Beyond the Pahl 5

Pahl:

Finally, if I’m right about these first four points, then whatever my personal perspectives are on exactly when or precisely how God created all things is a moot point. I'm not a scientist, so my thoughts on these matters carry no weight. And, with respect to my salvation, my orthodoxy, and my biblical fidelity, any thoughts I have on these matters are irrelevant.

Thoughts:

No if you are right about the first four points, then that God created at all, or if there is a personal God in relation with us is the moot point, if the details are rejected, then the world picture the details paint must also be rejected.

But, he's not a scientist, so his thoughts carry no weight? He's a theologian, and questions of origins are religious questions. He is eminently qualified to comment, because what we understand about origins is basic to how we grapple with the world and how we build our world picture. Our view of origins is our view of both ourselves and God (or what is independently basic). Resign this religious ground, and you leap towards deferring to an alternative conception of the world and not the one God provides.

Thus finally we come full circle to the ontology that Pahl must entertain: it must be a materialist ontology, where all that doesn't fit in a purely material conception is grafted on 'idealistically', or if I would be blunt: 'paganistically' where access to the real is not direct, but by conjuring because in the  materialist world we are either cut off from it, or 'it' is fictional, but hints of a deeper 'occult' reality to which our only access is illegitimate. Either way, not Christian.

Beyond the Pahl 4

Pahl:

Fourth, these modern questions about exactly when or precisely how all things came about, while potentially having tremendous theological significance, are best left to science. One should consult astronomers, physicists, geologists, paleontologists, biologists, and geneticists for these questions, not biblical scholars and theologians, let alone people who are neither trained theologians nor trained scientists.

Thoughts:

Interesting that something with potentially tremendous theological significance is best left to a pursuit which has no theological interest! But these are not simply modern questions. The church has held for about 1850 years that the world was formed about 6000 years ago. I suppose he must include Ussher in the 17th century as modern, and while in historical terms he is, I suspect that ‘modern’ in this passage means contemporaneously. So the question has been in the minds of theologians since theologians have been writing.

Nor is it that these are questions of potential theological significance; rather, they are questions pregnant with theological, and I might add, philosophical significance that go to the very foundation of Christian faith and the formation of the Christian world picture. The answers to the question will either respond in faith to Genesis 1, as the writer to the Hebrews exemplifies (11:4), and thus think within a theological structure that has God acting, relating and speaking with effect into this world circumscribed by common causality, physicality and where the Word of God delineates actual and not imaginary formations and relationship; or will reject the Hebrews writer’s faith response and defer to a world picture that refers to material as self-made, rejects that the personal is fundamental to reality and whose basic ontology is conjured up out of imaginings (thus the idealism that echoes throughout paganism, and marks its tracks) which connect only faintly with the real world of relationships and events.

Pahl's deference to science is completely misplaced and itself imports a prior concept of the world into biblical analysis. The concept is akin to the hollow and finally self-refuting nostrums of logical-positivism!


It is in pagan religions that questions of the material world are of secondary moment, because they are not engaged with the world that is, but an imaginary world of the mind; the world that is rejected with paganism’s rejection of the God who is. It is Christianity that stands in the world as present, and engages the world that is, that we all share as the setting of our existence, knowing and being. A great example of this is that the flowering of modern science is fixed firmly in the understanding that the Genesis account relates what happened; modern science started in no other thought world!

The question of origins is the question of who we are, what our connections or relationships are with other parts of the world, and sets the field of our thinking. It is the most profoundly important question that there is.

Thus the question doesn't 'potentially [have] tremendous theological significance' and is best left to science! The question of origins is a basic religious question, not a question for science at all. Pahl does his trade an injustice in slipping over this demarcation point and then fails to be able to make any real address to the world which conceptualises itself primarily in materialist terms, and uses these terms to bring all other considerations to heel.

Christianity doesn't adopt materiality as basic, of course, but has it as the result of God's willful love, and a real place where our lives are lived (including our life with God). But it and its processes being contingent, are not basic; in opposition to materialist conceptions.

And so, Pahl ends his excursion into resignation by suggesting we consult physical scientists about origins. Of course, in so doing we get modern, largely materialist speculation, and the 'meaning' that flows from this. We do not get any reflection of a world made by the will of God, but a world whose 'origin' denies that there is a God, or that his will (should there be one) has any bearing on life in this universe at all.

Beyond the Pahl 3

Pahl:

Third, the point of the biblical creation stories in Genesis 1-2 is not to answer modern questions about exactly when or precisely how all things came about. It is to answer, through an ancient genre for an ancient people, some common human questions, questions about who God is as Creator, what the cosmos is as God's creation, who we are as God's creation, how God as Creator relates to his creation, how we are to relate to our Creator and the rest of his creation, and the like. All subsequent biblical theology—as my first point illustrates—continues in this same trajectory.

Thoughts:

Interesting that he sees Genesis as having the same function as I see, but for completely different reasons!
He thinks it has this function despite having no relation to the real world that we live and move in; whereas I think that it can only have this function by virtue of being entirely about things that happened in and connected with the real world. Indeed with their connection to the real world made clear both in language and the references to shared 'real world' markers (my phrase 'common causality' captures this, but I use it to refer to the spatio-temporal continuity between the effect of God's word for, to and in this world, and its results).
It it that these things happened that they provide the platform for the other things. If they didn’t happen, and I repeat, something else instead did; then God is not shown as an actor in the world, but a figment unrelated to the world. If every point of relational connection is denied, which Pahl does, the whole theory of being that we use, or 'basic ontology' has to be derived from elsewhere. And this is the nub of the problem that I don't think is ever really dealt with in putting Genesis 1, etc. out of ‘this world’ and into some other, emblematic world where none of us really live.

Beyond the Pahl 2

Pahl:

Second, beliefs about exactly when and precisely how God created all things are neither central nor essential to an authentic Christian faith or a historically orthodox Christianity. Thus, it is not necessary for the sake of one's faith to hold to any beliefs about these matters with strong conviction; in fact, it may even be unwise to do so.

Thoughts:


Its interesting that people make this assertion just before they deny that Genesis 1, etc means anything in the real world. I always wonder about their information on this count and the rationale behind their claim. And it is always worth remembering that it is a mere claim. One made, I might add, that flies in the face of the biblical data, and is usually unsubstantiated (as per Pahl himself, of course).

But Pahl clouds the issue, just like Satan did in the garden, I might add, by inserting some concepts that aren't in the text, or in the Bible generally, then contradicting these concepts. An obvious 'straw man' manoeuvre.

Of course beliefs about EXACTLY when and PRECISELY how God created all things are neither central nor essential...etc. [And nor did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden']

No one says that they are; but what the Bible is quite clear about is GENERALLY when God created, and, in BASIC terms the method he used.

Well, its a bit more than 'basic' terms when it comes to method, as the method is quite clear. He spoke things into existence; or brought them into being by divine fiat: by willing them so.

What is contended for is that generally the biblical time scale is orders of magnitude smaller than the naturalist time scale. ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE! We are not talking about a small thing here. It's also worth noting that the biblical time scale has always been orders of magnitude less than the naturalist or pagan time scale; humanity seems to have a built in desire to push the genetic connection between God and itself as far away as it can.

While reading Bulfinch's Mythology I came across this, in Palmer Bovie's foward: "If our readers ask when all this took place, we must answer, in the first place, that mythology is not careful of dates...". Thus the placing of the creation in time is very important to its historicity. If it happened in time, it needs to be set in that time; which of course, places the events of creation in our history, and removes them from an idealist or fantasy (pagan) construction that has no real relationship with 'us and now'. This is also an important part of the specificity of the recount of events in the creation passage.

It is also contended that how God created differs radically from the naturalist/materialist formulation. It's not just a little different, different as to precise values; it is vastly different. Pahl might have gained some credibility if he'd recognised these matters rather than attempted to subvert them in yet another language game.

With the 'precise' means of God's creation in question, Pahl seems to think that the Biblical data has no real bearing on anything, and we can make of it what we like. But not so. Materialist/naturalist formulations are a world apart from the Bible's formulation and therefore mean entirely different things. Thus it is important that the creation account conveys real information, because it is about something that really happened. It would be odd (and irrelevant) if it were otherwise.

The basic issues I canvassed briefly in a previous blog, but to go further (and I stoop to using 'bullets'):

• creation is the representation of God as he is: that he acted (in the terms used; there being no other reference in the biblical world-concept) is his credential for god-ness, how he acted is the representation of his nature
• creation underpins the conceptualisation of the world and the world thus represents God's action in creating, and does not obscure it, or if the world doesn't connect with God's statements about creation, then the representation is a vain one, and empties God of any claim on us.
• the naturalist 'method' is alien to God, it is impersonal and loveless; the creation account shows that is not so and, rather, has its source and unfolding in the personal and is embedded in love; it results from the action of one who cares, and cares above all for relationship; not one who sets up a machine, then lets it run.

The contrast could not be more stark; the natural method denies that mind is essential to the creation of complex order, of information, and that love is unnecessary for the creation of community and interdependence.

It overturns the counter-conceptualisation of the world as naturally explicable, and in relation to no mind or will that is over above it; rather all mind and will is contained within it: hardly god-like!

Another quote from Palmer Bovie's forward to Bulfinch: "...just as Darwin was reviving man's physical life history..." One thing the creation account does, and that the Bible hinges on, is that man's physical life history, is one with man's 'any other' life history. Action is bound up with both thought and meaning in the Biblical conception of the world. The creation account tells us that there is one unified world from the will of God; Pahl would separate our world into different and disconnected compartments; multiple worlds at work, with the world's physical history unlinked from the 'religious' history in a move that would do a pagan proud and destroys meaning.

Thus it IS important how and when things were created by God. This information establishes a number of important things about us, the world and who we are before God and in the world; about the world as setting for our relationship with God and for his redemption of us, and about the basic ontology of the world; which Pahl sets aside to make the way for an ontology that contemplates a different world, and entails a 'god' different from the one who reveals himself.

Beyond the Pahl 1

In a post on his blog, Pahl set out his mini-manifesto of creation theology. It forms a suitable representative of the typical 'have it both ways' beliefs of most theistic evolutionists and so, I think, is worth commenting on. I'm setting out to do it over four or so parts.

Here, part 1:

Pahl

When it comes to origins, I have held to the same basic perspectives for quite a while now. I have stated, taught, preached, blogged, or published all of these points in various ways and in diverse venues for at least fifteen years.

First, God created all things—God himself and not merely some impersonal forces or natural laws. God created the heavens and the earth, and made humans in God’s image. Through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the very image of God, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; without him nothing was made that has been made. Thus, there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Thoughts

One becomes instantly suspicious, I think, when a theologian has to declare his orthodoxy in this way; it seems to me that he must do so only because his position on these matters is not clear from his other writings. Indeed, I think we will see over this short series of discussions that most of Pahl's writing on the matter of origins would question every point of the statement he makes in such assertive tones. As if to say, "of course I believe what you believe, I just don't believe that it happened!" So he has to shore up his orthodoxy by denying that words have stable meanings and can be reliably tracked to 'this world' referents, across time and cultures. One thinks, in some matters, that a little too much is made of culture, and not enough made of words. Their range of intent seems to be mystifyingly rubbery and they thus can mean whatever one wants them to mean, except of course, what they actually say!

And thus, I wonder why Pahl believes as he states? He undoes the credibility of his belief at every turn, as later posts will show. To that extent he makes of belief the sort of nonsense that one might hear from a Mormon 'elder' so called, who urges belief because, well, he 'really-really' believes himself; nothing to do with the warranted belief that runs through the Bible.

 In Hebrews we are told that “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible”. “By faith” does not mean, ‘unrealistic  hope against the facts’ but, because we weren’t there, we apprehend this information and accept its reliabiltiy and veracity by virtue of the word of God. The writer speaks to this in the preceding verse. The only information to which the writer could be pointing is the genesian account of creation; and this because it is the only information there is about our origin...anywhere. The locus of faith in the Bible is never counterfactual, but always predicated on actualities: in someone to be truthful to their word, or in things about which we are told, pinned to events that participated in this world's causality and whether events in a mind, or events in space.

Moreover, when the Bible refers to the creation, you can bet that the reference directs us to the Genesis account. The base creation account upon which all other references depending. So God is not the creator in some vague ethereal terms, or author of some general creation that cannot be pinned down, but of a 'creation' with specific biblical reference, and specific meaning in this world. The same terms that make sense in and circumscribe our existance in the space-time frame we inhabit and are constrained by are those terms that give the creation meaning and make a specific connection  to us by the common reference frame applying to both (deny this and the connection gets vague to the point of vanishing).

Later, confusingly, Pahl tells us that the only account we have of the creation doesn't represent things that happened. It just didn’t occur: something else occurred, presumably (which claim has its Monty Pythonesque aspect, I must suggest), but we are not told about it! How we know, I can't fathom (oh...science...we'll get to that in a later post).

So I have to wonder from whence he obtains his belief that God is creator if he denies the terms by which God represents himself as creator. He sets aside the only source of information which could underpin his belief as not in fact having happened in the terms of 'the real' that frames our lives and experiences; the information by virtue of which, in detail, we understand God as creator.

And it is the detail that is important here: the detail demonstrates God as creator by the actions he did with time and space effects. These tell us how the creation is constituted. Presumably, if this was not important, and not just 'important' in some vacuous rhetorical sense, but really important in the world we stub our toes in, it wouldn’t be provided. So if the detail is not about events, but about something else, firstly, how would we know, but then, how could we establish that God is creator? The only information he can give us, it is asserted or implied by Pahl, doesn’t actually relate to creation events, but, evidently, some other thing? What other thing this might be, we are not told. Perhaps, just a verbal flourish to 'out-flourish' the competitor accounts? But, if none of it happened, it is hard to see how it can even hope to sustain this rhetorical function.

And it's not just that 'something else' must have happened, but it's Pahl's language game that fascinates me. He takes it that words have meaning, and that meaning conveys content in the world that we are in. Presumably the content is related to some substance within the world, or the content, and the words that convey the content, would have no meaning that delineates anything within the common causality in which we live; they would be un-grounded in one sense, empty in every other. These words would merely ascend in a futile arc never landing in the world in which they were uttered to make meaning in that world in that world's terms.

Pahl's handling of the creation account in philosphical terms is even more dramatically deracinating of its biblical purpose. In saying that all the details in a house plan are wrong; but the right house will nonetheless somehow, but inexplicably, be communicated, he is speaking nonsense. This is far from a Christian approach to epistemology; knowledge is contained in the words that constitute language and have reference to the Real World that came from the fiat of God (nicely recursively), and not in pagan fashion, where content is maleable to preconception and any specific meaning is only to obscure an asserted and contrary 'truth'.

Thus, I would contend, contrary to the Cedarville College people, that Pahl is far from othodox in that he undoes the basic ontology of the Bible, founded in Genesis 1, and supposes that in the beginning, not 'God', but 'God and something...' Like most harmonisers, he fails to appreciate the grand scope of God's creation, and what it means to be solely and comprehensively from God. Like the ANE creation myths, he by implication presupposes a universe prior to God's creation of the universe! Not Christian at all.