Beyond the Pahl 1

In a post on his blog, Pahl set out his mini-manifesto of creation theology. It forms a suitable representative of the typical 'have it both ways' beliefs of most theistic evolutionists and so, I think, is worth commenting on. I'm setting out to do it over four or so parts.

Here, part 1:

Pahl

When it comes to origins, I have held to the same basic perspectives for quite a while now. I have stated, taught, preached, blogged, or published all of these points in various ways and in diverse venues for at least fifteen years.

First, God created all things—God himself and not merely some impersonal forces or natural laws. God created the heavens and the earth, and made humans in God’s image. Through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the very image of God, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; without him nothing was made that has been made. Thus, there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Thoughts

One becomes instantly suspicious, I think, when a theologian has to declare his orthodoxy in this way; it seems to me that he must do so only because his position on these matters is not clear from his other writings. Indeed, I think we will see over this short series of discussions that most of Pahl's writing on the matter of origins would question every point of the statement he makes in such assertive tones. As if to say, "of course I believe what you believe, I just don't believe that it happened!" So he has to shore up his orthodoxy by denying that words have stable meanings and can be reliably tracked to 'this world' referents, across time and cultures. One thinks, in some matters, that a little too much is made of culture, and not enough made of words. Their range of intent seems to be mystifyingly rubbery and they thus can mean whatever one wants them to mean, except of course, what they actually say!

And thus, I wonder why Pahl believes as he states? He undoes the credibility of his belief at every turn, as later posts will show. To that extent he makes of belief the sort of nonsense that one might hear from a Mormon 'elder' so called, who urges belief because, well, he 'really-really' believes himself; nothing to do with the warranted belief that runs through the Bible.

 In Hebrews we are told that “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible”. “By faith” does not mean, ‘unrealistic  hope against the facts’ but, because we weren’t there, we apprehend this information and accept its reliabiltiy and veracity by virtue of the word of God. The writer speaks to this in the preceding verse. The only information to which the writer could be pointing is the genesian account of creation; and this because it is the only information there is about our origin...anywhere. The locus of faith in the Bible is never counterfactual, but always predicated on actualities: in someone to be truthful to their word, or in things about which we are told, pinned to events that participated in this world's causality and whether events in a mind, or events in space.

Moreover, when the Bible refers to the creation, you can bet that the reference directs us to the Genesis account. The base creation account upon which all other references depending. So God is not the creator in some vague ethereal terms, or author of some general creation that cannot be pinned down, but of a 'creation' with specific biblical reference, and specific meaning in this world. The same terms that make sense in and circumscribe our existance in the space-time frame we inhabit and are constrained by are those terms that give the creation meaning and make a specific connection  to us by the common reference frame applying to both (deny this and the connection gets vague to the point of vanishing).

Later, confusingly, Pahl tells us that the only account we have of the creation doesn't represent things that happened. It just didn’t occur: something else occurred, presumably (which claim has its Monty Pythonesque aspect, I must suggest), but we are not told about it! How we know, I can't fathom (oh...science...we'll get to that in a later post).

So I have to wonder from whence he obtains his belief that God is creator if he denies the terms by which God represents himself as creator. He sets aside the only source of information which could underpin his belief as not in fact having happened in the terms of 'the real' that frames our lives and experiences; the information by virtue of which, in detail, we understand God as creator.

And it is the detail that is important here: the detail demonstrates God as creator by the actions he did with time and space effects. These tell us how the creation is constituted. Presumably, if this was not important, and not just 'important' in some vacuous rhetorical sense, but really important in the world we stub our toes in, it wouldn’t be provided. So if the detail is not about events, but about something else, firstly, how would we know, but then, how could we establish that God is creator? The only information he can give us, it is asserted or implied by Pahl, doesn’t actually relate to creation events, but, evidently, some other thing? What other thing this might be, we are not told. Perhaps, just a verbal flourish to 'out-flourish' the competitor accounts? But, if none of it happened, it is hard to see how it can even hope to sustain this rhetorical function.

And it's not just that 'something else' must have happened, but it's Pahl's language game that fascinates me. He takes it that words have meaning, and that meaning conveys content in the world that we are in. Presumably the content is related to some substance within the world, or the content, and the words that convey the content, would have no meaning that delineates anything within the common causality in which we live; they would be un-grounded in one sense, empty in every other. These words would merely ascend in a futile arc never landing in the world in which they were uttered to make meaning in that world in that world's terms.

Pahl's handling of the creation account in philosphical terms is even more dramatically deracinating of its biblical purpose. In saying that all the details in a house plan are wrong; but the right house will nonetheless somehow, but inexplicably, be communicated, he is speaking nonsense. This is far from a Christian approach to epistemology; knowledge is contained in the words that constitute language and have reference to the Real World that came from the fiat of God (nicely recursively), and not in pagan fashion, where content is maleable to preconception and any specific meaning is only to obscure an asserted and contrary 'truth'.

Thus, I would contend, contrary to the Cedarville College people, that Pahl is far from othodox in that he undoes the basic ontology of the Bible, founded in Genesis 1, and supposes that in the beginning, not 'God', but 'God and something...' Like most harmonisers, he fails to appreciate the grand scope of God's creation, and what it means to be solely and comprehensively from God. Like the ANE creation myths, he by implication presupposes a universe prior to God's creation of the universe! Not Christian at all.

John Chapman Foundation

I went to John Chapman's memorial service at St Andrew's Cathedral on 24 November. I admired John for his simple humility as a man, his easy communication of biblical teaching and his genuine interest in people. For an Anglican, he was as unstuffy and unimpressed by outward show as a Baptist. Excellent.

In the service papers there was a promotion for the John Chapman Foundation. Not a bad idea to remember the man and his ministry, and raise funds for the work of evangelism (probably just like Catholics have orders, Anglicans have foundations).

When I read the biog of John, I almost gagged. It was nothing like John himself, but full of the empty vanity of outward show and panting after worldly prestige and influence, as though these things are of any importance in the outlook of a Christian. They certainly never struck me as being of any significance in the John Chapman who I knew!

So, for the first time, I learn that he's preached in London; and presumably not London, Ontario, or London, Ohio. I wonder where in London he preached? In the middle of Baker Street? In Carter Lane? Clerks Place, near Wormwood St? All pretty pointless to say that he  preached in London. Anyone can preach in London. They do it all the time in Hyde Park!

But further, I see that he preached at Oxford University and Cambridge University. All I can say is, 'so what'. Does this make him a better preacher. Should I be impressed that he's been to some old stone buildings, where, incidently, anyone can preach, or am I supposed to infer that the VC called him up and said "John, what say you come along and preach to the Council here at Oxford." I think not. Rather these references represent mere Anglican bluster and hankering after worldy adulation, which, incidently, has zip to do with preaching the gospel, and double zip to do with anything in Australia, let alone Sydney. I note that there is no mention of mission work that John did (if he did) in Sydney University; right next to Moore College, or in Newtown, a densely populated suburb, also right next to Moore College, or work with the riff raff that inhabits the Sydney University Colleges (I think of St John's particularly), or about what he did do; and that was tirelessly work as a minister of the gospel in whatever setting he had access to, with humble and prayerful perserverance. And, that is the Christian way, not puffery about prestigious locations or institutions.

Or, maybe I'm wrong, maybe  John preached at Miami University, Oxford, in the USA...

Pahl...not orthodox?

An e-pal sent me his note to Michael Pahl, of recent post on this blog:

I've heard that you and Cedarville have parted company.

Unlike Cedarville, I *would* question your othodoxy.

Your view on Genesis 1, etc. amounts to a claim that nothing in Genesis 1 actually happened, and that our ontology, as Christians, therefore cannot be framed from the Bible (ontology being about what is, and ipso facto, what really is), but has to be grafted onto Christian faith from a pagan perspective in some sort of idealist conceit. So it seems that you want to pretend that questions of origins are 'scientific' questions, when their ontological implications are such that they are always finally theological questions, mediated in some ways philosophically.

Thus, you've resigned the field, and instead of allowing the revelation of God about his creation to set the structure of our understanding of our world, our setting in it, and the relations that reticulate through it, with reference to God himself (and this can only happen if G1 recounts things that happened, not fantasies, "fameworks" emblems, signs, or 'suggestions'), we are left to start our thinking with an ontological framework premised on there being no God, or if there is one, one who doesn't communicate and doesn't matter.

This is not in any way orthodox, but a view that makes Christian faith take its philosophical underpinning from a pagan world view, and is ultimately derivative of a materialist orthodoxy and not a challenge to it.

2 churches

I couldn't help but compare two local churches that have recently letter boxed my street.

One, an Anglican church, is about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of...wait for it...their building! No, not a church meeting on that site, or a church meeting in the area, or the local proclamation of the gospel, or a century of mission, no, none of those...but a darn building. As part of their celebration, they will be raising money, seeking to raise a lot of money, well in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And for? Missions? Aid? Helping people?

No, not on your nelly. They want to do more building work!

Then the other, not an Anglican church. It will be having its annual spring market. "Proceeds going to help refugees settling in Sydney".

I know which church I'd prefer to be part of.

Leave it to science

One of my listed blogs lead me to 'rustlings in the grass' where the basic perspectives on origins is to, finally, 'leave it to science' to connect us with our origins, and, presumably, to some sort of faith in some other-world set of events that God must be talking about in Genesis 1.

If I get around to it, I'll go into this a little more, but you can see my drift.

Just theological

Another zinger of a sermon this morning, further knocking Grudem out of play, for which I'm all cheers.

The minister unfortunatley has a view of Genesis 1, etc. (hereafter G1) that is common these days: that it is 'theological' and not anything else; and not therefore factual where it comes into conflict with contemporary cosmogony, evolutionary speculation or rampant materialism. One wonders how then one is able to figure which bits are important and which bits are mere 'dressing'?

But this is not a new position. I read of it in a work by Robert S. Candlish, D.D. (1806-1873) of Scotland who succeeded Thomas Chalmers in the chair of divinity at the New College, Edinburgh in 1841.

Quoting a work on Genesis:

To clear the way, therefore, at the outset, to get rid of many perplexities, and leave the narrative unencumbered for pious and practical uses, let its limited design be fairly understood, and let certain explanations be frankly made. In the first place, the object of this inspired cosmogony, or account of the world's origin, is not scientific but religious.

So...if its only religious, on what is the religious information carried, if it is not a factual account of events...is it carried on a mere fiction? If so, then the religions information is hardly worth our attention!

Yet, by the very notion of creation as set out in G1, it only has theological significance because it is about things that have happened. Just like the resurrection only has theological content because it had historical and physcial coordinates in history, and is in the same world of general causality as the one we live in. And so the resurrection has content for us. If it were in a different 'world' it would have nothing for us. And so 'creation' which sets the scene for all that follows.

Of men and women

This morning the sermon at church started a series looking at 'gender' as it is treated in the Bible.
We started with a reading from Genesis 1, which covered this passage:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ²⁸ God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply,

(NASB)

Of course, the NASB makes the same mistake as the NIV, which our church uses, and renders 'adam' as 'man'; when it should be 'mankind' at least, or preferably 'humanity' in today's usage.

The sermon series will deal with the arguments for 'male headship' put in Grudem's edited book on this topic. We dealt with the first today, and found nothing in G1 that can be construed as giving one sex primacy over another, contrary to Grudem's assertion. The notion of priority evaporates in the Bible's definition of 'man' as being created 'male and female' That is, together in the image of God, not one sex or the other so. This is further explicated in that [together] they are to be fruitful and multiply. A bloke can't do that by himself!

The sermon mentioned in passing the ANE context of Genesis 1, and I detected here, I think a verring to the idea that Genesis is a cultural work, rather than an inspired one, giving us concrete information about us and God. The minister made the point that the passage treated humanity in its relation to God completely differently from the ANE mythology. For example, humanity is not there to get food for the gods, but is fed by God. But this is not mere rhetorical point scoring by the Genesian author; it is that related thusly because that concretely corresponds to the real that the account reflects. If it is not doing this, then, of course it is without meaning and ranks only with other stories, bearing no relation to what really is and thus how our relationship to God is founded.

It ended rebutting the silly modern idea that men and women are different but equal, or are equal but have different roles. In the final analysis both versions of the rule-making error end up with a fake distinction between inequality and 'functional difference'. Its a thin language game that convinces no one outside the camp of the bluffers.

More on this, see Christians for Biblical Equality.