.
This is demonstrated nowhere better than in the creation. The creation is brought by God’s word: he speaks, it happens. He is immediately (that is, with no mediation apart from Christ, q.v. John 1:3) the author of the place that we live in and we ourselves. His authorship and revelation give us sufficient information to understand God, ourselves, the world we are given into and the noetic engagement with that world provided (Adam's naming the animals is an indicator along this line). No agent stands between us and God, and no process separates us from God.
Our confidence in the word of God and our hope is built on the continuity of God’s demonstrated connection with us and the world he created for us as the place where relationship and covenant is brought into being and played out. The three critical points in this are creation, incarnation (death pointing back to sin, and the contrast thrown starkly against the ‘very good’ preceding it, resurrection pointing forward to the new creation which envelops, reflects and extends the 'very good' now marred) and in the future, the new creation itself.
To remove God from his creation, which occurs when there is any interjection in the creation account and its significance as an anchor point for the historical 'flow', that dilutes the presence of God or the effect of his word also historically detaches him from the horizon of our existential placement. It brings uncertainty rather than certainty, because God’s relation to this world becomes uncommunicated and unknown, perhaps unknowable; this pushes God away from what he says and demonstrates (if words have meaning) is his closeness to us.
In some views this goes hand in hand with God’s actions being regarded as not only not being by God, but coming about by some mediating process not mentioned by God (and the mystery thus thickened by the uncertainty and speculation required by this argument from silence), but far removed from us in time, as though time might introduce the very process that is unstated by God (!). The function of time in this scheme is not only to provide the ‘time’ for the unstated to mediate between God’s word and its result in our time-space experience, but to push the question beyond any hope we would have of coming to knowledge of the creation as God's work: the intellectual process at work seems to be, ‘first deny the event, then insert a speculative component to assert sense in the event, then remove the event from our historical horizon with the effect that God is no longer the God of the Bible (where chronological information is almost pedantically set out) but a deist God who is uninvolved, or a Gnostic God who cannot be involved. Either way, not the God who is in intimate covenantal relationship with us; denoted with consistent historical reference to the world we are in and endorsing that world as the world that is from God to and for us; the one that we experience by the same mental organs and system of representation and logic by which we can come to have experience of God.
The upshot of pushing God out of the stream of being that puts us in the creation that he created and he has recorded requires some other creation to have occurred, which makes it call some other ‘god’ and invoke some other intervention than the incarnation of the creator amongst his creation.
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