Tom's midnight garden

From Tom's Midnight Garden (p. 169, the Oxford Edition) by Philipa Pearce:

After discussing theories of time, Tom says:

"I've heard a theory too...while his uncle paused to drink some tea, 'I know an angel--I know of an angel who said that, in the end, there would be time no longer'

"An angel!" His uncle's shout was so explosive that a great deal of tea slopped down his tie, ..."What on earth would an angel have to do with scientific theories?" Tom trembled and dared not explain that this was more than a theory, it was a blazing angelic certitude.

Interestingly, this related to the book's using Revelation 10:1-6, where the angel refers to "him that lives for ever and ever, who created heaven...and earth..." surely a secure credential for unifying thinking about the created order and the revelation of the one who created it!

Ironically, discussion on Michael Jensen's blog, treads the very same territory as the uncle: there is a separation between the creator (theology) and his creation ('science' and the world of theories), yet the Bible, in the account of creation, the tying of creation to the Son and by extension the incarnation, and our being in the creation as the place where we encounter God, and in which God covenants with us, brings them together!

Reading on Origins

Over recent months I've read a number of books to do with the question of origins. They are:

Eliade: The Myth of the Eternal Return
Bavinck: In the Beginning
Young: Studies in Genesis One
Thielicke: How the World Began
Moltmann: God and Creation
Sarfati: The Greatest Hoax on Earth?
DeRosa: Evolution's Fatal Fruit
Herbert: Charles Darwin's Religious Views
Crowe: Creation without Compromise
Sarfati: By Design
Kelly: Creation and Change
Wilder-Smith: God: To Be or Not To Be
Moreland: Creation Hypothesis
Lennox: God's Undertaker
Wells: Darwinism and Intelligent Design
Sandford: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome
Sudera: One Small Speck to Man
Mortensen: The Great Turning Point
ReMine; The Biotic Message
Repcheck: The Man Who Found Time
Simkins: Creator and Creation
Pipa nd Hall: Did God Create in 6 Days?
Moberly: Theology of the Book of Genesis

I could well comment on all of them, but for the sake of brevity I'll only do so for 'By Design'. I was disappointed by this book as it didn't really get to the issue of what design is as opposed to the product of stochastic processes.

A quick think suggests that design is characterised by:

High entropy: so it's not likely to be like something produced by undirected processes;
Parsimony: efficient fit to purpose; to properly appraise this we'd need to understand the full purpose within the context of the system (and the system of systems, to coin a defence technology phrase). For example, some claim that the koala's pouch is the 'wrong' way, or the design of the retina is inefficient; both claims do not address the full functional set that the particular design meets.
Trans-systemic interfaces: where the inputs and outputs of one system or sub-system are parsimoniously coupled with the output and input requirements of a system that operates within a different, but functionally related domain (e.g. eye-brain; facial anatomy and musculature, muscle feed back systems, circulatory and secondary nervous systems all of which are coordinated to enable vision);
System of systems participation: where a system works with other systems to produce a result that is not directly required or produced by one individual component system.

When is a day...a day?

From a lecture by Dr Joseph Pipa on the meaning of "yom" in Genesis 1?

"...it is used 2304 times in the Old Testament with the great overwhelming majority of its uses referring either to the period of daylight or the normal 24 hour day. The theologian Berkhoff writes "in its primary meaning the word "yom" denotes a natural day".

It is a good rule in exegesis not to depart from the primary meaning unless this is required by the context. It is not only the primary meaning, it is the default meaning of the word... this is the overwhelming sense of the word and that your first reading is always to be then of a daylight period or a normal 24 hour day, unless there is something else in the text that will cause you to see that it is being used in a figurative fashion."

Critics will ask how can you have a standard day in days 1 through 3 without the sun to regulate the period? But clearly days 4-7 are regulated by sun and should be so taken, so the coherent reading of the text, if 4-6 are regulated by the sun, then the same meaning should apply to verses 1-3: that's what the text demands.

Another word in the Hebrew that could have been used to communicate long periods of time is "olam". 'Day' does not express an epoch, if one claims then, one has to demonstrate such a use in the Bible: is there any such use of day in the Bible? Even figurative uses rely on day indicating a 24 period, except where is it idiomatic. For instance "period of influence", when it still contemplates a set of natural days or 'when'.

576 times "yom" with a numbered prefix: always refers to a standard day; the only possible exception is Hosea 6:2, but here, still, it refers to not a long period, but of God's brief judgement. It is also a prophesy of the resurrection, and still refers basically to a day as a day.

Moreover, when an ordinal is used with "yom" it always means normal day in sequence.

[Pipa suggests that you check the usage of 'yom' in Bibleworks or Logos...my preference is for Bibleworks, FWIW]

Clods

Read in the SMH reprinting a Telegraph article:

The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world? The Sun is incomparably vaster and more powerful than any work of man. We are forged from a few clods of solar dust. The Sun powers every plant and form of life, and one day the Sun will turn into a red giant and engulf us all. Then it will burn out. Then it will get very nippy indeed.

The dominating view of humanity as peddled by today's knowledge workers. From an evangelistic perspective, unseating this view of man has to be a first step to re-seating man as the creation of God, and in need of restored relationship.