Two Books

When it comes to discussions of science and Christian faith (or as it more usually is, materialist origins doctrines and Christian faith...), Bacon's dictum often comes up. Indeed, I heard it used as the basis for somewhat heterodox views of the Bible espoused by Henry Schaeffer in a presentation in Mosman many years ago.

Bacon's dictum is thus:

For our Saviour saith, "You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God," laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error; first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing his power; wererof the latter [the creatures] is a key unto the former [the Scriptures]: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures, by the general notions of reason and rules of speech; but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon his works."

(from The Advancement of Learning, p. 46 of the 1906 Oxford edition)


But I think Bacon gets it wrong. While the creation points to God, it is the Scriptures that provide our epistemological framework when it comes to understanding God and his acts. The propositional revelation sets the stage for our approach to the world, not the other way; as once observations of the world are turned into propositions, they constitute a 'second order' to revelation, being encapsulated in human ideas.

Better Granville Penn's 1820s view as stated in Terry Mortensen's book The Great Turning Point:

Genesis and geology ought to be connected because it was philosophically permissible, even necessary, to attempt to identify the God of Scripture with the God of nature, i.e., to show that they are one and the same God as Scripture itself teaches. And since God had communicated certain historical facts about the original creation of the earth and the Flood, it would certainly not be prudent to disconnect them from the geological study of the surface of the earth. Rather, to trace the connection of Genesis to geology would be "of the first importance in man's relation to God under Divine Revelation," as it would contribute to our confidence that Scripture is of divine origin, as we are sure that nature is...

The real problem, said Penn, was to show that the God of Scripture is the God of nature. Penn objected to the assertion of Conybeare and other geologists that the study of Scripture and of geology should be dissociated because (as the old earth geologists asserted) the professed object of revelation was to treat only the history of man. Penn argued that Exodus 20:11 shows that God intended to impart to man special and particular historical knowledge about the origin of the celestial bodies and the plants and animals of land and sea, before he imparted a history of man's own origin. "the history of the origin and relations of all and each of these, is therefore as much a professed objecct of revelation, as the history of the origin and relations of man himself"

Scripture is the one that teaches, and where it is history, it tells what happened, including when it touches on the formation of the material world in which our lives and God's actions meet. So, of course, questions of creation are important, and God provides the starting point. It is a pagan-derived abberation that shelves the material world in favour of the world of the idea, at the expense of the concrete world that God's revelation demonstrates.

Which God?

I recently listened to Kurt Wise's talk at the Grace Reformed Baptist Church creation conference (in 2000) where he said something with the import of:

If you deny the biblical data on God's creation, then you end up worshipping a different God to the one revealed in the Bible.

Ironically, I've had conversations with, usually younger people (and those usually university students, who may be suffering from the 'undergraduate delusion', i.e. they know everthing), where, on the topic of creation, they accuse such as I, who hold to the direct veracity of the biblical account, of 'worshipping a different god'.

This accusation is hurled because I counter the idealist biblical theology they espouse; without them understanding that they are espousing anything in particular, of course, just uncritically recycling the pap they've often been fed.

It amused me that Wise turns the tables, and points out that as they attribute to God things in creation that are not of his word (that is, they add to the doctrine of creation from outside the Bible, such as in the incoherent cliam that 'God used evolution'), they must be worshipping a different God to the one in the Bible.

Feeling powerful?

One of the themes I discuss on this blog is the misuse of the concept of 'leadership' in the Christian Church.

If we anoint people as 'leaders' mimicing the style of business and government organisations and adulatory journalists, we run the risk, I think, that Bob Sutton that leadership provides power, and the powerful de-humanise.

An unsurprising phenomenon identified by Lord Acton, ironically writing to a bishop!

So, no more 'leaders', but bring back 'servants', ministers, teachers, helpers, and the like.

Old Earth?

I got this comment (posted but as I've turned off comments, except from me! I re-post it; links are by me)

Well, of course the earth is old (therefore, I must be an ‘old-ager’) its about 6,000 years old. That’s old in my book!

The trouble is, we’ve been seduced by repetition that serious ages extend for billions of years, which have the effect, in my view, of distancing the creator from his creation.

Do these hyper-extended ages (HEAs) spring unmediated by human conceptualisation from the earth? Of course not. From historical reasoning? Again, no!

So their source is….

A deist pre-conception that the world must be of HEA because ‘god’ is a remote impersonal deity, care of Hutton ([and Lyell - ed.]), and the history in the Bible can be set aside tendentiously as untruthful, thus the surface form of the world must be the result of current processes operating over HEAs.

But that’s all supposition and full of assumptions about initial conditions, the rates of forces operating (e.g. a little bit of water over a long time, or a lot of water over a little time?), and who God is: more Greek than Christian in the deist conceptualisation; but anyway, an uninvolved God who is not the loving creator. So, wrong from the get go.

It is a concern that Christians who accept HEAs seem to be critically detached from the scriptures and uncritically attached to the progeny of deist ideas.

But there is also an implication that the Bible is not really concerned with such things as the age of the earth, which appears to be considered merely a technical scientific detail, or the nature of the creation, which also appears to have been passed to ‘science’ for adjudication.

However this is an approach that must deny scriptural content to proceed. It must also ignore the underlying ‘religious’ basis of the axioms of contemporary discourse in this area, and naively think that there is a neutral position when it comes to questions of creation.

The very point, I would suggest, of the creation account and its historical definition (given, for example, the chronogenealogies, which even if they could be extended by some period, go nowhere to meeting the time purportedly required for evolution of the cosmos) is to demonstrate:

(1) the means of creation: by fiat, of course, showing us the basic structure of the cosmos, as not admitting of alternative explanations that avoid the connection of man and God (unless the revelatory content is ignored, of course, which is the usual approach of even Christian commentators);

(2) that the creation occurred in terms that are congruent with the terms by which we understand and experience the world and our lives in it [thus showing that it refers to this world, and this world is the setting of God's dealing with man -- me], and

(3) the line of connection between God and man.

Demonstration being superior to assertion, and giving knowledge, whereas myth gives none.

Thus the Bible is very interested in the physical parameters of the creation, because its physicality is part of its ‘nature’. The denials that attend (I’d say ‘must needs’ attend) views that avoid the direct implications of the text refer more to a paganistic idealism of mind rather than the concrete realist philosophical frame of the Bible. Theologically, this extends to the incarnation and thence the new creation as realist events, not idealised mythic stories.

Inserting vast periods of time into salvation history immediately claims that God cannot show the connection between his fiat acts and humanity, and that mythic mystery, the ‘unknown’ stands between our creator and us; not connection, epistemic certainty, relationship and community.

Setting aside the creation as defined in the Bible invites humanity to define itself as it likes, ultimately leading to worship of the creation, not the creator. And this is exactly what we see!

My further notes:

If the demonstration of God’s founding of and the relationships with his creation is not factual, then no abductive extension can be made from it: no valid conclusions are available if the information we have doesn’t correspond with what happened.

Ironically, many commentators seek to draw conclusions about God’s creation as if the ‘demonstration’ were factual while denying that the events related in the Bible actually occurred. That is, that it provides information about actual events and relationships. Thus they assert conclusions that by their own claim have no real basis. So I wonder how they came to the conclusions that they assert in the absence of the only evidence that could promote the conclusion!

And I've just seen an article that attests to the discussion above: that students who believe in HEAs are more easily convinced of evolution's validity than those not. Of course, if you believe one fiction, you're more likely to believe the next! This was reported in Physorg.com 10 March 2010, and Evolution 64(3): 858-864 March 2010.


And more on point 2 above: that the creation revelation sets the place of God's encounter with his creation: it makes meaningful within the parameters which circumscribe our life God's contact with us in its totality; God is thus seeking us in the lives we are in: it makes the proclamation of the gospel be something that addresses our life-world, the circumstances we find ourselves in; our 'thrownness' to borrow a concept of Heidegger. It is not another world; the incarnation, being a type of reprise of the creation movement of God to Adam (ending in the post fall quest in Genesis 3:9), responds to, and rescues us as we are in this world, this world created fallen and to be redeemed.

Demonstrated

What does Genesis 1, and the other early genesian data do? As per my previous post, it tells us what happened, it is there to give us knowledge, but what is the function of this knowledge?

I think one major function of the knowledge arising from the information in Genesis 1 (and in 5, too) is that it doesn't just assert God's creation, it doesn't merely represent a claim that is devoid of references to the very subject of the claim, but it provides God's demonstration of what he did, and by which stands his revelation (claim) to be creator, and that we are connected to his creative act resulting in Adam and Eve.

It is by the demonstration of the effects of his creative actions that we can understand the meaning of his being creator. Without the detail, as I've touched on previously, we'd be left with the emptiness of myth. God's revelation as to his being creator has content that demonstrates what it is that his being creator entails (and thus excludes other expanatory programs for the creation as we experience it: whether the pagan myths of ancient days, or the materialist mythology of today). The creative content is not isolated from this world, the world that we experience, and exist only in some other world where we have no connection, but it is in the terms of our apprehension of the bounds of this world.

God just doesn't tell us things of such importance, he shows us. Like a good author who will not just tell us the characteristics of a character, but will show us them in the narrative, God is not content to abuse our likeness to him with an indeterminate reference to his activity as creator, he gives us a precise, detailed and (as it happens) rebuttable reference; noting that rebuttal challenges God's truthfullness, capability to communicate within our noetic frame of reference, and ultimately his being creator.

The knowledge we get from these parts of Genesis tells us real things about the real world we are in: shows us real links between us and God, and a real sequence of creation that encompases the setting of our place of encounter with God in the terms in which we know that setting: it provides epistemologic consistency and contiguity.

One of the outcomes of this is that alternative explanations are excluded; or rather, to be maintained they must exclude God's revelation. So, if one wants to say that God mixed it with materialisms great fantasy, Darwinian evolution, one has to set aside, or argue for the direct meaninglessness of God's word, or some other meaning that requires the text being given a particular extra-textual gloss.

And that is indeed what we have. But at least we can't pretend with an sustained credibility that we are representing the word of God, we have to explain why we are not. At least that signals to the hearer that we are embarking upon nonsense.

Its not right, its not even wrong!

If 'God being creator' is all that we need to know, about him and the cosmos, that would be established, arguably, and 'just' by John 1:1-3; but we've got far more information than this, with richness of detail as to events and the crystal clear framework of their happening (the days: the only objective framework in the text that's worth talking about) in Genesis 1; and this detail is referred to in other scriptures, so it has more than just passing importance.

Some people tell us that the Bible tells us that God created, but that science (Darwinism) reveals his method. But John 1:1-3 gives us authorship, the method is given elsewhere in scripture: Psalm 33:9 tells us it was by speaking as does Psalm 104, and Genesis 1 gives us the dense and stately detail. Aside this one must also consider Hebrews 11:3 (and 1:2, for that matter). These are clearly the reference points for passages such as Jeremiah 10:16 and Isaiah 48:13 (for the OT, of course). There's no room here for a 'method' because we have one. There's no room to set Genesis 1 aside as teaching a mere subset of its content.

So, when I hear people try to diminish the role of Genesis 1 in our understanding of the world God created as the setting for his covenant, I think of a quote of the physicist Pauli when confronted with an unscientific assertion in a colleague's paper:

"It's not right. It's not even wrong."

The hermeneutics and theology that seeks to step around Genesis 1 is so mis-founded that it isn’t even wrong!
 
Presumably the Bible is there to provide knowledge; including Genesis 1; so how does it provide knowledge if it is treated as a kind of baroque dance where moves have meaning for the dance, but the dance itself means nothing! Indeed, how does Genesis 1 teach anything if the basis of what it is said to teach: the details of its content, is denied as factual, and claimed to be a sort of word picture to teach us by telling us what didn’t happen, using the language of ‘this happened’.
 
Exegetes confuse themselves, and their readers, when they embark on a quest for hidden knowledge based on the dignified language of Genesis 1 (mistakenly called poetic, or poetic-like, when it is formally neither), but disregard the obvious lexical and grammatical import of the text. They then wrap this in a claim that the text as read cannot mean what it says, but means something else; but if it doesn’t mean what it says, the basis for it meaning something else is either gone, or left to the imagination of the exegete.

This position is not right; it's so off the beam, it's not even wrong!

Can God Speak?

Interestingly, those who steer their hemeneutical commitments away from the direct reading of Genesis 1 implicitly, it seems to me, claim that God has some problem with propositional revelation.

Thus, the one who is the word can't, under this view, use words to tell we who are in his image (rational propositionally aware people), what happened to create us in our cosmos by language that has direct reference to the time-space-event characteristics of the thus created cosmos. That is, he can't tell us where we came from or how we are connected to him, and can't identify the setting of his covenant! Odd.

Destroyed by Time

In my post on Keller's article, I mentioned at the end the conclusion of myth that attends de-historicised Genesis 1, etc.

There's a bit more to myth in this connection, I think. The part notions of time play needs to be touched upon. I mentioned that time seems to be related to capability: e.g. anyone can build a bridge, given enough time, but engineers can do it with reliable speed: next year, not next century.

One of the plays of time in myth is part of its de-historicising effect when extended to crazy periods. Eliade talks about this in his book of earlier posts.

When vast periods of time are interposed between then and now, they serve to break the possibility or validity of explanation; they destroy prevenance, and bring to question any assertion of relationship. Myth allows, even requires, its basis to be 'lost in time' and beyond both question and any verification.

One of the things that the Bible's treatment of the time of its own history is to underpin and demonstrate the underpinning of continuity between events of creation, where our resulting from God's word is recorded, and the historical stream to now.

This, and the period involved removes alternatives that would destroy the connection demonstrated, and allow all sorts of 'worship of creature' into our religious world; which is precisely what history shows to occur.

Contra Keller

I recently read an article that discussed Tim Keller's view on origins, science and the Bible. [Keller is one of the servants at Redeemer Presbyterian Ch in NYNY].

The article batted back Keller's, to my mind, rather absurd take on the relations between Genesis, the Bible generally, science and questions of origins; but one area it didn't touch, and I don't think that this really gets acknowledged by proponents of the 'it doesn't mean what it says' brigade is what Genesis teaches us, and how it teaches us. After all, the scripture is provided for a reason (if divinely inspired) and the reason has to have practical and theological signficance to make it to the biblical text. Saying that it teaches us what it doesn't say does not, in my view, encourage confidence in the Bible's credibility (where else, for instance, has that particular 'fast one' been pulled, a detractor might well ask?).

There are two main planks to the reason, I think, for the origins account and its chronological location (that is through the chrono-genealogies in the Bible, and the related genealogies that, while stripped of detailed chronological information, bear considerable historical significance).

Firstly, they give the relationship between God and humanity its provenance: God says that we are connected to his creative activity, and "here is the connection" spelt out in unmistakable and directly obvious detail.

Secondly, telling us the modalities and method of creation teaches us our relation to the creation (that is, we are all creatures, and there are no hidden 'princples' at work in some occult fashion between God and us), teaches us that the creation as is is real, and dependable, and gives context for humanity being given dominion over it (so there are no 'magic groves' of trees that might harm us if we decide to harvest them). It makes the work of God congruent with the world he made and understandable in terms of its creation. That is to say, when God tells us that he made X, then it is X as we know and understand it, not some other X that has no describable connection with the world we know and can comprehend.

The two planks together give us a concrete 'realist' framework for understanding our position with respect to God, history and the cosmos. Take sticks out of the framework, and it ceases to maintain a unified perspective between the elements of the world we are in and the creator's link to the world. Christian ontology collapses!

Also, if we entertain that somehow 'God used evolution' it would mount a criticism of the truth content of John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3, not to mention many other passages (see my earlier post on prophets). It would also raise a question about God's capability: he having to create by a second order process: making evolution to make us. But the whole area of 'evolution' (as in 'nothing, if left for long enough, will produce ideas') is one where random mechanical action has agency, not God. God using not-God? Absurd! There is also the factor of time: that things done quickly and accurately speak of power delivering intention, things done accidentally and with mistakes along the way speak of the reverse. For God who is love, this reverse is unthinkable (and unattested by scripture).

Put these lines of consideration aside and we are left with a mythic Genesis; and as myth arises from ignorance, then it would be odd indeed that God sets his covenant, his creative work, and the significance of humanity and the rest of creation in a contextual agnosticism. It would be saying: "I did it, I created you, and I created the world, but I can't tell you when and how to demonstrate the veracity of my claims." Odd, to say the least; leaving us where the myth-hearers are: in ignorance.

Prophets on Creation

At a recent Bible talk at St Philips York Street we started to consider the book of Jonah.

Reading through, we came to Jonah 1:9-10a: "He said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land."
Then the men became extremely frightened..."

I like to see the context of these references to God as creator being his existential representation to us in revelation (or his 'credential' in relation to us in faith response to him).

Here for instance I note that (a) it doesn't say 'Lord God of heaven who said he made the sea and dry land..." which could be expected if analogical re-framings of Genesis 1 were credible; rather it makes a direct reference to Genesis 1 as having valid content, as being evidence of the thing done and its doer; and not being a second order reference to some other process, too mysterious to put into words, or insufficiently important to our understanding of our relation to God, or awaiting the speculations of 19th century British deists.

I also note (b) that the point hit home to the sailors immediately: they "became extremely frightened". No mucking about here with word games; none of them remarked..."I think you mean God provides a framework to indicate his authorship of creation by some means unstated, and other than his direct fiat, so, as this removes him far from us in both existential and real terms, I'm not frightened in a remote God".

This joins well with Hebrews 11:3, where the creation is stated as the launching point of faith!

Other passages I've read recently that refer to God's being creator are:

Isaiah 44:24

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,
         "I, the LORD, am the maker of all things,
         Stretching out the heavens by Myself
         And spreading out the earth all alone

Note especially the 'all alone'

and

Isaiah 48:13

Surely My hand founded the earth,
         And My right hand spread out the heavens;
         When I call to them, they stand together.


Jeremiah 10:16

The portion of Jacob is not like these;
         For the Maker of all is He,
         And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
         The LORD of hosts is His name.

I guess there would be from some a deflecting argument about poetic language, anthropomophisms and metaphorical language, but taken with Gen 1, it would seem that there's an immediacy in these words that is congruent with the 'on the face of it' reading of Gen 1. It seems to belie the interposition of other principles, forces or factors standing between God's will and the world as subject for Isaiah's and Jeremiah's readers, and us or between God's fiat word and the response in creation; which analogical readings tend uniformily to put off without textual warrant.

Genesis sermons

A couple of interesting sites with sermons on Genesis.

Stillwater RPC, and

some talks from a conference on creation in about 2000.

I don't agree with everything said on these sites, but there's plenty to work through with profit, IMO.

Dr. Pipa is one of the speakers at the conference, and in dealing with Kline's redigestion of the 'framework hypothesis' makes what I think is a fairly silly suggestiong that the thorns, etc that come to pester humanity on the land were seeded before the fall by God in knowledge of the fall. I think this is speculative and unnecssary given the drama that the fall would impose on the creation as God moved away from live-sustaining relationship with humanity.

Samuel

The text for our sermon at church this morning was from 1 Samuel 2. I was particularly taken with the pastoral reference, and implications of 1 Samueal 2:8:

He raises the poor from the dust,
He lifts the needy from the ash heap
To make them sit with nobles,
And inherit a seat of honor;
For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S,
And He set the world on them.

The dependence of many passages on Scripture on God's being creator is often, I think, overlooked in discussions of origins.

I just wonder how people would have confidence in God, if they really understood there to be a great gulf of the unknown standing between his word and us? A gulf which does not seem to be present in Genesis 1.

See also my post '13' on this.

Framework theory

From Dr. Albert Mohler speaking at the Ligoner Ministries 2010 annual conference:

The idea that Genesis is merely literary has to be rejected out of hand as in direct contradiction to our understanding of the Bible as the inerrant and infallible word of God. That option for any credible and faithful evangelical Christian must be taken off the table. So then, we are left with the framework theory, held by some prominent evangelicals, but, I would argue, one of the least defensible positions when we understand that it is based upon the assumption not only that there may be a very long period of time that is involved and incorporated in Genesis 1 and the sequence of the days, but actually that the sequence does not matter! It simply is not credible, at least to me, 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 the direct content that he has given us within the text.

It certainly seems by any common sense natural reading of the text that it is making historical and sequential claims.

Challies on evolution

Tim Challies, whom I've recently added to my blog roll, has this nice post on evolution and Christian thought.

No chance

Recently reading Douglas Kelly's "Creation and Change" I was browsing through his long list of NT citations of the Genesis creation account, and, of course, came to John 1:3: "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being" (in Bulgarian, this is: Всичко това чрез Него стана; и без Него не e станало нищо от това, което е станало, if you really must know).

Here, I think, the notion of chance being operative in forming the creation as we know it, and as described in Genesis 1 (that is, formed by God in the categories we know, and he states) is put paid to: can't happen. Because, if chance operated, and that is the mainstay of contemporary evolutionary dogma, then some things came into being apart from Him. Not on, according to John.

And this is an exemplary statement as to the importance of the detail of the physical creation for our knowledge of self, the cosmos and God: unlike ancient Greek and Eastern religious view points, the physical world is of substantial moment; it is not relegated to a lower order of reality, because it was made by God in love as the place we stand in relationship to him, and it was made purposively by him as this setting for fellowship. It becomes ludicrous to claim that God 'used' evolution to create the world we see, because this demands that God stood back from the world of purpose to allow an 'interregnum' of chance to operate and do what it does (that is, allowing things to come into creation apart from him). Not only is this teleological nonsense, but it categorically defeats the central tenet of evolution. Chance! God 'used' chance for purpose? Oxymoronic (or just plain ordinary moronic).

No. He tells us that everything came into being through Christ, the only mediator between God and man, the word of creation; with no mysterious or occult principle intervening in the stream of relationship between God and man, commenced with God's creative acts.

Evolutionary Evangelist

One result of entertaining evolution as a real explanation of origins (even if artificially conjoined to Christian faith via so-called 'theistic evolution') is described by Al Mohler on his blog. It jetisons utterly the God of the Bible. Is this where the neo-evangelicals are taking us with moves such as the text-denying 'framework' hypothesis?

13

Recently I was invited to a business meeting on the 13th of the month. The person who invited me apologised laughingly for the date...for some '13' is considered 'unlucky'.

As it happens, I don't run my life on luck; I seek to live in dependence upon the creator and our redeemer. Luck just doesn't enter into it!

During a walk I was musing on this and wondering at the difference between myself as a Christian, with a certainty of faith in God and one without this who allowed themselves to be dogged by 'luck', omens, and similar superstitious rubbish.

I thought that one of the pillars of faith was that God who created, who spoke the cosmos into being, relieved me of the futility of unsettling reliance on the fates (luck).

But, I wondered as to whether this certainty would be as easily accessible if I thought that the Bible didn't tell us what happened when God created, and instead told us what didn't happen, then expected us to use this non-information to form a faith that God did what he didn't tell us.

I pondered that I could easily dismiss superstitious ideas about the number '13' because I knew that such things had no place in the cosmos, as the cosmos is mere creation of the one who saves. But could I have this comfortable position if I believed that God was not able to communicate to us his soverignty over creation (the process). There would still be a mystery, were there other factors that could influence me? How would I know?

But it is not so. God has communicated his creative work, and what creation is, by telling us in detail what constitutes the creative sequence and he tells us in terms that are congruent with the world we live in. Time then in creation, is time that we can connect to and make sense of. The actions of bringing things into existence are the things we see about us, at least in kind, the events are events that make sense to us as being about the features of the world we now see and experience. It is this world that God made, not some other world, not a world that he couldn't describe to us as co-participants in the 'life' of the cosmos. He as creator, we as its custodians and denizens.

If the creation, its account and our experience of it did not line up; one leg of our certain confidence in God would be gone, and the other, the resurrection, would be unstable. Thus, Hebrews 11:3

Death Penalty

I recently saw an article on the Creation website that set out to answer the question as to why God 'imposed' the death penalty on Adam for his sin.

As one could expect from a fairly theologically traditional organisation (I generally agree with their theological position in its dependence on the Bible, but I find that some traditionalists have allowed, I think, cultural influences to bend their theology; perhaps this is exemplified by such things as culturally traditional views of relationships with women, church order, and an overly forensic approach to theology).

The way Russell Grigg puts it in his article, it sounds as if the 'death penalty' is imposed in a discretionary manner because a law had been broken. But not so. The law was not given until many centuries after the fall. So, what happened?

God made Adam in his image, to be in a way a counterpart to God such that real relationship could be between the two: creator and creature. For real relationships, the imageness would need to include a real will, real capability for decision making to form a real relationship, and not just to mimic a relationship. God was, to adopt our language, taking a risk. But I'm sure he knew the possible outcomes and had them all 'managed' (as we like to say that we do with risk these days!).

The tree was presented to man as God setting the footing of the relationship: it was a genuine relationship, not an orchestrated one. Man could remain in a relationship of life, or turn from the relationship and cease to participate with God; that is, man would reject the one who had in himself 'life-source' as the foundation for the work of 'subduing' the creation (living within and caring for it, and not dominated by it). He would here live in life, but rejecting God, he would now live in rejection of the life-giver and so, in the struture of it would inherit death, purely on his own choice.

The 'death penalty' arrived because Adam choose to separate from life and 'know' in his own life-experience the evil of choosing 'not-life'.

Moltmann retrospective

...the human being perceives himself, not through reflection and introspection, but in the experiences of the history of the covenant and the promises of his God....The human being has really no substance in himself; he is a history. That is why the anthropology of the Old Testament does not deal so much in definitions as in narratives. (p.257)

These narratives are about the real world; the world we stand in and the world God spoke into existence which God sets in our history by the thorough chronological markers he provides in Genesis. Time, history, is not unimportant in the interplay of God and his creation, it is of the essence because it is in history: what really happened; that we are told who we are, who God is and what is the relationship.

The world we stand in and the world we talk about are the same world. They are not the two different worlds that many theologians, JM included, seem to entertain, but are unified as the only setting of covenant. The creation account brings together what our imagination might want to drive apart, and tells us that there is no other world that is, in our compass, more real than the one created, in which connection is made with God. Creation shows the joint history between God and his creation (us), with the history is established in the facts: the details of action, time and place, which as JM tells us on p. 73 has no corresponding human analogy; so claims that the creation account are parabolic in some way must go by the wayside.

If it is parablic, if there is something else, then God has not revealed to us the basis for our communion that has any meaning in the real world (the only world we know), and its provenance is made uncertain by the mists of unimaginably long periods of time and the uncertainty of mysticism (which is what any parabolic view of the Genesis account results in) removing from our historical experience God's actions and their results in the physical world we know.

Moltmann wrap up

A quick wrap of my reading of God in Creation by Moltmann

Moltmann wonders around the topic in his ‘true-to-form’ fashion: its entertaining, but can catch the reader off guard, as he appears to head first in one direction, then in another.

His views on the biblical doctrine of creation are no different.

Reading earlier chapters, he sounds like a biblical literalist, for all the reasons that biblical literalists are convinced by: the simple meaning of the words used in their grammatical context. No surprise there! Moltmann doesn’t try to kid us with pointless arguments about ‘literary form’ or insult our intelligence by proposing that he doesn’t take a literal, but a literary view of the Genesis creation account (he thinks, of course, that there are two accounts). What he does is to effectively put the biblical account in a different world from this one, yet seeks to make the intersection between revelation (I’m not quite sure if he thinks it is revelation or by using the word ‘myth’ if he thinks its more like crafted stories that attempt to convey something other than what they appear to convey) and the world we live in.

He does this more in the chapter ‘The Evolution of Creation’ than any other. In this chapter he is clearly influenced by contemporary rhetoric about origins; and adopts the scientistic/materialist frame of reference in both an uncritical and unfounded manner.

Uncritical because he neglects the history of ideas of evolution, being rooted in religious view that axiomatically excludes both revelation and a divine revealer, and unfounded because he appears to be informed more by the static Aristotelian conception of the physical world (he calls it ‘nature’ giving away the pagan game) than the creation as provided for in the Bible, and as conceptualised by modern ‘creationists’.

So, for example, he seems to believe the Bible requires a level of ‘fixity’, perhaps of species, that it actually does not. Then argues against this pointing to the ‘openness’ that is shown by evolution. However, the openness to the future he seeks is in the Bible comprehensively, as the creation is a field of interplay between its own variations: such as within ‘kinds’ of organisms and human custodianship. But the variation within the creation has no discernable teleological import in and of itself, the only ‘openness’ to the future, to God’s life related to ours, is in that very arena of relationship; and in our fallen world, of our movement toward and away from God: toward in repentance, and away in pride!

The basic failing of his theology of creation, seems to me to be that he operates his theology on two planes: the plane of the idealist and the realist. The Bible consistently paints a realist picture of the world and events; it is only what happens that is important. What does not actually happen is of no value. Yet Moltmann must hold that the creation did not actually happen as accounted in the Bible, but evolution did and does, and the one can inform the other. But this is equivalent to claiming that a mere story that one is wealthy will influence a statement from one’s bank! Try using that approach when you go to buy a Lear Jet.

Not so, of course. If something has no reality, then it has no substance! The ‘didn’t happen’ cannot inform the ‘did happen’ in the same world conception; and the world conception of the Bible is of a physical (embodied) creation from the word of God to form the field where the relationship between God and man; his image-like-him, is made. Because our total experience is circumscribed by the real world of event and consequence delimited by space and time in an absolutist manner, and God’s revelation of creation is to link his word to that world, it is difficult to give any credibility to a conceptualisation of the revelation that disconnects it from the very structure that it is causally of a family with.

It might be argued that mediatorial mechanisms do not threaten disconnection, but I think that if any but the mediatorial role of Christ is given a place, they do. They immediately undo the relationship between God and his creation/God and humanity founded in the history between them; particularly where the idea of evolution is concerned as in recognition of the formulation of this idea, it runs a materialist view, not a personalist/supernatural one, and requires an uncomfortable and indeterminate grafting of the world of love, relationship and hope on to the world of value-free material randomness whose only teleological target is the heat death of the universe. The notion of evolution is not merely mediatorial between God’s speaking and the world we live in coming into being; rather, it re-founds the basis for thought and life; removing it from the personal, and replacing it with the material. It thusly provides an interpretive framework that turns its back on a personal creator (creator who is a person; person-ness and not material being basically real), leaving us with a dead-end explanation that dissipates the personal in material, reifying the reduction.

It thus says that there are two histories with which we contend and that impose their utterly different coordinate systems on our conceptualisation of the world. But, again, the very purpose of the creation account is to give us the coordinate system by which we can understand our relationship with our creator, and the place of the world as product of his loving word, albeit fallen as we have rejected that relationship. The world God made in history by his word is our world, the world in which we either seek him or not, and the world that he will redeem in re-creation! It is not another world that just happened over vast periods of de-personalising time by random processes.

But did God put in train the random processes? Of course, but they are processes of degradation, not creation!

The Evolution of Creation

From this chapter in Moltmann, the following quote:

Why, in fact, does pantheism seem so plausible a philosophy to many evolutionary theorists, whether it be pantheism of matter, nature or life? The reason is not merely a striving for emancipation in rebellion against the church. †he reasons are factual, substantial ones. When eyes were turned towards the initial contingency of the world, theism always presented itself as the obvious philosophy, for theism distinguishes between God and the world. But when we are thinking about the evolution of the cosmos and of life from the contingency of events, dynamic pantheism seems much more plausible: the matter that organizes itself also transcends itself and produces its own evolution. So in this sense it is self-creative. This phenomenon can certainly be interpreted with the help of Spinoza's holistic theory. Natura est natura naturans. Consequently, deus sive natura. But the trinitarian doctrine of creation suggests a pneumatological interpretation. The God who is present in the world and in very part of it, is the creative Spirit. It is not merely the spirit of God that is present in the evolving world; it is rather God the Spirit, with his uncreated and creative energies

. (p.212).

Moltmann is here attempting to edge God into the creation that he, in my view, correctly, shows to reject him in its evolution.

No Date? Didn't Happen!

Watching a recent Martin Clunes show on TV, called, I think, the Islands of Britain, he met the self-styled head of the island of Forvik, an also self-styled 'Crown Dependency.

The fellow claims to have researched the legal status of the Shetland Islands and cannot find any dated link to the English or Scotish governments. He said on camera "If there's no date, then it didn't happen".

Which underlines the significance of dates in the Genesis account (whatever you, dear reader, think of them). Conversely to Forvik: if there is a date, it did happen!

Genesis makes the point that its events happened in history, and so they can be dated; and are.

Moltmann on Creation: more

A discernment of the eschatological redemption of the whole creation through Christ was the premise which led to the deduction that the protological creation had its foundations in Christ. This conclusion underlies the NT statements about Christ as ‘the mediator in creation’. We find the beginnings of this idea in Paul .He bases the liberty of believers in all sectors of life on the fact that everything is subjected to the sovereignty of Christ, but bases the universality of Christ’s sovereignty on the fact that everything has been created through him: ‘For us there is only one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist; (1Cor 8:6). In the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians too, awareness of the universality of salvation in and through Christ leads to the insight that ‘in him all things were created’ (Eph. 1:9ff.; Col. 1:15ff.). ‘The first-born from the dead’ (Col 1:18) is also ‘the first-born of all creation’ (1:15)

.

Hebrews 1:2 then presents the Christian vista of the universal lordship of Jesus, the Son of the eternal Father, and his mediatory function in creation, together with his preservation of the world and purification of our sins through him. ‘The Son’ is called ‘the brightness of his glory’ and ‘the express image of his (God’s) person (Heb 1:3 AV). These are symbols which Israel’s wisdom literature used to describe the eternal Wisdom of God through whom God created the world, still sustains it, and will one day glorify it (Prov. 8:22-31). The NT idea of Christ as mediator in creation is based on a sophia christology, according to which Jesus is both God’s Son and his eternal Wisdom. The Logos christology of the Gospel of John goes back to this when it declares: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made through him, and without him was not anything bade that was made’ (John 1:1, 3)

(pp 94, 95 God in Creation)

The experience of the eschatological reality of the Spirit leads to the conclusion that this is the same Spirit in whose power the Father, through the Son, has created the world, and preserves it against annihilating Nothingness: ‘When thou takest away their breath, the die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy breath, the are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground’ (Ps. 104:29-30).

(p. 96)

The earlier theological idea of the Creator Spirit who interpenetrates, quickens and animates the world was pushed out by the modern mechanistic world picture. (p. 98)

and I especially like this:

…pantheism has turned people into indifferentists

quoting Heine (p.103) which is, I think an explanation of the moral and ontological result of evolutionism!

First 55 minutes

Frances Schaeffer, in an interview toward the end of his life with Christopher Catherwood, stated the crucial evangelistic importance of a sound space/time doctrine of creation. The author heard him remark in a discussion group at L'Abri in December of 1968 that if he had an hour with a person on a plane who did not know the lord, he would spend the first fifty-five minutes talking about creation in the image of God and were that man came from, and the last five minutes on the presentation of the gospel of salvation Schaeffer felt we are greatly mistaken to avoid the important subject of how we go her , why we are like we are, who is in charge, by whose rules we should play;, and by whose rules we will be judged. Schaeffer thought that when one avoid those questions, which are deeply implanted in every human heart, and jumps immediately to salvation, one loses the major impact on those who are seeking the truth. (p17 Creation and Change by Douglas Kelly)

Know your past

This letter appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Tim Dean (Letters, August 3) says we should stop concerning ourselves about the distant evolutionary past and decide what is best for us today. Humans, like all living things, have been evolving to suit their environment for billions of years. Ten or 12,000 years ago we started to change the way we lived and the environment we lived in. If we don't understand our ''distant past'', we have little hope of dealing with our present circumstances.

How true, but which 'distant past'? For the Christian, I would think that the Bible gives us the only useful information about our 'distant past' and the point is well made; without this information, we have little hope of dealing with our present circumstances.

Either our distant past shows us we are in the family of God, or it makes us part of the family of dust!

Moltmann on Creation

As long as nature and human history represent promises of future glory itself, all knowledge of God and the world is parabolic, figurative knowledge…Images make present what is absent. when what was absent is present, the image is no longer necessary; it is even detrimental…The parable and the thing compared will no longer be distinguished from one another, because God will be directly and universally manifest through himself, and creation with all created things will participate directly and without any mediation in his eternal life.

(p. 64 God in Creation)

…the verb bara’ is used exclusively as a term for the divine brining forth, for which there is no corresponding human analogy. The world means a bringing forth in the sphere of history, nature and spirit, through which something comes into existence which was not there previously…This shows the divine creativity has no conditions or premises…It is neither actually nor potentially inherent or present in anything else.

(p 73)

All the works which the Creator makes in his creation follow one another consecutively; the phrases ‘and God said…’, ‘and God separated…’ make this evident

(p. 74)

Creation is not a demonstration of his boundless power; it is the communication of his love, which knows neither premises or preconditions: creation ex amore Dei… In his love God can choose; but he chooses only that which corresponds to his essential goodness, in order to communicate that goodness as his creation and in his creation….His love…leads him to go out of himself and to create something which is different from himself gut which none the less corresponds to him…the Sabbath – makes it unequivocally plain that creation was called into being out of the inner love which the eternal God himself is…The event of creation is depicted as creation through the Word…God ‘makes’ his creation through the Word which he utters. The word of creation is the continuum joining the Creator and his creation.

(p.76)


Anyone who believe in the God who created being out of nothing, also believes in the God who gives life to the dead. This means that he hopes for the new creation of heaven and earth. (p. 93)

North Shore Times Headbutting Continues

God in Creation

I'm reading Moltmann's God in Creation and despite JM's theistic-evolution type stance (I don't think that he's a typical TE person in the normal neo-evangelical usage), and his reference to the concerns of the 1980s (concerns which now seem dated and a little politically naive), he makes remarks which I think worth posting.

If we think in terms of environment and biotypes, the construction of the first creation account is astonishingly clear and logical. Modern reproaches that it is the mere outcome of mythical speculation, or that it displays a naive knowledge of nature, are quite wide of the mark.

Of course, I don't accept that there is more than one creation account. He refers above, of course to Genesis 1, and implies that G2 is a second account, which, of course, it is not.

One think that I've noticed is that Multmann flicks between quite a biblical world-concept and the opposite, that is, a materialist or pagan world-concept. His use of the word 'nature' above could betray this. Most usages of 'nature' imply disconnection from God, and self-existance at some level; I prefer the usage 'the creation' when considering the world around us as this identifies dependence upon and authorship by God, underlining the basic-ness of personality, or love in thinking about things.

Eternity: sycophancy rules?

Because Eternity published Greg Clarke's article, that I wrote directly to Greg about, I thought I'd write to the editor as well; almost needless to say, the letter was not published (does this mean Eternity's editorial policy is "agree or be silent?")

Greg Clarke’s comments about those who accept the direct reading of the Bible’s account of creation, in his article in Eternity, seems to stand at odds, not only with long Christian tradition (and theological consideration), but with the Bible itself!

The Genesis account, is endorsed, without qualification, throughout the Old and New Testaments, it is the spring point for the setting of covenant between God and humanity, and beds the relationship in the real world, not in an airy world of allusion or literary suggestion. Indeed, we are told in the OT that God spoke to Moses plainly (Ex 33:11), so presumably, Moses passed this plain talk on to us in the Bible!

The critical text in this connection, however, is Hebrews 11:1-3 which shows that God’s creating is the starting point of faith, faith hung on his action in history, and a creation that came from his word, not made of things seen: the very opposite of what materialism (evolution) contends!

So, Greg, do I take your word, or the word of the Holy Spirit?

Creation by Crowe

I've just read "Creation without Compromise" by Donald Crowe. Not a bad read, IMO. The book is fairly wide ranging, but has the central theme of one's view of origins being about, at root, the 'world-view' one adopts.

The book argues this well, without referring to what I think is a landmark book in this area, The Myth of Religious Neutrality, by Clouser. (Clouser is an evolutionist, as it happens). This results in one being able to say, I think, cogently, that the debate about origins (creation vs. evolution) is not a debate about 'science' vs. 'religion', where the science side thinks it gets the upper hand (but which just goes to prove what a philosopher I heard once say, only proves that scientists make poor philosophers), but is purely a religious debate.

Thus, putting paid to the tivial comment one often hears that 'the Bible is not a science textbook'. As though this was ever a question!

The author makes much of the importance of chronology as being the structure for history, and that the Bible gives us substantial chronological information, and does so quite self-consciously: that is, one doesn't have to go hunting for it.

Chronology does a couple of things in this connection, that rarely seems to be picked up in discussion.

1. It acts much the same way as the provenance of a document does for an historian. It gives us certitude about the connection of the document with that which it purports to report. Thus, in the Bible, the chronology gives us structuring information that goes to the historical credibility of its reports. If you can't give the chronological coordinates of your history, then the certitude of it being history reduces.

2. Similarly to (1) above, it shows us our connection to God. It is not some vague or mystical connection, conjoured out of hope or wishful thinking, but a connection that is tangible in terms of what makes things tangible in our life and times.

Adding 1 and 2, the creation, and indeed Biblical history, occured in this world, with the delimiters that position and relate every other event in this world: time and place (space). It is prosaically explicable, and not a mystery accessible only to those 'in the know'; but is, at least in principle, public knowledge.

If you can't give the coordinates of your story (of creation) then, it remains a story, and the real world must be explained in some other way.

PM 'outs' as atheist!

Following our Prime Minster, Julia Gillard's stating that she is no a believer in God, the series of letters below appeared in one of Sydney's suburban newspapers.

Interesting how the idea of God (or not-God, in this case) very quickly becomes a discussion about origins...its like the two ideas go together!

Genesis days

Another quote from Young's article on the Genesian days.





The whole article is in two parts on Ted Hildebrandt's website: part 1 and part 2.

Genesis & its literary form

From Young, EJ, Studies in Genesis One "The Interpretation of Genesis
1:2" First published in the Westminster Theological Journal.

Much has been written, even in evangelical circles, about the alleged
parallel between the Enuma Elish myth and Genesis 1. Young deals with an
aspect of this here. It is also worth noting that Eliade (see previous
posts) shows that EE is a ceremonial text with more cult usage than
setting out an account of what happened. Genesis is couched in language,
and a theological logic that indicates that the author took the events
of Genesis 1 to have actually happened in our 'time-space'.

65 million years

This quote from the ABC1 'Gruen Transfer' panel show:

...at the end of the day I personally don't have a problem with objectification of guys by women in ads or women by men in ads because at the end of the day the only reason we're here after 65 million years is someone's been 'shagin.'

The Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising, the quote is from one of the panelists Dan Gregory from SMART.

Interesting practical application of the idea of evolution: let's just use people for titilation, because all we are is reproducing units.

Eliade 7

Why does the universe look so old?

Well, does it, now?

Check this blog reporting on conference remarks by Al Mohler.
It is also on line. (It’s under the SAT (for Saturday) tab and over 60 mins long.)

Eliade 6

Eliade 5

Eternity...idiots?

In a recent edition of a local Christian newspaper "Eternity" an article appeared authored by Greg Clarke, a worker at the Centre for Public Christianity. He made the somewhat undergraduate claim that Christians who take the opening chapter of the Bible at face value are, somehow 'idiots'.

I wrote to Clarke as follows:

I was in many ways pleased to see your recent article in Eternity. I was particularly encouraged having heard you speak at the Centre for Public Christianity supporters’ lunch a couple of months ago at the Wesley Centre in Sydney.

However, as I read the article, I became concerned at the pejorative language attached to an historic Christian position held with respect to our understanding of the opening chapters of the Bible.

I must say, I was surprised, no, disappointed, in the use of the term ‘idiot’ to apply to some of the greatest names in church history, many respected Christian people and, to an extent, to myself as well. It reminds me of a similar lapse many years ago when Archbishop Jensen, who was then principal of Moore College and had been a regular preacher at my church, lampooned the historic Christian doctrine of creation as being a ‘hill billy’ view!

It seemed that his, and perhaps your, preferred take on the scriptures was to set them aside in deference to the world view which starts with the axiom that there is no God, and if there might be, he certainly hasn’t spoken meaningfully to us in terms congruent with the world we are in (yet how contrary this is to the import of Genesis 1). This aligns with the deist roots of modern views of cosmogony and Earth history that makes of God a mere cipher with no real connection with either the material cosmos or ourselves.

The irony in your declaration that people who accept the Bible’s account of creation at face value are ‘head in the sand idiots’ is its similarity to the more vehement declarations Richard Dawkins makes about Christians in general! His point is that any insertion of the supernatural into the evolutionary scheme is a sign of insanity. It was amusing to hear him on ABC TV’s Q&A program stating his view that he doesn’t mind if church worthies accept evolution alongside the Bible, because he saw such acceptance as the death knell of religious views. Why should he worry, he’s won!

Irony aside, the repugnance of your claim is the implications it has for the believer’s humility before the revelation of God, the preconceptions that constrain your particular hermeneutic, and the general failure to engage with conservative scholarship, let alone scientific criticism of the very old pagan view that the world, the ‘real’ world, really made itself over vast amounts of time, and we merely ‘clip on’ God, as a fiction, as most materialists see it: not as the credible creator who started it all.

I know that your colleague John Dixon is of the view that Genesis 1 has a literary structure that precludes it being an account of actual events, yet his case is not made, in my view, and he appears to simply trot out ideas that E J Young, as an example, had discussed and rebutted in the early 1960s. So, nothing new under the sun! Dixon does venture further into some more complex literary considerations, with his reference to the chiastic structure of Genesis 1, but he fails to indicate how this necessarily precludes the text being an account of events, given the ubiquity of the structure in the Bible and in ancient literature.

But it is at the point of ‘realism’ that I think your claim hits a snag. The view you appear to extol seems to me to have more in common with the anti-realist views of broadly conceived paganism and its contemporary dress-up, philosophical idealism. This set of views is perfectly happy with the Bible being regarded as conveying information by not conveying information, in some incoherent twist of logic, while pretending to adopt the realist stance of the Bible: that things can be as stated, and the world came from God’s hand as a unitary creation. That is, we think, understand and live in the world as a consistent whole, including the illumination of that world from the word of God, when it in fact rejects any realist stance and makes the Bible discontinuous with the world that it claims God made for encounter between him and us!

At bottom, you seem to be more impressed by contemporary materialism, its acolytes and deep cultural assent, and align yourself with a non-believers’ critique of the Bible. This alignment has never produced a change in materialists, but paves the road to disbelief by saying that God has nothing to do with this world, it just is.

Eliade 4

Israel's different take on history and 'gods'.

Eliade 3

Interesting thoughts about Abraham's obedience to God in preparing to sacrifice Isaac:



and over the page:



and from the introduction:

Eliade 2

Eliade

I've just completed reading Mircea Eliade's Myth of Eternal Return, and while in parts somewhat testing (i.e. dull), in other parts very illuminating on the operation of the concept of time in religious and ontological contexts. I'll post pieces I've found particularly interesting from a Christian perspective.

The first is below.



Against what I realise is some contemporary scholarship, which attempts to reabsorb the creation account in Genesis 1 into an ANE mythic background, Eliade identifies is as going in the very opposite direction!

Shepherd

It is well known that David was, prior to his prominence in the Bible, was a shepherd: in 1 Chronicles 17:7, it says this of him:

Now, therefore, thus shall you say to My servant David, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, "I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be leader over My people Israel.

Interesting to note that a shepherd...a pastor? doesn't lead, but follows the flock! Also that the passage distinguishes that role from that of 'leader'.

I wonder if this might throw light today on the prediliction we have in modern western churches to refer to a model of community life that is predicated upon the exclusivity and individualisating notion of leadership.

Leadership may work in authority or information relationships, such as the armed forces, or in the quasi legal relationships of business or government; but I don't think it is congenial with how the scriptures, particularly the NT describes the life of the church. Certainly we have apostles, prophets, teachers, etc. But essentially all relationships within the body of Christ are characterised as serving, ministry, relationships, not leading/boss/political relationships, essentially.

Yet we allow ourselves to be led down the path of the world, which loves specialness, celebrity, power and prestige, and have 'leaders' and CEOs (of christian organisations...why not coordinators, organisers, even just ministers or servants?).

This comes to me every so often in the context of 'leading' a service, or a small study group. But I've never 'led' them, I hope I've always served! So a small group servant/minister? Or at most convenor or moderator?

I've learnt of a recent World Vision leadership convention for young people. Surely we want young people, particularly young christians to learn to be humble servants, not court the prominence of 'leadership'. Christ had some hard words to say about 'leaders'. I would suspect that we should try not to be such, but seek opportunities to serve, and encourage, which I think the word and the contemporary context of 'leader' mitigates against.

On Ethics: the NSW Education Program

The recent debate about teaching ‘ethics’ instead of ‘special religious education’ in public schools has been an opportunity for public Christians to proclaim the gospel. Unfortunately, the opportunity has been neglected!

Much of the debate has let people think that Christian faith is about ethics, when it is very much not so. One looks to Christians to behave ethically, because they have a different take on life to those who think it all ends here (quoting a lyric by Bruce Cockburn), but Christian faith is not so. If anything, it is about the failure of ethics to produce ethical behaviour (think of Paul in Romans 7).

My line of criticism of the ethics courses would be in reference to ethical failure: how are people to make sense of their actions when they fail to live up to their own standards; and whence forgiveness, which is the very point of Christian faith?

The whole area of moral epistemology was also ripe for attack, but was not taken up, so the Anglican church in particular just looked like it was blustering about a ‘lost’ monopoly and probably failed to influence anyone, or attract interest with its sage and compassionate grasp of the underlying issues.

In connection with this matter, a few letters to the press from parents of children in scripture classes have been unhappy with the curriculum. One example was a young child who came home questioning if her parents would ‘go to hell’. If a curriculum or SRE teacher was so blunt with a young child, I’d want to avoid it too. When dealing with ‘heaven and hell’ with children, a better approach is along the lines of explaining that God’s friends will live with God forever, and anyone can be God’s friend by believing him.

A child then asks: “what about people who aren’t God’s friends?” The answer could be “if people aren’t God’s friends, why would they want to be with him? But, they might become God’s friends later.”

Truth in a post-modern world

A recent talk at church was the second on faith contexts; this one was on faith in a post-modern age. The main thrust of the talk was about the ‘relativity’ of truth in a post-modern world, as opposed to the ‘absolute’ truth that Christians hold to.

I wonder what ‘absolute’ truth is? Is it objective truth, that is independent of the subject, or could it be stated as something being true in all relationships at all times? So, in a way, true, independently of relationships. This could get a bit tricky, because truth is only apprehended in a relation, for example between an observer and a phenomenon in the external world.
But more is said better by Moreland in his address to the ETS in 2004.

One of the lines of development that underpins the post-modern approach to truth is, I think Berger and Luckmann’s book “The Social Construction of Knowledge” (1966). Where the case is made, with some merit, I think, that we jointly construct ‘reality’ in social contexts. However, this construction is limited and falls below the line of ‘truth’ in typical cases, and remains an operational matter, being about how relations are conceived and operated in complex social settings where a large set of shared assumptions about interactions and their meaning(s) apply. But, no matter how a group ‘constructs’ its world, they will leave rooms by doors and not walls. What is ‘constructed’ is the psycho-social meaning attached to leaving a room in the immediate context, I would think.

Towards the end of the talk, people were invited to join a prayer in turning to God; ironically, the invitation was made using the phrase “if it’s right for you” or words to that effect; which agrees with the post-modern project and tended to undo the argument being put forward in the talk (so if a Buddhist heard the talk, would they feel it was not ‘right for them’ and so not consider the prayer?). The irony of it!

The Bible, on the other hand, calls for repentance absolutely; there is no ‘right for you’ option. I’m not wanting to be critical here, as I’ve used this phrase myself, and it is probably a kind way of inviting people to consider their relationship with Christ…but, it also shows how popular thinking intrudes on our language (the way we socially construct reality) almost unnoticed.

In this context its interesting to consider a quote from Plantinga from his essay Naturalism Defeated

“But if naturalism is true, there is no God, and hence no God (or anyone else) overseeing our development and orchestrating the course of our evolution. And this leads directly to the question whether it is at all likely that our cognitive faculties, given naturalism and given their evolutionary origin, would have developed in such a way as to be reliable, to furnish us with mostly true beliefs. Darwin himself expressed this doubt: "With me," he said, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? The same thought is put more explicitly by Patricia Churchland. She insists that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; this means, she says, that its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

Aside from the puzzle of Platinga's have-cake-and-eat-it belief (he seems to accept evolution, which is derived from naturalism, but criticises its naturalism in interesting contrast to Flew’s latter day rejection of naturalism), he throws up an interesting take on the concept, and indeed, the operation of truth in a naturalistic world, where minds only need to be sufficient for survival, and while Churchland’s view might not be held by all naturalists, it does suggest a weakness in naturalism’s conceptualisation of why things are as they are. If it’s not about survival, in some way (and that net may be quite large), then the connection with truth may be unsure.

Of course, at base, the post-modern explanation is self-defeating: if ‘truth’ is what you make it, then the truth of that view is itself subject to what one makes of it: here the post-modern project follows in the steps of its naturalist cousin and, in the great tradition of logical positivism, cannot provide the basis for its progam in terms of the program, and collapses on itself. On these grounds, the Christian is at liberty to reject it, while inviting post-moderns to leave by the wall, and not the door.

As an aside, during the talk I referred to above, a comment was made about moral positions that are held in all societies. Unfortunately, the examples given were not held in all societies. For instance, child abuse, asserted as being universally rejected, was in fact institutionalised in the ancient world over many centuries; in his book Sick Societies, Robert Edgerton documents many societies where practices that we would be appalled by are or were commonplace and applauded. Don Richardson in his book Peace Child takes us on a similar tour of depravity.

Eusebius of Caesarea

It is interesting to consider how, centuries before the modern take on the origin of “life, the universe and everything”, the issues in discussion were pretty much the same as they are today.

That the teachers of the early church maintained the biblical line against pagan ideas then, and felt no need to morph the Bible into a text compatible with those ideas, suggests that the same approach would be appropriate today.

Here are a few snippets from Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339): Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) -- Books 1 & 7 where he provides a catalogue of the views held outside the church.

[the sub headings and bold are mine]

…

Well then, in recording the ancient theology of the Egyptians from the beginning, Diodorus, the Sicilian, leads the way, a man thoroughly known to the most learned of the Greeks as having collected the whole Library of History into one treatise. From him I will set forth first what he has clearly stated in the beginning of his work concerning the origin of the whole world, while recording the opinion of the ancients in the manner following.

CHAPTER VII

[DIODORUS] The full account of the ideas entertained concerning the gods by those who first taught men to honour the deity, and of the fabulous stories concerning each of the immortals, I shall endeavour to arrange in a separate work, because this subject requires a long discussion: but all that we may deem to be suitable to our present historical inquiries we shall set forth in a brief summary, that nothing worth hearing may be missed.

But concerning the descent of the whole human race, and the transactions which have occurred in the known parts of the world, we shall give as accurate an account as may be possible about matters so ancient, and shall begin from the earliest times. 'With regard then to the first origin of mankind two explanations have been held among the most accepted physiologists and historians. For some of them, on the supposition that the universe is uncreated and imperishable, declared that the human race also has existed from eternity, their procreation of children having never had a beginning; while others, who thought the world to be created and perishable, said that, like it, mankind were first created within definite periods of time…

'This was at first hardened from the fire round the sun shining upon it, and afterwards, when the surface was thrown into fermentation through the warmth, some of the liquid particles swelled up in many places, and tumours were formed about them surrounded by thin membranes, a thing which may still be seen going on in stagnant pools and marshy places, when upon the cooling of the ground the air becomes suddenly fiery, because the change does not take place in it gradually.

'The moist parts then being quickened into life by the warmth in the way mentioned, during the nights they received their nourishment direct from the mist which falls from the surrounding atmosphere, and during the days became hardened by the heat; and at last, when the pregnant cells attained their full growth, and the membranes were thoroughly heated and burst asunder, all various types of living things sprang up.

…

'It seems that even Euripides, who was a disciple of the physicist Anaxagoras, does not dissent from what has been now said concerning the nature of the universe; for he thus writes in the Melanippe:

"So heaven and earth at first had all one form; But when in place dissevered each from other, They gave to all things birth, and brought to light Trees, birds, and beasts, and all the salt sea's brood, And race of mortal men." 5

'Such are the traditions which we have received concerning the first beginnings of the universe. And they say that the primitive generations of mankind, living in a disorderly and savage state, used to go wandering out over the pastures, and procure for food the tenderest herbage, and the fruits of trees that grew wild: and that when warred on by the wild beasts they were taught by their own interest to help one another, and from gathering together through fear they gradually recognized each other's forms.

…

Thus much writes the aforesaid historian, without having mentioned God even so much as by name in his cosmogony, but having presented the arrangement of the universe as something accidental and spontaneous.

CHAPTER VIII

[PLUTARCH] 'Thales, it is said, was the first of all who supposed that water was the original element of the universe, for that all things spring from it and return to it.

'After him Anaximander, who had been a companion of Thales, said that the Infinite contained the whole cause of both the generation and decay of all things, and out of it he says that the heavens, and, generally, all the worlds, which are infinite in number, have been brought into distinct form…Further, he says that man at first was generated from animals of other kinds…

'Democritus of Abdera supposed that the All is infinite, because there was none who could possibly have framed it: he further says that it is unchangeable; and generally, everything being such as it is, he expressly asserts that the causes of the processes now going on have no beginning, but all things absolutely, past, present, and to come, are wholly fixed beforehand by necessity from infinite time.'

CHAPTER X

'The first principle of the universe he supposes to have been air dark with cloud and wind, or rather a blast of cloudy air, and a turbid chaos dark as Erebus; and these were boundless and for long ages had no limit…From its connexion Mot was produced, which some say is mud, and others a putrescence of watery compound; and out of this came every germ of creation, and the generation of the universe. So there were certain animals which had no sensation, and out of them grew intelligent animals, and were called "Zophasemin," that is "observers of heaven"; and they were formed like the shape of an egg. Also Mot burst forth into light, and sun, and moon, and stars, and the great constellations.'

Such was their cosmogony, introducing downright atheism. But let us see next how he states the generation of animals to have arisen. He says, then:

'And when the air burst into light, both the sea and the land became heated, and thence arose winds and clouds, and very great downpours and floods of the waters of heaven. So after they were separated, and removed from their proper place because of the sun's heat, and all met together again in the air dashing together one against another, thunderings and lightnings were produced, and at the rattle of the thunder the intelligent animals already described woke up, and were scared at the sound, and began to move both on land and sea, male and female.'
BOOK VII

For of all mankind these [Hebrews] were the first and sole people who from the very first foundation of social life devoted their thought to rational speculation; and having set themselves to study reverently the physical laws of the universe, first as to elements of bodies, earth, water, air, fire, of which they perceived that this universe consisted, the sun also, and moon, and stars, they considered them to be not gods, but works of God; for they perceived that the nature of bodily substance is not only irrational but also lifeless, inasmuch as it is ever in flux and liable to perish. They further argued that it is not possible that the order of the whole cosmos, so well and wisely composed, and full as it is of living beings both rational and irrational, should have a spontaneous cause ascribed to it, nor possible to suppose the creative principle of the living to be lifeless, nor the formative principle of the rational to be itself irrational.

But since a building could never be spontaneously composed of timber and stones, nor yet a garment be completed without a weaver, nor cities and states without laws and an order of government, nor a ship without a pilot, nor the smallest instrument of art exist except through an artificer, nor a ship ever gain a sheltering harbour without a good pilot, therefore neither can the nature of the universal elements, lifeless and irrational as it is, ever by its own law apart from the supreme wisdom of God attain to reason and life. With these thoughts then and such as these the fathers of the Hebrew religion, with purified mind and clear-sighted eyes of the soul, learned from the grandeur and beauty of His creatures to worship God the Creator of all.

CHAPTER IX

Let us then begin with God, after having in the first place invoked His aid through our Saviour.

CHAPTER XI

THEIR system then sets forth the first principle of theology by beginning from the power which made and organized the universe, not by syllogistic reasoning or plausible arguments, but in a more dogmatic and didactic manner of divination by aid of the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration Moses commenced his doctrine of God in the following manner: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'

Then he says: 'God said, Let there be light, and there was light.' And again: 'God said, Let there be a firmament: and it was so.' And again: 'God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, yielding seed after his kind and in his likeness, and every fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind, upon the earth: and it was so.' And again: 'God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: and it was so.' And again: 'God said, Let the waters bring forth moving creatures of living souls after their kind, and all the fowls of the heaven after their kind: and it was so.' And again: 'Let the earth bring forth four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so.'

The Scripture then by saying in these places 'God said' represents the divine command, and that God willed all things to be thus made, not, however, that we need suppose Him to speak with a voice and words. But summing up the whole statement, it says: 'This is the book of the generation of heaven, and earth, in the day that God made the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein.'

Such is the theology of the Hebrews, instructing us that all things subsist by the creative Word of God: and afterwards it teaches that the whole world was not left thus

CHAPTER XVII

HERE again the Phoenician and Egyptian account of the origin of animal life introduced spontaneous generation of all living beings upon the earth including even man, and described one and the same nature as springing forth in the like fortuitous manner from the earth, supposing that there is no difference at all between the irrational and the rational soul and being.