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.
28 April 2019
8 April 2019
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:
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.
It thus expresses four major theologically significant themes:
- Proximity
- Identity
- Commutativity
- Causality
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.
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