I got this comment (posted but as I've turned off comments, except from me! I re-post it; links are by me)
Well, of course the earth is old (therefore, I must be an ‘old-ager’) its about 6,000 years old. That’s old in my book!
The trouble is, we’ve been seduced by repetition that serious ages extend for billions of years, which have the effect, in my view, of distancing the creator from his creation.
Do these hyper-extended ages (HEAs) spring unmediated by human conceptualisation from the earth? Of course not. From historical reasoning? Again, no!
So their source is….
A deist pre-conception that the world must be of HEA because ‘god’ is a remote impersonal deity, care of Hutton ([and Lyell - ed.]), and the history in the Bible can be set aside tendentiously as untruthful, thus the surface form of the world must be the result of current processes operating over HEAs.
But that’s all supposition and full of assumptions about initial conditions, the rates of forces operating (e.g. a little bit of water over a long time, or a lot of water over a little time?), and who God is: more Greek than Christian in the deist conceptualisation; but anyway, an uninvolved God who is not the loving creator. So, wrong from the get go.
It is a concern that Christians who accept HEAs seem to be critically detached from the scriptures and uncritically attached to the progeny of deist ideas.
But there is also an implication that the Bible is not really concerned with such things as the age of the earth, which appears to be considered merely a technical scientific detail, or the nature of the creation, which also appears to have been passed to ‘science’ for adjudication.
However this is an approach that must deny scriptural content to proceed. It must also ignore the underlying ‘religious’ basis of the axioms of contemporary discourse in this area, and naively think that there is a neutral position when it comes to questions of creation.
The very point, I would suggest, of the creation account and its historical definition (given, for example, the chronogenealogies, which even if they could be extended by some period, go nowhere to meeting the time purportedly required for evolution of the cosmos) is to demonstrate:
(1) the means of creation: by fiat, of course, showing us the basic structure of the cosmos, as not admitting of alternative explanations that avoid the connection of man and God (unless the revelatory content is ignored, of course, which is the usual approach of even Christian commentators);
(2) that the creation occurred in terms that are congruent with the terms by which we understand and experience the world and our lives in it [thus showing that it refers to this world, and this world is the setting of God's dealing with man -- me], and
(3) the line of connection between God and man.
Demonstration being superior to assertion, and giving knowledge, whereas myth gives none.
Thus the Bible is very interested in the physical parameters of the creation, because its physicality is part of its ‘nature’. The denials that attend (I’d say ‘must needs’ attend) views that avoid the direct implications of the text refer more to a paganistic idealism of mind rather than the concrete realist philosophical frame of the Bible. Theologically, this extends to the incarnation and thence the new creation as realist events, not idealised mythic stories.
Inserting vast periods of time into salvation history immediately claims that God cannot show the connection between his fiat acts and humanity, and that mythic mystery, the ‘unknown’ stands between our creator and us; not connection, epistemic certainty, relationship and community.
Setting aside the creation as defined in the Bible invites humanity to define itself as it likes, ultimately leading to worship of the creation, not the creator. And this is exactly what we see!
My further notes:
If the demonstration of God’s founding of and the relationships with his creation is not factual, then no abductive extension can be made from it: no valid conclusions are available if the information we have doesn’t correspond with what happened.
Ironically, many commentators seek to draw conclusions about God’s creation as if the ‘demonstration’ were factual while denying that the events related in the Bible actually occurred. That is, that it provides information about actual events and relationships. Thus they assert conclusions that by their own claim have no real basis. So I wonder how they came to the conclusions that they assert in the absence of the only evidence that could promote the conclusion!
And I've just seen an article that attests to the discussion above: that students who believe in HEAs are more easily convinced of evolution's validity than those not. Of course, if you believe one fiction, you're more likely to believe the next! This was reported in Physorg.com 10 March 2010, and Evolution 64(3): 858-864 March 2010.
And more on point 2 above: that the creation revelation sets the place of God's encounter with his creation: it makes meaningful within the parameters which circumscribe our life God's contact with us in its totality; God is thus seeking us in the lives we are in: it makes the proclamation of the gospel be something that addresses our life-world, the circumstances we find ourselves in; our 'thrownness' to borrow a concept of Heidegger. It is not another world; the incarnation, being a type of reprise of the creation movement of God to Adam (ending in the post fall quest in Genesis 3:9), responds to, and rescues us as we are in this world, this world created fallen and to be redeemed.
30 September 2010
25 September 2010
Demonstrated
What does Genesis 1, and the other early genesian data do? As per my previous post, it tells us what happened, it is there to give us knowledge, but what is the function of this knowledge?
I think one major function of the knowledge arising from the information in Genesis 1 (and in 5, too) is that it doesn't just assert God's creation, it doesn't merely represent a claim that is devoid of references to the very subject of the claim, but it provides God's demonstration of what he did, and by which stands his revelation (claim) to be creator, and that we are connected to his creative act resulting in Adam and Eve.
It is by the demonstration of the effects of his creative actions that we can understand the meaning of his being creator. Without the detail, as I've touched on previously, we'd be left with the emptiness of myth. God's revelation as to his being creator has content that demonstrates what it is that his being creator entails (and thus excludes other expanatory programs for the creation as we experience it: whether the pagan myths of ancient days, or the materialist mythology of today). The creative content is not isolated from this world, the world that we experience, and exist only in some other world where we have no connection, but it is in the terms of our apprehension of the bounds of this world.
God just doesn't tell us things of such importance, he shows us. Like a good author who will not just tell us the characteristics of a character, but will show us them in the narrative, God is not content to abuse our likeness to him with an indeterminate reference to his activity as creator, he gives us a precise, detailed and (as it happens) rebuttable reference; noting that rebuttal challenges God's truthfullness, capability to communicate within our noetic frame of reference, and ultimately his being creator.
The knowledge we get from these parts of Genesis tells us real things about the real world we are in: shows us real links between us and God, and a real sequence of creation that encompases the setting of our place of encounter with God in the terms in which we know that setting: it provides epistemologic consistency and contiguity.
One of the outcomes of this is that alternative explanations are excluded; or rather, to be maintained they must exclude God's revelation. So, if one wants to say that God mixed it with materialisms great fantasy, Darwinian evolution, one has to set aside, or argue for the direct meaninglessness of God's word, or some other meaning that requires the text being given a particular extra-textual gloss.
And that is indeed what we have. But at least we can't pretend with an sustained credibility that we are representing the word of God, we have to explain why we are not. At least that signals to the hearer that we are embarking upon nonsense.
I think one major function of the knowledge arising from the information in Genesis 1 (and in 5, too) is that it doesn't just assert God's creation, it doesn't merely represent a claim that is devoid of references to the very subject of the claim, but it provides God's demonstration of what he did, and by which stands his revelation (claim) to be creator, and that we are connected to his creative act resulting in Adam and Eve.
It is by the demonstration of the effects of his creative actions that we can understand the meaning of his being creator. Without the detail, as I've touched on previously, we'd be left with the emptiness of myth. God's revelation as to his being creator has content that demonstrates what it is that his being creator entails (and thus excludes other expanatory programs for the creation as we experience it: whether the pagan myths of ancient days, or the materialist mythology of today). The creative content is not isolated from this world, the world that we experience, and exist only in some other world where we have no connection, but it is in the terms of our apprehension of the bounds of this world.
God just doesn't tell us things of such importance, he shows us. Like a good author who will not just tell us the characteristics of a character, but will show us them in the narrative, God is not content to abuse our likeness to him with an indeterminate reference to his activity as creator, he gives us a precise, detailed and (as it happens) rebuttable reference; noting that rebuttal challenges God's truthfullness, capability to communicate within our noetic frame of reference, and ultimately his being creator.
The knowledge we get from these parts of Genesis tells us real things about the real world we are in: shows us real links between us and God, and a real sequence of creation that encompases the setting of our place of encounter with God in the terms in which we know that setting: it provides epistemologic consistency and contiguity.
One of the outcomes of this is that alternative explanations are excluded; or rather, to be maintained they must exclude God's revelation. So, if one wants to say that God mixed it with materialisms great fantasy, Darwinian evolution, one has to set aside, or argue for the direct meaninglessness of God's word, or some other meaning that requires the text being given a particular extra-textual gloss.
And that is indeed what we have. But at least we can't pretend with an sustained credibility that we are representing the word of God, we have to explain why we are not. At least that signals to the hearer that we are embarking upon nonsense.
22 September 2010
Its not right, its not even wrong!
If 'God being creator' is all that we need to know, about him and the cosmos, that would be established, arguably, and 'just' by John 1:1-3; but we've got far more information than this, with richness of detail as to events and the crystal clear framework of their happening (the days: the only objective framework in the text that's worth talking about) in Genesis 1; and this detail is referred to in other scriptures, so it has more than just passing importance.
Some people tell us that the Bible tells us that God created, but that science (Darwinism) reveals his method. But John 1:1-3 gives us authorship, the method is given elsewhere in scripture: Psalm 33:9 tells us it was by speaking as does Psalm 104, and Genesis 1 gives us the dense and stately detail. Aside this one must also consider Hebrews 11:3 (and 1:2, for that matter). These are clearly the reference points for passages such as Jeremiah 10:16 and Isaiah 48:13 (for the OT, of course). There's no room here for a 'method' because we have one. There's no room to set Genesis 1 aside as teaching a mere subset of its content.
So, when I hear people try to diminish the role of Genesis 1 in our understanding of the world God created as the setting for his covenant, I think of a quote of the physicist Pauli when confronted with an unscientific assertion in a colleague's paper:
"It's not right. It's not even wrong."
The hermeneutics and theology that seeks to step around Genesis 1 is so mis-founded that it isn’t even wrong!
Presumably the Bible is there to provide knowledge; including Genesis 1; so how does it provide knowledge if it is treated as a kind of baroque dance where moves have meaning for the dance, but the dance itself means nothing! Indeed, how does Genesis 1 teach anything if the basis of what it is said to teach: the details of its content, is denied as factual, and claimed to be a sort of word picture to teach us by telling us what didn’t happen, using the language of ‘this happened’.
Exegetes confuse themselves, and their readers, when they embark on a quest for hidden knowledge based on the dignified language of Genesis 1 (mistakenly called poetic, or poetic-like, when it is formally neither), but disregard the obvious lexical and grammatical import of the text. They then wrap this in a claim that the text as read cannot mean what it says, but means something else; but if it doesn’t mean what it says, the basis for it meaning something else is either gone, or left to the imagination of the exegete.
This position is not right; it's so off the beam, it's not even wrong!
Some people tell us that the Bible tells us that God created, but that science (Darwinism) reveals his method. But John 1:1-3 gives us authorship, the method is given elsewhere in scripture: Psalm 33:9 tells us it was by speaking as does Psalm 104, and Genesis 1 gives us the dense and stately detail. Aside this one must also consider Hebrews 11:3 (and 1:2, for that matter). These are clearly the reference points for passages such as Jeremiah 10:16 and Isaiah 48:13 (for the OT, of course). There's no room here for a 'method' because we have one. There's no room to set Genesis 1 aside as teaching a mere subset of its content.
So, when I hear people try to diminish the role of Genesis 1 in our understanding of the world God created as the setting for his covenant, I think of a quote of the physicist Pauli when confronted with an unscientific assertion in a colleague's paper:
"It's not right. It's not even wrong."
The hermeneutics and theology that seeks to step around Genesis 1 is so mis-founded that it isn’t even wrong!
Presumably the Bible is there to provide knowledge; including Genesis 1; so how does it provide knowledge if it is treated as a kind of baroque dance where moves have meaning for the dance, but the dance itself means nothing! Indeed, how does Genesis 1 teach anything if the basis of what it is said to teach: the details of its content, is denied as factual, and claimed to be a sort of word picture to teach us by telling us what didn’t happen, using the language of ‘this happened’.
Exegetes confuse themselves, and their readers, when they embark on a quest for hidden knowledge based on the dignified language of Genesis 1 (mistakenly called poetic, or poetic-like, when it is formally neither), but disregard the obvious lexical and grammatical import of the text. They then wrap this in a claim that the text as read cannot mean what it says, but means something else; but if it doesn’t mean what it says, the basis for it meaning something else is either gone, or left to the imagination of the exegete.
This position is not right; it's so off the beam, it's not even wrong!
19 September 2010
Can God Speak?
Interestingly, those who steer their hemeneutical commitments away from the direct reading of Genesis 1 implicitly, it seems to me, claim that God has some problem with propositional revelation.
Thus, the one who is the word can't, under this view, use words to tell we who are in his image (rational propositionally aware people), what happened to create us in our cosmos by language that has direct reference to the time-space-event characteristics of the thus created cosmos. That is, he can't tell us where we came from or how we are connected to him, and can't identify the setting of his covenant! Odd.
Thus, the one who is the word can't, under this view, use words to tell we who are in his image (rational propositionally aware people), what happened to create us in our cosmos by language that has direct reference to the time-space-event characteristics of the thus created cosmos. That is, he can't tell us where we came from or how we are connected to him, and can't identify the setting of his covenant! Odd.
16 September 2010
Destroyed by Time
In my post on Keller's article, I mentioned at the end the conclusion of myth that attends de-historicised Genesis 1, etc.
There's a bit more to myth in this connection, I think. The part notions of time play needs to be touched upon. I mentioned that time seems to be related to capability: e.g. anyone can build a bridge, given enough time, but engineers can do it with reliable speed: next year, not next century.
One of the plays of time in myth is part of its de-historicising effect when extended to crazy periods. Eliade talks about this in his book of earlier posts.
When vast periods of time are interposed between then and now, they serve to break the possibility or validity of explanation; they destroy prevenance, and bring to question any assertion of relationship. Myth allows, even requires, its basis to be 'lost in time' and beyond both question and any verification.
One of the things that the Bible's treatment of the time of its own history is to underpin and demonstrate the underpinning of continuity between events of creation, where our resulting from God's word is recorded, and the historical stream to now.
This, and the period involved removes alternatives that would destroy the connection demonstrated, and allow all sorts of 'worship of creature' into our religious world; which is precisely what history shows to occur.
There's a bit more to myth in this connection, I think. The part notions of time play needs to be touched upon. I mentioned that time seems to be related to capability: e.g. anyone can build a bridge, given enough time, but engineers can do it with reliable speed: next year, not next century.
One of the plays of time in myth is part of its de-historicising effect when extended to crazy periods. Eliade talks about this in his book of earlier posts.
When vast periods of time are interposed between then and now, they serve to break the possibility or validity of explanation; they destroy prevenance, and bring to question any assertion of relationship. Myth allows, even requires, its basis to be 'lost in time' and beyond both question and any verification.
One of the things that the Bible's treatment of the time of its own history is to underpin and demonstrate the underpinning of continuity between events of creation, where our resulting from God's word is recorded, and the historical stream to now.
This, and the period involved removes alternatives that would destroy the connection demonstrated, and allow all sorts of 'worship of creature' into our religious world; which is precisely what history shows to occur.
12 September 2010
Contra Keller
I recently read an article that discussed Tim Keller's view on origins, science and the Bible. [Keller is one of the servants at Redeemer Presbyterian Ch in NYNY].
The article batted back Keller's, to my mind, rather absurd take on the relations between Genesis, the Bible generally, science and questions of origins; but one area it didn't touch, and I don't think that this really gets acknowledged by proponents of the 'it doesn't mean what it says' brigade is what Genesis teaches us, and how it teaches us. After all, the scripture is provided for a reason (if divinely inspired) and the reason has to have practical and theological signficance to make it to the biblical text. Saying that it teaches us what it doesn't say does not, in my view, encourage confidence in the Bible's credibility (where else, for instance, has that particular 'fast one' been pulled, a detractor might well ask?).
There are two main planks to the reason, I think, for the origins account and its chronological location (that is through the chrono-genealogies in the Bible, and the related genealogies that, while stripped of detailed chronological information, bear considerable historical significance).
Firstly, they give the relationship between God and humanity its provenance: God says that we are connected to his creative activity, and "here is the connection" spelt out in unmistakable and directly obvious detail.
Secondly, telling us the modalities and method of creation teaches us our relation to the creation (that is, we are all creatures, and there are no hidden 'princples' at work in some occult fashion between God and us), teaches us that the creation as is is real, and dependable, and gives context for humanity being given dominion over it (so there are no 'magic groves' of trees that might harm us if we decide to harvest them). It makes the work of God congruent with the world he made and understandable in terms of its creation. That is to say, when God tells us that he made X, then it is X as we know and understand it, not some other X that has no describable connection with the world we know and can comprehend.
The two planks together give us a concrete 'realist' framework for understanding our position with respect to God, history and the cosmos. Take sticks out of the framework, and it ceases to maintain a unified perspective between the elements of the world we are in and the creator's link to the world. Christian ontology collapses!
Also, if we entertain that somehow 'God used evolution' it would mount a criticism of the truth content of John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3, not to mention many other passages (see my earlier post on prophets). It would also raise a question about God's capability: he having to create by a second order process: making evolution to make us. But the whole area of 'evolution' (as in 'nothing, if left for long enough, will produce ideas') is one where random mechanical action has agency, not God. God using not-God? Absurd! There is also the factor of time: that things done quickly and accurately speak of power delivering intention, things done accidentally and with mistakes along the way speak of the reverse. For God who is love, this reverse is unthinkable (and unattested by scripture).
Put these lines of consideration aside and we are left with a mythic Genesis; and as myth arises from ignorance, then it would be odd indeed that God sets his covenant, his creative work, and the significance of humanity and the rest of creation in a contextual agnosticism. It would be saying: "I did it, I created you, and I created the world, but I can't tell you when and how to demonstrate the veracity of my claims." Odd, to say the least; leaving us where the myth-hearers are: in ignorance.
The article batted back Keller's, to my mind, rather absurd take on the relations between Genesis, the Bible generally, science and questions of origins; but one area it didn't touch, and I don't think that this really gets acknowledged by proponents of the 'it doesn't mean what it says' brigade is what Genesis teaches us, and how it teaches us. After all, the scripture is provided for a reason (if divinely inspired) and the reason has to have practical and theological signficance to make it to the biblical text. Saying that it teaches us what it doesn't say does not, in my view, encourage confidence in the Bible's credibility (where else, for instance, has that particular 'fast one' been pulled, a detractor might well ask?).
There are two main planks to the reason, I think, for the origins account and its chronological location (that is through the chrono-genealogies in the Bible, and the related genealogies that, while stripped of detailed chronological information, bear considerable historical significance).
Firstly, they give the relationship between God and humanity its provenance: God says that we are connected to his creative activity, and "here is the connection" spelt out in unmistakable and directly obvious detail.
Secondly, telling us the modalities and method of creation teaches us our relation to the creation (that is, we are all creatures, and there are no hidden 'princples' at work in some occult fashion between God and us), teaches us that the creation as is is real, and dependable, and gives context for humanity being given dominion over it (so there are no 'magic groves' of trees that might harm us if we decide to harvest them). It makes the work of God congruent with the world he made and understandable in terms of its creation. That is to say, when God tells us that he made X, then it is X as we know and understand it, not some other X that has no describable connection with the world we know and can comprehend.
The two planks together give us a concrete 'realist' framework for understanding our position with respect to God, history and the cosmos. Take sticks out of the framework, and it ceases to maintain a unified perspective between the elements of the world we are in and the creator's link to the world. Christian ontology collapses!
Also, if we entertain that somehow 'God used evolution' it would mount a criticism of the truth content of John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3, not to mention many other passages (see my earlier post on prophets). It would also raise a question about God's capability: he having to create by a second order process: making evolution to make us. But the whole area of 'evolution' (as in 'nothing, if left for long enough, will produce ideas') is one where random mechanical action has agency, not God. God using not-God? Absurd! There is also the factor of time: that things done quickly and accurately speak of power delivering intention, things done accidentally and with mistakes along the way speak of the reverse. For God who is love, this reverse is unthinkable (and unattested by scripture).
Put these lines of consideration aside and we are left with a mythic Genesis; and as myth arises from ignorance, then it would be odd indeed that God sets his covenant, his creative work, and the significance of humanity and the rest of creation in a contextual agnosticism. It would be saying: "I did it, I created you, and I created the world, but I can't tell you when and how to demonstrate the veracity of my claims." Odd, to say the least; leaving us where the myth-hearers are: in ignorance.
5 September 2010
Prophets on Creation
At a recent Bible talk at St Philips York Street we started to consider the book of Jonah.
Reading through, we came to Jonah 1:9-10a: "He said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land."
Then the men became extremely frightened..."
I like to see the context of these references to God as creator being his existential representation to us in revelation (or his 'credential' in relation to us in faith response to him).
Here for instance I note that (a) it doesn't say 'Lord God of heaven who said he made the sea and dry land..." which could be expected if analogical re-framings of Genesis 1 were credible; rather it makes a direct reference to Genesis 1 as having valid content, as being evidence of the thing done and its doer; and not being a second order reference to some other process, too mysterious to put into words, or insufficiently important to our understanding of our relation to God, or awaiting the speculations of 19th century British deists.
I also note (b) that the point hit home to the sailors immediately: they "became extremely frightened". No mucking about here with word games; none of them remarked..."I think you mean God provides a framework to indicate his authorship of creation by some means unstated, and other than his direct fiat, so, as this removes him far from us in both existential and real terms, I'm not frightened in a remote God".
This joins well with Hebrews 11:3, where the creation is stated as the launching point of faith!
Other passages I've read recently that refer to God's being creator are:
Isaiah 44:24
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,
"I, the LORD, am the maker of all things,
Stretching out the heavens by Myself
And spreading out the earth all alone
Note especially the 'all alone'
and
Isaiah 48:13
Surely My hand founded the earth,
And My right hand spread out the heavens;
When I call to them, they stand together.
Jeremiah 10:16
The portion of Jacob is not like these;
For the Maker of all is He,
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
The LORD of hosts is His name.
I guess there would be from some a deflecting argument about poetic language, anthropomophisms and metaphorical language, but taken with Gen 1, it would seem that there's an immediacy in these words that is congruent with the 'on the face of it' reading of Gen 1. It seems to belie the interposition of other principles, forces or factors standing between God's will and the world as subject for Isaiah's and Jeremiah's readers, and us or between God's fiat word and the response in creation; which analogical readings tend uniformily to put off without textual warrant.
Reading through, we came to Jonah 1:9-10a: "He said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land."
Then the men became extremely frightened..."
I like to see the context of these references to God as creator being his existential representation to us in revelation (or his 'credential' in relation to us in faith response to him).
Here for instance I note that (a) it doesn't say 'Lord God of heaven who said he made the sea and dry land..." which could be expected if analogical re-framings of Genesis 1 were credible; rather it makes a direct reference to Genesis 1 as having valid content, as being evidence of the thing done and its doer; and not being a second order reference to some other process, too mysterious to put into words, or insufficiently important to our understanding of our relation to God, or awaiting the speculations of 19th century British deists.
I also note (b) that the point hit home to the sailors immediately: they "became extremely frightened". No mucking about here with word games; none of them remarked..."I think you mean God provides a framework to indicate his authorship of creation by some means unstated, and other than his direct fiat, so, as this removes him far from us in both existential and real terms, I'm not frightened in a remote God".
This joins well with Hebrews 11:3, where the creation is stated as the launching point of faith!
Other passages I've read recently that refer to God's being creator are:
Isaiah 44:24
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,
"I, the LORD, am the maker of all things,
Stretching out the heavens by Myself
And spreading out the earth all alone
Note especially the 'all alone'
and
Isaiah 48:13
Surely My hand founded the earth,
And My right hand spread out the heavens;
When I call to them, they stand together.
Jeremiah 10:16
The portion of Jacob is not like these;
For the Maker of all is He,
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
The LORD of hosts is His name.
I guess there would be from some a deflecting argument about poetic language, anthropomophisms and metaphorical language, but taken with Gen 1, it would seem that there's an immediacy in these words that is congruent with the 'on the face of it' reading of Gen 1. It seems to belie the interposition of other principles, forces or factors standing between God's will and the world as subject for Isaiah's and Jeremiah's readers, and us or between God's fiat word and the response in creation; which analogical readings tend uniformily to put off without textual warrant.
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