Anglican Origins Discussion

History: event or interpretation?

2012-01-30T12:26:00.000+11:00

Some quotes from Elton, The Practice of History, that touch on, and raise questions about the way Genesis 1 is approached by many commentators today, who deny that it is history, or take it as a type of verbal gloss on an underlying but unnominated set of events:

The task of history is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must be given full respect in its own right. And unless it is properly understood, any use of it in the present must be suspect and can be dangerous.

p. 47.

A long one which is interesting in the difference between ‘natural’ science and history:

As a matter of fact, in a very real sense the study of history is concerned with a subject matter more objective and more independent than that of the natural sciences. The common argument that, unlike the scientist, the historian cannot verify his reconstruction by repeating the experiment at will can be turned round to give him greater assurance of objectivity...All scientific experiments are essentially constructs, and this applies to both the physical and the biological sciences...Of course, he obtains his problem by asking questions of nature--of something outside himself--but his method enables him to treat nature willfully and to compose for himself the argument which he wishes to resolve...scientific experiments are...artificial; theses things would not have happened but for a deliberate act of will on the part of the experimenter; the matter studies may be taken from nature, but before it is studied it is transformed for the purposes of the investigation. It is not going too far to assert that nearly all scientific study deals with specially prepared artificial derivatives from what naturally occurs.

The historian’s case is different...he cannot invent his experiment; the subject of his investigation is outside his control. When the problem of truth is under consideration, his essential difference from the natural scientist works in his favour...the matter he investigates has a dead reality independent of the enquiry.

pp. 52-3.

When it comes to views of Genesis 1 that see it not as an account of time-space events in the sequence given, but a sort of meta-historical account that abstracts from events to convey some inferred ‘truth’ that lies beneath them, I can’t but help think that such views consider God to be a historical relativist: a position that has to be argued and demonstrated, rather than asserted glibly and taken for granted as though there are no alternative positions:

Interpretation, or general acceptance of a thesis, has nothing whatever to do with its independent existence...others who think that history is what historians write, not what happened, come dangerously close to suggesting either that it does not much matter what one says because (interpretation being everything) there are always several reasonably convincing interpretations of any given set of events, or that history is altogether unknowable, being merely what happens to be said by a historian at a given moment.

p. 56.

...but that men cannot ever eliminate themselves from the search for truth is non-sense, and pernicious nonsense at that, because it once again favours the purely relativist concept of history, the opinion that it is all simply in the historian's mind and becomes whatever he likes to make of it.

p. 57.

So those who think that Genesis 1 is a late Jewish ‘interpretation’ of what they think happened, against the conceptions of the day as to origins, have succumbed to the notion that it is interpretation (the ancients’ or theirs) that matters and not the facts. But this is a perspective, not itself a self-evident fact, and it is what actually happened that is important, because this is reflective of who God is and what we are in relation to him, in every aspect and dimension of our being. To think that the interpretation is more significant than the events is to express a view that the cosmos and its ‘reality’ is something other than what is from God’s hand, somehow independent of God and that principles and mechanisms have an independent existence to which God in his creation tale also makes reference. But this undercuts the whole notion of a meaningful creation account and leaves us knowing nothing about ourselves or our world, subject to the changing whims of contemporary ideas: currently, of course these are materialist.

CMS Summer School

2012-01-27T20:51:00.003+11:00

A friend who'd attended the school sent me a copy of his letter to the Archbishop, who addressed the attendees on the subject of creation.

I am very glad that you broached the controversial question of creation at the CMS Summer School.

The question is often delimited in the terms that you used in your talk: that is, both by science and theology, thus your deferral to science, I would expect, on the scientific questions.

This represents, I think, a profound mistake! The question of our origin is not a scientific question at all. It is, from start to finish, a theological question and its answer has only theological implications.

The question has only become regarded as a scientific one by a sleight of hand to which the church has caved in from the day of its active promotion by Darwin and his supporters in the mid 1800s and resiled from its prophetic function ever since. The great sleight of hand is two-fold: firstly that processes within the creation can throw light on the supernatural act of creation, and that something must be interposed between the word of God and the effects of that word, some ‘mechanism’ to give life to what God has called to be! How extraordinary for a Christian theologian to buckle before the puffery of materialism and its typically atheistic proponents (or unwitting Christian fellow-travellers) and agree that our God needs a ‘mechanism’ to achieve his ends; particularly when he has gone out of his way to tell us precisely what happened in sufficient detail to eliminate the role of any subsidiary mechanism.

And just think what a mechanism might imply for the doctrine of creation itself? It might imply that agency apart from God was necessary for creation: so whence this agency? It might imply that God made something in order to make something else, as though ordinary providence operated in the extraordinary period of the creation, ending as it does with God in his glory! It might imply things that exist that are outside God and outside the creation: some principle, power, or ‘mechanism’ that is uncreated? What does this say, then about God? But what, also, of us? The effect is to immediately de-personalise the creation work and destroy the filial relationship between us and God. We would be the sons of a machine, not God if he interposed a mechanism between himself and us; yet the only mediator is Christ!

Clearly, this opens up a can of worms.

The reason creation is a theological matter, and one of prime importance is because the creation both shows and defines our relationship with God and sets the entire cosmos and all that is within it in theological context: arising only from God, for God’s purpose and reflecting God as ‘very good’, then to be under the stewardship of his creature that is in his image.

Importing evolutionary ideas into this is not innocuously adding a ‘scientific’ explanation, but is mounting an attack on the sovereignty and capability of God, if not his very being; re-founding humanity as a mere assembly of material, and making the cosmos the foundation of being, with person-hood, shown in will and love relationships and actions occurring within this and not prior to it, in the three-person God. Apart from this, it is also allowing a fiction to explain God’s supernatural acts, a fiction for which there is no evidence, any actual evidence cutting off after it has explained the variation in creatures (but not their origin).

I would ask you to re-consider your position on creation and re-take it as a theological question, because those who deny God see the theological issue very clearly and make materialism the engine of their view of humanity. The two do not co-join. Materialism, how ever it trumps itself up, does not mix with Christian supernaturalism. Each places man and the cosmos on utterly different trajectories.

A sermon that deals with this topic which may be of interest is at:

http://www.gty.org/resources/Sermons/90-359

I would also add that to argue for any mixture of evolution and creation removes God from creation: as many published works attest, as does the lack of movement to God brought by expousal of evolution. My posts on de-godding God and the Creation discuss this.

Furthermore, to claim that the text is empty of historical content, but still serves to show God as creator, fails. If the content is inaccurate, then nothing is communicated but puffery, and it is empty of information that relates to the creation in which it is purported to make sense: that is connects with the categories, relationships and common causality of the creation. It is a sad sign of theological neglect to let this hollow argument pass into print, or sermons, which it does from time to time.

Creation, but not as you know it

2012-01-21T08:21:00.000+11:00

The sermon on Genesis 1, to which I referred the other day, started off very well, I thought, and it ended well too, for that matter. It was the middle that was the problem; or where there were a number of problems, to my mind.

At one point the speaker made an analogy by asking if we believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews. Of course, most people affirmed. He then told us that in fact all Hitler did was give orders. The killing was done by others. He extended this to say that creation was similar. God gave the orders, but other factors did the work.

There are a couple of basic problems with this: there is no biblical evidence that God used intermediaries, or had to rely on agency (apart from Christ, the only agent mentioned in the Bible: John 1:1-3) particularly noting Hebrews 11:3 and Psalm 33:6 and 9. There is also an irrationality in God having to rely on, or use, something from within the creation to recursively do the creating itself, when God's resting on day 7 marks the division between creating and the world as created. It means that God used something from what was not there do make what became there. Simply unworkable!

The speaker also brought up the notion that the creation account gives us the 'why' or the meaning behind it all, but 'science' gives us the 'how'.

Again, this fails. The failure is a basic linguistic one, as the account clearly provides the 'how' (God spoke, it happened) as the 'why'. The two are inseparable. But the failure is also logical: if it is imagined that a materialist, de-godding doctrine (evolution) which relies on observations within the completed (but fallen) creation gives the detail of the pre-fall, pre-normal-providence creation acts, then we are using imaginary paddles on this particular canoe!

One remark perhaps gave the game away. The speaker mentioned 'intelligent design' which, to my mind is a non-Christian approach to origins, when it is extended past the observation that the creation is replete with the characteristics of design. ID does not a theology make, nor is it adequate to inform theological work. Our consideration of creation must start with the Bible, as for instance this sermon on the theology of creation demonstrates.

Underlying the speaker's thesis, I think, was a misunderstanding of the creation account itself; which is about relationship and soverign action, not providing openings for us to 'grope' for 'mechanisms'. And, as I've argued, the quest for a mechanism is itself recourse to materialism and rejection of the biblical world view, sith its use of history to establish the basis for relationship and the connection between creator and creation, and gives primacy to materialism as basic within the creation and probably prior to it!

One of the nice touches in the sermon was how the speaker characterised the pinnacle of creation. Usually it is said that this occurs on day 6, with the creation of man. But Duncan suggested that it is day 7, when God rested. And this has a symmetry to it (in chiasmic fashion) with it a book end to God being the focus of the start of the passage in Genesis 1:1.

Thus, it is all about God, and the detail of the account is even less some literary artifice to convince us that God is creator, but is very much about God creating: about what he, as God, did as the work of God in bringing a creation into being as the place where he would be in relationship with his creatures.

Creation in pictures

2012-01-17T14:51:00.001+11:00

Not quite clear in the picture (using phone not camera) but this shows a children's activity at a church I was visiting today (15 Jan 12). The chart was divided into 7 sections, and children were asked to stick pictures of what God created on each day in the appropriate section. Was very enjoyable as Alison, the moderator (I hate, as you know, the word 'leader' in a Christian context), led us through the questions, answers and sticking up.

The sermon that followed (thanks Duncan) took us into some interesting territory, but included, I think, some views that are not defensible from the Bible.

More on this in a later post.

evolutionary history

2012-01-12T20:17:00.000+11:00

“The evolutionary theory of history has a good deal in common with that which sees the hand of God in history; after all, evolution was thought to explain the facts of natural creation in default of the existence of a creator.”

Elton, G The Practice of History p. 31

The suppression of Christianity

2012-01-12T14:14:00.000+11:00

In "The Good Weekend" of 17 December 2011 Greg Bearup wrote:

...he remembers being fascinated reading about the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer, a German philosopher, physician and musician who set up a hospital in Africa and supported it by performing organ recitals.

Note, no mention of Schweitzer's christian devotion being the major factor in his life and work or the sacrifice of his opportunities in Germany for the work in Africa. Note also the 'on purpose' mistake to call him a philosopher, but to not mention that he was a theologian, and a significant one!

Bearup also downplays Schweitzer's musical capability. He indeed was a great musician, but he was also a noted musicologist, with a two volume work on Bach.

Typical atheistic revisionism that attempts to erase the Christian heritage from the popular mind.

Elton on OT

2012-01-12T11:09:00.000+11:00

“No other primitive sacred writings are so grimly chronological and historical as is the Old Testament, with its express record of God at work...”
G. R. Elton The Practice of History, p. 2

Theistic evolution's project

2012-01-08T21:35:00.004+11:00

The project of theistic-evolution, in any of its various forms, is a project to establish that God did, or could have, created by some ‘mechanism’ or ‘principle’ not identified with God but ipso facto, from within the creation itself.

But its seeking an ‘explanation’ for the creation from within the creation is not only incoherent nonsense, but is to miss the very point of the creation as accounted in the Bible. Indeed, to even consider that God’s creative acts could be shared with something from within the creation is to undo God’s chief credential with respect to us, his creation, for our worship of him, his self identification as one who wills in love, and his capability to communicate true content in his revelation, which revelation is only made into the world that he created in which such content must have meaning in terms of elements and relations within that creation.

Thus, to embark upon a quest for a mechanism for creation, interposed between God’s speaking and its effect is to embark upon a quest to avoid God: to imagine that God would share with something within the creation his unique identifying capability is to misunderstand God and deny (1) that his creation is a means of contentful communication between him and us, (2) his love (in making the creation ‘very good’), and (3) the very point of the creation (for God’s extending in love to us ), is as grand a mistake as could come from a human mind.

The creation is not about mechanism, but about relationship wherein we know, love and glorify God. The account itself is not devoid of content, by this fact, but provides information about what and how God did his acts.

To think that the notion of mechanism adds anything to the creation account inserts into understanding of the account a materialist conception; so it counters the Bible’s ‘world view’ at the outset, holding that person-hood, love, intention (word) are not basic, but that mechanism is: materialism's only ontological recourse.

Rather, the account sets in a tight couple word-act and result: God in relationship with his creation; mechanism de-couples result from word-act: word-act - mechanism - result: this breaks the relational connection and puts us in filial relationship with something within the creation! So, asserting a mechanism doesn't explain anything about the creation account, nor does it fill a gap that the account leaves; instead, it voids the creation as a love-act and robs it of the very personal link that it explicates and within which it occurs.

The theistic-evolutionary project ends up by replacing God as he reveals himself in acts, with a ‘something’ that denies this revelation and requires agency outside of God, and, as I’ve indicated above, something that is founded in a conception of the world that is at odds with the Bible as it makes a materialist make-over of the word of God.

An analogy in human relationships would be to think that one could maintain a marriage relationship not by being in fellowship with your spouse, by asking the butler to look after it for you.

This post is related to the ideas discussed in 'de-godding'.

Happy Holiday?

2012-01-05T21:29:00.001+11:00

Leading up to Christmas I received a few emails from business contacts in North America. Some ended with the sign-off line: 'happy holiday' or similar pabulum.

Just to keep the facts straight, I replied with 'Christmas Blessings', just to make the point for religion avoiders and their appeasers.

Next thing is to start a movement to put Christ firmly, defiantly and unmistakably into Christmas: pickets outside schools that soft-pedal the Christian-ness of the day would be a good start; the noisier the better. Petitions to school principals, meetings with them (easy if you are a parent), phone calls, of course, letters and emails. You name it. Next year: beat the drum!

De-godding God

2012-01-03T16:04:00.000+11:00

There is, I think, a futher ramification to denying the direct reading of the creation account in the Bible beyond my post on eclectic creation and the one on de-godding.

That is, not only is the creation de-godded, but God himself suffers this process, in his being represented as other than his own self-representation.

Moves such as 'theistic'-evolution make God's self-proclaimed acts to be of other than God: a process, or matter itself. It undoes God.

Now, this may not be a problem for many commentators on the topic of origins, as most think the cosmos has been thoroughly de-godded anyway. Even for many ostensibly Christian commentators, the cosmos has been de-godded along deistic or gnostic lines, following a pagan, rather than a biblical lead.

But for conservative evangelicals the implications are more than stark.

God places nothing but himself between 'said' and 'is was so'. The interpolators go beyond the text and say that there is something in between. That God has not told us the full story, and that mechanical process is there. Over time, God will thus be 'faded' from his palpable presence in our life-story (man's life-story) to be replaced by another agent; not a personal one, but at best an occult one (occult as in 'hidden' and not known, if not unknowable) and at worst a completely material one, that is set free from God, his personhood and love for his creation.

The genesian connection between creation and creator is direct and unmediated (but by Christ). There is nothing impersonal between us and God as maker. In alternative views, this is destroyed, and we end up with a removed God, if God at all.

Creation: eclectic?

2011-12-30T11:37:00.005+11:00

In Michael Jensen's blog, he announced recently his plan for a book on anthropology: interesting project; he also commented on the connection points with the doctrine of creation. I commented as follows:

Michael,

Sounds like a fabulous project; although I don't know that the doctrine of creation can be set as you've suggested: as more eclectic than the Doctrine of God, or as being integrative rather than comprehensive. If these poles determine your analysis, then I think that other than the polarities you have selected might be considered. For example, I don't think that the doctrine of creation is up for grabs in the eclectic manner you suggest here. The scriptures set it as definitive and determinative of the identity of God and the parameters of our relationship with God and each other. Therefore I think that some of your themes may need to be cast in a less individualistic, atomistic manner, and more in terms of the cluster of relationships which make the setting and sense of questions 1 and 6, particularly, but all as they hang off question 4.

I think Calvin brought creation and his doctrine of God into a close coupled arrangement, and indeed, it would be hard to see anything else in the scriptures, I would think; God provides the creation as his chief identifying element, and his credential for our worship of him; collecting other perspectives in an integrative manner, rather than for prophetic analysis, seems at odds with this.

However, it will be interesting to read your handling of literature in this context, particularly as most, particularly more modern works, seem to share with ancient pagan creation myths (and encapsulate it in the modern myth to which they implicitly refer and give credence: the idea of evolution) a conception of the totality of the material world, the 'given-ness' of the cosmos as a complete basis for our life and the reality in which we are embedded. Then going on to capture any conceptualisation of the divine as a comparative triviality completely captured by the over-arching material world, expressed in some sort of man-glorifying way as either unknowable or not worth really knowing, being merely some sort of cultural fabrication borne of ignorance, or at best, a folorn protest at the ultimate lonliness of persons in a cosmos which is finally impersonal.

However, knowing your acceptance that the idea of evolution is genuinely explanatory, and this cannot be prevented from being explanatory at all levels (contrary to the oxymoronic 'theistic-evolution'), I would fear that your project will more than tip its hat to the nostrums of materialism/naturalism and capture God to a human intellectual-aesthetic (not to say political) construction to remove him from his place as creator, in real terms. I would hope that it holds up the teleological barrenness that literature leaves man in when it denies God as real, or God as creator as he discloses in the early chapters of Genesis, then unfolds to provide the contraverting frame for the news of the new creation.

I touch on some of these issues in my blogs:

http://anglicanoriginsdiscussion.blogspot.com/2011/12/de-godding-creation.html

And also in Four Moves.

Remarkable Claims

2011-12-24T11:40:00.001+11:00

Nice quote from Carl Sagan, ironically, at Herding Cats:

Remarkable claims require remarkable proof.

OK, let's hear the remarkable 'proof' for:

Evolution

Extra-terrestrials

Theistic evolution (evolution, really, but where's the biblical data...seriously!)

Big Bang

I mean 'REMARKABLE' proof, not just the circumstantial hand waving we get instead.

De-godding the creation

2011-12-22T07:49:00.000+11:00

Letter I sent to Dr Harbin, regarding his 1997 article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society "Thestic-Evolution"

I recently read your 1997 article in JETS on theistic evolution. I acknowledge that this was written some time ago, and that your interests may have shifted over the intervening period, but, on the assumption that you have maintained some connection with the thinking in this paper; I would like to offer some comments.

In a debate as complex and challenging as the one you have addressed, it was refreshing that you distinguished between different usages of the concept ‘evolution’. I also appreciated your canvassing of some of the more obvious theological issues (I say ‘more obvious’ not to downplay them, as I think much work remains to tease out the implications of the points that you made).

The nub of the problem, is, as you identify, that theistic evolution has more of evolution than ‘theism’, at least of the biblical variety, and subsumes biblical considerations under materialist/mechanistic ones.

A couple of aspects of the attempt to blend the biblical doctrine of creation and contemporary framing of the origins ‘story’, I think challenge how we understand God and his relation to us (which of course the salient issue of the fall and its counter in God’s redemption opens).

In brief, to assert evolution as basic to the formation of life as we see it, makes a representation about both God and the cosmos that differs from the representation that God himself makes in the Bible, at many points. It says something about God which God doesn’t say!

At root, it makes God not an author in direct relationship with his creation, contrary to what the Bible sets out, and the creation thus as consistent with who God is, but an author who is hidden, occulted by intervening principles which in themselves not just obscure his hand, but negate it entirely. Hard then to align evolution even if ‘theistic’ with God relying on his being creator as the basis of worship, especially throughout the prophets.

This voids the real dependence of the creation on the creator and allows the deist view to run riot and invert the relationship of creator and creature, to enclose the God within the creation, in effect; this is the critical failing of all the ANE creation myths that I’ve read in that they all presuppose a cosmos at some level.

In the creation account God sets out the marks of his activity (and ReMine, for example would say that the marks remain patent) in his close and immediate involvement with the components of the creation. They are not independent and not the result of mechanism, but all the result of intention at every point, underscoring that person-hood (God’s) is ontologically basic, whereas to push God into an occult role obscures this and proposes some 'principle' as basic, I think.

As a result, the cosmos is ‘de-godded’. God as an effective and involved creator: which one who is love would be expected to be, is removed, and a void is opened up that non-love, exemplified in materialism, fills; but it is a faux filling, because the filling is beyond human/personal engagement and is not relationally accessible (personal relationship, that is). It is an empty filling!

De-godding re-configures the cosmos, ‘reality’, in ontological terms, and the core of reality being God’s wisdom at work through love in relationship is gone, to be replaced by the echo of a plea for significance that seems to be pre-supposed in almost every human activity, and indeed extended to the rest of life that is arrayed for human attendtion (that is, in the presence of man as worshipping creature place over the creation to care for it).

De-godding also makes Adam’s naming the animals a meaningless gesture. With God patent and involved in the creation as we experience it (e.g. made the kinds of animals, not a pathway where chemicals could become cells, could become animals…maybe) the naming is steward’s response to his lord’s lovingly knowing his creation. Adam, therefore also now knows it in terms that are congruent with his being the steward.

A de-godded cosmos is one where God is no longer able to demonstrate his ‘god-ness’ to us for us to know him, but one where the focus of our gaze ends at the creature, and that in its mute form: dirt and energy, and tells us nothing about ourselves. Redemption then drifts to myth instead of re-connecting us with what really is.

Finally, if Genesis 1 doesn’t convey information about the cosmos, in terms that make sense in the cosmos, and correspond to what they claim to describe: that is events occurring in space and time, and predicated on the same categorical arrangement and space-time causality in relationships that we would meaningfully apply; then they tell us nothing, and cannot, by telling us something other than what happened, what in fact happened in summative terms contrary to the well worn irrationality that the creation account doesn’t tell us what God did, but that he is creator; well, he is only ‘creator’ on account of him telling us what he did. If we deny that, we deny that he is creator; which is where theistic-evolution must leave us.

Why Leadership? #2

2011-11-25T20:12:00.001+11:00

I got a reply to my previous post, and the writer wanted some background, so I rejoined with this:

My observations on 'leadership' come from years of ministry and advanced formal study in management.

The problem as we conceptualise the body of Christ (thus different from the pre-incarnation references to God's people) in terms that gives sense to 'leadership' is that we run, I think, the very risk that Mintzberg identifies as fatal to an enduring practice in any organisation, where one, or even a small group is stuck out the front or on a pedestal and isolation between leader and lead is created: the word itself does that; and renders everyone else a follower, induced to passivity; against how I think the biblical injunctions on church life would work.

The induction to passivity leads pretty quickly to the church coalescing around the 'priesthood' and ministry, the ministry of all believers, ceases to be the central motif of church life. It also gives the 'leader' an impossible job to do. Isolating this person from the coalition of mutual service that is in situational flux in the paradigmatic church. That is we take different roles with respect to one another as circumstances adjust. I've seen many a home group 'leader' feeling overburdened by the false responsibility they think they have, when if their service had been characterised, as it truly was, as 'convening', ministering or even just helping, their and the group life would have been simpler and more effective.

But, I think what disturbs me about the slide from talk about ministry to talk about leadership over the past 30 years, in my observation, is that we adopt organisational terminology which points away from the gospel. Thus my use of terms about my own experience above, which are community centric terms, not 'me-centric', I hope, and I hope my efforts have been genuinely of this manner, and the list I suggested in my first email to you. So, not 'youth leader' but youth minister/worker, not children's 'leader' (if there are any children's leaders, they are their parents), but children's worker, teacher...etc.

As I composed this list, I reflected on my admiration for my late father's trade union work. His union adopted terms for the service roles they had that reflected their beliefs about the way things should work. Oddly enough the 'leader' of the smallest unit (called a chapel) was the 'father'. They had organisers, delegates and similar roles, because they were all equally workers, and no one 'led' them!

So too in the church. If we are serious about our profession, I think that we must organise congruently with this profession. As soon as we say that there are leaders ('archon', is, I think the Greek equivalent word, and not used of church life in the NT) we say that there are followers; but we only follow Christ. Paul is clear on that as he teaches against party spirit; if we say there are leaders and followers, we also say that we have leadership, not community-ship (a coining by Mintzberg that I particularly like).

Thus, as I read the list regarding healthy church life...which list I've worked with in another denomination, I think, if a church has 'good leadership' that is expressed in the natural reading of the phrase, ministry will inevitably break down, the 'pastor' and elders will burn out and the church will dry up, the idea is a problem both terminologically and instrumentally. But what if a church was characterised by a resilient network of ministry groups? Much better I think, and very much what chimes with the NT church life exhortations.

A couple of references that may be of interest:

http://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/hello-world/ and quite a few other posts

http://oss.sagepub.com/content/24/6/961.abstract (I can send you this article if you don't have access)

http://www.faithandleadership.com/multimedia/ronald-heifetz-the-nature-adaptive-leadership

Why Leadership?

2011-11-20T20:10:00.000+11:00

I read with interest you piece on the healthy church in the current issue of Together.

Lists that motivate action are always helpful, and one could probably not disagree with your nine points, even though we would all probably give the phrases differing understandings.

But, I do disagree with one of them: point 2 "empowering leadership". I think that there is much wrong with this notion from many perspectives.

I will, however, be brief, and argue that I don't find this concept in the New Testament at all. All I find there is a charismatic community: joint 'leadership' at work, if we must still use this term. It is a great concern that we've imported into our conceptualisation of church, and rather uncritically, the worldly concept of 'leadership'. And its not even uncontested in the world of business organisation, whence it came.

Refer to this article by Henry Mintzberg, for instance: http://www.oxfordleadership.com/journal/vol1_issue2/mintzberg.pdf, and this one:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c917c904-6041-11db-a716-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=8d70957c-6288-11db-8faa-0000779e2340.html#axzz1bDm1PwMc

What the concept of leadership does in a church is instantly disempower everyone, no matter how 'empowering' it sets out to be. The paradox is, that if a 'leader' wants to empower, they must think that they have the power to give out. I don't think that this is the case scripturally, or in terms of the sociology of congregational organisations, such in your denomination.

With the joint exercise of ministry, a healthy church will not have a 'leader', someone who has the ideas, gives out power, forges into the future, because we are lead as a church by the Holy Spirit. I would not want to usurp this role.

Now, its a pity that our adherence to the scriptures does not permeate the way we think about ourselves as organisation. Our language should reflect our beliefs. We don't have leaders, we have organisers, coordinators, helpers, facilitators, teachers, convenors, moderators (a good concept in the Presbyterian church that has morphed into 'leader' unfortunately), delegates and above all, ministers: servants of the people of God. And we don't have that awful oxymoron, the 'servant-leader' which is a trick of business rhetoric and has no real meaning within a church context.

Don't know...maybe

2011-11-10T21:37:00.002+11:00

Mick Jensen, in a recent article in Eternity magazine claimed that it's OK for Christians not to be certain about everything.

Well, of course, but by what epistemological slight of hand do we extend that to the Bible and overturn its literary clarity?

For instance, Michael was asked a while ago if he thought that Noah's flood occured. His answer? "Maybe".

Well, where did 'maybe' come from? On what basis does he set aside the biblical information for some other information? and where does this hermeneutical project draw its lines?

I have a fairly good feeling that he would think that uncertainty about the basic doctrine of the creation has a similar status: that is, the uncertainty is acceptable. Only this time we're not considering a trifle, but something that is basic about God, us and what connects us.

Mc'Neill puts it nicely, talking of Calvin:

Throughout his thought a judgement of the nature of man accompanies the doctrine of God; theology is linked with anthropology. God is not for a moment conceived merely as the author and ruler of the universe, but always as Creator and Redeemer of man. God's resources answer man's need.

Calvin de-abstracts the God which I think idealist views such as I think MJ entertains make increasingly theoretical and detached from the real interactions grounded in his word-acts in Genesis 1. The creation is about connection, its deconstruction evaporates this and isolates man from God, undoing the connection that is patent in the text.

So here, I think the Bible expects us to have certainty. If we want uncertainty, we can only achieve that by an arbitrary epistemological move, a move, I think, against the revelatory capacity of the Spirit, and one that muddles the historical stream of relations between God and man.

I've also talked about this in the four moves between God and man.

CBM 13532

2011-11-06T19:27:00.000+11:00

A tablet, older than the Gilgamesh tablet, with a better story:

Unam Sanctam

2011-11-02T20:09:00.003+11:00

In the Bull of 1302, Pope Boniface said:

..he pretends that there are two prinicples, which doctrine we judge to be false and heretical because, as Moses testifies, God created heaven and earth not in several but in one prinicple.

Now, PB was talking about Manichaeans, but the observation applies eminiently to the philosophy of origins. He was right, Moses in scripture conveys a unitry principle of and in creation: God's speaking in wisdom and love producing one entire creation de novo: no room for alternative principles, such as idealism, materialism or naturo-mysticism. When attempts are made to mix the unified creation with materialism, we get an attempt at two principles going at once: incoherent, crazy and undoing Christ, who is the creator!

I have to wonder at people like our esteemed Archbishop, who think that the notion of the two mixing is somehow rational! Of course Christ diluted is Christ eliminated. Not Good Peter!

Growing Science

2011-10-30T22:15:00.001+11:00

From The World of the Reformation by Hillerbrand:

Protestant learning enjoyed the advantage of not being unduly restricted by the weight of tradition. It was able to explore new avenues. that the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander contributed a preface to Copernicus's famous work on The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, in which he defended the scientist's right to offer hypotheses, is worthy of note in this connection.

Sistine Chapel

2011-10-27T20:20:00.001+11:00

Another from Elton's Reformation Europe:

The God of the Sistine Chapel is the pre-Reformation God: man's answer to the problem of the universe.

Now, of course, the 'answer' is not God, not a person, not the one who is love, and makes our love of value, but the universe ourself...a mere pile of powder, albeit a big one, above which nothing can rise!

the world ends

2011-10-24T13:06:00.000+11:00

Quote from David Byrne's blog:

“The end of the world happens every time somebody dies.”

Something for a theologian to do something with, although, an atheist (or en evolutionist, for that matter), of course, could do nothing with it.

So, where would that leave the Archibisop of Sydney, given that he's an evolutionist and there's no between category.

Reformation Europe

2011-10-20T20:18:00.001+11:00

Quotes from Elton's Reformation Europe:

The revival of Greek studies might add to the number of authorities consulted, but it did not encourage any idea of criticising received knowledge by personal observation...astrology deserves to be called the specific science of the humanist.

Reminds me of so much that is said of evolution!

it is now thought that he probably arrived at his revolutionary notion by pure reasoning, without any scientific investigation. This is a method which has yielded as much error as truth, and in the sixteenth century reasoned error predominated.

Same again!

Theistic evolution #2

2011-10-15T23:21:00.000+11:00

I mentioned TE a while ago, but I've moved on a little, and think that the term should be expunged from discussion. Once Christ is mixed with another 'principle'; in this case, the principle that not only did the Word create, but the creation created itself, Christ is diminished. So, there can't be two creators: Christ and the creation; with separate ontologies, but only one.

So, if a Christian thinks that the two can mix, then I think they are referring to a 'god' other than the creator, and so they are only referring to evolution.

Open letter to Peter Jensen: atheism debate

2011-10-10T22:38:00.003+11:00

Dear Peter,

I followed with interest your recent participation in the 'atheist' debate. One remark that you made in that debate caught my attention.

You said:

Thus, it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.

It seems from this that you regard ‘evolution’ as being restricted to mere biological machinery descriptive of, for instance, the development of new species, or indeed, all life from just one cell. I get the impression that you conceptualise this within a basically creationist frame of reference: that is, you hold that God created, although, possibly not as the Bible sets out (how one could know that God did create, or that it was God who did the creating, when what is currently claimed about the universe's origin, and seemingly accepted by many Christians does not line up with scripture is not entirely clear, but that is another matter).

The fearful thing is that your position allows the unravelling of any proclamatory opportunity by its acceptance of the materialist framing of being when discussion of origins arises (as it did in the speech by Russell Blackford). As soon as it is denied that Genesis gives any information about the history of the cosmos, the biblical conceptualisation of the compass of God and our existential ground is unseated, the point of contact between a real God taking real action in making then redeeming the world, for real effect is gone and the way to repentance is effectively closed. This is denial, in short, that there is any possible objective concrete reference in Genesis 1 to real events or the world we stand in and where God’s covenant is operative.

As soon as we say that Genesis conveys truth, but not in the only information that it presents, we invite the materialist to maintain his conceptualisation of the world and find no place for God. This comes about because we say that the world can at once be created with the only representation of this in the detail set out in Genesis 1, by a God who is love, and for loving reasons, and be the aimless product of random material interactions, and full of un-love, at the same time.

This hardly brings glory to God. Modern evolutionary atheism is clear on this: it sees no place for the glory of God in an evolved world, only ‘facts’ that show there is no god (a stark example of this is provided by Sommers and Rosenberg in “Darwin’s nihilistic idea: evolution and the meaninglessness of life” Biology and Philosophy 18: 2003)!

And it doesn’t help to grasp at analogical views of Genesis 1 to hope to change this. These end up not explaining the text, but explaining it away. Thus, ‘framework’ type views are ‘anti-exegetical’: in that they deny the intersection of the text and the real world of sin and relationship, rather than prophetically position us within it.

So, what is happening here?

I think we must reach back into the Enlightenment “project” to tease this out.

In your remark you seem to have bought the Enlightenment story, without acknowledging that it starts with a complete disjunct between rationality inherited from its biblically inspired forebears, and the Bible itself, attempting instead to find a rational ground in humanist terms: the biblical basis is removed, but its effects are forlornly held on to.

To save its scheme, the Enlightenment needed to find a substitute basis for the real and us in it that was independent of a creator, or at least a creator-person. It found this, after not to much searching, in rehabilitating the ancient Greek notion of a universe that is truly ontologically independent and that necessarily, made itself. Thus is the evolutionary principle around which the modern world turns.

For you to then express a concern that the modern world wants evolution to be more than a minor mechanical detail of biological change and adaptation could only evoke puzzled looks from its proponents: that’s the very point of it! Evolution is a totalising world view that explains, and is relied upon to explain, the origin and nature of the universe purely in terms of the universe itself. It has reduced God, if he is to be given any place at all, to a result of matter (brain activity), completely captured within the bounds of the cosmos and entailed by it, at best. Certainly not separate from it, not holy, not to be glorified and worshipped, from whom there can have been no separation, against whom death is neither a breach nor the last enemy, and to whom is owed nothing at all.

In the end, your remarks betray two mistakes about evolution.

Firstly, you think that it is just the mechanical detail of life within a basically Christian conception of the world. Not so, as it proposes completely different things about the real world from those in Genesis 1, in the main.

Secondly, you seem to confine evolution to science alone, cutting it off from wider questions. In fact, it starts as a metaphysical principle and ends, not as science, which it never was, but as a metaphysical setting for all experience that pursues the material (“now, let’s suppose that the universe is not the result of intention, but is completely explained by naturalistic processes”), and rejects the personal, let alone the supernatural, as basic to being. Evolution is an overarching materialist conceptualisation of the world, counter at every point to the Christian one.

Post the Enlightenment; it is a methodologically pagan program that is, as Mary Midgley, the British philosopher, pointed out in ‘Evolution as a Religion’, the creation myth of the modern Western mind. It is the idea that now provides the cultural and intellectual reference point for art, literature, intellectual enquiry (including theology, I must add; yours being an example), and human relations. It has nothing to do with anything that the creator God reveals about himself, the world or our redemption.

Also on creation and the Christian starting point.

Ancient Error

2011-10-10T20:06:00.001+11:00

This appeared in the SMH letters: John Dickson is a member of the Centre for Public Christianity and a Sydney Anglican clergyperson. He is probably most well known here for his heterodox views of Genesis 1; yet in his own field:

Not-so-ancient error
Having also waded in ancient literature on ethics, I must advise John Dickson (''And the last shall be first - why leaders thrive on humble pie'', October 7) that the Athenian statesman Pericles certainly never lamented how little influence he had compared with Demosthenes. Pericles died nearly half a century before Demosthenes was born.

Back in fourth century BC Athens, Demosthenes and Aeschines were the Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott of their day, and it was the modern advertising executive David Ogilvy who observed: ''When Aeschines spoke they said 'How well he speaks'; but when Demosthenes spoke they said 'Let us march'.'' As an academic in the department of ancient history at one of our prominent universities, it is Dr Dickson who will be eating the humble pie, I'm afraid.

Julian Holden Turramurra

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/pity-were-not-as-concerned-for-foreign-children-20111009-1lfmg.html#ixzz1aLW6nivy

Where do we go now?

2011-10-01T20:44:00.000+10:00

As I was reading back through Al Mohler's blog, I came to this article on a recent Templeton Prize winner. It illustrates the end game of the opening canvassed by Peter Jensen in a recent debate: Peter starts by thinking that the evolutionary speculations can somehow be isolated from an evolutionary world view (well, they can, in a unreflective denial of their mutually exclusive bases). He thinks this will end in the glory of God. Al's blog illustrates that in fact, it goes the other way; unwittingly and ironically paving the road to perdition.

Is that all that is at stake?

2011-09-30T20:32:00.000+10:00

In this post by Al Mohler, he talks about the importance of the historical place of actual Adam and Eve, something fast eroding in even evangelical circles; or likely be the next on the list of 'it aint history' in Genesis 1-11. The results are illustrated in Al's quotes in the article

Science and Religion

2011-09-29T20:53:00.001+10:00

Survey at Rice University: they do mix!

Consensus

2011-09-28T20:43:00.000+10:00

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled ... the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world ... Consensus is invoked only where the science is not solid enough ... Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

Michael Crichton, 2003 Caltech lecture "Aliens Cause Global Warming"

Archbishop off the rails

2011-09-25T20:30:00.001+10:00

At the “Intelligence Squared” public debate held a little while ago in Sydney there were six speakers; 3 spoke for the motion “Atheists are wrong”; 3 against, but this Peter Jensen quote from his presentation followed by an extract from Russell Blackford’s later address highlights the strategic vulnerability of Jensen’s agnosticsm-based doctrine of creation.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen: Thus, it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.

Now, the AB clearly has a content-less doctrine of creation here; not seemingly aware of this aspect of the doctrine, that reality; or all that created; is ontologically isotropic; and congruently exhibits a uniformity of causal transactions. He seems to think that the one reality is open to different basic descriptions, or different natures: that is, one is like God (in the Bible) and the other is not like God. Blackford, below, picks this up (and interestingly, his evolutionary way does not result in God's being glorified, which tends to rule it out as having any part of the creation) noting that evolutionary doctrines are disjunctive with the world having been very good before man's fall. He regards the fall as fictional, of course; so he is left with a world that is temporally replete with suffering. Jensen is left in this place too, with no connection between the real world and a history that does not embed enmity between creation and God.

And its not even that he needs to discuss science: he's committed the error of the two magisteria here; playing right into the atheist trap; pity he doesn't have sufficient confidence in the revelation of God to set his revelation in the history of his actions in relation to us to whom he reveals himself and out of that bring a critique of atheist nonsense and its self refuting implications.

Dr Russell Blackford [part-way into his presentation]: As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all.
And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values.
God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good.
Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth?
And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings.
Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us?
Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself.
These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence.
So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved?
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.

Indeed, in Blackford’s comments introducing the above extract he scornfully taunted his Christian opponents’ lack of faith:

Russell Blackford: In fact, though, they [Peter Jensen, Tracey Rowland, Scott Stephens] seem to have shown a lack of faith. None of the traditional arguments for the existence of God have been relied upon - they seem to have no faith in those arguments.
Indeed, no argument of any kind for the existence of a god was developed by them in any concerted way.

The transcripts: Jensen's and Blackford’s.
,

Rocks in mud

2011-09-22T18:33:00.000+10:00

In a recent promo on TV for a series on the cosmos, it was claimed that the series told us who we were and how we fitted into the universe.

That is, physical sciences, or the materialist interpretation of the physical world, is looked to for basic ontology and this as the foundation for human existential affirmations.

As I heard this promo, my mind went to the oft repeated phrase that religion (meaining biblical Christianity) and 'science' have two different domains of reference. The implication is that science deals with the real world; what actually is or actually happened, and is thus the real (material) basis for who we are and what significance we have (or don't), but religion deals within the real world about values, morals and other affective ethical aspects of life. But the important thing to note is that science is definitional and real, religion is derivative and encompased by the real defined by science. Science (in the sense of religions materialism and its cognates) then is the ultimate reference point, and religion is not.

Science, of course, is contextualised here by the materialist evolutionary world view, which sets out a comprehensive view of life, yet oddly introduces teleological concepts left right and centre contrary to its premis (see for instance the very notion of meaning: if there is in fact no 'meaning', or rather significance, meaning being a property of propositions, not phenomena, then science tells us nothing and any whiff of intentionality in any mind is a chimera).

Then, of course we have those theologians who, riding the wave of religion materialism's boosting, agree that the biblical informaiton about creation and contemporary scientific (materialist) claims about evolution treat different things, and are brought into compatibility in the notion of theistic evolution. Theistic evolution means that evolution is accepted, and any thing that God might have done is made consistent with the current materialist story.

Yet, this leaves one in great perplexity, because each has over-arching ontological claims with completely different epistemic and existential outworkings, which do not permit the glib compatibilist formulation that we have in theistic evolution.

Either the one is right: and intention is real because person-ness is basic in the structure of reality (that is God is and everything is a result of his intention, intention in love, moreover); or the other is, and if so, bibilical Christianity, and the spiritual matters it explicates are captured within the over-arching materialist ontology, and are not only finally, but are totally empty. The alternative, which theistic evolution seems to want to entertain, is that there is a functional dualism, with the real world we inhabit having a dualist character; at once created and un-created; with the incarnation being then inexplicable as there being no clear ontological relation between the dual ontologies. But this is simply unworkable because we can only live life as a unity, not monadically, but existentially and therefore ontologically unified with relations operating in consistent causality across time, space and domains of being.

What ends up is that we come straight round to material being basic, provding the root ontology, and intention (loving intention: our existential rootedness) being a (mere) epiphenomenon of matter and thus reflecting an arbitrary, or random, set of mechanical interactions at the atomic level with as much purpose and significanance as rocks caught in a mud slide!

Self Organisation

2011-09-17T22:17:00.000+10:00

A self-organizing garden is called a weed patch.

Courtesy of this post on organising in IT projects using the 'agile' methodology.

Earth...Light...Action

2011-09-15T22:12:00.000+10:00

In response to this Creation item; the following comment:

Thinking that the existence of light prior to the sun is problematic is, I think, an example of trying to project a naive observer view of the cosmos back into Genesis. While it is true that Genesis 1 has naive observer aspects, and some theologians think that this is the dominating characteristic of Genesis 1; I don't think that this is a necessary conclusion.
From a naive observor viewpoint is would seem peculiar if light, which seems to be made by the sun, existed before its source; but this misunderstands the physics of light. In fact, if there was no light: no photons emitted by sub-atomic excitement, there would be nothing coming out of the sun at all. Further, as light is but a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one would reasonably surmise that the creation of light signified the creation of the entire spectrum, if not the entire energy field of the cosmos.
Could the lack of light be related to the formlessness and voidness of the 'stuff' of the cosmos: the heavens and earth as summary of all that was made, as inert 'stuff' un-energised occupant of space; add energy, and things really get going.
On these grounds, of course light would have to be 'made'. Without it the sun would be just sitting there, a mass of inert unproductive not-quite-matter.
Then this goes on to light being involved in the marking of evening and morning. I don't think that this occurs before day 4 when the marking of time is done by the heavenly bodies. Thus this marking was not occurring prior. So the evening and morning are set as nominal signifiers of the passing of time congruent with the later defined days now timed by the astronomical markers: same days by duration, different signification, but the same period of time elapsing on the basis of the equivalence of names.
I recall traveling in the arctic circle where my fellow travelers and I entertained each other playing with the fact that the light was the same at evening and morning: the light really didn't vary that much, but time still did pass, and the names gave meaning to the course of diurnal time. So with the days prior to day 4; I think is possible.

Sample of 1

2011-09-09T18:36:00.005+10:00

A local newspaper reported a new allegedly candidate transitional ape-to-man fossil.
Well, it might be an intermediate between two species, but I don't know how this could be determined. From a fossil, ancestry and progination are just not determinable either in general or the particular; so its a mountain of speculation: if people financed their businesses this way, we'd all be broke overnight.
But its also impossible to determine what we are dealing with with a sample size of just 1.
Nevertheless, much trumpeted!
Also of interest is the volume of comments attracted (see below). For a matter that is largely neglected by the church, it has obvious attraction, usually far outweighing the attraction of many other topics.
Paul was right.

The article mentioned the supposed age of the find; but, true to a newspaper, without mentioning the range of results, their error bands and the physical calibration that applied (as opposed to the guesswork calibration of fossil order).

From (the) Kitchen, K. A. on ANE tales.

2011-08-29T20:21:00.000+10:00

Re-posted from the Gairney Bridge blog:

K.A. Kitchen, in On the Reliability of the Old Testament, writes the following in response of frequent assertion of commonality between the biblical creation story and those of other early cultures:

The individual themes of creation and flood … recur in other writings. Thus the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish (called “Babylonian Creation” in most books), completed circa 1000 from older sources, has been repeatedly compared with Genesis 1-2. But despite the reinterated claims of an older generation of biblical scholars, Enuma Elish and Gen. 1-2 share no direct relationship. … In terms of theme, creation is the massively central concern of Gen. 1-2, but it is mere tailpiece in Enuma Elish, which is dedicated to portraying the supremacy of the god Marduk of Babylon. The only clear comparisons between the two are the inevitable banalities: creation of earth and sky before the plants are put on the earth, and of plants before animals (that need to eat them) and humans; it could hardly have been otherwise! The creation of light before the luminaries is the pecularity that might indicate any link between the Hebrew and Eunma Elish narrative; but where did it earlier come from? Not known, as yet. Thus most Assyriologists have long since rejected the idea of any direct link between Gen. 1-11 and Enuma Elish, and nothing else better can be found between Gen. 1-11 and any other Mesopotamian fragments. (pp. 424-425, emphasis added)

Kitchen goes on to describe various similarities and massive differences between the different flood accounts:

Here the basic contents are common to both the Mesopotamian and Genesis accounts. So we have in both: a flood sent as divine punishment; one man enjoined to build an “ark”; he taking family and living creatures; and his survival. In detail the differences are so numerous as to preclude either the Mesopotamian or Genesis accounts having been copied directly from the other. We may list the following: (1) The Mesopotamian gods sent the flood simply becausee they could not stand the noise made by humanity … . (2) The Mesopotamian gods hid their plan from all humanity … . (3) The respective boats differ totally; … the Mesopotamian one was a cube! (4) The lengths of duration of the respective floods differ … . (5) A much greater range of folk people the Mesopotamian craft (pilot, craftsmen, etc.) … . (6) The details of sending out birds differ entirely between the two accounts. (7) The Mesopotamian hero leaves the ark on his own initiative, then offers a sacrifice to appease the gods [who were angry at his escape] … . (8) The land of Mesopotamia was replenished by direct divine activity …; but in Gen. 9 it is left to Noah, family and surviving creatures to get on the job by natural means. So, an epochally important flood in far antiquity has come down in a tradition shared by both early Mesopotamian culture and Gen. 6-9, but which found clearly separate and distinct expression in the written forms left us by the two cultures. (p. 425, emphasis added).

Kitchen goes on to state in lengths of the various accounts are considered, “Genesis … offers a more concise, simpler account, and not an eloboration of a Mesopotamian composition” (p. 425, emphasis in the original). He also notes, “Floods per se were a commonplace in the ‘Land of the Two Rivers,’ so why this fuss about a flood? Presumably because, in folk memory, there had been a particularly massive one, far more fatal than most, and the memory stuck ever after, until finally it entered the written tradition. Assyriologists have no problem on this score” (p. 426).

Lucretius

2011-08-25T21:17:00.000+10:00

From Chesteron's The Everlasting Man: on evolution and its ontological predicate!

There remains only the fourth element or rather the first; that which had been in a sense forgotten because it was the
first. I mean the primary and overpowering yet impalpable impression that the universe after all has one origin and one aim; and because it has an aim must have an author. What became of this great truth in the background of men's minds, at this time, it is perhaps more difficult to determine. Some of the Stoics undoubtedly saw it more and more clearly as the clouds of mythology cleared and thinned away; and great men among them did much even to the last to lay the foundations of a concept of the moral unity of the world. The Jews still held their secret certainty of it jealously behind high fences of exclusiveness; yet it is intensely characteristic of the society and the situation that some fashionable figures, especially fashionable ladies, actually embraced Judaism. But in the case of many others I fancy there entered at this point a new negation. Atheism became really possible in that abnormal time; for atheism is abnormality. It is not merely the denial of a dogma. It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul; the sense that there is a meaning and a direction in the world it sees. Lucretius, the
first evolutionist who endeavoured to substitute Evolution for God, had already dangled before men's eyes his dance of glittering atoms, by which he conceived cosmos as created by chaos. But it was not his strong poetry or his sad philosophy, as I fancy, that made it possible for men to entertain such a vision. It was something in the sense of impotence and despair with which men shook their fists vainly at the stars, as they saw all the best work of humanity sinking slowly and helplessly into a swamp. They could easily believe that even creation itself was not a creation but a perpetual fall, when they saw that the weightiest and worthiest of all human creations was falling by its own weight. They could fancy that all the stars were falling stars; and that the very pillars of their own solemn porticos were bowed under a sort of gradual deluge. To men in that mood there was a reason for atheism that is in some sense reasonable. Mythology might fade and philosophy might stiffen; but if behind these things there was a reality, surely that reality might have sustained things as they sank. There was no God; if there had been a God, surely this was the very moment when He would have moved and saved the world.

Pagans, poets and myth

2011-08-21T21:30:00.002+10:00

From Chesterton's Everlasting Man

Paganism lived upon poetry; that poetry already considered under the name of mythology.

Chesterton reverses the logic of those who claim that Genesis as other than factual can tell us anything. Claims that poetry produces the rational realism of Christian thesim are simply wrong: poetry is bundled with myth to keep us from understanding, not to introduce us to it!

Theologian's Own-Goal

2011-08-17T19:04:00.006+10:00

In the Sun-Herald on Sunday 14 August 2011, Brian Rosner, a 'New Testament scholar' attached to the Centre for Public Christianity, scored an own goal against Christian proclamation, and without even trying hard to avoid it! My son's soccer team does better.

What Brian did was write this, in the context of a press debate on teaching scripture in public schools, with Peter Fitzsimons, a well known booster for atheism.

"The much-maligned doctrine of creation, which to many Christians is not in opposition to evolution..."

Now, the correct line of debate with an atheist goes something like: "so why should your view, which results from an arbitrarily and essentially meaningless tangle of chemicals, have any credibility at all? Now let's get on with my view, which is based on people having real value."; however, Rosner, wanting to show how compatible are Christian ideas with those that would keep people from their creator forever, put it about that some Christians actually share the materialist world view of most (modern Western) atheists.

Now, what could he mean by this, apart from 'Peter, we are really on the same wavelength on what is basically real...nothing in Christian theology really needs to disrupt the atheistic thought world'? How crazy...with friends like these...

And why bring it up at all? The rhetoric of so many neo-othodox theologians in this context is that creation doesn't matter, just keep up with 'clear presentations of the gospel' (notwithstanding that Paul shows that the intellectual path for an atheist is from creation to Jesus: refer to Acts 17, as the paradigmatic evidence of this). No, Rosner shows that it is really important, but perhaps not as the Bible sets out; after all, if he can conflate the Bible's teaching that creation was purposed in love, quickly and recently with the idea that it is purposeless, slow and meandering, then he's on a different wavelength from the apostles. Seems that he's rather set to deflate the importance of the difference to help atheists into the kindgom. But what they would hear, and consistently do hear, from what they write, is that as soon as their world-concept is accepted, the rationale of the gospel evaporates, and God shifts notionally from transcendent creator, to social construct. Rosner abets this, despite the fundamental stuctural disparity between the two conceptions of the world, instead of opposing it with Pauline energy, concern and commitment!

As Al Mohler stated in his talk on the age of the universe, it is futile to try to meet atheists half way, as there is no halfway point for those in oppostion. As soon as ground is conceded, the attack has failed.

I can imagine Fitz saying in response: "so, my world view is fundamentally sound; what does 'God' add to it"?

But aside from this, what is the point of saying what a number of Christians think? That number may be decidedly wrong (as it is in this case); its the fallacy of truth being established by popular vote. For a paid Christian to make this mistake is frightening. If I was paying fees at Moore, I'd want a refund.

Finally, just why would a Christian accept that the doctrine of creation is 'much maligned'? Do I detect a freudian slip? Why not say, the 'poorly understood', or the 'not-very-well-communicated-by-the-church doctrine of creation' (and this because it is generally despised, as the behaviour of most theologians and proclamation indicates; or either ignored, rejected, or undermined by being re-written for compatibility with evolution; against which it is diametrically set!), or the 'completely neglected and disarticulated' or any number of other descriptions for how contemporary neo-orthodoxy blunts the sword of God's word. Of course the world maligns every doctrine we have; this is not news, but as a rhetorical strategy, I think it is wanting. Here is an occasion to make a point, but instead Rosner adopts the tail between the legs tactic: one known not to work!

Spotlight on leadership in the church

2011-08-16T20:38:00.000+10:00

This article by Jon Zens picks up a theme I've caught in a few posts in my 'ministry' tag.

Drifting away, doing nothing

2011-08-15T12:57:00.002+10:00

The Youthworks site has an article that shows where conventional evangelism, Christian education and apologetics fails to connect with what younger people; probably all people, really want to know about life, the universe and everything.

The four biggest questions that surveyed young people had were:

1. How can I know that God exists?
2. How could a good God send people to hell?
3. How can I believe in a good God when there is so much suffering?
4. Doesn’t evolution prove that God doesn’t exist?

The article's author went on to comment:

What strikes me about those questions is that they are very focused on the question of God’s existence and his nature

And is this surprising? I think not, because the Bible starts with these very questions: it sets out the parameters of the revelation of God in basic ontology linking immediately to the basic existential questions.

The author goes on to discuss this:

In our apologetics we often get caught up in the questions that we think are important, like: “did Jesus rise from the dead?” “Why doesn’t God want us to have sex before marriage?” “Can I take the bible literally?”These are good questions, but we should be dealing with the more foundational questions first such as: “Who is God?” even when we are teaching kids that we think are well informed.

In the survey, as well as choosing from a range of questions, there was the option of writing down your own question. Popular questions that came up repeatedly were:

1. Where does God come from?
2. Why did God make us?
3. If the Big Bang is true does that mean God is not?
4. What is heaven & hell and how do you go there?

The mistake that is made is Christian thinkers not engaging with the thought world of those outside the church; but assuming a shared thought world.

Yet, Paul, 2000 years ago, saw the issue, and confronted it in Athens. In Acts 17:22ff, he showed us how to evangelise outside of a Christian thought world:

So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;

A comment on the Youthworks website put it this way:

This article indicates a deeper theological problem; and that is we seem to think [and] convey to our children, and probably the world, that profound questions about our being here at all can be answered independently of God. This arises from the empty notion that Genesis 1 doesn't tell us 'how' or 'what' but only 'why'; when, of course, the three questions cannot be separated. If the how or what of our being can be answered without reference to 'why' then the 'why' is not truly informative; but is detached from the world.

The contrary is the case, however, in the Bible's 'view'. That is, at base the question that the Bible answers first off is 'who' and this is folded out in terms of 'what', 'how' and 'why'. All are bound up with one another and reality is finally personal, not finally material, which is insisted by the modern materialism that hides behind the facade (the house of cards, really) of evolutionary dogma and yet insists that it provides foundational truths about our world.

In a Christian frame, science is not philosophically separate from theology, but grows out of it. And this is reflected in the history of modern science growing out of a thought-world that took its cues from the Bible's structuring of the real world as created by God; and created recently and rapidly, which underlines the hand of God, and not material independence mediated by extended periods of time isolating the cosmos from its creator.

Kelly on Creation, Days and Theology

2011-08-10T20:21:00.001+10:00

A piece published many years ago in The Presbyterian Witness

 Q & A  with Dr. Douglas Kelly

Q. The focus of your forthcoming book is Christ and creation. What is the importance of a study on creation in our day?

A. The title of my next book is The Creation: An Exposition Look at Genesis In Light of Changing Paradigms. Let me begin by citing from a great work from Straussburg by one of Calvin’s colleagues written in 1539 called Hexameron (still in Latin) on the six-days of creation. It was authored by Wolfgang Capito. He says that creation is the foundation stone of the whole Christian philosophy. By Christian philosophy he means systematic theology - world and life view and practice. If God did not make this world then religion is really a matter of some less than real world.

James Denny was a Scottish theologian in Glasgow in the 1890's and early 1900's. He wrote in the 1890's that to separate religion (Christianity) from science is to separate religion from the true. Once religion is separated from the true, Denny goes on to say, then religion dies among true men. I would say that if God begins His revelation to us with the doctrine of creation it must be important. It is therefore not only the first doctrine of the Bible (other than God Himself) it is primal. It is the basis of all covenants, of all revelation, of all God’s dealings with the human race, that He made all things out of nothing.

Of course we know from the New Testament, particularly the prologue to John’s Gospel that it was the agent of creation who took on flesh in the incarnation. As St. Anselm said in his famous Cor Deos Hormo? (Why Did God Become Man?) it took somebody as big as the Creator/God to become man to redeem us. If God is not really the Creator. Christ is not as big as the New Testament told us He was. His work does not have the kind of universal and eternal consequences that the New Testament theology teaches. Creation is important both for reality and that the real world is controlled by God. Christ the Agent of Creation is also our Redeemer. If you eviscerate a solid biblical doctrine of creation, the religion becomes unreal and Christ is diminished.

Q. Why is there so little connection between Christ and creation in modern day preaching?

A. I think there are two or three factors involved. I believe that evangelical theologians and commentators since the late 1800's have tended to avoid creation because of its controversial nature. There has been the rather uncritical acceptance of the assumptions of vast ages of the universe and of some form of evolutionary theory by most evangelicals. Dr. Nigel Cameron who is now at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School wrote a book in 1983 Evolution and the Authority of the Bible. He surveys the evangelical commentaries in the late 19th century and finds there is only one - Thomas Scott's - that hadn't caved in to some form of evolution. Therefore most ministers have come out of ministries and institutions that have accepted some form of evolutionary thinking. Obviously that is going to take away one's zeal for the glory of the Creator; if what He did is considerably less than what we are told in Genesis.

A second reason might be that there is a tendency among us ministers to see practical results. There is nothing wrong with that. I do as much as anyone. There can be a hesitancy to preach the whole range of biblical doctrine because you might feel that some doctrines might be too hard for people to understand or the doctrines do not get a good response or are too divisive. An example is the critique of evolutionary thinking. Thus many avoid it.

Q. Regarding creation, some reformed denominations are receiving men who believe that Genesis is poetic. What is some argumentation that elders can use to confront this view?

A. First let me recommend In the Beginning by Edward J. Young, published by Banner of Truth a few years ago. He was an authority of massive erudition in the Semitic languages. He discusses this matter. In the 60's when he wrote this he said that evangelicals were hesitant to enter the lists with people that accepted evolution. Thus they said that Genesis 1-3 was poetic and not meant to be taken as serious chronological history. Therefore they could have peace with the other point of view.

E. J. Young says that there are poetic accounts of creation in Scripture such as Ps. 104 and certain passages in Job. Such characteristics of Hebrew poetry are not found in Genesis 1-3. One of the marks is heavy parallelism as in the Psalms such as synthetic and antithetic parallelism. Such parallelism is not found in Genesis 1-3. These chapters are written as straight chronological history.

My colleague at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Dr. John Currid wrote an excellent article a few years ago in which he shows that the five or six characteristics of Hebrew poetry are not found in Genesis 1-3.

The great Jewish scholar, now deceased, Issac Cassuto did, I think, the finest single commentary I have ever seen on Genesis. It was translated into English in l961. He says the creation account is the way the Hebrew mind wrote history. The writer gives the broad picture in Genesis 1 and then isolates a portion and expands upon it in Genesis 2. This approach is not the method found in the Hellenistic and western intellectual tradition of writing history.

Q. Another critique laymen may hear is that past reformed scholars such as B. B. Warfield did not hold to a six-day (24 hours) creation view.

A. That is a true statement. Reformed scholars beginning in the mid 19th century felt the pressure in the shift in the intellectual world to the belief that geology had proven a massive age of physical structures in the physical world and in the solar system. The reformed scholars perhaps did not have the same alternative explanation to help them critique as some of us do today. They tried to preserve the truth claims of Scripture but make some kind of allowance for vast ages as did Thomas Chalmers of the Free Church of Scotland. That began to influence Charles Hodge somewhat. However Hodge very clearly came out strongly against Darwinism in 1874. He wrote What Is Darwinism? Therein he said that Darwinism is basically Satanism. Hodge was not an evolutionist. In his later years however he felt it necessary to make an allowance for an ancient earth because he thought the information that was coming in at that time was fairly conclusive.

Green, one of his successors at Princeton, was for an old earth. He felt that evolution was receiving so strong a testimony in science as for instance McKosh's support. McKosh was the head of Princeton and an evolutionist from Scotland. So Green wrote on the genealogies of Genesis, trying to lengthen them out and allow for an ancient earth. Warfield, a student of Green's, did the same. He would, I think, have allowed for some form of theistic evolution although Warfield was very conservative, one of our greatest scholars.

In his lifetime he did not have any serious challenges to this scientific paradigm. Therefore he felt he had to accommodate it. This has been the story with many of our best reformed scholars. Without wishing to disparage their great work in other areas, I think we have to say that we regret that they did not raise enough questions about those people who question the veracity of the word of God at these points. We do have considerable information available to us that they did not have to help us answer these questions.

Q. It is also a reminder that men are prone to error. We have to ultimately return to Scripture for our answers not just rely on the work of godly scholars.

A. Yes. That is perhaps what Christ meant when he said, "Call no man ‘Father’."

Q. Looking at Scripture there seems to be much internal evidence for a 24 hour day. If ‘day’ is not literal then the passage may not be literal itself.

A. Right.

Q. What is the meaning of the word ‘day’ in Gen. 2:4?

A. It is referring to the first day of creation on which God created all things out of nothing- all things visible and invisible as the Nicene Creed states. The remaining days are, as the German theologian Von Rad states, the turning of a chaos into a cosmos. [Alternatively it is merely an idiomatic way of saying ‘when’.]

Q. In Gen 5:5 we read "So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died." In Gen. 5:8 we read, "So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died." Thus the time comparison between the two life spans was based on the same increments of time. [note that the ‘days’ these men lived were ordinary days: a whole lot of them, formed into definite other periods called years. The days remain normal days.]

A. I think that is clearly true. It is definite in Hebrew that when you have an ordinal accompanying the word "day" it always means a normal solar day. If in the Bible anywhere "day" means something else the immediate context makes that perfectly clear. For example, in 2 Peter 3:8 we read that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." The context clearly shows that "day" is a long period of time. [On the contrary, the normal day is used as a comparison; it tells us that God is not constrained as we are by time. If the day here was a long period it would make the comparison nonsensical.] It would be the worst form of isogesis to read that meaning back into Genesis 1 where "day" has ordinals in a specific series. The creation account sets the order for our lives. Are we to work 6000 years and rest 1000 years?

The Fourth commandment also points this out in Ex.20:8ff. The Sabbath is very clearly a normal solar day. Six days of work and one day of rest is the normal pattern.

I think the evidence is preponderant that "day" means a twenty-four hour day. The famous Hebrew Old Testament linguistic professor of Oxford University, Dr. James Barr was no conservative. He wrote the book Fundamentalism attacking conservative Christianity although he came out of that sort of background himself. He wrote a letter to David C. C. Watson in 1984. I have a copy of that letter. In it he says that no world class scholar in any major university that he is aware of thinks that the writer of Genesis intended the word "day" to mean anything other than a 24 hour day. Now he doesn't agree with the truth claims of Scripture. He is saying that we must be honest when we interpret Scripture and say that the writer meant 24 hour days.

Q. If we follow the reformed hermeneutic of Scripture interpreting Scripture then we can come to no other interpretation than that of a six day (24 hours each) creation. To deny six day creation is also to deny this interpretive principle.

A. I fear that if we loosen our moorings to the clear teaching of Scripture in these early chapters of Genesis we have brought in a principle that when the basic teachings of Scripture go against the culture then you go with the culture.

Q.Your forthcoming book is on changing paradigms. Could you elaborate on that theme?

A. I take the subtitle from the famous work of Thomas S. Kuhn (University of Chicago) who in 1970 published his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Therein he speaks about a paradigm shift. Science proceeds not on an even uphill line but in terms of revolutions in which one paradigm (which is a world view, model or explanation of reality) is in a sort of revolutionary way replaced by another. This new paradigm is contradictory to many aspects of the former but contains all the same facets though from a different point of view.

The reason the old paradigm eventually goes defunct is because anomalies or questions are raised with it that cannot be answered in light of the basic paradigm. Kuhn gives illustrations in the history of science such as the old phlogistic theory of fire which finally just could not accommodate all the evidence. Another very different theory arose. This has happened many times in science.

Only time will tell if I am right. I am proposing that since so many problems are now being raised against the scientific empirical possibilities of the evolutionary mechanism even from non-Christian scholars, it is becoming increasingly difficult for evolutionary science to maintain intellectual standing because it cannot answer these questions.

I am thinking that we are in a transition time. If believing scientists of which there are many will continue to do their homework well and if people will learn what they can, the pressure may come that in another 40-50 years from now there may be an intellectual revolution that causes the old evolutionary paradigm to be replaced by the creationist paradigm or perhaps some other paradigm.

Fred Hoyle of Oxford and Wickransinghe wrote a book entitled Evolution from Outer Space in which they say evolution is preposterous. Professor Wickransinghe has flown over here from the British Isles to be a witness on the creationist side in some cases, such as a recent one in Louisiana. Even as a Buddhist he is willing to stand on the side of creation because evolution is such bad science. Now their paradigm would not be one of Biblical creation. Thus I do not know which paradigm will replace it. I do believe the evolutionary paradigm has got to go.

Professor Phillip E. Johnson of the University of California is showing in his books that evolution is intellectually bankrupt. He is not a young earth man but he does believe in creation. He shows that evolution is dogma, not science.

Q. Could you list two or three books that you think are important- books that parents could use with their children- teaching them how to counter evolutionary teaching?

A. A very helpful book by Phillip E. Johnson, Evolution As Dogma is approximately 40 pages and very helpful. Another book Pandas and People by Davis and Kenyon examines empiric evidence against any possibility of evolution. It is intended for use as a supplement to high school biology textbooks. The authors asked evolutionists to critique the book. They interact with them. They try to be fair. There is no mudslinging. That book is being used in many public schools as a supplementary text. It has been translated into Russian and is in wide use there.

A somewhat older work, but still a valid one, is Henry M. Morris' Evolution and the Modern Christian- particularly in regards to the two laws of thermodynamics. It is written at a popular and accurate level.

Paul Ackerman's It's A Young World After All is popularly written Some of its chapters are uneven but it is thought provoking and of use to parents regarding the age of the earth.

Q. Your book should be available by the end of 1997?

A. That is right. The book will have questions at the end of each chapter. I hope to have a study guide for use with it for Christian school and home school youth.

Q. It should also be of use in Sunday Schools and Bible study groups.

A. That is right. It will also be useful for pastors and seminary students.

Q. We will look forward to the book's publication. Thank you very much for this interview.

A. God bless you.

Why I believe in God (Peter Jensen)

2011-08-05T21:34:00.001+10:00

This piece was published in my church's newsletter for 31 July 2011, attributed to the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen.

I was asked recently about the reasons for belief and even more to the point, why I believe in God. I'm sure there are more, but here are ten of the factors which have created my belief in God.
First, the fact that he believes in me. That is, I have not found God at the end of a stringent enquiry into the nature of the universe. He found me, wandering as i was, and he revealed himself to me. It was his revelation, not my interrogation.
Second, the fact that his revelation was a public one. That is, it is not my private possession. When God revealed himself it was like the sun shining. As Jesus said, "I am the light of the world". Looking for God without looking at Jesus is like playing football without a ball—like seeing without insight.
Third, the fact that his revelation was a personal one. I do not believe in God because I have a superior intellect or am a better person. It is because God illumined my understanding by his spirit [sic-no capital 's'] as I looked at the person and work of Jesus Christ. God has to be God in the way in which I come to know him.
Fourth, I found that his revelation makes sense of the Bible. Overall, the Bible contains god's preparation for Jesus and then his fulfilment in Jesus. His preparation was more than sufficient to create a God believing people. The God they believed in was a God who made and then kept his promises; made promises and kept promises of an extraordinary nature. The most extraordinary, God-like keeping of promises is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Fifth, I see that the worship of Jesus is a reality in the world. Everywhere people have treated him as God and seek to obey him. From that point of view it is no use asking is there a God—clearly there is. His kingdom is in the world. The actual question is, what sort of God? Is he a God whom I should worship?
Sixth, I judge that the worship of God makes best sense of the world. The standard human belief that there are many gods makes no sense of the unity of the world. The recently popular belief that there is no God makes no sense of the morality and beauty of the world. The belief that there is one remote God who cannot enter his own world makes no sense of the love in the world. The belief that Jesus Christ bore the burden of the sins of the world makes best sense, especially of a world of pain and suffering.
Seventh, I judge that believing in this God makes the best sense of history. I do not believe that history is circular, infinitely repeating itself. I do not believe that history will have no end. Believing in the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ explains the nature of the human experience of living in time and enables us to have the hope which give [sic] meaning.
Eighth, I judge that belief in God makes best sense of what I see in the community. The will of God expressed in the law of God is a tremendous positive force for good. The will of God followed by men and women is wholesome and life-giving. It creates generosity and public virtue. It frees people from such crippling vices as gambling and substance abuse.
Ninth, because I know that belief in God makes the best sense of what I experience in my own life. I have learned long ago that I am a weak and faulty creature, prone to error and vulnerable to pain. God and belief in God spares me some things because his law guards me against things which are harmful. I am not spared from the ordinary conditions of life in a world such as this. But I have found that in the midst of the trials of the world, the love of God is manifested in ways which assure and re-assure.
Tenth, because I know God. The way we have asked the question skews it a little. Our belief is intellectual but it is not merely intellectual; it is personal. To quote and old pro verb, God is not a problem to be solved but a person to be known.

My comment

Now, there're a lot of interesting angles there; and together, they make strong case, I think.
I was, however, quite struck by his avoiding the basic ground that the Bible sets out for belief in God, and indeed, his worship: that he is creator! I think, immediately, of course, of Romans 1:20 and that he grounds his revelation and sets his covenant relationship is the world that he has made.

Speed

2011-07-30T15:47:00.002+10:00

I recently heard a discussion that one of the indicators of God's being creator, and not the cosmos itself being its own 'creator', or processes within the cosmos being required to give effect to God's fiats in Genesis 1, is the parsimony of action implied in Genesis 1.

That is, a clear result of intelligence brought to bear is the economy of effort that is applied.

This is echoed in a number of passages in the Bible:

The centurion's servant is one. The centurion expected instant results from Jesus' command, just as he expected from his troops.

There are also examples in the Psalms:

Psalm 33:8-10: he spoke and it happened!

Psalm 148:5: same as above!

Genesis 1 itself indicates parsimony of causative effort: God spoke...and it was so!

I don't think this leaves much room for setting aside the implications of rapidity in Genesis 1.

Bavink, Lankshear and myth

2011-07-24T22:35:00.000+10:00

Recently, searching my emails I came across this letter from 3 years ago: in Internet time, this is ancient history, of course, and what fun to share it.

William,

Bavink in "In the Beginning" makes the observation that materialism leads to occultism, and points to the late 19th C when it did just that... I'll hunt up the quote as its quite pithy.

Along those lines, thinking about Lankshear's jumble of ideas; particularly his joining of EE [Enuma Elish] and Gen 1: it seems that his fundamental take on reality in referring to a mythical view as having credibility; that is, an a-historical tale being able to meld with what is historical (or at least factual; as he seems to think for some reason that God is creator), must itself be mythical.

He is letting a source that is outside biblical revelation structure his world view... what is that source? Well, it could be either purely materialist (maybe provide links to Gisler's JETS paper on beware of philosophies and Mortensen's The Master's Seminary Journal paper on materialism and age of earth; I can give links if you don't have them) which means that he is judging the bible on the basis of a view that denies the world view of the bible: that is, a view that says "there is no god'; 'material is all there is' and 'man has no moral, generative or epistemological relationships outside himself' that is, is ethically and actually independent. So; Lankshear appears to base his thinking, at least by default' on this world view and uses it to analyse the Bible; from the get go he has prejudiced his thinking.

Alternatively, his view might be that consequence of materialism: mythological: that there are factors to consider that are not principally material, but have arisen culturally as a response by the imaginatively powerful to their situation in the material world...which reduces entertainingly to 'mere fiction'. If myth is a cultural response to a historical situation, then its interesting, but probably unimportant... Lankshear is then using the unimportant to assess the credibility of the Bible!

Another thing about ANE and other myths, they all take the cosmos as a given; effectively; even if they pretend to be a true cosmogony; they are not, as in EE they are either a theogony, or a story of the origin of something within the cosmos, not of the cosmos and its ontological implications for us...so, myths are pretty skinny; and they do not allow us to build anything of substance; thus mythologically referenced cultures have not produced natural science; nor objective history.

On this last point, he fails also to understand the critical importance in Jewish culture of objective history: Jewish thought regards objective history with bedrock importance; it is not a mythological culture at all, but a concretely historical one; for it to base this on a myth is both absurd and incoherent: cultures do not and cannot build objective historically referred structures on mythological foundations: the Jews have done the reverse: their culture is objectively historical and concretely real down to day 1.

Once Lankshear manages to reflect on the structure of his thought world he might be able to adopt a biblical noetical frame of reference which would instantly eliminate the explanatory dead ends of materialism and its cousin mythology.

BTW, I'll lend you Bavink: he's old fashioned (well...just old) but has some great ideas, including a wonderful logical critique of Darwinism as it then was.

Southern Baptists

2011-07-20T22:56:00.000+10:00

I've mentioned Al Mohler's work in previous posts.

Al has written a goodly amount on the matter of origins on his blog.

Here are some links:

The Futility of Theistic Evolution

Christianity and Evolution: Seeing the Problem

Creation vs. Evolution: The New Shape of the Debate

Evolution on the Mind

Should we really thank God for evolution?

The Buzzing Fly: Why the Creation-Evolution Debate is So Important

The Christian World View as Master Narrative: Creation

Mohler on Hawking on Creation

Mohler on Ruse on Creation'ism'

A darwinian compendium.

A knight of the mind.

Darwin's dog.

You'll get the idea!

God and Science

2011-07-16T16:02:00.008+10:00

This letter appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald today (16 July 2011)

God and science
Mike Phillips (Letters, July 15) suggests that Tony Maher has engaged in cherry picking of his beliefs and that there is an inconsistency between accepting climate change science on the one hand and belief in a creator god on the other.
As many theistic scientists will attest, it's a false dichotomy to pit God against science. Scientific inquiry looks at the world and how it works, while theology looks behind the curtain and wonders why it all exists to begin with.
One might look at how the world began, the other at why and by whom the world began. The two disciplines ask and answer completely different questions about life.
Cherry picking? I don't think so. But Mike Phillips might be comparing apples with oranges.
Andrew Miers Bardwell Valley

Phillips' letter rightly identified the foundation of Christian theism (although without using that term) being that God is creator. Oddly, he sees the significance of this cornerstone idea or doctrine, while many teachers of the church fail to understand it, leading at best, in many cases to views such as Miers' above.

Miers and others who see a spilt between what happened and what it means are philosophically out of tune with the Bible's world concept, and theologically under-done when it comes to discussion of origins. The Bible is very clear that what happened is the basis for the significance of what happened (the 'why' that Miers notes). There is no split in the Bible's framing of the world of thought and event so that 'meaning' is carried on a different plane to causal continuity. Certainly the Bible insists that 'word' is necessary, but you may note, that the word with respect to origins is about what happened in causal continuity, and not other than what happened.

Phillips gets it: if the Bible is not to be trusted when it deals with events in causal continuity, then what it derives human significance from is but a fiction, and the 'really real' events, and their inherent meaning, are otherwise, and God is divided! A house divided, of course, is a house bound to fall, particularly when theologians set out to divide what God has conjoined.

Phillips knows that it is 'God of the real world' that Christianity has in mind; he just disbelieves. Miers on the other hand seems to think that Christian faith is in a God of other than the real world: disconnected, not Elohim who connects with us, or draws worship from us because he is creator of the real that we are in!

For the sake of brevity I won't go through the flowering of modern science in the rich bed of Christian theology and belief, including the face-value reading of Genesis 1.

Un-knowledge

2011-07-14T19:49:00.003+10:00

The application of symbolism to critical biblical passages remains an interesting thing to contemplate.

Going on from my earlier post,

There is a major problem in attempts to cast the early chapters of Genesis as other than having the meaning of their face reading; particularly noting that the face reading is set in terms of of the causality of the world of our being and experience (coordination points are in the chronological alignment, the pattern of causality that is identical our experience, the continuity of space-time between the Genesis 1-3 depiction of the world and ours, and the uniformity of relationships between that depiction and ours, for example).

The problem is that unfooting Genesis 1 unfoots the understanding of our origin, relationships and sin (particularly the relationship with God) that only can come from Genesis 1.

The claim that G1 is mythic, or symbolic (which amounts to the same thing) immediately removes the information-content that it would otherwise convey. This means that the origin of all things, of our relationship with God (both made, in Genesis 1:27? and broken in Genesis 3:n, and fore-redeemed (Genesis 3:n), and our self-identity are not known, if they are not factual in the only account we have.

Then to explain sin, for example (but also to explain anything else in these chapters), becomes problematic. To understand the claims of scripture people must know the real connections that did, do and will affect them; they mythic connections will not do this, as people's lives are lived, challenged, enjoyed and frustrated in the real world, not the uninformative mythic one from whence comes at best metaphors of the real world. So is we can't show a 'real-world' engagement that explains our situation and all its dimensions, then it does not provide for us to understand our position.

This has a pastoral aspect.

If a person grappling to understand sin and God's redemptive response is told that sin is only explained in the Bible in symbolic terms, then the person can ask "then where did it really come from?" And how would we know? If G1 doesn't tells us what really happened, then what did really happen, and how would we know? Are we therefore really linked to God as G1 says, and do we really bear God's image, or is that just an ex-post facto hope for significance and meaning? The person could well ask, what is 'really real' and the 'real' point of reference for our existential position. If G1 is relegated to the symbolic, then the person would well look to materialism as the final reference point: materialism which eliminates God and the existential position would be the tissue of nonsense that Camus, Satre et al would leave us.

The unwitting, or perhaps just unacknowledged reference made when G1 is regarded as symbolic is that the world as we know it becomes 'a given' not created, and the result of itself, not of will. Alternatively it defaults to an implicit materialism which provides that true knowledge about the world in its totality (our world as experienced) leaves God out, as a not quite real figure; linking only through the tendrils of symbol, not the stout columns of what is real. So he's not really part of our world, but is set more in pagan terms, being an element of a prior world: the world as given, as Enuma Elish, for instance, assumes.

The odium of theistic-evolution

2011-07-12T10:05:00.001+10:00

What is so odious about theistic-evolution, I think, is that it makes a represenetation of God, with respect to origins, that diverges from the representation God makes of himself through the creative actions; actions that are linked to who he is (Romans 1:20).

In saying that 'no, God didn't do that, but he did something else that not he but I tell you.' it is saying that God is different from how he has communicated himself, and the relationship of God to creation is not what the Bible sets out.

This arises, I think, in part from the thrall of modern materialism, but partly out of a misplaced idealism descended from ancient Greece, where 'god' is too exulted to have any real connection with the material.

But this is not Christianity. God has provided the material world as not only the setting, but as part of his covenant with man, as him who is in God's image, the steward of the creation, to whose redemption the 'whole creation' looks.

The theological trouble with theistic evolution

2011-07-10T22:37:00.000+10:00

The trouble with theistic evolution (or Christian Darwinism) is that it says something about God that is different from what God says about God.

It makes a different relationship between God's words and actions from that which God states.

Adios theory

2011-07-08T13:08:00.000+10:00

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald 25 June 2011: trouble is Lyell was right...adios theory!

4 big moves

2011-07-05T21:17:00.006+10:00

I recently re-listened to Al Mohler's address on the age of the universe at a recent Ligoner Ministeries Conference.

In it he remarked that the Bible has four essential movements that condition the span of action between God and man: creation, fall, redemption and new creation.

These are four moments in the relation between God and us, where God's actions are material in the relationship.

And the relationship parameters are isotropic. That is, the zone of contact doesn't shift between them: sometimes metaphor, sometimes imaginary, sometimes real-world. They all must be real world and interact with our life-perspective, our experience as subjects, uniformly. Some cannot be appraised as 'lets agree this is important' (myth), and others as 'this occupies unique space in the time-space zone that effects and constrains my actions, choices and life-perspective'.

But even more, the zone of contact is action by God.

Most of the views of the account in Genesis 1 that depart from the direct meaning also seem to set aside that this is God telling us what he has done. Him describing the actions through which he represents himself to us in an unavoidably meaningfully tangible manner. It is not some artful allusion to 'teach that God is creator' but is the sequence of things that he did, being creator by which he communicates himself to us, and demonstrates that his claim to being creator is not empty, but delivered! So its 'personal'. Most of what I've read seems to want to de-personalise the account; yet the Bible is all about God's actions towards his creation, within his creation to the end of the new creation; once it is denied that he can give information about his acts, or that they occur in terms of different parameters from all his other acts, and from how acts 'work' (with causal continuity and contingency) in the time-space creation, then we don't have God's telling us about himself at all, but about someone/thing else. Strange way for one who is love to operate then. Does one write to a friend to tell him what one didn't do, or what one did do, as genuine self-revelation?

A friend made this comment in response to the above:

Interesting to note that when Philip said to our Lord Jesus "Lord show us the Father and that will be enough for us." The Lord Jesus replied with "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father...at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."

The historical evidence of the Lord Jesus' recreative acts gave testimony of who he is; and so the evidence of God's creative acts giving testimony to who the creator is. Undo one, and you undo the other.

Creation outside Genesis

2011-06-30T22:18:00.006+10:00

I was privilaged to attend a conference at St. John's Park Baptist Church recently titled Getting Genesis Right (check under sermons for the sound files).

One of the lectures was titled Creation outside Genesis.

This is the list of biblical references discussed (compiled by Dr. William Barrick of The Master's Seminary):

Exodus 20:8-11; 31:17
Deuteronomy 4:32
2 Kings 19:15
1 Chronicles 16:26
2 Chronicles 2:12
Nehemiah 9:6
Job 4:17; 9:8; 38:1-41:34 (38:4, 12, 32-33; 40:15)
Psalms 8:5-6; 33:6; 89:11-12, 47; 96:5; 104:2-5, 24; 115:15; 136:5; 148:4-5
Proverbs 14:31; 17:5; 22:2
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Isaiah 37:16; 40:26-28; 42:5, 12, 18; 44:24; 45:7; 12; 18; 51:13
Jeremiah 10:12, 16; 32:17; 51:15, 19
Amos 4:13
Malachi 2:10
Matthew 19:4; 25:34
Mark 10:6; 13:19
Luke 3:38
John 1:1-5, 9, 10
Acts 4:24; 14:15; 17:24
Romans 1:20, 25; 5:14; 8:19-22, 39
1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:9; 15:22, 45
2 Corinthians 4:6
Ephesians 3:9
Colossians 1:13-16
1 Timothy 2:13-14; 4:4
Hebrews 1:2; 11:3
1 Peter 1:20; 4:19
Revelation 4:11; 5:13; 10:6; 13:8.

One of the great themes in many of these references is that God's being creator provides the reason for us worshipping him. It provides the basis for the connection between creator and creature; embedded in acts which occured in the time and space that we occupy.

Symbolic Sin!

2011-06-26T20:36:00.001+10:00

In my church's latest study group notes, the following question was posed:

5. Read Genesis 3.7-24. In these verses we see the consequences of human sin in the breakdown of relationships between people and people and God. In this highly symbolic section we see a reality that is still with us today. What area of brokenness troubles you the most?

As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol heralds its dereification, in this context. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about the real life to which it refers.

So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps it is taken as symbolic of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol? How does the 'symbol' participate in the connected reality of relationships over time and space?

What the passage does is give to us the source of the current shared reality (shared between us, and between us and God). Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied and only can know from his word).

And if it is a symbol, what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as subjects? Where does symbol stop and the concrete or actual start?

I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.

No, it just doesn't wash.

So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and itself demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!

The words of C. S. Lewis are apposite here:

"These [critics] ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seeds and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."

"The argument runs like this. All the details are derived from our present experience; but the reality transcends our experience; therefore all the details are wholly and equally symbolic....[However, you cannot know that everything in the representation of a thing is symbolic unless you have independent access to the thing and can compare it with the representation."

So, what is it, then?

2011-06-25T15:29:00.000+10:00

In recent posts I've referred to some who claim that Genesis 1 is other than history. Typically these people will say that it's analogy, parable, metaphor, allegory, polemic or anything but an account of events that happened.

Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.

The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.

On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)

This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.

Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.

Beasties

2011-06-24T22:11:00.001+10:00

At the St Philip's Bible talk today (Thursday 23 June), in the series on Job, we reached God's rhetorical discourse to Job; the one where God mentions two particular beasts: behemoth and leviathan. Justin told us that they were most likely referring to the hippopotamus and elephant. Or perhaps mythical beasts: fairy story characters.

Justin, I don't think so; on any count.

Firstly, look at the descriptions: His tail sways like a cedar (Job 40:17); doesn't remind me of a hippo!

[Interesting to note Job 40:15b: "made along with you" made like I made you, or made at the time I made you? I'll check it out; but there appears to be an element of confluence in their creation.]

Then leviathan: his back has rows of shields (Job 41:15), his snorting throws out flashes of fire (Job 41:18)! Not like any elephant I've seen!

Both explanations are improbable, particularly when there are known animals that the descriptions to fit' only they are extinct. Of course, one does become perplexed by Job's references when the history in the Bible is set aside and the ear is bent to the arid world-story of materialism that starts from a completely different premise to the Bible, and naturally has different conclusion!.

But would the creatures be mythical? I think not. The detail is too fine and unelaborated for myth, and to naturally descriptive, and many parts of the descriptions are 'every day' observations. And if they were myth, then what sort of God is worshipped when he has to go to fairy tales to depict his works, and not to his own creation; which itself is set in the Bible as the basis for him being worshipped by us!

History, or not?

2011-06-20T14:18:00.000+10:00

In the latest issue of Creation magazine there's an article by Andrew Kulikovsky "Common Errors". He refers to the errors usually made by people who attempt to read an evolutionary world view back into the Bible, specifically, Genesis 1, of course.

One of the errors he mentions, and a typical one (see this article on John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity for discussion of this type of error), is the assertion that Genesis 1 gives us a theological rather than an historical account. Bruce Waltke, Bernard Ramm and a few others are cited in this connection.

The trouble with this view is that it supposes that 'theological intent' can exist detached from the setting of theological interchange where meaning is made (the real world, and recursively, the world resulting from the creative work set out in Genesis 1). Thus theology is 'carried' by history, in the Bible; it does not exist in some other world detached from this one: a kind of theological upper storey (to use Francis Schaeffer's analogy) that doesn't have feet on the same ground that our feet are on.

Andrew makes this very point, quoting Graeme Goldsworthy (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture), "The fact is that the whole Bible presents its message as theology within a framework of history".

Theology is connected through history (that is the recount of events in space and time) with the domain of life concerns that dominate our thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is in and makes sense in our world because it is us in our world who are subject of God's salvific communication. If this were not so, there would be no tangible congruence between theological statements and our possible apprehension of them. They would reduce to the nonsense of Zen koans.

A further question one would have to ask of this error, is its basis: how do its exponents know that certain parts of the Bible are 'theological' and not historical, when the explanation of the historical is typically the source of theological information, as God explains the significance of events (especially those set in historical narrative language, like Genesis 1). It is only history that makes theology meaningful. History is the domain of relationships between actors, people, agents; and God the creator in relation to us is on this plane: relationships that have actual reality do not exist outside of historical circumscription, because then they cease to be relationships and the very point of God's creating would evaporate. This is the great theological error that is made by those who want to think that theology and history exist in separate worlds.

Sun-Herald letter

2011-06-17T21:04:00.000+10:00

I saw this letter in the Sydney 'Sun Herald' on Sunday last:

Jean Whittle (Letters June 5) begs the question that God is necessarily a created being like we are and thus stands in need of a prior causal creator. Theists will tell you that God is eternal and consequently has never come into existence. He just always is.

The dilemma facing Jean, indeed confronting all atheists, is whether their “god”, matter, is eternal or popped into existence from absolutely no-thing and from no cause. While the first alternative is purely religious, the second is metaphysical nonsense: from no-thing, nothing comes.

After deciding, maybe Jean can tell us theists how matter or no-thing produced the non-material biological information that underwrites life, and brought into being love, consciousness and morality.

The atheists' only explanation, evolution, fails badly, scientifically and philosophically, against theism. After all, a supremely intelligent and all-loving God certainly seems a more viable option to explain reality than, well, no-thing.

Sincerely yours

Marc Kay

Murder

2011-06-15T11:04:00.000+10:00

At a recent lunch time Bible talk at St Philip's York Street, Justin observed (in the context of discussing Job 28)
If natural selection is true, then there would be nothing wrong with murder. It would be one means of the strong eliminating the weak.
And if the origin of humanity, let alone the cosmos, was as evolutionary dogma has it, this would be so; even if the dogma is bolted on to a theistic framework: as in theistic-evolution, it would remain true that murder to achieve success was built into the structure of reality, and moral questions were mere questions of convenience, and not having real moment.
Thus the dilemma of those who think that God 'used' evolution to create...they end up with a morally divided God, who's creation is different in type to him, where his glory is found (Roms 1:20), not in peace and joy and love, in the vanquishment of the weak.

What they say!

2011-06-10T22:33:00.000+10:00

I've heard a lot of neo-evangelicals claim that the question of origins/the biblical doctrine of creation, is a rather unimportant issue in either a pastoral or evangelical context.

I think this clip from a recent Sydney Morning Herald contradicts that.

Plato

2011-06-06T20:24:00.002+10:00

There’s a philosophical tendency in the West, following Plato, to conclude that if a theory isn’t working, there must be something wrong with reality

.
from Harvard Business Review May 2011: Nonaka, The Wise Leader

Reminds me a lot of neo-evangelicals who concluded that because the 'theory' that God created as he set out in Genesis is not like the popular theory of evolution, and is contrary to an implausibly ancient earth; that is, it doesn't 'work'; then there must be something wrong with the reality of his word...so, of course, much sweat and ink is spent on saying that Genesis 1, etc. doesn't mean what it clearly says!

Theistic evolution?

2011-06-05T20:07:00.000+10:00

Termed by Al Mohler, an oxymoron, and I couldn't agree more, this web page on theistic evolution gives a good run down of the idea that Christian revelatory theism is somehow compatible with non-christian speculative materialism.

Cat and Dog Theology

2011-05-30T19:38:00.002+10:00

Recently I attended an evening with Gerald Robison of Cat and Dog Theology: a surprisingly fun ministry.

After Gerald's talk question time started and a couple of questions dealt with the recurrent 'good God, world of evil' subject.

One of the questions went something like "does God like earthquakes and tsunamis?" because, I guess, the questioner thought that they were part of the 'very good' world that God created. This may have been indicative of a poorly taught or understood theology of creation and its place in the biblical (the 'real') history of the physical world; or a failure to integrate information about spiritual matters, with the covenantal relationship between the material world and our concourse with God.

Gerald's answer focused on Romans 8:22 ("For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now".); and given the time constraints, it appealed to me as a pretty good answer. He went on to affirm that despite the effects of sin on our world, 'God was still in control".

The answer, however, did not quite satisfy. There is a more fulsome response to deal with the why of natural 'evil' (earthquakes and the like), and the notion of God's being 'in control'; the latter being a particularly objectional piece of contemporary reflexive determinism.

That the world is not as God created is clear in scripture: the cosmos left God's hand as 'very good' (Gen 1:31). We are twice removed from this state: firstly by the fall, where God ceased his intimate relationship with his creation (Gen 3:9, for example), and secondly by the flood, and its aftermath.

In the contemporary Anglican church the question of natural evil arises, perhaps, because of the inroads made into the doctrine of creation by worldly admixes of 'theistic-evolution' or Christian Darwinism, and various other reconfigurations of the doctrine brought by metaphorical readings of Genesis 1, etc. Thus, I suspect, the world contorted by disruption is mistakenly 'read' as the very good world that left God's mind as revealed in the genesian account; and God is somehow identified with the blind, relentless, meaningless, cruelty and frustration that 'evolution' entails.

But, not so. God created 'very good' consistently with his goodness and love; he took pleasure in what he had done and gave to us; he also will restore the entire creation to joyful fellowship with him and peace; overturning any idea that this broken world represents, in its brokenness, God's nature. [Despite its broken state, Paul insists that it does still make representation of God]

'Control'

The notion of God being 'in control' comes up frequently, and appears to be used by Christians, in many cases, as the final support for their confidence in God's capability to finally save them. However, the glibness of its expression conjures up for me the image of God as puppeteer; which I don't find in the Scriptures.

Without grappling with the vast world of debate on this topic, and its many colours and flavours (canvassed in Christian Determinism, as one example served up at the top of a recent Google search); I will put down but a few notes.

God's being 'in control' strikes me as a god disengaged from his creation, and one who imposes on his creation or people (those in his image, and therefore not made to be 'controlled') the events and circumstances of their lives.

But God our creator represents himself differently to this. I think of Romans 8:28 where Paul tells us that God (actively) works all things together for good...so, God engaged, at work and, I think one can extend to him working in the world that we are working in, he to reliably bring about what he wills not necessarily over against us, but through and by us, even if we intend otherwise.

The way the teleological dimension of God's relationship with the cosmos is expressed in Job, is I think, what is largely in mind when people talk of him being 'in control'; but the biblical expression is far more helpful: Job 42:2, for instance, where God's ends will out: but reading this with the Romans passage, it is not, I suggest, by 'brute force' fiat, but by his working, by his Spirit in and with the minds and motivations of his creatures in all their circumstances.

I find myself discomforted by the absolutist terms that speak more of a Greek philosophical tradition ('in control' being of this ilk), and am more comfortable with God as represented in the Bible as living with us, and taking a part in the pattern of life, albeit a supreme part, by which his objectives are never thwarted and always achieved: so in these terms, he is not a puppet master, but the supreme moulder, leader, guide and 'captain' of the way of his creation; even his creation marred in rebellion and seeking to be against him.

We, though, in his church, are part of the new creation, seeking not to be against him, but to be entierly for him; but the new creation has intersected with the old, and God achieves his goal while we are wading still through the mess and sometimes horror of life in this now broken creation. We live, as it were, in two creations at once, and this living sustained in God's light by his indwelling Spirit and engaged by the life of prayer.

Just as an aside, I think that some confusion arises when people think of pre-destination, in this context, and perhaps think the Bible teaches that God has pre-destined 'you', the individual, to share eternity with him. I don't think this is so; rather, the destination of the 'train' of the church is eternity with him; but who is on the train is a different matter: not entirely different, but nevertheless, different, as God seeks and saves those who are lost, and would that all come to know him.

No longer part of eternity

2011-05-28T23:21:00.002+10:00

From a recent article by Elizabeth Farrelly (touted as an architect on the Herald's website, but she isn't: not registered in NSW so cannot be one!)

It captures very nicely the wrong-headedness that parlously descends upon as by evolutionary fictions, and spreads through the church due to its faustian bargain in 'theistic evolution' reconfiguring Genesis 1 into a metaphor for something else!

For in big, fat, rich modernity, as you know, time is money. We may live twice as long as those mediaevals, but our time cannot be wasted on the merely beautiful or the merely worshipful. This is because we no longer see ourselves as part of eternity but simply as the poor, bare, forked animals that Darwinian modernism bequeathed us. Our allotted span is all we have, so it matters...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/mystery-dies-when-we-dont-see-ourselves-as-part-of-eternity-20110427-1dwmy.html?posted=successful#ixzz1KlKuot6U

Facts from non-facts

2011-05-27T22:04:00.007+10:00

There are a number of views of Genesis 1 that fall into a basic conceptual approach to the text. It is this: the information contained in the passage is not factual. It does not correspond to events in the real world in either sequence or substance. However, Genesis 1 does teach that God is creator, that he is (somehow) sovereign over creation and that he has created a cosmos that is consistently well ordered, predictable and is subject to uniform causal regularities.

What is not explained by this basic view is how all this fact is derived from something that is non factual on its face!

It seems that to hold that one can draw the factual from the non-factual; denying that the material on its face conveys facts, but that somehow underneath it reveals something that it does not do on the surface, in the direct meaning of the text, is not a mark of thought, but of conjuring!

What is pretty obvious to me, is that this program requires the material to be sorted into that which has objective meaning and that which does not, not on its own grounds, but by some criterion that is private to the interpreter.

But how would we know that interpreter A, in rejecting that the direct reading of the text is factual, is able to know that other matters in the text, not directly accessible to the direct reader, are where its facticity lies? Indeed, how would we know that interpreter A has anything of value to say against interpreter B who responds to the text on its face? Or is it just that one garners credentials from the occult act of finding something beneath the text (occult here referring to 'hidden')? What is the basis either in the text or by reference to something outside the text to say that a fact can be deduced from a text which itself contains no facts?

That doesn't sound like even a rational reading of a text, let alone a spiritually responsive one!

So, lets get it straight; most modern post/neo/quasi evangelicals would say that Genesis 1 teaches us that God is creator, but does not provide any factual material, any reliable content, which communicates that! So where does the idea that God is creator come from if that creator cannot communicate the basis of the attribution to those he created in language which is the medium presumably created for communication between persons, or, if the Bible is right, is ontologically basic?

This is a particularly pointed question when most such PNQ evangelicals fall into line with the idea of evolution being thoroughly (or not quite thoroughly) explanatory of origins; an idea which in itself seems to feel no epistemological deficiency; and actively denies that personhood is basically real, but rather, that material is; personhood being a mere outworking of an assembly of material.

John Dixon, who I mentioned in my previous post might be one of these non-facts teach facts chaps. I'd ask him: by what criterion do you draw from a text whose facticity you deny, conclusions which are only validly available by reference to the very text you deny can provide them.

The decision to claim that some facts are established in the face of the rejection of their medium is arbitrary; those who espouse it don't have any substantial ground to reject the contrary view, that the fact they claim is carried only by the facts that convey it. To deny this is more than perverse, it is crazy.

Why age?

2011-05-15T16:15:00.007+10:00

Comment I posted on a recent article on John Dickson's teaching about earth and its age.

It is saddening to see Christian teachers like John Dickson wanting to support a conceptualisation of the world that separates it from God, indeed, wants to make it independent of God's revelation in a fashion that has more to do with paganism than Christianity. The pagan worldview typically sees the world either as 'given' or as independent of any intelligent cause or agency. Long ages abet this idea.

Further support for paganist ideas comes in denying that the Bible could or would want to include information about our physical cosmos or world; yet the physical setting is clearly significant in the scriptures: it shows us our very tangible connection with God, and God's direct connection with his creation, thus establishing who he is for us, and who we are before him.

In denying that the opening chapters of Genesis have anything concrete to say about these topics people like Dickson, etc. effectively say that the 'god' they conceive is very different from the God of the Bible, who sets out his program for relationship with us in terms parameterised in the terms by which we know the very world that he says that he created.

Moreover, the approach that severs the direct genetic connection between God and his creation, and ultimately us, de-personalises the connection God declares through Genesis 1:1 to 2:4; de-personalisation is precisely the fruit of pagan ideas. I wonder if this implication is seen by others?

The 5-fold formula

2011-04-27T15:08:00.001+10:00

There have been a few schemes that apply a structure to Genesis 1; usually they are schemes to avoid the direct reading of the passage (e.g. the 'framework' hypothesis), but oddly, the authors of these schemes usually fail to deal with the passage's most obvious structuring scheme.

Joseph Pipa in his lecture on the doctrine of creation puts it this way:

Moses adopts a formula much more powerful and pervasive than the parallel between the days 1-3 and 4-6. It is a five-fold formula that is used fairly consistently with each of the six days, the work of each day is described by the five-fold formula:

1. the act of creation,
2. the declaration of fulfillment,
3. the statement of purpose,
4. the expression of delight and
5. the indication of time.

In each event the act of creation is described in a two-fold manner: firstly the word of creation, and that is complimented by the particular works of creation.

The word predominates as we read this chapter: "and God said", shaping the particular out of the initial 'mass' of creation.

Real Public Events

2011-04-18T22:10:00.004+10:00

I've recently been listening to a lecture by Thomas, until recently, of Durham (Tom Wright: recently stepped down as bishop) 'Can a scientist believe in the resurrection?" In it he makes a couple of remarks that I'd like to use to consider how we might think about Genesis 1/the creation.

1. He says that the question of Jesus' resurrection was not a question about the internal state of his followers, but about something that happened in the real public world.

That is, the resurrection as an event was accessible to anyone who was there at the time, independently of that person's views, beliefs or prejudices.

2. He also said that the disciples' transformed world view was only explicable on the assumption that something really did happen (really = an event in material space-time which objectively occurred independently of any observers)

Here it is clear that people's approach to life and their thoughts about their own circumstances and personal trajectories through life were reoriented by something that really happened.

Christian faith is thus not some rarified 'faith in faith', but confidence in the actuality of events that have an affect upon us.

So, the creation, if not something that happened in the real public world in the terms in which God portrays it, is not something that happened meaningfully at all! If it was not accessible, in principle, to anyone who read the text, and could make sense of it, then it is not revealed, but obscured!

Then, the world view that the creation account sets out to create is one that depends on something really having happened. Not something that we are free to characterise ( and therefore characterise God) any way we please, but something that is bound to the context of the revelation; otherwise, it is not this creation that we are talking about, but some other source of the world, built on some other premise, and connected historically to some principle other than the God who has taken pains to tells us the basis for the connection between us and him from which flows the entirety of redemptive history.

Canards

2011-04-10T22:32:00.004+10:00

In the most recent Southern Cross; the journal of our (Sydney) anglican diocese, a letter was published in reply to an earlier one on Genesis 1.

The earlier letter used Genesis 1 to be able to draw conclusions about life on earth; the latter letter denied this was possible, but that information could only come from outside the Bible.

Specifically, the author, one Stenning, asserted that Genesis was but poetry; and presumably could have no truth content in its own terms, and that armed with 'two books' to 'read the world' we could be content to relegate the Bible (Genesis 1) to other than concretely informative.

Both assertions are, in my view, erroneous.

Firstly, it is hard to understand how anyone could think that Genesis 1 is poetry. It is obviously not! So obvious, I'll not rehearse here what I've covered previously.

The second assertion is a little trickier, although I've touched on it previously too.

Are there two books? One of 'nature' (and that word gives the game away instantly: its not 'nature' but the 'creation' that should concern us), and the other of God's word? The so-called book of nature only becomes such, that is, nature is only 'en-booked' in the propositions formulated by people, with all the prejudices, errors and fabrication that people are prone to. Hardly something to use over against the Bible!

Reference to a second book in this context is almost invariably to off-set the biblical information about origins, and render it meaningless by comparison with modern 'majority' views. So the second book is not really the book of the creatures, to express God's power, as Francis Bacon put it, but the book of 'God cannot communicate his work of creation to us'; with us relying instead on constructions that start, not with God, but with asserting his irrelevance. This is canvassed in another recent post.

Second book reference also usually indicates a view that the Bible has no business talking about the material cosmos, and that any such talk is usually irrelevant to spiritual matters. But the Bible would have it otherwise. In the creation do we learn of the close connection and historical continuity of redeeming relationship between God and man, and that it is this world, this setting, in which we encounter God; not some other, less concrete, less do to with 'our' world, world. The pastoral implications of this can be quite dramatic, in my own experience.

Creation? Yes, but on my terms!

2011-03-17T16:12:00.003+11:00

It is a popular line in much of the evangelical world that Genesis 1, etc. tells us that God is creator, and that creation was ex nihilo, but that the actual facts of creation do not line up with Genesis 1. So Genesis 1 is either pure polemic, or mere rhetoric.

Simply at the level of the pure logic of the claim, it seems to be a nonsensical position to hold: it denies the alignment with events of the only information that we have on which to base our acceptance of God's being creator. The claim is that 'God created, but not how he tells us'. The sceptic is well entitled to deny that our belief in God's being creator can be a serious one.

What is happening here amounts to denying the word of God, and maintaining that his creating was not on his terms, but has to be on our terms (and who are we to say?).

This was the mistake of the Pharisees: they wanted a messiah on their terms, not God's!

In making this move, we evacuate God's revelation of its direct verbal-grammatical meaning, and substitute our own thoughts as to what really must have happened, bending, in many cases to the materialist view of the world, and allowing its claims the ascendency over those of our God! This happens either by accepting the notion of Darwinian evolution, or materialist cosmogony and the accompanying history of the earth, or both; usually both.

I don't know of any other part of scripture where we deny that God can communicate what he wants, and we comfortably substitute our own views!

But this is not a denial without danger: as soon as we substitute our own content, we change the substance of God's information: we say not only that God created, but not how he says, but that the world is other than the Bible sets out.

Our relationship with God throughout the Bible, and its flow of history, is framed in terms of the creation: it sets out who he is, who we are, and grounds the covenant! Setting the details of the account aside means that we set this aside too, and we have to then be content that the world is not the world that God sets out for us, but some other world, where things happen differently, and to which God relates differently.

The theological ramifications are not trivial!

Dembski's Theodicy

2011-02-25T21:53:00.002+11:00

When I first read Andrew Hodge’s review of Dembski’s “The End of Christianity” in the Journal of Creation, I regarded Dembski’s views as being arcane speculation. I did not expect them to become present in everyday Christian discourse. But subsequently to reading the review, I found that they had!

A Christian worker of my acquaintance used an approach similar to Dembski’s to answer a question as to how there could be death before the Fall. This was done in a group discussion, but did not itself evoke much comment, unfortunately. It certainly didn’t bring discussion of the logical circle that Hodge sets out in the review, which ends with God being the author of evil.

And here, I think we see the basic theological problem of theistic evolution: not that it puts death before the fall, which it does, and which is obviously a problem, it being at first counter-scriptural then making the evidence of the dissolution of relationship between God and creature come to effect before the actual dissolution; but that it makes the action of evil inherent in the creation. Thus it makes to be evil part of what God has done out of his nature, and termed ‘very good’. This is simply incoherent. It makes God the author of ‘not-God’ and therefore by nature to include his own inversion. Interestingly Barth does this very thing in this statement in his commentary on Romans 8:21, 22 “All things...observed by men are hidden in God...good and evil” (Oxford edition, p. 309). It ends up more Zoroastrian than Christian, to my mind.

The notion has a number of other effects as well.

It seems to ignore that temporal order was created by God as part of the organising structure of experience within his creation. To upend this and have his creation show the dislocation of the fall prior to the fall makes nonsense of sequence, justice and causality. Indeed, if this had been part of orthodox theology, I doubt if science and reason would have taken root as the temporal anti-causality of Dembski’s theology would remove their basis in the created world (that which God has created as Real). Such an outworking would be reminiscent of the anti-temporality of some contemporary philosophical discussion that pops up in both critical theory particularly, and some flavours of post-modernism (refer, for instance to Fredric Jamison and Jean-Francois Lyotard’s glee at the displacement of history’s ‘grand narratives’ by post-modern language games, notwithstanding the irony of their inevitable reliance on strict temporality for actual communication).

Dembski seems to have also set out to rather glibly solve a problem that his commitment to naturalist chronology creates; but glibness here leads to another theological error. The results of the fall in death and dissolution are because relationship with God is broken. God steps back from his creation, as it were (signified in his having to seek Adam, and not know him in confraternity: loss of loving intimacy and life sustaining involvement has occurred) within the temporal framework of that creation. Adam, as the steward of the creation has rejected and ejected God from fellowship in his life by particular action at a particular time (notwithstanding the interpretation of Calvinism that has God in relationship trampling over his own creation of temporality, sequence and his image in man): the creation thus cut loose from the author and source of life must experience death and decay, frustration and failure.

To have the creation simultaneously be in fellowship with God and out of fellowship with God, which is what Dembski’s theodicy requires, has to be explained, not just presented by an off-hand and illogical assertion.

The final consequence is that Dembski’s ‘effect of the fall before the event of the fall’ theology is, as I’ve touched on above, destroys the temporal structure the Bible, gives to interaction patterns. It forces the adoption of a cyclical indeterminacy that turns its back on temporality, makes chronology meaningless and runs against biblical thought. This, if it truly did emerge with any real grounds from the Bible, would align Christian (and Jewish) theology with the types of pagan anti-temporal structures that Eliade discusses in “The Myth of Eternal Return”, and would undermine revelatory historicity with dire implications for the incarnation. In these terms, Dembski’s adoption of the concept of kairology is interesting as it makes time subjective (which is quite workable in many day to day ways: 'eat when hungry' is an example), but risks melding this into a pagan package of impersonal spiritualist subjectivity, countering the highly involved personal spiritual objectivity of the scriptures.

Finally, it is simple to rebut Dembski’s parallel between the sufficiency of Christ for redemption across history, and applying the fall contrary to causality irrespective of the flow of history. The first case is an act of will: God decides, a-temporally, that Christ’s work will have trans-temporal effect, because in fact it makes life triumph over death, and so must swallow up death (irrespective of what would end up to be transient temporal effects); but the second case is a matter of an event sequence within the creation where God has provided time as the mechanism of experiential structure, causal sequence and consequential moral responsibility or, to adopt a quip: “to stop everything happening at once”, which is precisely what Dembski wants to have happened!

2011-02-20T11:32:00.000+11:00

The Bible is premised on the relationship of God and his creation, specifically God and mankind, where the relationship is personal: that is, as between persons.

For the relationship to substantiated as real, it has to have a real basis; a point of connection. For example, the marriage relationship for Christians, is given a basis in reality in the wedding ceremony, where a covenental connection between man and woman is made.

A parallel to this is the connection that God demonstrates with his creation in the creation account in Genesis 1-2 (and 3 for that matter, to give in a soteriological fulsomness). The link between the two is not just asserted, but shown. Shown in terms that are part of the fabric of reality between God and humanity (the fabric created by God, which is part of the substance of the account). In both participating in the shared fabric, we and God are shown to be sharing an ontological domain that makes sense of communion (relational concourse), expectations, relationship and covenant.

If the words of the account have no connection with the reality they assert to recount (that is the account means other than it specifically states, and sets out its propositional content only to infer a vaguely stated 'real' on the basis of a clearly stated non-real) then the intersection of our and God's being is not validly given and there is no indication of joint participation in a shared domain, or 'fabric'. That is, the parameters that would show the participation are invalid. If this were so, then the creation account would be meaningless, and convey no content that was propositionally fruitful: it would tell us nothing and undercut the notion that there was a basis for our connection with God.

If God could not tell us the basis in meaningful propositions, then it would be fair to think that there was no basis in the reality that would put God and us into relationship.

Enuma Elish

2011-02-15T11:28:00.001+11:00

Many years ago I recall a discussion on the Anglican Media forum about the influence of Enuma Elish on Genesis chapter 1.

Kitchen, among others denies that there is a link, but this came back to mind when I was reading Creator and Creation by Simkins, where he says:

Certainly the Enuma Elish is the most elaborate Mesopotamian creation myth, but it is doubtful that it represents the predominant Mesopotamian view of creation. One prominent Assyriologist even characterized it as a sectarians and an aberrant combination of mythological threads that have been woven in to an unparalleled composition (Lambert, 1965). Although he perhaps depicted the myth too narrowly, he has rightly cautioned us against overemphasizing this myth in understanding the Mesopotamian view of creation. Some scholars have even argued that the Enuma Elish is a foreign import into Mesopotamia. The textual evidence suggests that there is no single tradition that made up the Mesopotamian view of creation.

Dinosaurs in Eden?

2011-02-12T20:22:00.000+11:00

In an article in the current (Feb 11) Southern Cross, the Sydney diocesan newspaper, there is an article on 'dating' (romantic, not geological), quoting:

"My father always told me that the Bible tells us what we need to know, not what we want to know.

For a child who wanted to know if Dr Who was real and whether or not dinosaurs were running around in the Garden of Eden, this was a disappointing answer to my queries"

How interesting that the connection of the Bible with the real world, at its beginning, as it creates the framework for understanding that God's word and the real world converge in God's revelation (and thus the word making sense of the world), is (a) anticipated by a child, but rejected by an adult, and that information about the grounding of salvation history in the totality of the history of the creation is something we presumably don't need to know, although we might want to know it.

The Bible, however, does seem to think that we do need to know such things; the pity is that many today think that the Bible is wrong on this and the identity of the world created, the act of creation and our experience of God expressed in the Bible is not necessary to know! An extraordinary traducing of the Bible's 'view" of itself!

Now, were dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden; of course, it is logically possible, seeing that all creatures were made on day 6.

Two books

2011-02-08T20:14:00.000+11:00

I commented on an article I saw that mentioned the 'two books' notion that is supposed to make the Bible and contemporary interpretations of the created world (note, not the created world itself, although this is hoped to be understood, but the interpretations, which are if not completely tendentious, then at least programatic).

I know it's popular in heterodoxy, but the 'two books' idea is nonsensically overdone, in my view. One book is clearly a book: the Bible, the other is a book only by metaphor. Yet, how often are books about the metaphor book used to interpret the Bible, and the possibility of the Bible: which is a real book full of propositions, doing some interpreting of the metaphorical book is rejected?

At root, I think this position entails a philosphy that at its start fails to be informed by the Bible, and has its roots in paganistic idealism, where a non-real world is the only one the Bible is allowed to occupy; its statements of connection with this world expressly denied to enable its rejection!

Genesis literary?

2011-02-06T20:37:00.000+11:00

From Al Mohler's talk at last year's Ligonier Conference:

The idea that Genesis (1-11) is merely literary has to be rejected out of hand as in direct contradiction to our understanding of the Bible as the infallible word of God.

The framework theory is one of the least defensible positions when we understand that it is based upon the assumption that there not only may be a long period of time in Genesis 1 and the sequence of days, but actually that the sequence does not matter. It simply is not credible that God gave us this text with such rich detail and sequential development merely that we would infer from it his providential direction without any specific reference to all of the direct content he has given us within the text!

Even a commonsense reading of the text indicates that it is making historical and sequential claims.

As Pipa says, it contains so many time and sequence markers that it is as though the writer is going out of his way to drive the point that this text relates events that occur in time as we experience time, and with a tempo that we can make sense of given our own experience of the succession of days.

The unitary construction of the chiasm in Genesis one emphasises the point: this text sits as a unit, self contained, and understandable within its own terms.

Conflict on evolution

2011-02-05T19:41:00.005+11:00

Al Mohler gets discussed in this Baptist article.

All the fluff that gets discussed in Christian circles about there being a non-issue between evolution and creation has to die on quite a number of verses in the Bible. For instance, Hebrews 11:3 tells us that "the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" which is the very opposite of the evolutionionary claim that what is seen WAS made out of what is visible. QED, in my view!

I've posted on Mohler before, and will do so again.

Tom's midnight garden

2011-01-30T21:49:00.000+11:00

From Tom's Midnight Garden (p. 169, the Oxford Edition) by Philipa Pearce:

After discussing theories of time, Tom says:

"I've heard a theory too...while his uncle paused to drink some tea, 'I know an angel--I know of an angel who said that, in the end, there would be time no longer'

"An angel!" His uncle's shout was so explosive that a great deal of tea slopped down his tie, ..."What on earth would an angel have to do with scientific theories?" Tom trembled and dared not explain that this was more than a theory, it was a blazing angelic certitude.

Interestingly, this related to the book's using Revelation 10:1-6, where the angel refers to "him that lives for ever and ever, who created heaven...and earth..." surely a secure credential for unifying thinking about the created order and the revelation of the one who created it!

Ironically, discussion on Michael Jensen's blog, treads the very same territory as the uncle: there is a separation between the creator (theology) and his creation ('science' and the world of theories), yet the Bible, in the account of creation, the tying of creation to the Son and by extension the incarnation, and our being in the creation as the place where we encounter God, and in which God covenants with us, brings them together!

Reading on Origins

2011-01-24T10:39:00.004+11:00

Over recent months I've read a number of books to do with the question of origins. They are:

Eliade: The Myth of the Eternal Return
Bavinck: In the Beginning
Young: Studies in Genesis One
Thielicke: How the World Began
Moltmann: God and Creation
Sarfati: The Greatest Hoax on Earth?
DeRosa: Evolution's Fatal Fruit
Herbert: Charles Darwin's Religious Views
Crowe: Creation without Compromise
Sarfati: By Design
Kelly: Creation and Change
Wilder-Smith: God: To Be or Not To Be
Moreland: Creation Hypothesis
Lennox: God's Undertaker
Wells: Darwinism and Intelligent Design
Sandford: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome
Sudera: One Small Speck to Man
Mortensen: The Great Turning Point
ReMine; The Biotic Message
Repcheck: The Man Who Found Time
Simkins: Creator and Creation
Pipa nd Hall: Did God Create in 6 Days?
Moberly: Theology of the Book of Genesis

I could well comment on all of them, but for the sake of brevity I'll only do so for 'By Design'. I was disappointed by this book as it didn't really get to the issue of what design is as opposed to the product of stochastic processes.

A quick think suggests that design is characterised by:

High entropy: so it's not likely to be like something produced by undirected processes;
Parsimony: efficient fit to purpose; to properly appraise this we'd need to understand the full purpose within the context of the system (and the system of systems, to coin a defence technology phrase). For example, some claim that the koala's pouch is the 'wrong' way, or the design of the retina is inefficient; both claims do not address the full functional set that the particular design meets.
Trans-systemic interfaces: where the inputs and outputs of one system or sub-system are parsimoniously coupled with the output and input requirements of a system that operates within a different, but functionally related domain (e.g. eye-brain; facial anatomy and musculature, muscle feed back systems, circulatory and secondary nervous systems all of which are coordinated to enable vision);
System of systems participation: where a system works with other systems to produce a result that is not directly required or produced by one individual component system.

When is a day...a day?

2011-01-17T22:35:00.003+11:00

From a lecture by Dr Joseph Pipa on the meaning of "yom" in Genesis 1?

"...it is used 2304 times in the Old Testament with the great overwhelming majority of its uses referring either to the period of daylight or the normal 24 hour day. The theologian Berkhoff writes "in its primary meaning the word "yom" denotes a natural day".

It is a good rule in exegesis not to depart from the primary meaning unless this is required by the context. It is not only the primary meaning, it is the default meaning of the word... this is the overwhelming sense of the word and that your first reading is always to be then of a daylight period or a normal 24 hour day, unless there is something else in the text that will cause you to see that it is being used in a figurative fashion."

Critics will ask how can you have a standard day in days 1 through 3 without the sun to regulate the period? But clearly days 4-7 are regulated by sun and should be so taken, so the coherent reading of the text, if 4-6 are regulated by the sun, then the same meaning should apply to verses 1-3: that's what the text demands.

Another word in the Hebrew that could have been used to communicate long periods of time is "olam". 'Day' does not express an epoch, if one claims then, one has to demonstrate such a use in the Bible: is there any such use of day in the Bible? Even figurative uses rely on day indicating a 24 period, except where is it idiomatic. For instance "period of influence", when it still contemplates a set of natural days or 'when'.

576 times "yom" with a numbered prefix: always refers to a standard day; the only possible exception is Hosea 6:2, but here, still, it refers to not a long period, but of God's brief judgement. It is also a prophesy of the resurrection, and still refers basically to a day as a day.

Moreover, when an ordinal is used with "yom" it always means normal day in sequence.

[Pipa suggests that you check the usage of 'yom' in Bibleworks or Logos...my preference is for Bibleworks, FWIW]

Clods

2011-01-06T21:39:00.002+11:00

Read in the SMH reprinting a Telegraph article:

The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world? The Sun is incomparably vaster and more powerful than any work of man. We are forged from a few clods of solar dust. The Sun powers every plant and form of life, and one day the Sun will turn into a red giant and engulf us all. Then it will burn out. Then it will get very nippy indeed.

The dominating view of humanity as peddled by today's knowledge workers. From an evangelistic perspective, unseating this view of man has to be a first step to re-seating man as the creation of God, and in need of restored relationship.

Joshua Davidson

2010-12-25T22:56:00.001+11:00

With the NT adopting the Greek-ized form of the saviour's name, the signficance of Joshua taking the people into the promised land is obscured: I prefer to think of the Messiah as Joshua of Nazareth: closer to the truth!

But if we were going to render our Lord's earthly name into contemporary style, it would be as the title of this post: Joshua Davidson! It doesn't quite work liturgically, but there you are!

Preaching on Genesis

2010-12-20T20:21:00.001+11:00

I've heard a good number of sermons on Genesis 1, a few live, and a few via MP3s. The live ones include those that triggered this blog to start a few years ago: a series on Genesis at my local church.

But I've heard more since then, particularly at the sites linked from this blog.

The MP3 variety have, I must say, been better sermons. They have taken the hearer more to thinking about Christ than the live ones! Perversely, the local sermons, in a 'Bible-believing' evangelical church, did not so take up the challenge with the warmth, passion, logic and drama that the linked ones do.

Have a listen to:

Joseph Pipa on the Doctrine of Creation

Gary Hendrix also on the Doctrine of Creation

Rick Viz, of course, on the Fact of Biblical Creation

could have

2010-12-15T21:08:00.002+11:00

Surprisingly, even some biblical creationists have claimed that God could have created in a different manner to that which he [told us that he] did. For instance, they say, he could have created in 6 seconds or 6 billion years, if he had wanted to (or instantly, as Augustine averred). This goes alongside the claim that God could have ‘used’ evolution as the means of his creation, which often prepares the way for accepting that he did use evolution (contrary to the direct reading of Genesis 1, and elucidated by Ps 33:9, John 1:3, Hebrews 1:2 and Hebrews 11:3, for instance)!

But, what are we saying here? Are we recognising that God doesn’t act arbitrarily, or capriciously, but that his actions reveal who he is, as Paul teaches in Romans 1:20. Does not the claim above attribute to God, not the glory of the one who is, but the inglory of who he is not, or worse, that of pagan ‘fates’ or ‘spirits’ who in the relevant literature are unpredictable, capricious and have no discernable selfhood or nature?

There are two answers to the question, I think:

Firstly, on the basis of the argument above, the answer is “No, God could not have created in any old way, because he is not a magician who does tricks, but is the almighty creator whose actions, will and nature are unified: he only does what is of him to do, what represents who he is". This is the import of my reference to Romans 1:20. If we say that God didn’t create as he has revealed, as is his nature, representing who he is, but we set that aside and say that he did, or could in principle, create in another way, then we are talking about another identity, not the God of the Bible, the creator of all that is. As Kurt Wise said in a conference address in about 2000, if we say that God created in a way other than he reveals to us, then we are talking about another god! This amounts to backing into blasphemy: not saying that something of the Holy Spirit is not of the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit could be other than he is!

The second answer is that to suppose alternative creative possibilities is idle speculation and doesn’t get us anywhere. One could also speculate that God could not have created at all; then where would we be? Not that creating was necessary, but that it was what God chose to do as an act in line with his will; entirely and thoroughly in line with his will, which is in line with his nature. The point is that the only information we have about his creating is what is in the Bible, to want to set this aside and claim that could be alternatives is completely pointless, unless, of course, one wants to open the way to set aside the revelation and claim that it is about something other than what it depicts. That then is a different story and relies on what is not said, not on what is said. This still gets us nowhere, because everything that is not said is available for reference: then why have words at all, if their meaning can be negated so easily?

The god who could have created differently is, I suggest, another god: he is not the one whose invisible attributes are revealed in his creation, but one who is otherwise: uninvolved, dis-related, not in relationship, or one who is by his nature love. So could God have created in a way different to that which he did? All I can say, is, 'not this God' you have to think up another god whose invisible attributes are different to the one who reveals himself in the Bible and in creation.

Stick up for Atheists!

2010-12-10T21:53:00.004+11:00

I overheard a coversation at a primary school concert this week: a chap was telling his friend that his daughter (in year 1) had told the teacher "those of us who are atheists don't feel happy singing this song". The song was a Christmas carol, of course.

The friend, who was a church goer, supported the child's independence, and may have made an opening to the fellow on the larger questions (no conversation had under God's hand is a lost conversation, IMO); but what could have been said as an alternative?

A reply might have gone along these lines:

That's a great comment: it takes Christmas to the next stage: you know that Christmas is the Christian work-over of a pagan cult; well that girl was giving the Christian festival another religous work-over; but her religion is 'I don't believe in God'. I don't know that there's a lot of romance in that religion though.

Yeah, its not right that children are made to suppress religious questions: I hope she lets others question her religion!

I wonder if she has explored the logical conclusion of a thorough-going materialist ontology: that there are no qualitative differences between any particular configurations of matter.

Hey, really? Ironically, I reckon that [modern Western] atheism is a heresy of Christianity! It presupposes a rational world where human ideas have value! Which is inconsistent with atheism!

How come?

Atheists act as though will has value and ideas have significance but their belief does not provide a basis for either. But both are consistent with Christian theism. It has it that personhood is fundamental to what is real, and mind is prior to matter! Atheism must reduce to materialism and that provides no way of saying any arrangement of matter is any better than any other.

How can you say that? I mean – any belief expressed by an arrangement of material can have no value over any other: they are all equally arbitrary results of arrangements of material which aren’t themselves differentiable as to value and so provide no basis for comparative valuation. In other words, arrangements of material are just that, and being simply material there is nothing in them to say one is better than the other and so there is nothing in them to say the results of any one are better than any other. So, if your atheism is the result of an arrangement of material, which on your grounds it must be, and if my theism is the result of an arrangement of material, then there’s nothing to tell them apart! Both are equally unimportant.

That’s certainly a view, but how can it have any real-world validity, any substance, when it is the result of a mere arrangement of matter and when there is no basis in matter for preferring any one arrangement and its results over any other?

How can matter rise above itself and allow the creation of value judgements, or even basic value attributes when matter is the final reference point? You start with material arrangements and end with other material arrangements. Nothing is there that allows gradations of value to be established, or value criteria to be derived in any way that has real meaning; that is, meaning attached to what is basically real: value is completely arbitrary, as are arrangements of matter and therefore is without substance. What you are left with is force, which is what atheists use on everyone as soon as they come into power.

Genesis and Poetry

2010-12-10T18:50:00.001+11:00

My comments on an article on Genesis and Poetry:

The narrative structure of Gen 1, while it contains a sort of rough parallelism, is more like a deliminted list, as we'd call it today. It has a list structure similar to the ordered lists used in computer databases, with regular structure of incremented counts, start and end markers and a content section.

Blocher calls it a list, and it is in general structural conformity with the many other narrative lists scattered throught the pentateuch and historical books of the OT (this would be worth a solid academic study by a Hebrew scholar). The point of a narrative list is that it makes communication both memorable and unambiguously efficient; its over-arching dual structures of the two groups of three days, and the rough chiasmatic structure also go toward improving its memorability.

Prior to the use of punctuation and typograpical hints to the interpretation of texts, I hazard the guess that the sophisticated structures of grouping and patterning of texts, such as chiasmis performed the role of demarking text units to draw understanding of what was being communicated.

Translating leadership

2010-12-08T21:12:00.002+11:00

In the light of my recent posts on the misapplication of the notion of 'leadership' to church life, I recently came across some statements of a church's objectives which I thought I'd attempt to re-word in the light of those posts.

Original: to review the leadership structures and processes of church and evaluate our goals in the light of this.

My suggestion: to review the ministry structures and processes of church....

Original: To develop service/leadership teams for reach congregation.

My suggestion: to develop service teams for each congregation.

Original: For our children's ministry leaders; to establish regular meetings and care for our leaders.

My suggestion: For our children's ministry workers; to establish regular meetings and pastoral support.

Original: To further develop a culture of equipping leaders.

My suggestion: To further develop a culture of equipping and encouraging people to take part in ministry.

Original: To establish a leadership team to coordinate men's ministry.

My suggestion: To establish a committee to coordinate men's ministry.

The constant use of the word 'leadership' is not only cloying, not only uninteresting use of English, but it masks the range of ministries that people engage in within a church, it hides variety, interest and complexity behind one somewhat mechanical term which has become meaningless through (inaccurate) overuse.

Refutations

2010-12-05T18:48:00.001+11:00

Rick Vis in his talk “The Fact of Biblical Creation" quotes Henry Morris in his commentary on Genesis:

This opening verse of the Bible refutes atheism, because the universe was created by God; it refutes pantheism for God is transcendent to that which he created, it refutes materialism for matter had a beginning, it refutes dualism because God was alone [notwithstanding that God is in three persons], it refutes humanism, because God, not man is the ultimate reality, it refutes evolution because God created all things.

What Good's Creation?

2010-11-30T17:23:00.000+11:00

From a talk by Rick Vis at Grace Reformed Baptist Church (at about 38m into the talk) "The Fact of Biblical Creation":

The implication of welcoming the truth of our text, Genesis 1:1 is simply this: it opens the door to hope and salvation for sinners.

Once admit that the world come into being because of the supernatural creation of almighty God, then there is no miracle in the Bible that should be a stumbling block to any man; believe that God created all things out of nothing and what miracle that follows should be so hard to believe; once believe, once recognize, once acknowledge that God created the heavens and earth and all that exists out of nothing, then it's not a leap at all to believe that the same God, God the son, the second person of the trinity, should join himself to a human nature, not ceasing to be God but nevertheless becoming fully man to save sinners, idolaters who have been saying ever since Genesis 3 “in the beginning man”, and to bring them to a place where they begin to agree with Genesis 1:1 and say for the first time in their lives “in the beginning God”.

Quadrant on Christians

2010-11-29T20:20:00.009+11:00

In this month's Quadrant there's a discussion of the public face of Christianity, noting the voice that the 'new atheists' have, but the lack of public involvement by Christian intellectuals in defending, explaining and applying their faith in critique of current culture (and not just mere moralising, for which the Church seems to be pegged).

They mention the Centre of Public Christianity, which is not too bad an endeavour, although I've criticised one of its people for their view of Genesis 1, etc. that fails to distinguish a Christian view from a Naturalist one, but the problem with such explicit missions to the contemporary mind is that it waves its flags and everyone ducks, dismissively.

I'd prefer to see Christian intellectuals in the 'marketplace' so to speak. Writing in the SMH Spectrum weekend magazine, in the Australian and Financial Review; having a strong, cogent and sufficiently well argued case to be listened to, because what they say is worth hearing.

This would be 'counter-ghettoing' after decades, if not a century of ghettoing, largely driven, I lead towards thinking, by the self-boosting ascendency of naturalism under the cover of its flag-ship, Darwinism. Christians in the public sphere have not come to grips with the strength of biblical creation and the weakness of materialism for engaging persons with their inevitable teleological concerns, and, given the popular interest in or commitment to Darwinism, at some level, and origins in general, they end up having nothing to say.

Interestingly in the Church itself the topic is avoided, as if there's an unspoken embarrasment at the doctrine of creation; yet whenever the topic and its related topics come up, they are received with vast interest and often debate (see this discussion). People at church think about and are interested in this topic, but the Church's servants so often skirt it.

What your exegesis says about your exegesis

2010-11-29T15:47:00.002+11:00

Much contemporary evangelical exegesis of Genesis 1 starts with an acceptance of the basic tenets of materialism and preserves that world view from any final conflict with the revelation of God, showing no final challenge from the Word of God to the Word of Man and no opening of the path to the gospel by declaring that our creator and redeemer works through his word and is intimately involved with his creation. The great point of Genesis 1 is that Spirit (love, personhood, mind) is basic, and matter is not, it is produced by mind (God's mind).

In short it provides a view of Genesis 1 that leaves the materialist world view intact. So you've got to wonder at its credibility, and its evangelical effectiveness, because failing to effectively challenge an anti or non-theistic world view must be a marker of failure to adhere to biblical proclamation.

Rather, Genesis 1 can be a launch pad for challenge from both the real world and revelation to the notion that the world is somehow independent of God, marked in the assertive rhetoric which has as its aim, and result, the removal of God from the real world of our personal encounters. Indeed, it so amends the intent of Genesis 1 that it comes into conformity with the materialist impoverishment that stands diametrically opposed to it!

This exegesis removes any challenge to the materialist conceptualization of the world in an anti-prophetic move that denies the Spirit of God. Most materialists upon hearing such exegesis relegate it to fantasy, because they *know* that the cosmos exists on its own account and mind is a mere arrangement of matter. That most usage of Genesis 1 fails to dislodge this is the extent to which it submerges the gospel. It agrees that we live in a purely material world, and statements to the contrary are a mere gloss with strictly aesthetic appeal, and not post-Fall confrontations to its lunacy. They therefore offer nothing to a world lost in empty and self-obsessed consumerism, where things, image, impression, and sheer braggadocio displace inner growth and loving connection with the creator of all things, who is love.

Sustainability

2010-11-28T21:20:00.000+11:00

It's amazing how adherence to the biblical doctrine of creation can lead to evangelism in the most unlikely of settings.

I was at a business function hosted by a university school of business (at The Establishment, for what its worth) and was chatting to a couple of people when the conversation swung to sustainability. I played a somewhat sceptical line to see where it would lead (I discussed economic drivers of production and consumption and wondered where the idea of sustainability fitted in).

One of the people there claimed that sustainability was a Value, not only because it would preserve the habitat we all relied upon, but even if there were no people it would be a Good. I asked how it would be a Good if there were no people to value the result: she said it would be Good for the earth; but, I said, the earth is not conscious, so how would the good be apprehended?

She had no answer and was at materialism's dead end. So I discussed that Good only had context in people, and had to be about conscious interactions; but if these interactions were the mere outcomes of material, the notion of Good having any real weight evaporated.

Of course, the conversation meandered, but it got to the point where I could point to the dichotomy: materialism took us to dust, which had no differentiable value, but the notion of value itself relied upon there being a means of differentiating values and this came from mind. If mind was basic, then there were real values; and thus was congruent with a real creator, mind who had will: matter therefore being an outcome of mind.

It wasn't the gospel by any means, it was too short a conversation, but it took her to an edge of her inarticulate materialism. I pray the next conversation with a Christian who obeys the word of God in its revelation of creation will move her thoughts closer to our redeemer.

The Faith of an Evolutionist

2010-11-27T23:39:00.000+11:00

John Whitcombe suggested that the following would be a statement of faith for one who 'believes' in evolution:

By faith I understand that the worlds were not framed by the word of any god, so that what is seen has indeed been made out of previously existing and less complex visible things by purely natural processes over billions of years.

The faith of the Christian, in distinction, is given in Hebrews 11:3: "by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things that are seen are not made of things that are visible; in line with Genesis 1:1: the personal, transcendent, triune God created all things that exist and he did it out of nothing.

So the materialist thinks that complex things came from less complex (gratuitously?), that personality comes from material, that life comes from non-life, randomly and for no special reason. On the other hand, the biblical Christian would hold the opposite: that matter came from (God's) mind, that personality comes from personality, and our being as people: loving, communicating and hoping, connects with the basics of reality, in opposition to the materialist, for whom the only connection we have with the basics of reality, is that we can reduce to material: dust!

Yet there are Christians who either think that our origins: the Bible's information about our origin, is of marginal, and perhaps only symbolic importance, or that the true information is given on the basis of materialism and that God must be an epiphenomenon of matter, because evolution relies on material: it is a philosophy that finally mind comes from matter, and the personal is of no more real significance than dust blowing in the wind!

Some Christians think that 'evolution' explains what God proclaims; yet the disjunct between the two is that our origin is connected to God, to 'word' to person and to will at every point; and does not start with material, but thought. The material is, however, important in the economy of God, because we are made in material, and the life in the high entropic improbabilities that we are is connected with God to the extent that rejection of God is linked with the absence of life: death!

Mohler on Adam

2010-11-27T06:57:00.002+11:00

A quote from Albert Mohler:

If you adhere to an old earth position you have a very difficult time explaining how the effects of the Fall--death, disease and suffering--showed up long before Adam and Eve.

[from the current Creation magazine]

The article also cites a couple of papers on the topic:

Plants and death, and

Romans 8

I've posted with reference to Mohler previously, on the Framework Hypothesis, and the age of the earth.

Dead like dust

2010-11-26T21:37:00.000+11:00

Further to my posts on death, reading the Bible I came to Genesis 3:19. This would seem to cap off any thought that the death Adam brought was only 'spiritual'. There is clearly a conjunct between the physicalness of the creation as our physical setting, and that death intrudes physically: dust is clearly of physical, and death is clearly to have physical effects. QED.

2 Worlds to Live In

2010-11-24T21:58:00.001+11:00

Comparing conceptions of the world between materialism and Christianity causes me to ponder why anyone would want to adopt or even align with materialism.

Materialism has it that matter produces mind.

Christianity, that mind produced matter.

Materialism asserts that the end of all questions is dust: that’s effectively what everything comes from.

Christianity tells us that the end of all questions is a person with whom one may have a beneficial relationship, a relationship of love.

Materialism is that reality is finally material. Persons’ relationships, decisions and will have no significance.

Christianity is that reality is finally love: persons’ relationships, decisions and will have significance.

Some Christians think that materialist speculations tell us how the universe came about, and then graft God onto this scheme without any influence on the scheme (so the grafting has no effect or substantive point).

The Bible sets it the other way around: The creation account provides the scheme by which we can understand the material world as the product of love, for beneficial relationships. It goes on to explain why this seems to not properly obtain in our experience as we, in the first man and woman, rejected relationship with God for isolation from his love.

What do these two ways of conceiving the world produce?

Two different chains of descent, or "provenances" for we people: for the materialist we go back to pond scum, and by reference have no where to look for the basis of person hood and its significance; for the Christian, we go back to Adam, a person, who is directly from the will and action of God: its persons back to the start, and our personhood is not an 'emergent property' of material, but has genuine significance.

What do we do with words?

2010-11-20T13:29:00.002+11:00

There’s a common hermeneutical epistemology employed in respect of Genesis 1 that represents, I think, a retreat from the possibility of gaining understanding, rather than an advance into understanding. Applied to texts wholesale, the approach often adopted to Genesis 1, etc. would render problematic any attempt to provide safety instructions on cleaning fluids!

One of the features of the relationship between us and God is that it rests on propositions: the ‘word’ is of central importance in Christian theology, practice and devotion. Indeed, it was in the beginning and through it all that exists came about (John 1:1-3 and Genesis 1, Hebrews 1:2, 11:3 Ps 33:9?).

But when it comes to G 1, we have commentators telling us that God is not capable of communicating propositions that have any connection with the real world to which they appear to represent a connection, but by such propositions communicates something other than the content of the words used.

This does two very dramatic things: firstly, it puts out approach to the Bible on par with a world-concept in which there is no communicating God. It gives Christian theology the same footing as paganism, where lack of knowledge leads to myth, where explanation is rendered irrelevant and inaccessible by the ‘mists of time’, questioning is deflected by vagueness, and enquiry denied by imprecision. In G 1 we have to the contrary of myth the elucidation of information to demonstrate, not just assert, God’s creative activity. If the information is false, the demonstration fails and we don’t know that (let alone what) God created!

Asserting the validity for exegesis of applying whatever explanation we like for words in the Bible (that is, explanations that overturn the sense of the words on their face reading, given the narrative genre we are dealing with here), puts us in the same position as the pagan who denies that there are any such words, or an author of God’s capability and love (and therefore truthfulness) to produce them.

Secondly, and by implication, it denies that the content of G 1 is able to convey precision, despite it being replete with precision on its face: as to timing, events, and their distribution over the period stated. If anything, the content is nothing but precise. To overturn it, you must deny that God can communicate content that is congruent with actual events in our earth “frame of reference”. And if he can’t, you must establish the basis upon which we can use the communication of these events (which become not-events) to establish a principle that only exists on the basis of the report of these events having correspondence with their occurrence in time and space, and therefore having a date and a location!

The step-wise denial, which if not articulated by commentators, is implicit, means that the hope that we can make anything of G 1 collapses under the weight of a level of incoherence that makes texts pointless as means of communicating. Welcome to the Framework Hypothesis!

(Briefly here: a previous post on God's word qua word.)

Hostile Intruder

2010-11-19T17:11:00.002+11:00

From a sermon by Robert Jones, St James Turramurra, 11-11-2007 (a Remembrance Day sermon, starting with mention of the Battle of the Somme)

The Bible passages used were:

Isaiah 11:1-10

1 Cor 15: 12-58

Robert towards the end of the sermon, made these remarks:

Jesus’ resurrection signals the total defeat of death…death itself will be destroyed as the hostile intruder it is in God's creation.

Picking up on the theme starting at Death at the Carrington.

Whose God?

2010-11-17T19:13:00.003+11:00

From Kurt Wise’s talk in 2000 at Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Creationist Biology

[at about 8 mins, if you want to find it in the talk]

God in creating created a creation that reflects his very nature, he was constrained to create a creation that reflects his very nature,…if God had been a different God there would have been a different creation that would have resulted (Roms 1:20). If you believe in a different kind of creation, you believe in a different kind of God. When you play around with the issues of origins, because there is such a direct relationship, accord to the claim of God, God himself created the creation. so If that’s the case, if you postulate a different mode of origin of the universe it necessitates a different view of God from that provided in the scriptures.

Wise on death and the creation

2010-11-17T19:10:00.003+11:00

From Kurt Wise’s talk in 2000 at Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Creationist Biology

[at about 47 mins, if you want to find it in the talk]

We under estimate the importance of sin before God, so much so that the sin of man caused a crack in the perfection of the entire universe. There is no such thing as a little sin. Sin is extraordinarily important in God’s economy and we so undervalue the significance of sin; but when you start to see the effects it has had on the biological creation I think you re struck by the incredible force of sin in God’s economy and how much against his nature that it is.

For example, the curse introduced imperfection into the creation, [and] automatically God introduces death: which it turns out has a dual function: punishment for sin, but also an indication of his mercy. Can you imagine being fallen forever, separated from God? And that goes for the creature itself, because in Romans chapter 8 it says ‘the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God’: the entire universe is waiting for our glory because it is going to be relieved from the curse, the bondage of corruption will be lifted.

Kelly on Death

2010-11-16T16:13:00.002+11:00

Another follow-up to the Death at the Carrington post:

From Creation and Change by Douglas Kelly, Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte.

Even more theologically significant is the clear Biblical teaching running throughout the Old and New Testaments (as in Genesis chapter three and Romans chapter five) that death and disintegration of the entire cosmos came through Adam's sin, for Adam was the covenant head and representative of the whole creation, not Lucifer. Althought Lucifer fell before Adam, his fall did not bring death into the rest of the created order, because Adam, not Lucifer, was the representative figure (or 'covenant head') of the whole creation, thus taking it down with him into judgement. (97)