For little kids

I recently picked the Bible Societies' book "Christmas" by Susannah McFarlane.

What a great idea to get children interested in Christian faith and to start understanding it.

Then, on page 6, it started to unravel.

"People didn't want to do what God told them to....They wanted to decide things, not God."

And this was for kids, who spend their whole lives being told what to do...is God like that? Just a bigger teller what to do?

I don't think so. Just think about Genesis 1:27 and 3:9-10. God made us for relationship, to be 'in sync' with him, then sought that relationship.

What's missing in the book is that God started out as the one who loves, who seeks relationship everywhere.

Thus the text might better be:

"People didn't want to be friends with God and live how he had made them to. People turned away from being God's friends and tried to be God's bosses. But they didn't know enough, and weren't wise enough.

We are all like that, we think we know better than God about who God made us and we muck things up...often we do this a lot.

No matter how hard we try, we cannot really be God's friends because we keep telling him we don't want to live like he made us."

You get the picture. For kids particularly, its about relationship, about relationship broken, and about God himself coming into our world (that he made for us) to make us strong enough to be his friends again.

Then, of course, you'll have to deal with what it means that God made everything. The first thing kids will hit at preschool is materialistic, pagan evolution, which de-personalises the universe, pushes God away from real involvement with us, and denies that he created us in any real and meaningful way.

Indeed, part of the theology of Genesis 1 is that God stepped into our world in the very act(s) of creation and did so to show his means of creating: by his direct word, and that this creation was immediately from the 'hand' of God. The place made for us to be friends of God. The creation account embeds the relationship in the real concrete world; not in some immaterial fiction that has no relation with anything real in our lives.

A Christmas observation

One of the 'problems' of theology is whence the possibility of relationship between the eternal God and man in his finite world, between the eternal and the temporal.

This is done in Genesis 1 where God acts in our time-constrained and physical world, with physical effect and rational (existential) causality by his will (his word): the stage-setting intersection of eternity and humanity, enabling the reciprocal communion between us and God because we are in God's image: like him in aspects of our nature; and he is existentially active, really present, in our world. Being here, so we can be with him. He demonstrates this in Genesis 1 (demonstration being better than mere assertion) as he tells us what and how he did.

The incarnation completes and authenticates this: with God in Christ being one of us, but God and man, rescuing us from our alientation from our Creator. Both concretely grounded in the Real. The Real, where we  sweat, weep, laugh and love.

This goes further and joins God's nature, his being, with our existential experience; but only, again, on the basis of God demonstrating his existential sharing in our temporal world: the whole point of Genesis 1 as a concrete realist account of events.

It solves what I call Rorty's dilemma, which Rorty sketches in this wonderful essay Trotsky and the Wild Orchids. Where it leaves Rorty reminds me of Schaeffer's comments (in The God Who Is There) of John Cage's similar dilemma. Cage made 'deconstructed' music, but couldn't safely pursue his hobby of wild mushroom collecting (and eating) in similar fashion. Cage's assertions about the world did not work. Without a rigiourous order and classification system for his mushrooms he would not avoid sudden liver failure and certain death. His world and its meaning did not intersect as did not Rorty's in that essay.

As the church broadly embraces the conceit of Paganism in imagining impossibly long ages for Earth's existence (but, ironically, insufficiently long for evolution to even theoretically operate), it puts everyone in Rorty's and Cage's position: their irrationality of the intellect fails to play out in life. Denying Genesis, we do the same: endorse the impossible life and its conceits, obstructing the gospel at every turn, and keeping people on the road to perdition, with a God detached existentially from our world and therefore relationship.

Not only this, but we reinforce the unreality of Genesis 1 by making it a mere symbol, or figure, or a 'framework' of something else. The trouble is, if Genesis is not true to events, then it conveys nothing about the Real, rather it leaves us in the Hindu position of illusion.

Our real reality is defined by what really is (and the source is essential to understanding this), and if our reality comes otherwise than Genesis 1 sets out, then it is that something else which is basically definitional of us, our lives and relationships.

PS, all that said, Cage's piece 4'33 is worth listening to.

Something from nothing

A conversation with a uni student, a Christian, who accepted the 'big bang' despite it ostensibly requiring that something come from nothing.

When asked to consider the creation account, she objected "Why can you have a something from nothing, but I cannot?"

The great error she made, aside from the obvious logical one, was that her ‘first philosophy’ her  orientating ontology was ‘basic materialism’. That is, ‘materialism’ was basic to the explanation of all that is. The problem with materialism is its initial conditions: how did it start; had to be eternal, but where does ‘eternal energy’ come from in a materialist frame?

But the theological concern is that the Scriptures give us a basic theism: basic ‘personist’ first philosophy.

The explanation of all that is is that God is, God is love, God is in triune relationship. God has effective will. God outworks his will in love in the creation of the cosmos and man in his image.

This does not constitute a sleight of hand, where we have something coming from noting. We have everything that has a beginning coming from he who has no beginning, but is spirit and is eternal and who is the continuous sponsor of our foundational ontology. Thus our praise of him, love of him and proper relationship being in his family for ever.

The framework hypothesis

Much has been written on the 'so-called' framework hypothesis that evacuates Genesis of real-world meaning (and signficance).

For instance:

Russell Grigg's

Bob McCabe's

and

Joseph Pipa's

None of the really touch on the philisophical issues raised.

Those who support the FH are in a bind. They have to explain what really did happen, and how this unkown other thing underpins their theology. That is, if none of the events in the creation account are truly real, how can any of them support a theology that affects us in the real world? Either the creation is a unity from God's speaking to our experience of fellowship with God, or something else that we don't know, and therefore cannot study, creates that unity. They are left with a conncoction from silence, or some imaginary pagan 'creation'.

For many it seems that the FH requires a double reality: "God-reality" in the Bible, and 'real-reality' out here in the world. This ends up with the 'God-reality' being subservient to and deriviative of the 'real-reality', but failing to deal with the Almightyness of God, as Augustine sets out in his little talk on the Creed, and the integrated reality (or ontology) of the Genesis account.

The spiritual dimension is also disrupted.

The greatest theological flaw in the FH is that it breaks the intimacy of fellowship between Creator (God) and creature-in-his-image (man/humanity). In the Genesis account it is an intimate communion where God and man relate to each other in the real time-space in which and by which God created (e.g. creating in created time we are in over the six days, demonstrating that this is real in the commutative relationship of God and creature).

The FH pushes God off somewhere else and obscures the directness of his creation of his image-bearers. The creation account also underscores the real-ness of our relationship with God and the 'setting' of that relationship: the material creation.

The FH discounts this as a comparative triviality and brings into question, 'what is truly real'? This then goes to bring into question the reliability of our being-and-place and the significancy of anything we do.

It leads us to pagan conceptions of the creation, typified by platonic Idealism, for example, and given a modern outing in European Idealism. To the contrary, God created in a concrete reality in which he participated to relate to us: the days of creation a great example of him being and acting in our time-space, creating, demonstrating and underscoring the closeness of his fellowship. 

And on top of all this, if the FH denies the reality of  the contents of the framework, then it can mean nothing. The framework itself is just an empty fantasy.

19th century

Great line in an essay by Douglas Murray:

The explanations for our existence that used to be provided by religion went first, falling away from the 19th century onwards.

Now, I wonder which explanation this is?

Note he is not able to say "Darwin's wonderful discovery allowed us new insights into the relation of our creator and his world" No; Darwian's project and effect was to rid the world of a creator, giving a world concept where material was primary. Not personhood.

Going public

If you might want to use 'creation' to discuss belief, life and who we are (culminating in the gospel where possible), here are some tips from a group that did this over about a 7 year period.

1. Anything you can't answer, write it done in a dedicated book and research for the next time the question pops up.

2. Offer to respond to the person by e-mail.

3. Have a tablet or some other device handy with backup material.

4. Have a good and easily available pamphlet supply at the ready and in view. Have a sign saying 'Free Literature'. If you don't you'll be bombarded all people with people asking you "May I take this?".

5. Have the material/articles on the walls of the stand in some sort of order/category to make for easy reading. Have the heavy hitters up there e.g. T-Rex blood.

6. Have your spiel down pat but be prepared to break away from it when the situation demands.

7. Don't be afraid to reel people in as they pass by for an explanation of your stand e.g. "Would you like me to give you an explanation regarding our stand?"

8. Have an enticing line to reel them in e.g. "We want people to reconsider the question of origins. 

Logically there is nothing objectionable about there being a Creator/Personal Designer", or something to that effect.

9. Follow Jesus' use of analogies (i.e. parables) to get the message across (e.g. "Do you believe that it's possible that the paper, ink and time alone cam make a book? What's missing? Information, which is not a material entity, can't arise from purely material processes." Then link it it biological and evolutionary processes.)

10. Be prepared to "respond" to the idiot! i.e. the nasty atheist.

11. Have a sleeved folder with article in categories to help.

12. DO NOT throw Jesus and the Bible at people. Wilder Smith always said it was better to stick to the science (and from my perspective, philosophy). If they ask for further info (i.e. what do you believe?), then tell them as a Christian I believe reality begs for a Creator and chance chemistry just doesn't cut the mustard (or some variation on this tactic).

13. If you are at a fair, check out the other Christian stands and invite them around for a talk. Chances are they won't turn up but it's always worth a try. And have your anti-theistic evolution and long age responses, both the biblical and philosophical, down pat.

14. Research other religions and philosophies and be ready to give them a response (but don't come across as uber-Christian e.g. sin, you're a sinner, Jesus died for you, hell....). Instead show them how their own system of thought can't handle the big questions and is internally at odds with itself and with external reality.

15. Appeal to the personal.

16. Recommend a good book (have that list next you you as you'll likely forget the ideal book in the moment) or web site (e.g. creation.com, Answers in Genesis, etc.)

17. Be able to respond to the question "But are you religious?" (I usually say "By 'religious', if you mean having answers to the ultimate and big questions, then yes we are religious. But then all people are religious: the atheists, Marxists, Buddhists...We happen to be Christian and hold that the complexity of the universe, particularly the biological world, demands explanation and we say that only a Creator of the order that Christianity proposes can explain this. Chance chemistry over eons of time is inadequate. We can show you why a Creator is the only rational explanation." i.e. be BOLD!)

18. Have interesting photos or objects (samples, fossils, etc.) at the back of the stand to attract people in and past the free literature.

Genesis v poetry?

Comment I made on a website (https://creation.com/genesis-not-poetic)

If Genesis 1 is poetry (which it is not), this would not itself bear on its facticity.

For example, the Australian folk song 'Waltzing Matilda' is poetry, but that doesn't mean there were no jumbucks, tucker bags, troopers, or swagmen. Nor does it not mean there was no late 19th century drought. Indeed, in ancient times, poetry was typically the form of conveying stories (including about actual events).

What is inferred by the claim is that Genesis is figurative or symbolic. However, it doesn't use figurative or symbolic language, it uses historical. If it was 'merely' figurative, then it would tell us nothing about the real world, because it uses concrete language it embeds itself in the real world and sure, it is not about the details of creation, but is clear on the 'how' God's word, because this is intimately connected to the why: God creating in love. The other details of Genesis 1 are also essential to its theological significance, but only because they happened in the world which is the setting of its theological significance. It is modern philosophical conceit that pretends to be able to separate the two.

Putting Genesis 1 into the bubble

When people (typically scholars) work to put Genesis 1 into some sort of non-realist box, they, at the same time, express a view that Genesis 1 is not the foundational definition of all that is, of our relationship with God and the real world he created, but relies on some other, unstated foundation.

Thus they have Genesis 1's teaching in some sort of idealist bubble in a world that has its foundational being, its cause and 'creation' from some other source. This world is not really aligned with God, but God and his creative works become clients of this other world that is definitively foundational and inevitably reflects the terms of its foundation.

Typically this foundational definition is, today, what I would call 'ethical materialism', or ontological 'naturalism'. Where what really is is random uncalibrated and morally nebulous interactions of molecular assemblages. This world is not morally deep, but mechanistically shallow and personhood is an accident within this world, not foundationally prior to it.

What does Genesis 1 teach?

What it teaches is not only what it says, but what is demonstrated by what is said.

It thus expresses four major theologically significant themes:

1. Proximity
2. Identity
3. Commutativity
4. Causality

 All four sit on the basic stratum of concrete realism in Genesis teaching that what occured occured in the terms by which it is related. That is, its terms demonstrate a realist connection between God, the creator, who is love, we creatures in his image and the realist framing in which and by which we fellowship with God. Terms that make sense in the world which they refer to; the world which was made reflectable in the terms by which we navigate the world and form understanding of and within it.

This is the basic realist congruence between God's intention, its results and our capacity to make sense of his communication about it in those terms.

Some more detail.

Proximity
There is no great distance between God's intention and his creation of mankind: formed from material, enbreathed by him (Genesis 2:7). The relationship between intention and result is immediate, proximate and causally direct. Absent are intervening layers of causal cascades which would result in distance between us and God and belie the love with which God created.


Identity
Who we are is defined both in Genesis 1:26f and 2:7. Who we are is stated in Genesis 1:27 and demonstrated in the creation mandate (Genesis 1:28f). Our identity is not reliant upon or referred to other causal motions or elements. We too are personal, with will, affection and motive.

Commutativity
This makes possible the fellowship God created us for, enabled by the imageness we share with God. Commutativity is borrowed from the mathematical concept where an arithmetic operation gives the same result irrespective of the order it proceeds in. That is 2+3=5, as does 3+2. That is, the meaning runs 'both ways'.

The point is that communication, sharing of meaning and the fellowship of persons between God and us is equally significant and of the same terms either way: God to us or us to God. There are 'magnitude' differences, of course, to continue the mathematical analogy but not differences of kind. We are, after all, in God's image. We occupy the realist domain which God created such that it is representable in realist terms denominated in commutative experience of that domain and its terms. That is, we know what God is talking about in the creation account, and it makes sense of and in this world that he made and described in that account.

There is no other system, causal mechanism, site or mediating agent between God and us and our fellowship is thus real. Marred, of course, now, post fall, but repaired, indeed, 'over-repaired' by Christ and given effect by the in-dwelling Spirit of God.


Causality
The creation is an intentioned thing; a recursively sense-making communicative thing between us and God, about us and God.

Events of and within creation flow from intention without dislocation. Contrast paganism where effect has no comprehesible connection with its causal initiation.

Causality is also consistent; God demonstrates this in consistently bringing things to be that are directly the effect of his intention. They are 'bound' as results of his will, of his actions in love.

We are therefore confident of our instrumental causality; this has given us the genesis and development of modern enquiry into the world, as is explicated in the Jaki-Duhem thesis.

Dismiss the real-world concrete realism of the Genesis account, and these four essential theological factors fail, and we no longer have reliable fellowship with God and God is no longer accessible in the framework of his creation.

If a theology dismisses the real-world concrete realism of the creation account, then it must assert that something else happened, and it is this something else that defines and describes what is really real, determining all the features and contours of our real life-world; only we cannot know what this is, or default to the very different world of impersonal materialism.

Instead of the real being the fellowship of persons (God in three persons), it is mute random material fusion, endlessly and meaninglessly.

Light before Sun?

There are some who pose a challenge of light existing before the sun was created.

I think the problem is overstated and easily rebutted.

When God created light, I believe ‘light’ is used as a synecdoche for the entire electro-magnetic spectrum or perhaps the entire energy field of which visible light is but a part.

In the order of creation, I suspect that the energy ‘infrastructure’ must have been created first or nothing would ‘work’, and it is separated from darkness (unenergetic substance?) as a distinct thing in creation.

Thus light, as a thing with real existence does not rely on it particular production at any time, but must exist to be able to be produced by particular atomic activity.

It’s like saying music could not exist before there were instruments on which to play it; however, its the other way: music had to be invented to be able to be produced by an oboe. Oboe without music is just an elaborate tube.

Then, does the repetition of ‘evening and morning’ indicate that there were diurnal lighting variations?

Not necessarily. The terms exist primarily as markers of time, not the names of lighting conditions. Just think of evening in the Arctic Circle in July: ‘as bright as day’.

Stellar objects as markers of time don’t appear until later, in Gen 1:14, so there are no ‘markers of time’ operating. There is no need for a temporary or supernatural light source as there is no need for light with no one on earth during the first 5 days. Nevertheless, to indicate the duration of events Moses tells us that the evening and morning markers of time are chronologically relevant to the passing of time in those first few days, and are calibrated by the v. 14 markers for human use.

Simply, light and time passing are two separate things, connected only with the creation of stellar objects.

 

Matt Strassler might help shine some light on what 'light' is really about.