Eyes wide shut!

A friend directed me to an essay by Richard Rorty from 1992: "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids".

Read with a little thought it is scary. Not for its content, but for its indicators of a church that collectively fails to bring to a questioning mind the answers that only come in the Bible: not the John 3:16 answers...we have to get to that. But the philosophical answers that can only be formed from a sound and responsive theology of creation: of a God who made all in a loving immediacy, who is directly involved with a concrete reality and communicates in terms of that reality; who shows in his acts the primacy of personhood in community, of love, and of relationship; all of which evaporates when the church leans over to philosophical and ethical materialism, no longer able to answer anyone.

Some quotes:

I wanted to find some intellectual ... framework that would let me ... hold reality and justice in a single vision.

To say that truth is what works is to reduce the quest for truth to the quest for power. Only an appeal to something eternal, absolute, and good -- like the God of St Thomas, or the 'nature of human beings' described by Aristotle -- would permit one to answer the Nazis...

 ...even if there were no such thing as 'understanding the world' in the Platonic sense -- an understanding from a position outside of (sic) time and history...

Dewey now seemed to me a philosopher who had learned all that Hegel had to teach about how to eschew certainty and eternity, while immunizing himself against pantheism by taking Darwin seriously.

...the whole idea of holding reality and justice in a single vision had been a mistake...I decided that only religion .. only a nonargumentative faith in a surrogate parent who, unlike my real parent, embodied love, power and justice in equal measure -- could do the trick Plato wanted done.

The two will, for some people, coincide -- as they do in those lucky Christians for whom the love of God and of other human beings are inseparable. 

Interesting to note that Dewey was not attracted by the theistic-evolutionist artifice...he saw no need for it's 'god' at all.

Also interesting that love power and justice come together in equal measure in God who created (setting the parameters of our approach to being, ethics and knowledge), loved and redeemed.

In avoiding a real time creation account, and fussing about obscure readings of 'days' instead of taking Moses' lead and building an assertive philosophy on this ground, the church talks to no issue of moment for any thinking person.

Real world effects only result from real world causes; if the creation account is not accurate to the real world of event and order, then it doesn't tell us what really happened and it is something else that really happened. It is this something else, then, and not the creation account, that is the real cause of the effect we experience and can only be the real basis for our approach to being, ethics and knowledge. This fact de-basing what would be built on a real-time creation as Moses has taught us, and been affirmed by the word of God in Exodus 20:1 and 11. So, what would this 'something else' be? As far as we could tell, it is akin to Dewey's position, leaving us in Rorty's dilemma, or equally in Sartre's...where nothing finally hangs together, no integration point, no final relationship, no final love, but everything an outworking of random material interactions: all that we have is...power. Not love, not hope, existentially alone in the universe and adrift.

Genesis: the text.

There's an interesting section in Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, in the chapter on Eternal Life (regarding the fourth gospel), called "Truth in the Old Testament."

It deals with the difference between the Greek idea of truth: basically the correspondence theory, which is, to my mind easily Platonised, and the Hebrew idea: trustworthiness and reliability.

Now, take this dichotomy to Genesis 1, noting its being the source of many points of reference throughout the Bible, and consider the difference between a Greek, (neo)Platonic view of truth; which allows the easy Idealist slide into all sorts of non-truth variations: the framework hypothesis, Genesis 1 as 'impression', rhetorical counter to ANE myths (meaning Enuma Elish, invariably). Could a Hebrew think in that fashion?

I think not. Truth as trustworthy conduct, or words: seems to sit with Genesis 1 being an event narrative, immune to the pressure of Western thought that would undermine it; words God has spoken to Moses, and God saying as much (see below).

This makes arguments about 'genre' trivial in their missing of the point so egregiously. Particularly the point reinforced in those reliable people: Jehovah and Moses! The question of taking the Bible 'seriously' without taking it as proceeding from the mouth of God in the detail that we are given undoes the seriousness instantly.

Particularly as one considers God speaking directly to Moses in Exodus 20, attempting, for the cool crowd, to put aside the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and its kin, and consider the text in terms of the Hebraic understanding of truth as relational, not as something apart from the God who authors it, apart from people (creator and creature) in loving (and therefore trusted) relationship (which is one of the major implications of the text, in grand recursive fashion). From Exodus 20:1 

Then God spake all these words, saying...for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

Ending with Exodus 20:11.

And that's it for Bird.

Bird's hermeneutical frame

Having looked briefly at the results of Bird's thinking about the Doctrine of Creation and its source in scripture, let's touch on his hermeneutical policy.

Its a great confusion.

Not only does it introduce the arbitrary into the practice (so which bits of Genesis 1 are to be taken seriously? the days? Clearly not; God speaking? Maybe; God doing? Don't know; God?), but it assassinates the perspicuity of scripture; one needs to be a specialist to read and understand it. You need the Bible, but you need other books.

Should we take that seriously? I know the JWs do: they must have their 'other books' to gain their bizarre understanding of scripture. Mormons similarly.

And so theistic evolutionists, or interpretive readers, or framework hypothesists, or scriptural impressionists, like Bird, must also do.

And what guides the metaframe of though that compels this take on Genesis? Nothing in the Bible, but only what comes from outside the Bible: at root materialist ideas that have everything in the Bible as a mere epiphenomenon of matter; and not, 'so to speak' the other way around. And there goes their ability to confront a lost world with a comprehensive gospel of God's comprehensive totalising love at work in his son, our Lord.

Seriously?

My (almost) last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).

What is it to take this passage seriously?

For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.

If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.

A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.

So, what is the creation account, theologically?

The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.

These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.

The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.

To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from  our Creator.

Seriously?

My last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).

What is it to take this passage seriously?

For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.

If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.

A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.

So, what is the creation account, theologically?

The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.

These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.

The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.

To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from  our Creator.

Genre, seriously now.

Bird, like most who want to engineer a heterodox view of Genesis 1 so as not to offend the rampant materialism of our time (I mean philosophical materialism: the view, world view, to borrow Bird's label, that dust is all there is), tell us that on the basis of 'genre analysis' we don't need to take the text as conveying objective information; back to impressionism.

Genre...that is the 'type' of text: is it poetry, description, narrative, and so on. Its a great escape hatch.

However, we can through some biblical light on the question. We have a poetic response to creation. It is in Psalms 8 and 19 as great examples. We also have a list of events in Numbers 7.

A quick comparison tells one which Genesis 1 is more like: the list, of course.

Bringing a modern conception of information to Genesis 1, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a structured computer file of 6 records. Each record has a record opening field, an event description field, a count field and an end of record marker.

Nothing like poetry, nothing like an impressionistic account, nothing mystical. The closed thing we have to it today is a concrete list of events.

Moreover, the grammatical signals are of historical narrative, with consecutive constructions used throughout.

Additionally, the author's driving insistence on the passage of time is remarkable. In Numbers 7 (which also, like Genesis 1 states the first day differently to the subsequent days) the announcement of the day is quite simple. In Genesis 1, it is quite elaborate, as if to make quite sure that the reader understands what 'day' means, precisely. It is counted, it is described: a 'evening and morning' type day. Not a day of indeterminate time, or a day that is detached from our everyday experience of day.

World view

So, Genesis 1 is mainly about world view!

How would we know when we are assured that the account is, at best, impressionistic? It is only about world view (and I think that notion is itself contestable: the idea of world view operates within a non-absolutist ontology that the Bible does not partake in), if it gives a world view. Now, setting aside for the moment that there is such a thing as a world view, as one in a range of options, let's think: how does the Bible give us a world view that is not as fictional as the world views of those whose world view sets the Biblical data at nought and erects a world view on that basis? Their world view is clearly wrong, but, still...its a 'world view'.

We go in circles, of course. The Bible does not present a 'world view'. It tells us how the world actually, really, and concretely is. There is no alternative that aligns with what it is. It is our god-given  duty to have our thinking conform to the Bible, not to use it to generate yet another 'world view' option!

Of course, if the Bible does not tell us how the world actually, really, concretely is; then it is hardly able to provide even a 'world view'. We only have the impressionistic picture that I've already mentioned. This does not 'refute' Darwinism (which truly is a 'world view') because it is categorically different. Darwin claims to tell us what the world is truly. But it is wrong (for lots of reasons, including human experience). This is what refutes Darwinism, and every other 'world view' that denies that we are here by the loving agency of God who brings forth from nothing by his will.

The creation account relies upon and teaches this: its detailed list of events underlines two very important things by demonstration (not mere picture painting): The personal (God) in loving relationship, is fundamental to all being, in the most profound way, and that this personal God is concretely involved in events and substance of creation: he is directly and intimately connected to its outcomes, and not remote from then due to an intervening or mediating principle that is, itself, not God (that is, not Christ, the only mediator, but some other medaitorial, impersonal principle as is proposed in darwinian evolution).

Let me tell how it is...

A lot of what I've written to discuss Pahl's views would be applicable to Bird's; but why avoid writing when writing is such fun?

Here goes:

There's an old joke, at the expense of economists that has members of three professions on a desert island with only a can of beans for food. The first two puzzle over what to do...it comes to the economist who starts by saying "let's assume we have a can opener..."

Thinking that the Genesis creation account tells us something about God and creation without actually telling us anything that really happened is similarly empty. How can telling us something that didn't happen teach us anything about what did happen? How can a 'story' of what didn't happen respond to contemporaneous (and that I'd question) ANE tales which were also of what didn't happen (even tho' this confuses theogony and cosmogony)?

The idea is nonsensical. Its a Goon Show approach ( I recal one show where Neddy Seagood thought that a picture of a gun was an adequate weapon). Just like a mountain climber setting off with a picture of a rope: no actual rope, and the picture itself not even telling what a rope could do or how it could be used....that's the divide between concrete events and an account that does not encompas concrete events being asserted to lead us to conclusions about that which it fails to reveal.

More Hegel than Hegel...and nothing like the God who is concretely involved with his creation, where it is the details that make the general, and not the other merrily Platonic way around.

Showing the bird!

According to Michael Bird, its not in how it reads, but in how you read it (this is called reader response theory, cooked up by one Stanley Fish):

In recent full page peaen to neo-orthodoxy (well, nothing to do with orthodoxy to my mind, so meta-orthodoxy might be a better term) in Eternity we get this:

I'll write about it later, but for the moment, let's think about Exodus 20:11, then Deuteronomy 5:32, and finally, reflect on Genesis 3:1, the serpent's words particularly.

For Bird, taking the word of God seriously means taking it not quite seriously enough and cutting it to fit the cloth of contemporary materialist ideas. Not on, as Deuteronomy 5:32 tells us, reflecting on the coupling of creation and statute in God's words in Exodus 20:11 and more emphatically in Ex 31:12-17

Now, some bright spark will tell us that God was really a Hegelian idealist when he was speaking, and was not referring to concrete acts in the actual real world, but a story about something else of which he did not reveal (as though the concrete events of creation were not in fact important to understanding God and us).

Bird courts a significant epistemological problem which he hides under the obfuscation of 'competing narrative'. Of course one cannot 'compete' against a non-truth by a factually decoupled narrative that merely paints an alternative but unsubstantiated picture; one must compete by the truth.

That's why in the army we don't use pictures of bullets, but actual real bullets.