If an eight year old read Genesis 1, he or she would understand that the world was created in 6 days; or at least would agree that the text said that.
A typical Christian adult, one who read books, would hum and har, and say maybe this, or maybe that, or 'it could be read that way' or 'you have to understand the genre', and so on.
So, what happened between 8 and 28?
28 August 2016
24 August 2016
Genesis: the text.
There's an interesting section in Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, in the chapter on Eternal Life (regarding the fourth gospel), called "Truth in the Old Testament."
It deals with the difference between the Greek idea of truth: basically the correspondence theory, which is, to my mind easily Platonised, and the Hebrew idea: trustworthiness and reliability.
Now, take this dichotomy to Genesis 1, noting its being the source of many points of reference throughout the Bible, and consider the difference between a Greek, (neo)Platonic view of truth; which allows the easy Idealist slide into all sorts of non-truth variations: the framework hypothesis, Genesis 1 as 'impression', rhetorical counter to ANE myths (meaning Enuma Elish, invariably). Could a Hebrew think in that fashion?
I think not. Truth as trustworthy conduct, or words: seems to sit with Genesis 1 being an event narrative, immune to the pressure of Western thought that would undermine it; words God has spoken to Moses, and God saying as much (see below).
This makes arguments about 'genre' trivial in their missing of the point so egregiously. Particularly the point reinforced in those reliable people: Jehovah and Moses! The question of taking the Bible 'seriously' without taking it as proceeding from the mouth of God in the detail that we are given undoes the seriousness instantly.
Particularly as one considers God speaking directly to Moses in Exodus 20, attempting, for the cool crowd, to put aside the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and its kin, and consider the text in terms of the Hebraic understanding of truth as relational, not as something apart from the God who authors it, apart from people (creator and creature) in loving (and therefore trusted) relationship (which is one of the major implications of the text, in grand recursive fashion). From Exodus 20:1
And that's it for Bird.
It deals with the difference between the Greek idea of truth: basically the correspondence theory, which is, to my mind easily Platonised, and the Hebrew idea: trustworthiness and reliability.
Now, take this dichotomy to Genesis 1, noting its being the source of many points of reference throughout the Bible, and consider the difference between a Greek, (neo)Platonic view of truth; which allows the easy Idealist slide into all sorts of non-truth variations: the framework hypothesis, Genesis 1 as 'impression', rhetorical counter to ANE myths (meaning Enuma Elish, invariably). Could a Hebrew think in that fashion?
I think not. Truth as trustworthy conduct, or words: seems to sit with Genesis 1 being an event narrative, immune to the pressure of Western thought that would undermine it; words God has spoken to Moses, and God saying as much (see below).
This makes arguments about 'genre' trivial in their missing of the point so egregiously. Particularly the point reinforced in those reliable people: Jehovah and Moses! The question of taking the Bible 'seriously' without taking it as proceeding from the mouth of God in the detail that we are given undoes the seriousness instantly.
Particularly as one considers God speaking directly to Moses in Exodus 20, attempting, for the cool crowd, to put aside the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and its kin, and consider the text in terms of the Hebraic understanding of truth as relational, not as something apart from the God who authors it, apart from people (creator and creature) in loving (and therefore trusted) relationship (which is one of the major implications of the text, in grand recursive fashion). From Exodus 20:1
Then God spake all these words, saying...for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.Ending with Exodus 20:11.
And that's it for Bird.
22 August 2016
Bird's hermeneutical frame
Having looked briefly at the results of Bird's thinking about the Doctrine of Creation and its source in scripture, let's touch on his hermeneutical policy.
Its a great confusion.
Not only does it introduce the arbitrary into the practice (so which bits of Genesis 1 are to be taken seriously? the days? Clearly not; God speaking? Maybe; God doing? Don't know; God?), but it assassinates the perspicuity of scripture; one needs to be a specialist to read and understand it. You need the Bible, but you need other books.
Should we take that seriously? I know the JWs do: they must have their 'other books' to gain their bizarre understanding of scripture. Mormons similarly.
And so theistic evolutionists, or interpretive readers, or framework hypothesists, or scriptural impressionists, like Bird, must also do.
And what guides the metaframe of though that compels this take on Genesis? Nothing in the Bible, but only what comes from outside the Bible: at root materialist ideas that have everything in the Bible as a mere epiphenomenon of matter; and not, 'so to speak' the other way around. And there goes their ability to confront a lost world with a comprehensive gospel of God's comprehensive totalising love at work in his son, our Lord.
21 August 2016
Seriously?
My (almost) last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
Seriously?
My last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
18 August 2016
Genre, seriously now.
Bird, like most who want to engineer a heterodox view of Genesis 1 so as not to offend the rampant materialism of our time (I mean philosophical materialism: the view, world view, to borrow Bird's label, that dust is all there is), tell us that on the basis of 'genre analysis' we don't need to take the text as conveying objective information; back to impressionism.
Genre...that is the 'type' of text: is it poetry, description, narrative, and so on. Its a great escape hatch.
However, we can through some biblical light on the question. We have a poetic response to creation. It is in Psalms 8 and 19 as great examples. We also have a list of events in Numbers 7.
A quick comparison tells one which Genesis 1 is more like: the list, of course.
Bringing a modern conception of information to Genesis 1, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a structured computer file of 6 records. Each record has a record opening field, an event description field, a count field and an end of record marker.
Nothing like poetry, nothing like an impressionistic account, nothing mystical. The closed thing we have to it today is a concrete list of events.
Moreover, the grammatical signals are of historical narrative, with consecutive constructions used throughout.
Additionally, the author's driving insistence on the passage of time is remarkable. In Numbers 7 (which also, like Genesis 1 states the first day differently to the subsequent days) the announcement of the day is quite simple. In Genesis 1, it is quite elaborate, as if to make quite sure that the reader understands what 'day' means, precisely. It is counted, it is described: a 'evening and morning' type day. Not a day of indeterminate time, or a day that is detached from our everyday experience of day.
Genre...that is the 'type' of text: is it poetry, description, narrative, and so on. Its a great escape hatch.
However, we can through some biblical light on the question. We have a poetic response to creation. It is in Psalms 8 and 19 as great examples. We also have a list of events in Numbers 7.
A quick comparison tells one which Genesis 1 is more like: the list, of course.
Bringing a modern conception of information to Genesis 1, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a structured computer file of 6 records. Each record has a record opening field, an event description field, a count field and an end of record marker.
Nothing like poetry, nothing like an impressionistic account, nothing mystical. The closed thing we have to it today is a concrete list of events.
Moreover, the grammatical signals are of historical narrative, with consecutive constructions used throughout.
Additionally, the author's driving insistence on the passage of time is remarkable. In Numbers 7 (which also, like Genesis 1 states the first day differently to the subsequent days) the announcement of the day is quite simple. In Genesis 1, it is quite elaborate, as if to make quite sure that the reader understands what 'day' means, precisely. It is counted, it is described: a 'evening and morning' type day. Not a day of indeterminate time, or a day that is detached from our everyday experience of day.
15 August 2016
World view
So, Genesis 1 is mainly about world view!
How would we know when we are assured that the account is, at best, impressionistic? It is only about world view (and I think that notion is itself contestable: the idea of world view operates within a non-absolutist ontology that the Bible does not partake in), if it gives a world view. Now, setting aside for the moment that there is such a thing as a world view, as one in a range of options, let's think: how does the Bible give us a world view that is not as fictional as the world views of those whose world view sets the Biblical data at nought and erects a world view on that basis? Their world view is clearly wrong, but, still...its a 'world view'.
We go in circles, of course. The Bible does not present a 'world view'. It tells us how the world actually, really, and concretely is. There is no alternative that aligns with what it is. It is our god-given duty to have our thinking conform to the Bible, not to use it to generate yet another 'world view' option!
Of course, if the Bible does not tell us how the world actually, really, concretely is; then it is hardly able to provide even a 'world view'. We only have the impressionistic picture that I've already mentioned. This does not 'refute' Darwinism (which truly is a 'world view') because it is categorically different. Darwin claims to tell us what the world is truly. But it is wrong (for lots of reasons, including human experience). This is what refutes Darwinism, and every other 'world view' that denies that we are here by the loving agency of God who brings forth from nothing by his will.
The creation account relies upon and teaches this: its detailed list of events underlines two very important things by demonstration (not mere picture painting): The personal (God) in loving relationship, is fundamental to all being, in the most profound way, and that this personal God is concretely involved in events and substance of creation: he is directly and intimately connected to its outcomes, and not remote from then due to an intervening or mediating principle that is, itself, not God (that is, not Christ, the only mediator, but some other medaitorial, impersonal principle as is proposed in darwinian evolution).
How would we know when we are assured that the account is, at best, impressionistic? It is only about world view (and I think that notion is itself contestable: the idea of world view operates within a non-absolutist ontology that the Bible does not partake in), if it gives a world view. Now, setting aside for the moment that there is such a thing as a world view, as one in a range of options, let's think: how does the Bible give us a world view that is not as fictional as the world views of those whose world view sets the Biblical data at nought and erects a world view on that basis? Their world view is clearly wrong, but, still...its a 'world view'.
We go in circles, of course. The Bible does not present a 'world view'. It tells us how the world actually, really, and concretely is. There is no alternative that aligns with what it is. It is our god-given duty to have our thinking conform to the Bible, not to use it to generate yet another 'world view' option!
Of course, if the Bible does not tell us how the world actually, really, concretely is; then it is hardly able to provide even a 'world view'. We only have the impressionistic picture that I've already mentioned. This does not 'refute' Darwinism (which truly is a 'world view') because it is categorically different. Darwin claims to tell us what the world is truly. But it is wrong (for lots of reasons, including human experience). This is what refutes Darwinism, and every other 'world view' that denies that we are here by the loving agency of God who brings forth from nothing by his will.
The creation account relies upon and teaches this: its detailed list of events underlines two very important things by demonstration (not mere picture painting): The personal (God) in loving relationship, is fundamental to all being, in the most profound way, and that this personal God is concretely involved in events and substance of creation: he is directly and intimately connected to its outcomes, and not remote from then due to an intervening or mediating principle that is, itself, not God (that is, not Christ, the only mediator, but some other medaitorial, impersonal principle as is proposed in darwinian evolution).
12 August 2016
Let me tell how it is...
A lot of what I've written to discuss Pahl's views would be applicable to Bird's; but why avoid writing when writing is such fun?
Here goes:
There's an old joke, at the expense of economists that has members of three professions on a desert island with only a can of beans for food. The first two puzzle over what to do...it comes to the economist who starts by saying "let's assume we have a can opener..."
Thinking that the Genesis creation account tells us something about God and creation without actually telling us anything that really happened is similarly empty. How can telling us something that didn't happen teach us anything about what did happen? How can a 'story' of what didn't happen respond to contemporaneous (and that I'd question) ANE tales which were also of what didn't happen (even tho' this confuses theogony and cosmogony)?
The idea is nonsensical. Its a Goon Show approach ( I recal one show where Neddy Seagood thought that a picture of a gun was an adequate weapon). Just like a mountain climber setting off with a picture of a rope: no actual rope, and the picture itself not even telling what a rope could do or how it could be used....that's the divide between concrete events and an account that does not encompas concrete events being asserted to lead us to conclusions about that which it fails to reveal.
More Hegel than Hegel...and nothing like the God who is concretely involved with his creation, where it is the details that make the general, and not the other merrily Platonic way around.
Here goes:
There's an old joke, at the expense of economists that has members of three professions on a desert island with only a can of beans for food. The first two puzzle over what to do...it comes to the economist who starts by saying "let's assume we have a can opener..."
Thinking that the Genesis creation account tells us something about God and creation without actually telling us anything that really happened is similarly empty. How can telling us something that didn't happen teach us anything about what did happen? How can a 'story' of what didn't happen respond to contemporaneous (and that I'd question) ANE tales which were also of what didn't happen (even tho' this confuses theogony and cosmogony)?
The idea is nonsensical. Its a Goon Show approach ( I recal one show where Neddy Seagood thought that a picture of a gun was an adequate weapon). Just like a mountain climber setting off with a picture of a rope: no actual rope, and the picture itself not even telling what a rope could do or how it could be used....that's the divide between concrete events and an account that does not encompas concrete events being asserted to lead us to conclusions about that which it fails to reveal.
More Hegel than Hegel...and nothing like the God who is concretely involved with his creation, where it is the details that make the general, and not the other merrily Platonic way around.
8 August 2016
Darwin does it down
The cool TE crowd love to say that evolution was God's 'method' of creation...or the creation account is a culturally situated tale to tell us that God is creator. If it is not concretely real, of course, it teaches no such thing. But atheists are also unpersuaded:
From The Australia a few days ago.
From The Australia a few days ago.
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