I mentioned the review of Walton's book in my post on the dangerous sermon, but would like to discuss it futher.
I think that Walton must be the source of much of the sermon in question. Walton's mistake however, is that he adopts a pagan framework from the start, and fits the Bible within it, ending up not with the God of creation, but a God within creation, who adheres to the categories of modern atheistic materialism, not the categories of the Bible. The Bible's categorical structure has will exercised in love basic to all being. A pity the speaker did not explore this, or start his thinking from the Bible instead!
Walton's view is founded on the great irony that the creation account is not about creation, but something else, also called the creation, but not the creation that we are talking about (if that seems 'double-dutch' it is). It requires creation to be independent (effectively asserting a prior material creation); he also, like most today, misunderstands the creation as an exercise in only material formation (it is far more than this), and the world view that is required to sustain his position (a pagan world view) either deifies the material creation, or regards it as a ‘given’ and does not conceive of it as having been originated in the will of one who is love.
Like many other moderns, he wants to split the creation into categories that evacuate it of meaning: some split ‘how’ and ‘why’ as the domains of science and theology, respectively. Walton, likewise splits function and being, but being is function in the unified creation that comes from God’s hand. To suppose otherwise is to fall into the pagan error, now repeated in the use of materialist categories, that the creation is otherwise originated, this origination so remote from us in every way as to be an impersonal given, destroying God’s representation to us as creator of a world where his words have real meaning in terms that make sense to us within the world (as it is from his hand, and we, his image bearers, can make sense of the words God gave to us) relating to him. In effect he ‘de-gods’ the world in its totality. This makes God not the creator of a world that is dependent upon him, and part of the means of his relating to us and extending his love to us, but a being derivative of, or referred to from the world which is beyond him.
On these grounds, who, then, are we, who is this god and whence relationship, if there is one that has any meaning at all?
The proposal is pagan from start to finish, and even if Walton truly understands ANE culture, he understands a pagan culture, against which the Bible stands and the word of God confounds! To take this as a reference is to set to one side the work of the Spirit of God in communicating the word to us and the relegate the Bible to merely another meaningless ANE curiosity of history.
And the creation account opposes both these errors in its unification of ‘how’ coupled with ‘why’, and function being part of formation.
'How’s' coupling with 'why' is made in the creation being about the relationships between persons, by the will of the almighty person, exercised in love for the bringing about of other persons to participate in that love, with all the other-centredness of love. The 'function' being part of 'formation' is made in the creation leaving God’s hand caused only by his word (will) and not an interposed mechanism so beloved of materialists who must split off matter from love to make it pre-eminent, and love subservient, and then seek a machine to do the work that the Bible tells us is the work of God’s loving mind!
Walton’s proposal, like every other attempt to defuse Genesis 1, etc. simply represents an embarrassment from pitting Genesis 1 against modern conventional materialism and wanting materialism to have the first and final word!
16 February 2012
10 February 2012
Inconvenient Information
The trouble with many parts of the Bible is that the information it contains is inconvenient to the aims and objects of fallen mankind.
Thus it is with Genesis 1. Many Christian commentators undertake, with great effort, the exercise of telling us that Genesis 1 doesn't say what it clearly does say. Because it is inconvenient.
It is inconvenient to smart modern people (imblued with or cowed by materialist views) that God created by his will (the method) within the span of 6 days. So much effort is put into explaining that this information, which structures and upon which the text depends, is not an essential part of the information conveyed.
Indeed, it must end up being held that Genesis 1 conveys no actual information, but merely allows the impression that God is creator, with the text providing no evidence fo the fact.
Extrodinary. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
In this vein, I'd refer to a book review by Howard Van Til: [title], where Van Til does just this, and fails to bring a Christian world-view to his work.
Thus it is with Genesis 1. Many Christian commentators undertake, with great effort, the exercise of telling us that Genesis 1 doesn't say what it clearly does say. Because it is inconvenient.
It is inconvenient to smart modern people (imblued with or cowed by materialist views) that God created by his will (the method) within the span of 6 days. So much effort is put into explaining that this information, which structures and upon which the text depends, is not an essential part of the information conveyed.
Indeed, it must end up being held that Genesis 1 conveys no actual information, but merely allows the impression that God is creator, with the text providing no evidence fo the fact.
Extrodinary. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
In this vein, I'd refer to a book review by Howard Van Til: [title], where Van Til does just this, and fails to bring a Christian world-view to his work.
5 February 2012
Creation and agency
Letter I sent to the speaker of a recent sermon:
Thank you for your sermon on Genesis 1 recently at church. I was very taken by your approach, and pleased with your conclusion that the pinnacle of creation is not the creation of man, on day 6, which is often stated (although among created things man does represent this, given his role in naming the animals and God giving him the garden to tend), but God resting, in his holiness and glory. I think this notion is quite important, as it makes the climax of creation symmetrical with the opening of the account in Genesis 1:1: ‘In the beginning God....at the end, God’.
There were a couple of points you made where I didn’t see the connection with the text so easily.
I liked your illustration of agency and will by referring to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. But this does not, I think, throw light on how we are to regard agency in the Genesis account. The ‘five-fold’ repetition in the account that Joseph Pipa notes in his essay in “Did God Create in 6 Days” is such a tight concatenation as to prohibit the entry of non-divine (and therefore, mindless) agency. Indeed, taken together Psalm 33:6, John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3b would seem to eliminate the need for and possibility of such agency altogether. And particularly agency from within the creation to effect the course of creation unfolding between the word and conclusion (“it was so”). This applies something that God has created (at best): an impersonal principle from within the creation (or even independent of the creation!), to do the work of creation, the outcome of which the Bible clearly attributes to God, or requires an anachronistic recursion as something ‘not yet’ is used to produce that which will come to be. I don’t think this stacks up logically.
This also couples with your suggesting that science tells us the ‘how’ of creation as act, or perhaps as achievement (that is, the cosmos we are in and the reality by which we and it are drawn into a structured set of causal relationships), but the Bible tells as ‘why’.
I don’t think that God’s act and its realization can be so easily severed, and certainly not from what is set out in the Bible itself; nor can the component parts of creation be allocated to different frameworks so easily in theological terms.
The very mental act of separating aspects of the creation and giving them separate identities is itself seems to be conceptually contrary to the creation as it is set out in the Bible, and must assume, implicitly if not explicitly, that there is some uncreated ‘reality’ to which both God and his creation separately refer. This is because the creation account as it stands makes the ‘why’ depend totally on the ‘how’. That is, God’s speaking the creation into existence, and concluding that his word has achieved its object without reference to any principle or mechanism external to himself. There is, therefore, not only no place for something interposed between God and his creatures, but no reason for it. In similar terms, some have said that the details of Genesis 1 do not correspond with events in time-space, but nevertheless identify God as an orderly creator. However, this is incoherent. One cannot deny the basis for a conclusion’s reality (events on days) yet persist that the conclusion itself has an objective status (what only events on days can indicate).
If the biblical ‘how’ is a nullity, then the ‘why’ is hollow and cannot promote either God’s glory or his worship by his creatures, contrary to its purpose throughout the Bible (that is, God’s being creator, in biblical terms, being that which calls us to worship of him).
But it is also at odds with its place to think that science does tell us the ‘how’ of creation, as science deals in the repeatable and observable within the completed (and fallen) creation. The creation is not accessible to ‘science’. Ideas of evolution, which are often regarded as explaining how life, or organisms as we know them, or indeed the entire cosmos came about does not in fact do this. It is not science, but religious materialism. To think that the variation we do see in organisms reaches back into their origin moves from science to unfounded belief almost instantly, and a belief that has its feet in the idea that there is no God, or if there is, he is the remote and uninvolved deist god. Not the God of the Bible who created in love for relationship.
To even look for a ‘mechanism’ that would execute the creation beyond the terms of scripture misunderstands both the account itself and its theological place. The account is not, and the cosmos and us in it, are not about ‘mechanism’ in some materialist vision of how the world is, but about relationship: that between God and what he has made to glorify himself and give us life to live in his presence. Science and mechanism occur post-creation, and any light they are thought to throw does not illumine the creation account or our understanding of it, but colours it to the detriment of understanding and in congruence with a prior materialist conceptualisation.
Blessings
David Green
PS. Some references that may be of interest are:
http://creation.com/john-dickson-vs-genesis
http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/?speaker=mohler2
(Al Mohler’s talk at the 2010 Ligonier conference, summarised here:
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2010-ligonier-national-conference-albert-mohler/)
http://www.grbc.net/sermons/index.php?action=by_conference&conference=5
http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?keyword=GPTS%20Conference%201999
http://www.stillwaterrpc.org/genesis.php
A recent book review reminded me of another point that the speaker made: he spoke of Genesis 1 being about 'funciton' not origination in material/cosmic terms. I didn't pick up on this, but a review of Walton's book on this matter reminded me.
The fatal flaw in this line is the pagan separation of being and action (or pure origination and function). It encapsulates a world-view that is not biblical, where only God is 'pre-supposed', but where a cosmos is regarded as a 'given' and not something that results from the will of God who is love. It depersonalises the basic nature of 'being' and ultimately 'de-god's' our world.
Thank you for your sermon on Genesis 1 recently at church. I was very taken by your approach, and pleased with your conclusion that the pinnacle of creation is not the creation of man, on day 6, which is often stated (although among created things man does represent this, given his role in naming the animals and God giving him the garden to tend), but God resting, in his holiness and glory. I think this notion is quite important, as it makes the climax of creation symmetrical with the opening of the account in Genesis 1:1: ‘In the beginning God....at the end, God’.
There were a couple of points you made where I didn’t see the connection with the text so easily.
I liked your illustration of agency and will by referring to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. But this does not, I think, throw light on how we are to regard agency in the Genesis account. The ‘five-fold’ repetition in the account that Joseph Pipa notes in his essay in “Did God Create in 6 Days” is such a tight concatenation as to prohibit the entry of non-divine (and therefore, mindless) agency. Indeed, taken together Psalm 33:6, John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3b would seem to eliminate the need for and possibility of such agency altogether. And particularly agency from within the creation to effect the course of creation unfolding between the word and conclusion (“it was so”). This applies something that God has created (at best): an impersonal principle from within the creation (or even independent of the creation!), to do the work of creation, the outcome of which the Bible clearly attributes to God, or requires an anachronistic recursion as something ‘not yet’ is used to produce that which will come to be. I don’t think this stacks up logically.
This also couples with your suggesting that science tells us the ‘how’ of creation as act, or perhaps as achievement (that is, the cosmos we are in and the reality by which we and it are drawn into a structured set of causal relationships), but the Bible tells as ‘why’.
I don’t think that God’s act and its realization can be so easily severed, and certainly not from what is set out in the Bible itself; nor can the component parts of creation be allocated to different frameworks so easily in theological terms.
The very mental act of separating aspects of the creation and giving them separate identities is itself seems to be conceptually contrary to the creation as it is set out in the Bible, and must assume, implicitly if not explicitly, that there is some uncreated ‘reality’ to which both God and his creation separately refer. This is because the creation account as it stands makes the ‘why’ depend totally on the ‘how’. That is, God’s speaking the creation into existence, and concluding that his word has achieved its object without reference to any principle or mechanism external to himself. There is, therefore, not only no place for something interposed between God and his creatures, but no reason for it. In similar terms, some have said that the details of Genesis 1 do not correspond with events in time-space, but nevertheless identify God as an orderly creator. However, this is incoherent. One cannot deny the basis for a conclusion’s reality (events on days) yet persist that the conclusion itself has an objective status (what only events on days can indicate).
If the biblical ‘how’ is a nullity, then the ‘why’ is hollow and cannot promote either God’s glory or his worship by his creatures, contrary to its purpose throughout the Bible (that is, God’s being creator, in biblical terms, being that which calls us to worship of him).
But it is also at odds with its place to think that science does tell us the ‘how’ of creation, as science deals in the repeatable and observable within the completed (and fallen) creation. The creation is not accessible to ‘science’. Ideas of evolution, which are often regarded as explaining how life, or organisms as we know them, or indeed the entire cosmos came about does not in fact do this. It is not science, but religious materialism. To think that the variation we do see in organisms reaches back into their origin moves from science to unfounded belief almost instantly, and a belief that has its feet in the idea that there is no God, or if there is, he is the remote and uninvolved deist god. Not the God of the Bible who created in love for relationship.
To even look for a ‘mechanism’ that would execute the creation beyond the terms of scripture misunderstands both the account itself and its theological place. The account is not, and the cosmos and us in it, are not about ‘mechanism’ in some materialist vision of how the world is, but about relationship: that between God and what he has made to glorify himself and give us life to live in his presence. Science and mechanism occur post-creation, and any light they are thought to throw does not illumine the creation account or our understanding of it, but colours it to the detriment of understanding and in congruence with a prior materialist conceptualisation.
Blessings
David Green
PS. Some references that may be of interest are:
http://creation.com/john-dickson-vs-genesis
http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/?speaker=mohler2
(Al Mohler’s talk at the 2010 Ligonier conference, summarised here:
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2010-ligonier-national-conference-albert-mohler/)
http://www.grbc.net/sermons/index.php?action=by_conference&conference=5
http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?keyword=GPTS%20Conference%201999
http://www.stillwaterrpc.org/genesis.php
A recent book review reminded me of another point that the speaker made: he spoke of Genesis 1 being about 'funciton' not origination in material/cosmic terms. I didn't pick up on this, but a review of Walton's book on this matter reminded me.
The fatal flaw in this line is the pagan separation of being and action (or pure origination and function). It encapsulates a world-view that is not biblical, where only God is 'pre-supposed', but where a cosmos is regarded as a 'given' and not something that results from the will of God who is love. It depersonalises the basic nature of 'being' and ultimately 'de-god's' our world.
2 February 2012
scientific knowledge
"Scientific knowledge occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant" F. Hayek's critique of 'scientism' quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald's Weekend Business by Nicholas Gruen, 21 Jan 12.
If only my Anglican colleagues in this diocese had the courage to assert this in favour of theological knowledge!
If only my Anglican colleagues in this diocese had the courage to assert this in favour of theological knowledge!
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