The song remains the same

Sometimes it passes amusing that the struggles of today, where biblical creationists argue against the hermeneutical conceits of those who want to find biblical support for their melding materialism and an emasculated doctrine of creation, were also encountered in the past.

Here's Mortenson on George Bugg (early 1800s)

Respecting the accommodation of the language of Scripture, Bugg contended that the history of creation has one plain, obvious, and consistent meaning, throughout all the Word of God. The rest of Scripture offers no hint or key to any other meaning so that if the obvious meaning is not the true one, then the biblical authors have misled their readers and the creation narrative has no meaning, or a false one. Furthermore, argued Bugg, the phenomenological language that the Bible uses to describe the movement of the heavenly bodies is the common language used than as now. Otherwise, it would be intelligible to no one but astronomers...However , although the Bible also was not intended to teach the science of geology, it did give detailed narratives of the creation and the Flood, which were critically relevant to the discussion of geological theories about earth history.

Two Books

When it comes to discussions of science and Christian faith (or as it more usually is, materialist origins doctrines and Christian faith...), Bacon's dictum often comes up. Indeed, I heard it used as the basis for somewhat heterodox views of the Bible espoused by Henry Schaeffer in a presentation in Mosman many years ago.

Bacon's dictum is thus:

For our Saviour saith, "You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God," laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error; first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing his power; wererof the latter [the creatures] is a key unto the former [the Scriptures]: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures, by the general notions of reason and rules of speech; but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon his works."

(from The Advancement of Learning, p. 46 of the 1906 Oxford edition)


But I think Bacon gets it wrong. While the creation points to God, it is the Scriptures that provide our epistemological framework when it comes to understanding God and his acts. The propositional revelation sets the stage for our approach to the world, not the other way; as once observations of the world are turned into propositions, they constitute a 'second order' to revelation, being encapsulated in human ideas.

Better Granville Penn's 1820s view as stated in Terry Mortensen's book The Great Turning Point:

Genesis and geology ought to be connected because it was philosophically permissible, even necessary, to attempt to identify the God of Scripture with the God of nature, i.e., to show that they are one and the same God as Scripture itself teaches. And since God had communicated certain historical facts about the original creation of the earth and the Flood, it would certainly not be prudent to disconnect them from the geological study of the surface of the earth. Rather, to trace the connection of Genesis to geology would be "of the first importance in man's relation to God under Divine Revelation," as it would contribute to our confidence that Scripture is of divine origin, as we are sure that nature is...

The real problem, said Penn, was to show that the God of Scripture is the God of nature. Penn objected to the assertion of Conybeare and other geologists that the study of Scripture and of geology should be dissociated because (as the old earth geologists asserted) the professed object of revelation was to treat only the history of man. Penn argued that Exodus 20:11 shows that God intended to impart to man special and particular historical knowledge about the origin of the celestial bodies and the plants and animals of land and sea, before he imparted a history of man's own origin. "the history of the origin and relations of all and each of these, is therefore as much a professed objecct of revelation, as the history of the origin and relations of man himself"

Scripture is the one that teaches, and where it is history, it tells what happened, including when it touches on the formation of the material world in which our lives and God's actions meet. So, of course, questions of creation are important, and God provides the starting point. It is a pagan-derived abberation that shelves the material world in favour of the world of the idea, at the expense of the concrete world that God's revelation demonstrates.

Which God?

I recently listened to Kurt Wise's talk at the Grace Reformed Baptist Church creation conference (in 2000) where he said something with the import of:

If you deny the biblical data on God's creation, then you end up worshipping a different God to the one revealed in the Bible.

Ironically, I've had conversations with, usually younger people (and those usually university students, who may be suffering from the 'undergraduate delusion', i.e. they know everthing), where, on the topic of creation, they accuse such as I, who hold to the direct veracity of the biblical account, of 'worshipping a different god'.

This accusation is hurled because I counter the idealist biblical theology they espouse; without them understanding that they are espousing anything in particular, of course, just uncritically recycling the pap they've often been fed.

It amused me that Wise turns the tables, and points out that as they attribute to God things in creation that are not of his word (that is, they add to the doctrine of creation from outside the Bible, such as in the incoherent cliam that 'God used evolution'), they must be worshipping a different God to the one in the Bible.

Feeling powerful?

One of the themes I discuss on this blog is the misuse of the concept of 'leadership' in the Christian Church.

If we anoint people as 'leaders' mimicing the style of business and government organisations and adulatory journalists, we run the risk, I think, that Bob Sutton that leadership provides power, and the powerful de-humanise.

An unsurprising phenomenon identified by Lord Acton, ironically writing to a bishop!

So, no more 'leaders', but bring back 'servants', ministers, teachers, helpers, and the like.