History: event or interpretation?

Some quotes from Elton, The Practice of History, that touch on, and raise questions about the way Genesis 1 is approached by many commentators today, who deny that it is history, or take it as a type of verbal gloss on an underlying but unnominated set of events:

The task of history is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must be given full respect in its own right. And unless it is properly understood, any use of it in the present must be suspect and can be dangerous.

p. 47.

A long one which is interesting in the difference between ‘natural’ science and history:

As a matter of fact, in a very real sense the study of history is concerned with a subject matter more objective and more independent than that of the natural sciences. The common argument that, unlike the scientist, the historian cannot verify his reconstruction by repeating the experiment at will can be turned round to give him greater assurance of objectivity...All scientific experiments are essentially constructs, and this applies to both the physical and the biological sciences...Of course, he obtains his problem by asking questions of nature--of something outside himself--but his method enables him to treat nature willfully and to compose for himself the argument which he wishes to resolve...scientific experiments are...artificial; theses things would not have happened but for a deliberate act of will on the part of the experimenter; the matter studies may be taken from nature, but before it is studied it is transformed for the purposes of the investigation. It is not going too far to assert that nearly all scientific study deals with specially prepared artificial derivatives from what naturally occurs.

The historian’s case is different...he cannot invent his experiment; the subject of his investigation is outside his control. When the problem of truth is under consideration, his essential difference from the natural scientist works in his favour...the matter he investigates has a dead reality independent of the enquiry.

pp. 52-3.

When it comes to views of Genesis 1 that see it not as an account of time-space events in the sequence given, but a sort of meta-historical account that abstracts from events to convey some inferred ‘truth’ that lies beneath them, I can’t but help think that such views consider God to be a historical relativist: a position that has to be argued and demonstrated, rather than asserted glibly and taken for granted as though there are no alternative positions:

Interpretation, or general acceptance of a thesis, has nothing whatever to do with its independent existence...others who think that history is what historians write, not what happened, come dangerously close to suggesting either that it does not much matter what one says because (interpretation being everything) there are always several reasonably convincing interpretations of any given set of events, or that history is altogether unknowable, being merely what happens to be said by a historian at a given moment.

p. 56.

...but that men cannot ever eliminate themselves from the search for truth is non-sense, and pernicious nonsense at that, because it once again favours the purely relativist concept of history, the opinion that it is all simply in the historian's mind and becomes whatever he likes to make of it.

p. 57.

So those who think that Genesis 1 is a late Jewish ‘interpretation’ of what they think happened, against the conceptions of the day as to origins, have succumbed to the notion that it is interpretation (the ancients’ or theirs) that matters and not the facts. But this is a perspective, not itself a self-evident fact, and it is what actually happened that is important, because this is reflective of who God is and what we are in relation to him, in every aspect and dimension of our being. To think that the interpretation is more significant than the events is to express a view that the cosmos and its ‘reality’ is something other than what is from God’s hand, somehow independent of God and that principles and mechanisms have an independent existence to which God in his creation tale also makes reference. But this undercuts the whole notion of a meaningful creation account and leaves us knowing nothing about ourselves or our world, subject to the changing whims of contemporary ideas: currently, of course these are materialist.

CMS Summer School

A friend who'd attended the school sent me a copy of his letter to the Archbishop, who addressed the attendees on the subject of creation.

I am very glad that you broached the controversial question of creation at the CMS Summer School.

The question is often delimited in the terms that you used in your talk: that is, both by science and theology, thus your deferral to science, I would expect, on the scientific questions.

This represents, I think, a profound mistake! The question of our origin is not a scientific question at all. It is, from start to finish, a theological question and its answer has only theological implications.

The question has only become regarded as a scientific one by a sleight of hand to which the church has caved in from the day of its active promotion by Darwin and his supporters in the mid 1800s and resiled from its prophetic function ever since. The great sleight of hand is two-fold: firstly that processes within the creation can throw light on the supernatural act of creation, and that something must be interposed between the word of God and the effects of that word, some ‘mechanism’ to give life to what God has called to be! How extraordinary for a Christian theologian to buckle before the puffery of materialism and its typically atheistic proponents (or unwitting Christian fellow-travellers) and agree that our God needs a ‘mechanism’ to achieve his ends; particularly when he has gone out of his way to tell us precisely what happened in sufficient detail to eliminate the role of any subsidiary mechanism.

And just think what a mechanism might imply for the doctrine of creation itself? It might imply that agency apart from God was necessary for creation: so whence this agency? It might imply that God made something in order to make something else, as though ordinary providence operated in the extraordinary period of the creation, ending as it does with God in his glory! It might imply things that exist that are outside God and outside the creation: some principle, power, or ‘mechanism’ that is uncreated? What does this say, then about God? But what, also, of us? The effect is to immediately de-personalise the creation work and destroy the filial relationship between us and God. We would be the sons of a machine, not God if he interposed a mechanism between himself and us; yet the only mediator is Christ!

Clearly, this opens up a can of worms.

The reason creation is a theological matter, and one of prime importance is because the creation both shows and defines our relationship with God and sets the entire cosmos and all that is within it in theological context: arising only from God, for God’s purpose and reflecting God as ‘very good’, then to be under the stewardship of his creature that is in his image.

Importing evolutionary ideas into this is not innocuously adding a ‘scientific’ explanation, but is mounting an attack on the sovereignty and capability of God, if not his very being; re-founding humanity as a mere assembly of material, and making the cosmos the foundation of being, with person-hood, shown in will and love relationships and actions occurring within this and not prior to it, in the three-person God. Apart from this, it is also allowing a fiction to explain God’s supernatural acts, a fiction for which there is no evidence, any actual evidence cutting off after it has explained the variation in creatures (but not their origin).

I would ask you to re-consider your position on creation and re-take it as a theological question, because those who deny God see the theological issue very clearly and make materialism the engine of their view of humanity. The two do not co-join. Materialism, how ever it trumps itself up, does not mix with Christian supernaturalism. Each places man and the cosmos on utterly different trajectories.

A sermon that deals with this topic which may be of interest is at:

http://www.gty.org/resources/Sermons/90-359

I would also add that to argue for any mixture of evolution and creation removes God from creation: as many published works attest, as does the lack of movement to God brought by expousal of evolution. My posts on de-godding God and the Creation discuss this.

Furthermore, to claim that the text is empty of historical content, but still serves to show God as creator, fails. If the content is inaccurate, then nothing is communicated but puffery, and it is empty of information that relates to the creation in which it is purported to make sense: that is connects with the categories, relationships and common causality of the creation. It is a sad sign of theological neglect to let this hollow argument pass into print, or sermons, which it does from time to time.

Creation, but not as you know it

The sermon on Genesis 1, to which I referred the other day, started off very well, I thought, and it ended well too, for that matter. It was the middle that was the problem; or where there were a number of problems, to my mind.

At one point the speaker made an analogy by asking if we believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews. Of course, most people affirmed. He then told us that in fact all Hitler did was give orders. The killing was done by others. He extended this to say that creation was similar. God gave the orders, but other factors did the work.

There are a couple of basic problems with this: there is no biblical evidence that God used intermediaries, or had to rely on agency (apart from Christ, the only agent mentioned in the Bible: John 1:1-3) particularly noting Hebrews 11:3 and Psalm 33:6 and 9. There is also an irrationality in God having to rely on, or use, something from within the creation to recursively do the creating itself, when God's resting on day 7 marks the division between creating and the world as created. It means that God used something from what was not there do make what became there. Simply unworkable!

The speaker also brought up the notion that the creation account gives us the 'why' or the meaning behind it all, but 'science' gives us the 'how'.

Again, this fails. The failure is a basic linguistic one, as the account clearly provides the 'how' (God spoke, it happened) as the 'why'. The two are inseparable. But the failure is also logical: if it is imagined that a materialist, de-godding doctrine (evolution) which relies on observations within the completed (but fallen) creation gives the detail of the pre-fall, pre-normal-providence creation acts, then we are using imaginary paddles on this particular canoe!

One remark perhaps gave the game away. The speaker mentioned 'intelligent design' which, to my mind is a non-Christian approach to origins, when it is extended past the observation that the creation is replete with the characteristics of design. ID does not a theology make, nor is it adequate to inform theological work. Our consideration of creation must start with the Bible, as for instance this sermon on the theology of creation demonstrates.

Underlying the speaker's thesis, I think, was a misunderstanding of the creation account itself; which is about relationship and soverign action, not providing openings for us to 'grope' for 'mechanisms'. And, as I've argued, the quest for a mechanism is itself recourse to materialism and rejection of the biblical world view, sith its use of history to establish the basis for relationship and the connection between creator and creation, and gives primacy to materialism as basic within the creation and probably prior to it!

One of the nice touches in the sermon was how the speaker characterised the pinnacle of creation. Usually it is said that this occurs on day 6, with the creation of man. But Duncan suggested that it is day 7, when God rested. And this has a symmetry to it (in chiasmic fashion) with it a book end to God being the focus of the start of the passage in Genesis 1:1.

Thus, it is all about God, and the detail of the account is even less some literary artifice to convince us that God is creator, but is very much about God creating: about what he, as God, did as the work of God in bringing a creation into being as the place where he would be in relationship with his creatures.

Creation in pictures

Not quite clear in the picture (using phone not camera) but this shows a children's activity at a church I was visiting today (15 Jan 12). The chart was divided into 7 sections, and children were asked to stick pictures of what God created on each day in the appropriate section. Was very enjoyable as Alison, the moderator (I hate, as you know, the word 'leader' in a Christian context), led us through the questions, answers and sticking up.

The sermon that followed (thanks Duncan) took us into some interesting territory, but included, I think, some views that are not defensible from the Bible.

More on this in a later post.

evolutionary history

“The evolutionary theory of history has a good deal in common with that which sees the hand of God in history; after all, evolution was thought to explain the facts of natural creation in default of the existence of a creator.”

Elton, G The Practice of History p. 31

The suppression of Christianity

In "The Good Weekend" of 17 December 2011 Greg Bearup wrote:

...he remembers being fascinated reading about the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer, a German philosopher, physician and musician who set up a hospital in Africa and supported it by performing organ recitals.

Note, no mention of Schweitzer's christian devotion being the major factor in his life and work or the sacrifice of his opportunities in Germany for the work in Africa. Note also the 'on purpose' mistake to call him a philosopher, but to not mention that he was a theologian, and a significant one!

Bearup also downplays Schweitzer's musical capability. He indeed was a great musician, but he was also a noted musicologist, with a two volume work on Bach.

Typical atheistic revisionism that attempts to erase the Christian heritage from the popular mind.

Elton on OT

“No other primitive sacred writings are so grimly chronological and historical as is the Old Testament, with its express record of God at work...”
G. R. Elton The Practice of History, p. 2

Theistic evolution's project

The project of theistic-evolution, in any of its various forms, is a project to establish that God did, or could have, created by some ‘mechanism’ or ‘principle’ not identified with God but ipso facto, from within the creation itself.

But its seeking an ‘explanation’ for the creation from within the creation is not only incoherent nonsense, but is to miss the very point of the creation as accounted in the Bible. Indeed, to even consider that God’s creative acts could be shared with something from within the creation is to undo God’s chief credential with respect to us, his creation, for our worship of him, his self identification as one who wills in love, and his capability to communicate true content in his revelation, which revelation is only made into the world that he created in which such content must have meaning in terms of elements and relations within that creation.

Thus, to embark upon a quest for a mechanism for creation, interposed between God’s speaking and its effect is to embark upon a quest to avoid God: to imagine that God would share with something within the creation his unique identifying capability is to misunderstand God and deny (1) that his creation is a means of contentful communication between him and us, (2) his love (in making the creation ‘very good’), and (3) the very point of the creation (for God’s extending in love to us ), is as grand a mistake as could come from a human mind.

The creation is not about mechanism, but about relationship wherein we know, love and glorify God. The account itself is not devoid of content, by this fact, but provides information about what and how God did his acts.

To think that the notion of mechanism adds anything to the creation account inserts into understanding of the account a materialist conception; so it counters the Bible’s ‘world view’ at the outset, holding that person-hood, love, intention (word) are not basic, but that mechanism is: materialism's only ontological recourse.

Rather, the account sets in a tight couple word-act and result: God in relationship with his creation; mechanism de-couples result from word-act: word-act - mechanism - result: this breaks the relational connection and puts us in filial relationship with something within the creation! So, asserting a mechanism doesn't explain anything about the creation account, nor does it fill a gap that the account leaves; instead, it voids the creation as a love-act and robs it of the very personal link that it explicates and within which it occurs.

The theistic-evolutionary project ends up by replacing God as he reveals himself in acts, with a ‘something’ that denies this revelation and requires agency outside of God, and, as I’ve indicated above, something that is founded in a conception of the world that is at odds with the Bible as it makes a materialist make-over of the word of God.

An analogy in human relationships would be to think that one could maintain a marriage relationship not by being in fellowship with your spouse, by asking the butler to look after it for you.

This post is related to the ideas discussed in 'de-godding'.

Happy Holiday?

Leading up to Christmas I received a few emails from business contacts in North America. Some ended with the sign-off line: 'happy holiday' or similar pabulum.

Just to keep the facts straight, I replied with 'Christmas Blessings', just to make the point for religion avoiders and their appeasers.

Next thing is to start a movement to put Christ firmly, defiantly and unmistakably into Christmas: pickets outside schools that soft-pedal the Christian-ness of the day would be a good start; the noisier the better. Petitions to school principals, meetings with them (easy if you are a parent), phone calls, of course, letters and emails. You name it. Next year: beat the drum!

De-godding God

There is, I think, a futher ramification to denying the direct reading of the creation account in the Bible beyond my post on eclectic creation and the one on de-godding.

That is, not only is the creation de-godded, but God himself suffers this process, in his being represented as other than his own self-representation.

Moves such as 'theistic'-evolution make God's self-proclaimed acts to be of other than God: a process, or matter itself. It undoes God.

Now, this may not be a problem for many commentators on the topic of origins, as most think the cosmos has been thoroughly de-godded anyway. Even for many ostensibly Christian commentators, the cosmos has been de-godded along deistic or gnostic lines, following a pagan, rather than a biblical lead.

But for conservative evangelicals the implications are more than stark.

God places nothing but himself between 'said' and 'is was so'. The interpolators go beyond the text and say that there is something in between. That God has not told us the full story, and that mechanical process is there. Over time, God will thus be 'faded' from his palpable presence in our life-story (man's life-story) to be replaced by another agent; not a personal one, but at best an occult one (occult as in 'hidden' and not known, if not unknowable) and at worst a completely material one, that is set free from God, his personhood and love for his creation.

The genesian connection between creation and creator is direct and unmediated (but by Christ). There is nothing impersonal between us and God as maker. In alternative views, this is destroyed, and we end up with a removed God, if God at all.