I was privilaged to attend a conference at St. John's Park Baptist Church recently titled Getting Genesis Right (check under sermons for the sound files).
One of the lectures was titled Creation outside Genesis.
This is the list of biblical references discussed (compiled by Dr. William Barrick of The Master's Seminary):
Exodus 20:8-11; 31:17
Deuteronomy 4:32
2 Kings 19:15
1 Chronicles 16:26
2 Chronicles 2:12
Nehemiah 9:6
Job 4:17; 9:8; 38:1-41:34 (38:4, 12, 32-33; 40:15)
Psalms 8:5-6; 33:6; 89:11-12, 47; 96:5; 104:2-5, 24; 115:15; 136:5; 148:4-5
Proverbs 14:31; 17:5; 22:2
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Isaiah 37:16; 40:26-28; 42:5, 12, 18; 44:24; 45:7; 12; 18; 51:13
Jeremiah 10:12, 16; 32:17; 51:15, 19
Amos 4:13
Malachi 2:10
Matthew 19:4; 25:34
Mark 10:6; 13:19
Luke 3:38
John 1:1-5, 9, 10
Acts 4:24; 14:15; 17:24
Romans 1:20, 25; 5:14; 8:19-22, 39
1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:9; 15:22, 45
2 Corinthians 4:6
Ephesians 3:9
Colossians 1:13-16
1 Timothy 2:13-14; 4:4
Hebrews 1:2; 11:3
1 Peter 1:20; 4:19
Revelation 4:11; 5:13; 10:6; 13:8.
One of the great themes in many of these references is that God's being creator provides the reason for us worshipping him. It provides the basis for the connection between creator and creature; embedded in acts which occured in the time and space that we occupy.
30 June 2011
26 June 2011
Symbolic Sin!
In my church's latest study group notes, the following question was posed:
As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol heralds its dereification, in this context. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about the real life to which it refers.
So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps it is taken as symbolic of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol? How does the 'symbol' participate in the connected reality of relationships over time and space?
What the passage does is give to us the source of the current shared reality (shared between us, and between us and God). Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied and only can know from his word).
And if it is a symbol, what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as subjects? Where does symbol stop and the concrete or actual start?
I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.
No, it just doesn't wash.
So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and itself demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!
The words of C. S. Lewis are apposite here:
5. Read Genesis 3.7-24. In these verses we see the consequences of human sin in the breakdown of relationships between people and people and God. In this highly symbolic section we see a reality that is still with us today. What area of brokenness troubles you the most?
As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol heralds its dereification, in this context. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about the real life to which it refers.
So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps it is taken as symbolic of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol? How does the 'symbol' participate in the connected reality of relationships over time and space?
What the passage does is give to us the source of the current shared reality (shared between us, and between us and God). Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied and only can know from his word).
And if it is a symbol, what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as subjects? Where does symbol stop and the concrete or actual start?
I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.
No, it just doesn't wash.
So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and itself demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!
The words of C. S. Lewis are apposite here:
"These [critics] ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seeds and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."
"The argument runs like this. All the details are derived from our present experience; but the reality transcends our experience; therefore all the details are wholly and equally symbolic....[However, you cannot know that everything in the representation of a thing is symbolic unless you have independent access to the thing and can compare it with the representation."
25 June 2011
So, what is it, then?
In recent posts I've referred to some who claim that Genesis 1 is other than history. Typically these people will say that it's analogy, parable, metaphor, allegory, polemic or anything but an account of events that happened.
Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.
The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.
On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)
This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.
Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.
Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.
The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.
On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)
This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.
Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.
24 June 2011
Beasties
At the St Philip's Bible talk today (Thursday 23 June), in the series on Job, we reached God's rhetorical discourse to Job; the one where God mentions two particular beasts: behemoth and leviathan. Justin told us that they were most likely referring to the hippopotamus and elephant. Or perhaps mythical beasts: fairy story characters.
Justin, I don't think so; on any count.
Firstly, look at the descriptions: His tail sways like a cedar (Job 40:17); doesn't remind me of a hippo!
[Interesting to note Job 40:15b: "made along with you" made like I made you, or made at the time I made you? I'll check it out; but there appears to be an element of confluence in their creation.]
Then leviathan: his back has rows of shields (Job 41:15), his snorting throws out flashes of fire (Job 41:18)! Not like any elephant I've seen!
Both explanations are improbable, particularly when there are known animals that the descriptions to fit' only they are extinct. Of course, one does become perplexed by Job's references when the history in the Bible is set aside and the ear is bent to the arid world-story of materialism that starts from a completely different premise to the Bible, and naturally has different conclusion!.
But would the creatures be mythical? I think not. The detail is too fine and unelaborated for myth, and to naturally descriptive, and many parts of the descriptions are 'every day' observations. And if they were myth, then what sort of God is worshipped when he has to go to fairy tales to depict his works, and not to his own creation; which itself is set in the Bible as the basis for him being worshipped by us!
Justin, I don't think so; on any count.
Firstly, look at the descriptions: His tail sways like a cedar (Job 40:17); doesn't remind me of a hippo!
[Interesting to note Job 40:15b: "made along with you" made like I made you, or made at the time I made you? I'll check it out; but there appears to be an element of confluence in their creation.]
Then leviathan: his back has rows of shields (Job 41:15), his snorting throws out flashes of fire (Job 41:18)! Not like any elephant I've seen!
Both explanations are improbable, particularly when there are known animals that the descriptions to fit' only they are extinct. Of course, one does become perplexed by Job's references when the history in the Bible is set aside and the ear is bent to the arid world-story of materialism that starts from a completely different premise to the Bible, and naturally has different conclusion!.
But would the creatures be mythical? I think not. The detail is too fine and unelaborated for myth, and to naturally descriptive, and many parts of the descriptions are 'every day' observations. And if they were myth, then what sort of God is worshipped when he has to go to fairy tales to depict his works, and not to his own creation; which itself is set in the Bible as the basis for him being worshipped by us!
20 June 2011
History, or not?
In the latest issue of Creation magazine there's an article by Andrew Kulikovsky "Common Errors". He refers to the errors usually made by people who attempt to read an evolutionary world view back into the Bible, specifically, Genesis 1, of course.
One of the errors he mentions, and a typical one (see this article on John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity for discussion of this type of error), is the assertion that Genesis 1 gives us a theological rather than an historical account. Bruce Waltke, Bernard Ramm and a few others are cited in this connection.
The trouble with this view is that it supposes that 'theological intent' can exist detached from the setting of theological interchange where meaning is made (the real world, and recursively, the world resulting from the creative work set out in Genesis 1). Thus theology is 'carried' by history, in the Bible; it does not exist in some other world detached from this one: a kind of theological upper storey (to use Francis Schaeffer's analogy) that doesn't have feet on the same ground that our feet are on.
Andrew makes this very point, quoting Graeme Goldsworthy (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture), "The fact is that the whole Bible presents its message as theology within a framework of history".
Theology is connected through history (that is the recount of events in space and time) with the domain of life concerns that dominate our thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is in and makes sense in our world because it is us in our world who are subject of God's salvific communication. If this were not so, there would be no tangible congruence between theological statements and our possible apprehension of them. They would reduce to the nonsense of Zen koans.
A further question one would have to ask of this error, is its basis: how do its exponents know that certain parts of the Bible are 'theological' and not historical, when the explanation of the historical is typically the source of theological information, as God explains the significance of events (especially those set in historical narrative language, like Genesis 1). It is only history that makes theology meaningful. History is the domain of relationships between actors, people, agents; and God the creator in relation to us is on this plane: relationships that have actual reality do not exist outside of historical circumscription, because then they cease to be relationships and the very point of God's creating would evaporate. This is the great theological error that is made by those who want to think that theology and history exist in separate worlds.
One of the errors he mentions, and a typical one (see this article on John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity for discussion of this type of error), is the assertion that Genesis 1 gives us a theological rather than an historical account. Bruce Waltke, Bernard Ramm and a few others are cited in this connection.
The trouble with this view is that it supposes that 'theological intent' can exist detached from the setting of theological interchange where meaning is made (the real world, and recursively, the world resulting from the creative work set out in Genesis 1). Thus theology is 'carried' by history, in the Bible; it does not exist in some other world detached from this one: a kind of theological upper storey (to use Francis Schaeffer's analogy) that doesn't have feet on the same ground that our feet are on.
Andrew makes this very point, quoting Graeme Goldsworthy (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture), "The fact is that the whole Bible presents its message as theology within a framework of history".
Theology is connected through history (that is the recount of events in space and time) with the domain of life concerns that dominate our thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is in and makes sense in our world because it is us in our world who are subject of God's salvific communication. If this were not so, there would be no tangible congruence between theological statements and our possible apprehension of them. They would reduce to the nonsense of Zen koans.
A further question one would have to ask of this error, is its basis: how do its exponents know that certain parts of the Bible are 'theological' and not historical, when the explanation of the historical is typically the source of theological information, as God explains the significance of events (especially those set in historical narrative language, like Genesis 1). It is only history that makes theology meaningful. History is the domain of relationships between actors, people, agents; and God the creator in relation to us is on this plane: relationships that have actual reality do not exist outside of historical circumscription, because then they cease to be relationships and the very point of God's creating would evaporate. This is the great theological error that is made by those who want to think that theology and history exist in separate worlds.
17 June 2011
Sun-Herald letter
I saw this letter in the Sydney 'Sun Herald' on Sunday last:
Jean Whittle (Letters June 5) begs the question that God is necessarily a created being like we are and thus stands in need of a prior causal creator. Theists will tell you that God is eternal and consequently has never come into existence. He just always is.
The dilemma facing Jean, indeed confronting all atheists, is whether their “god”, matter, is eternal or popped into existence from absolutely no-thing and from no cause. While the first alternative is purely religious, the second is metaphysical nonsense: from no-thing, nothing comes.
After deciding, maybe Jean can tell us theists how matter or no-thing produced the non-material biological information that underwrites life, and brought into being love, consciousness and morality.
The atheists' only explanation, evolution, fails badly, scientifically and philosophically, against theism. After all, a supremely intelligent and all-loving God certainly seems a more viable option to explain reality than, well, no-thing.
Sincerely yours
Marc Kay
Jean Whittle (Letters June 5) begs the question that God is necessarily a created being like we are and thus stands in need of a prior causal creator. Theists will tell you that God is eternal and consequently has never come into existence. He just always is.
The dilemma facing Jean, indeed confronting all atheists, is whether their “god”, matter, is eternal or popped into existence from absolutely no-thing and from no cause. While the first alternative is purely religious, the second is metaphysical nonsense: from no-thing, nothing comes.
After deciding, maybe Jean can tell us theists how matter or no-thing produced the non-material biological information that underwrites life, and brought into being love, consciousness and morality.
The atheists' only explanation, evolution, fails badly, scientifically and philosophically, against theism. After all, a supremely intelligent and all-loving God certainly seems a more viable option to explain reality than, well, no-thing.
Sincerely yours
Marc Kay
15 June 2011
Murder
At a recent lunch time Bible talk at St Philip's York Street, Justin observed (in the context of discussing Job 28)
If natural selection is true, then there would be nothing wrong with murder. It would be one means of the strong eliminating the weak.
And if the origin of humanity, let alone the cosmos, was as evolutionary dogma has it, this would be so; even if the dogma is bolted on to a theistic framework: as in theistic-evolution, it would remain true that murder to achieve success was built into the structure of reality, and moral questions were mere questions of convenience, and not having real moment.
Thus the dilemma of those who think that God 'used' evolution to create...they end up with a morally divided God, who's creation is different in type to him, where his glory is found (Roms 1:20), not in peace and joy and love, in the vanquishment of the weak.
If natural selection is true, then there would be nothing wrong with murder. It would be one means of the strong eliminating the weak.
And if the origin of humanity, let alone the cosmos, was as evolutionary dogma has it, this would be so; even if the dogma is bolted on to a theistic framework: as in theistic-evolution, it would remain true that murder to achieve success was built into the structure of reality, and moral questions were mere questions of convenience, and not having real moment.
Thus the dilemma of those who think that God 'used' evolution to create...they end up with a morally divided God, who's creation is different in type to him, where his glory is found (Roms 1:20), not in peace and joy and love, in the vanquishment of the weak.
10 June 2011
What they say!
I've heard a lot of neo-evangelicals claim that the question of origins/the biblical doctrine of creation, is a rather unimportant issue in either a pastoral or evangelical context.
I think this clip from a recent Sydney Morning Herald contradicts that.
I think this clip from a recent Sydney Morning Herald contradicts that.
6 June 2011
Plato
There’s a philosophical tendency in the West, following Plato, to conclude that if a theory isn’t working, there must be something wrong with reality.
from Harvard Business Review May 2011: Nonaka, The Wise Leader
Reminds me a lot of neo-evangelicals who concluded that because the 'theory' that God created as he set out in Genesis is not like the popular theory of evolution, and is contrary to an implausibly ancient earth; that is, it doesn't 'work'; then there must be something wrong with the reality of his word...so, of course, much sweat and ink is spent on saying that Genesis 1, etc. doesn't mean what it clearly says!
5 June 2011
Theistic evolution?
Termed by Al Mohler, an oxymoron, and I couldn't agree more, this web page on theistic evolution gives a good run down of the idea that Christian revelatory theism is somehow compatible with non-christian speculative materialism.
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