The trouble with theistic evolution (or Christian Darwinism) is that it says something about God that is different from what God says about God.
It makes a different relationship between God's words and actions from that which God states.
10 July 2011
8 July 2011
Adios theory
Published in the Sydney Morning Herald 25 June 2011: trouble is Lyell was right...adios theory!
5 July 2011
4 big moves
I recently re-listened to Al Mohler's address on the age of the universe at a recent Ligoner Ministeries Conference.
In it he remarked that the Bible has four essential movements that condition the span of action between God and man: creation, fall, redemption and new creation.
These are four moments in the relation between God and us, where God's actions are material in the relationship.
And the relationship parameters are isotropic. That is, the zone of contact doesn't shift between them: sometimes metaphor, sometimes imaginary, sometimes real-world. They all must be real world and interact with our life-perspective, our experience as subjects, uniformly. Some cannot be appraised as 'lets agree this is important' (myth), and others as 'this occupies unique space in the time-space zone that effects and constrains my actions, choices and life-perspective'.
But even more, the zone of contact is action by God.
Most of the views of the account in Genesis 1 that depart from the direct meaning also seem to set aside that this is God telling us what he has done. Him describing the actions through which he represents himself to us in an unavoidably meaningfully tangible manner. It is not some artful allusion to 'teach that God is creator' but is the sequence of things that he did, being creator by which he communicates himself to us, and demonstrates that his claim to being creator is not empty, but delivered! So its 'personal'. Most of what I've read seems to want to de-personalise the account; yet the Bible is all about God's actions towards his creation, within his creation to the end of the new creation; once it is denied that he can give information about his acts, or that they occur in terms of different parameters from all his other acts, and from how acts 'work' (with causal continuity and contingency) in the time-space creation, then we don't have God's telling us about himself at all, but about someone/thing else. Strange way for one who is love to operate then. Does one write to a friend to tell him what one didn't do, or what one did do, as genuine self-revelation?
A friend made this comment in response to the above:
Interesting to note that when Philip said to our Lord Jesus "Lord show us the Father and that will be enough for us." The Lord Jesus replied with "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father...at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."
The historical evidence of the Lord Jesus' recreative acts gave testimony of who he is; and so the evidence of God's creative acts giving testimony to who the creator is. Undo one, and you undo the other.
In it he remarked that the Bible has four essential movements that condition the span of action between God and man: creation, fall, redemption and new creation.
These are four moments in the relation between God and us, where God's actions are material in the relationship.
And the relationship parameters are isotropic. That is, the zone of contact doesn't shift between them: sometimes metaphor, sometimes imaginary, sometimes real-world. They all must be real world and interact with our life-perspective, our experience as subjects, uniformly. Some cannot be appraised as 'lets agree this is important' (myth), and others as 'this occupies unique space in the time-space zone that effects and constrains my actions, choices and life-perspective'.
But even more, the zone of contact is action by God.
Most of the views of the account in Genesis 1 that depart from the direct meaning also seem to set aside that this is God telling us what he has done. Him describing the actions through which he represents himself to us in an unavoidably meaningfully tangible manner. It is not some artful allusion to 'teach that God is creator' but is the sequence of things that he did, being creator by which he communicates himself to us, and demonstrates that his claim to being creator is not empty, but delivered! So its 'personal'. Most of what I've read seems to want to de-personalise the account; yet the Bible is all about God's actions towards his creation, within his creation to the end of the new creation; once it is denied that he can give information about his acts, or that they occur in terms of different parameters from all his other acts, and from how acts 'work' (with causal continuity and contingency) in the time-space creation, then we don't have God's telling us about himself at all, but about someone/thing else. Strange way for one who is love to operate then. Does one write to a friend to tell him what one didn't do, or what one did do, as genuine self-revelation?
A friend made this comment in response to the above:
Interesting to note that when Philip said to our Lord Jesus "Lord show us the Father and that will be enough for us." The Lord Jesus replied with "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father...at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."
The historical evidence of the Lord Jesus' recreative acts gave testimony of who he is; and so the evidence of God's creative acts giving testimony to who the creator is. Undo one, and you undo the other.
30 June 2011
Creation outside Genesis
I was privilaged to attend a conference at St. John's Park Baptist Church recently titled Getting Genesis Right (check under sermons for the sound files).
One of the lectures was titled Creation outside Genesis.
This is the list of biblical references discussed (compiled by Dr. William Barrick of The Master's Seminary):
Exodus 20:8-11; 31:17
Deuteronomy 4:32
2 Kings 19:15
1 Chronicles 16:26
2 Chronicles 2:12
Nehemiah 9:6
Job 4:17; 9:8; 38:1-41:34 (38:4, 12, 32-33; 40:15)
Psalms 8:5-6; 33:6; 89:11-12, 47; 96:5; 104:2-5, 24; 115:15; 136:5; 148:4-5
Proverbs 14:31; 17:5; 22:2
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Isaiah 37:16; 40:26-28; 42:5, 12, 18; 44:24; 45:7; 12; 18; 51:13
Jeremiah 10:12, 16; 32:17; 51:15, 19
Amos 4:13
Malachi 2:10
Matthew 19:4; 25:34
Mark 10:6; 13:19
Luke 3:38
John 1:1-5, 9, 10
Acts 4:24; 14:15; 17:24
Romans 1:20, 25; 5:14; 8:19-22, 39
1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:9; 15:22, 45
2 Corinthians 4:6
Ephesians 3:9
Colossians 1:13-16
1 Timothy 2:13-14; 4:4
Hebrews 1:2; 11:3
1 Peter 1:20; 4:19
Revelation 4:11; 5:13; 10:6; 13:8.
One of the great themes in many of these references is that God's being creator provides the reason for us worshipping him. It provides the basis for the connection between creator and creature; embedded in acts which occured in the time and space that we occupy.
One of the lectures was titled Creation outside Genesis.
This is the list of biblical references discussed (compiled by Dr. William Barrick of The Master's Seminary):
Exodus 20:8-11; 31:17
Deuteronomy 4:32
2 Kings 19:15
1 Chronicles 16:26
2 Chronicles 2:12
Nehemiah 9:6
Job 4:17; 9:8; 38:1-41:34 (38:4, 12, 32-33; 40:15)
Psalms 8:5-6; 33:6; 89:11-12, 47; 96:5; 104:2-5, 24; 115:15; 136:5; 148:4-5
Proverbs 14:31; 17:5; 22:2
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Isaiah 37:16; 40:26-28; 42:5, 12, 18; 44:24; 45:7; 12; 18; 51:13
Jeremiah 10:12, 16; 32:17; 51:15, 19
Amos 4:13
Malachi 2:10
Matthew 19:4; 25:34
Mark 10:6; 13:19
Luke 3:38
John 1:1-5, 9, 10
Acts 4:24; 14:15; 17:24
Romans 1:20, 25; 5:14; 8:19-22, 39
1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:9; 15:22, 45
2 Corinthians 4:6
Ephesians 3:9
Colossians 1:13-16
1 Timothy 2:13-14; 4:4
Hebrews 1:2; 11:3
1 Peter 1:20; 4:19
Revelation 4:11; 5:13; 10:6; 13:8.
One of the great themes in many of these references is that God's being creator provides the reason for us worshipping him. It provides the basis for the connection between creator and creature; embedded in acts which occured in the time and space that we occupy.
26 June 2011
Symbolic Sin!
In my church's latest study group notes, the following question was posed:
As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol heralds its dereification, in this context. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about the real life to which it refers.
So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps it is taken as symbolic of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol? How does the 'symbol' participate in the connected reality of relationships over time and space?
What the passage does is give to us the source of the current shared reality (shared between us, and between us and God). Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied and only can know from his word).
And if it is a symbol, what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as subjects? Where does symbol stop and the concrete or actual start?
I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.
No, it just doesn't wash.
So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and itself demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!
The words of C. S. Lewis are apposite here:
5. Read Genesis 3.7-24. In these verses we see the consequences of human sin in the breakdown of relationships between people and people and God. In this highly symbolic section we see a reality that is still with us today. What area of brokenness troubles you the most?
As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol heralds its dereification, in this context. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about the real life to which it refers.
So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps it is taken as symbolic of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol? How does the 'symbol' participate in the connected reality of relationships over time and space?
What the passage does is give to us the source of the current shared reality (shared between us, and between us and God). Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied and only can know from his word).
And if it is a symbol, what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as subjects? Where does symbol stop and the concrete or actual start?
I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.
No, it just doesn't wash.
So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and itself demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!
The words of C. S. Lewis are apposite here:
"These [critics] ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seeds and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."
"The argument runs like this. All the details are derived from our present experience; but the reality transcends our experience; therefore all the details are wholly and equally symbolic....[However, you cannot know that everything in the representation of a thing is symbolic unless you have independent access to the thing and can compare it with the representation."
25 June 2011
So, what is it, then?
In recent posts I've referred to some who claim that Genesis 1 is other than history. Typically these people will say that it's analogy, parable, metaphor, allegory, polemic or anything but an account of events that happened.
Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.
The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.
On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)
This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.
Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.
Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.
The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.
On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)
This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.
Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.
24 June 2011
Beasties
At the St Philip's Bible talk today (Thursday 23 June), in the series on Job, we reached God's rhetorical discourse to Job; the one where God mentions two particular beasts: behemoth and leviathan. Justin told us that they were most likely referring to the hippopotamus and elephant. Or perhaps mythical beasts: fairy story characters.
Justin, I don't think so; on any count.
Firstly, look at the descriptions: His tail sways like a cedar (Job 40:17); doesn't remind me of a hippo!
[Interesting to note Job 40:15b: "made along with you" made like I made you, or made at the time I made you? I'll check it out; but there appears to be an element of confluence in their creation.]
Then leviathan: his back has rows of shields (Job 41:15), his snorting throws out flashes of fire (Job 41:18)! Not like any elephant I've seen!
Both explanations are improbable, particularly when there are known animals that the descriptions to fit' only they are extinct. Of course, one does become perplexed by Job's references when the history in the Bible is set aside and the ear is bent to the arid world-story of materialism that starts from a completely different premise to the Bible, and naturally has different conclusion!.
But would the creatures be mythical? I think not. The detail is too fine and unelaborated for myth, and to naturally descriptive, and many parts of the descriptions are 'every day' observations. And if they were myth, then what sort of God is worshipped when he has to go to fairy tales to depict his works, and not to his own creation; which itself is set in the Bible as the basis for him being worshipped by us!
Justin, I don't think so; on any count.
Firstly, look at the descriptions: His tail sways like a cedar (Job 40:17); doesn't remind me of a hippo!
[Interesting to note Job 40:15b: "made along with you" made like I made you, or made at the time I made you? I'll check it out; but there appears to be an element of confluence in their creation.]
Then leviathan: his back has rows of shields (Job 41:15), his snorting throws out flashes of fire (Job 41:18)! Not like any elephant I've seen!
Both explanations are improbable, particularly when there are known animals that the descriptions to fit' only they are extinct. Of course, one does become perplexed by Job's references when the history in the Bible is set aside and the ear is bent to the arid world-story of materialism that starts from a completely different premise to the Bible, and naturally has different conclusion!.
But would the creatures be mythical? I think not. The detail is too fine and unelaborated for myth, and to naturally descriptive, and many parts of the descriptions are 'every day' observations. And if they were myth, then what sort of God is worshipped when he has to go to fairy tales to depict his works, and not to his own creation; which itself is set in the Bible as the basis for him being worshipped by us!
20 June 2011
History, or not?
In the latest issue of Creation magazine there's an article by Andrew Kulikovsky "Common Errors". He refers to the errors usually made by people who attempt to read an evolutionary world view back into the Bible, specifically, Genesis 1, of course.
One of the errors he mentions, and a typical one (see this article on John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity for discussion of this type of error), is the assertion that Genesis 1 gives us a theological rather than an historical account. Bruce Waltke, Bernard Ramm and a few others are cited in this connection.
The trouble with this view is that it supposes that 'theological intent' can exist detached from the setting of theological interchange where meaning is made (the real world, and recursively, the world resulting from the creative work set out in Genesis 1). Thus theology is 'carried' by history, in the Bible; it does not exist in some other world detached from this one: a kind of theological upper storey (to use Francis Schaeffer's analogy) that doesn't have feet on the same ground that our feet are on.
Andrew makes this very point, quoting Graeme Goldsworthy (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture), "The fact is that the whole Bible presents its message as theology within a framework of history".
Theology is connected through history (that is the recount of events in space and time) with the domain of life concerns that dominate our thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is in and makes sense in our world because it is us in our world who are subject of God's salvific communication. If this were not so, there would be no tangible congruence between theological statements and our possible apprehension of them. They would reduce to the nonsense of Zen koans.
A further question one would have to ask of this error, is its basis: how do its exponents know that certain parts of the Bible are 'theological' and not historical, when the explanation of the historical is typically the source of theological information, as God explains the significance of events (especially those set in historical narrative language, like Genesis 1). It is only history that makes theology meaningful. History is the domain of relationships between actors, people, agents; and God the creator in relation to us is on this plane: relationships that have actual reality do not exist outside of historical circumscription, because then they cease to be relationships and the very point of God's creating would evaporate. This is the great theological error that is made by those who want to think that theology and history exist in separate worlds.
One of the errors he mentions, and a typical one (see this article on John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity for discussion of this type of error), is the assertion that Genesis 1 gives us a theological rather than an historical account. Bruce Waltke, Bernard Ramm and a few others are cited in this connection.
The trouble with this view is that it supposes that 'theological intent' can exist detached from the setting of theological interchange where meaning is made (the real world, and recursively, the world resulting from the creative work set out in Genesis 1). Thus theology is 'carried' by history, in the Bible; it does not exist in some other world detached from this one: a kind of theological upper storey (to use Francis Schaeffer's analogy) that doesn't have feet on the same ground that our feet are on.
Andrew makes this very point, quoting Graeme Goldsworthy (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture), "The fact is that the whole Bible presents its message as theology within a framework of history".
Theology is connected through history (that is the recount of events in space and time) with the domain of life concerns that dominate our thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is in and makes sense in our world because it is us in our world who are subject of God's salvific communication. If this were not so, there would be no tangible congruence between theological statements and our possible apprehension of them. They would reduce to the nonsense of Zen koans.
A further question one would have to ask of this error, is its basis: how do its exponents know that certain parts of the Bible are 'theological' and not historical, when the explanation of the historical is typically the source of theological information, as God explains the significance of events (especially those set in historical narrative language, like Genesis 1). It is only history that makes theology meaningful. History is the domain of relationships between actors, people, agents; and God the creator in relation to us is on this plane: relationships that have actual reality do not exist outside of historical circumscription, because then they cease to be relationships and the very point of God's creating would evaporate. This is the great theological error that is made by those who want to think that theology and history exist in separate worlds.
17 June 2011
Sun-Herald letter
I saw this letter in the Sydney 'Sun Herald' on Sunday last:
Jean Whittle (Letters June 5) begs the question that God is necessarily a created being like we are and thus stands in need of a prior causal creator. Theists will tell you that God is eternal and consequently has never come into existence. He just always is.
The dilemma facing Jean, indeed confronting all atheists, is whether their “god”, matter, is eternal or popped into existence from absolutely no-thing and from no cause. While the first alternative is purely religious, the second is metaphysical nonsense: from no-thing, nothing comes.
After deciding, maybe Jean can tell us theists how matter or no-thing produced the non-material biological information that underwrites life, and brought into being love, consciousness and morality.
The atheists' only explanation, evolution, fails badly, scientifically and philosophically, against theism. After all, a supremely intelligent and all-loving God certainly seems a more viable option to explain reality than, well, no-thing.
Sincerely yours
Marc Kay
Jean Whittle (Letters June 5) begs the question that God is necessarily a created being like we are and thus stands in need of a prior causal creator. Theists will tell you that God is eternal and consequently has never come into existence. He just always is.
The dilemma facing Jean, indeed confronting all atheists, is whether their “god”, matter, is eternal or popped into existence from absolutely no-thing and from no cause. While the first alternative is purely religious, the second is metaphysical nonsense: from no-thing, nothing comes.
After deciding, maybe Jean can tell us theists how matter or no-thing produced the non-material biological information that underwrites life, and brought into being love, consciousness and morality.
The atheists' only explanation, evolution, fails badly, scientifically and philosophically, against theism. After all, a supremely intelligent and all-loving God certainly seems a more viable option to explain reality than, well, no-thing.
Sincerely yours
Marc Kay
15 June 2011
Murder
At a recent lunch time Bible talk at St Philip's York Street, Justin observed (in the context of discussing Job 28)
If natural selection is true, then there would be nothing wrong with murder. It would be one means of the strong eliminating the weak.
And if the origin of humanity, let alone the cosmos, was as evolutionary dogma has it, this would be so; even if the dogma is bolted on to a theistic framework: as in theistic-evolution, it would remain true that murder to achieve success was built into the structure of reality, and moral questions were mere questions of convenience, and not having real moment.
Thus the dilemma of those who think that God 'used' evolution to create...they end up with a morally divided God, who's creation is different in type to him, where his glory is found (Roms 1:20), not in peace and joy and love, in the vanquishment of the weak.
If natural selection is true, then there would be nothing wrong with murder. It would be one means of the strong eliminating the weak.
And if the origin of humanity, let alone the cosmos, was as evolutionary dogma has it, this would be so; even if the dogma is bolted on to a theistic framework: as in theistic-evolution, it would remain true that murder to achieve success was built into the structure of reality, and moral questions were mere questions of convenience, and not having real moment.
Thus the dilemma of those who think that God 'used' evolution to create...they end up with a morally divided God, who's creation is different in type to him, where his glory is found (Roms 1:20), not in peace and joy and love, in the vanquishment of the weak.
10 June 2011
What they say!
I've heard a lot of neo-evangelicals claim that the question of origins/the biblical doctrine of creation, is a rather unimportant issue in either a pastoral or evangelical context.
I think this clip from a recent Sydney Morning Herald contradicts that.
I think this clip from a recent Sydney Morning Herald contradicts that.
6 June 2011
Plato
There’s a philosophical tendency in the West, following Plato, to conclude that if a theory isn’t working, there must be something wrong with reality.
from Harvard Business Review May 2011: Nonaka, The Wise Leader
Reminds me a lot of neo-evangelicals who concluded that because the 'theory' that God created as he set out in Genesis is not like the popular theory of evolution, and is contrary to an implausibly ancient earth; that is, it doesn't 'work'; then there must be something wrong with the reality of his word...so, of course, much sweat and ink is spent on saying that Genesis 1, etc. doesn't mean what it clearly says!
5 June 2011
Theistic evolution?
Termed by Al Mohler, an oxymoron, and I couldn't agree more, this web page on theistic evolution gives a good run down of the idea that Christian revelatory theism is somehow compatible with non-christian speculative materialism.
30 May 2011
Cat and Dog Theology
Recently I attended an evening with Gerald Robison of Cat and Dog Theology: a surprisingly fun ministry.
After Gerald's talk question time started and a couple of questions dealt with the recurrent 'good God, world of evil' subject.
One of the questions went something like "does God like earthquakes and tsunamis?" because, I guess, the questioner thought that they were part of the 'very good' world that God created. This may have been indicative of a poorly taught or understood theology of creation and its place in the biblical (the 'real') history of the physical world; or a failure to integrate information about spiritual matters, with the covenantal relationship between the material world and our concourse with God.
Gerald's answer focused on Romans 8:22 ("For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now".); and given the time constraints, it appealed to me as a pretty good answer. He went on to affirm that despite the effects of sin on our world, 'God was still in control".
The answer, however, did not quite satisfy. There is a more fulsome response to deal with the why of natural 'evil' (earthquakes and the like), and the notion of God's being 'in control'; the latter being a particularly objectional piece of contemporary reflexive determinism.
That the world is not as God created is clear in scripture: the cosmos left God's hand as 'very good' (Gen 1:31). We are twice removed from this state: firstly by the fall, where God ceased his intimate relationship with his creation (Gen 3:9, for example), and secondly by the flood, and its aftermath.
In the contemporary Anglican church the question of natural evil arises, perhaps, because of the inroads made into the doctrine of creation by worldly admixes of 'theistic-evolution' or Christian Darwinism, and various other reconfigurations of the doctrine brought by metaphorical readings of Genesis 1, etc. Thus, I suspect, the world contorted by disruption is mistakenly 'read' as the very good world that left God's mind as revealed in the genesian account; and God is somehow identified with the blind, relentless, meaningless, cruelty and frustration that 'evolution' entails.
But, not so. God created 'very good' consistently with his goodness and love; he took pleasure in what he had done and gave to us; he also will restore the entire creation to joyful fellowship with him and peace; overturning any idea that this broken world represents, in its brokenness, God's nature. [Despite its broken state, Paul insists that it does still make representation of God]
'Control'
The notion of God being 'in control' comes up frequently, and appears to be used by Christians, in many cases, as the final support for their confidence in God's capability to finally save them. However, the glibness of its expression conjures up for me the image of God as puppeteer; which I don't find in the Scriptures.
Without grappling with the vast world of debate on this topic, and its many colours and flavours (canvassed in Christian Determinism, as one example served up at the top of a recent Google search); I will put down but a few notes.
God's being 'in control' strikes me as a god disengaged from his creation, and one who imposes on his creation or people (those in his image, and therefore not made to be 'controlled') the events and circumstances of their lives.
But God our creator represents himself differently to this. I think of Romans 8:28 where Paul tells us that God (actively) works all things together for good...so, God engaged, at work and, I think one can extend to him working in the world that we are working in, he to reliably bring about what he wills not necessarily over against us, but through and by us, even if we intend otherwise.
The way the teleological dimension of God's relationship with the cosmos is expressed in Job, is I think, what is largely in mind when people talk of him being 'in control'; but the biblical expression is far more helpful: Job 42:2, for instance, where God's ends will out: but reading this with the Romans passage, it is not, I suggest, by 'brute force' fiat, but by his working, by his Spirit in and with the minds and motivations of his creatures in all their circumstances.
I find myself discomforted by the absolutist terms that speak more of a Greek philosophical tradition ('in control' being of this ilk), and am more comfortable with God as represented in the Bible as living with us, and taking a part in the pattern of life, albeit a supreme part, by which his objectives are never thwarted and always achieved: so in these terms, he is not a puppet master, but the supreme moulder, leader, guide and 'captain' of the way of his creation; even his creation marred in rebellion and seeking to be against him.
We, though, in his church, are part of the new creation, seeking not to be against him, but to be entierly for him; but the new creation has intersected with the old, and God achieves his goal while we are wading still through the mess and sometimes horror of life in this now broken creation. We live, as it were, in two creations at once, and this living sustained in God's light by his indwelling Spirit and engaged by the life of prayer.
Just as an aside, I think that some confusion arises when people think of pre-destination, in this context, and perhaps think the Bible teaches that God has pre-destined 'you', the individual, to share eternity with him. I don't think this is so; rather, the destination of the 'train' of the church is eternity with him; but who is on the train is a different matter: not entirely different, but nevertheless, different, as God seeks and saves those who are lost, and would that all come to know him.
After Gerald's talk question time started and a couple of questions dealt with the recurrent 'good God, world of evil' subject.
One of the questions went something like "does God like earthquakes and tsunamis?" because, I guess, the questioner thought that they were part of the 'very good' world that God created. This may have been indicative of a poorly taught or understood theology of creation and its place in the biblical (the 'real') history of the physical world; or a failure to integrate information about spiritual matters, with the covenantal relationship between the material world and our concourse with God.
Gerald's answer focused on Romans 8:22 ("For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now".); and given the time constraints, it appealed to me as a pretty good answer. He went on to affirm that despite the effects of sin on our world, 'God was still in control".
The answer, however, did not quite satisfy. There is a more fulsome response to deal with the why of natural 'evil' (earthquakes and the like), and the notion of God's being 'in control'; the latter being a particularly objectional piece of contemporary reflexive determinism.
That the world is not as God created is clear in scripture: the cosmos left God's hand as 'very good' (Gen 1:31). We are twice removed from this state: firstly by the fall, where God ceased his intimate relationship with his creation (Gen 3:9, for example), and secondly by the flood, and its aftermath.
In the contemporary Anglican church the question of natural evil arises, perhaps, because of the inroads made into the doctrine of creation by worldly admixes of 'theistic-evolution' or Christian Darwinism, and various other reconfigurations of the doctrine brought by metaphorical readings of Genesis 1, etc. Thus, I suspect, the world contorted by disruption is mistakenly 'read' as the very good world that left God's mind as revealed in the genesian account; and God is somehow identified with the blind, relentless, meaningless, cruelty and frustration that 'evolution' entails.
But, not so. God created 'very good' consistently with his goodness and love; he took pleasure in what he had done and gave to us; he also will restore the entire creation to joyful fellowship with him and peace; overturning any idea that this broken world represents, in its brokenness, God's nature. [Despite its broken state, Paul insists that it does still make representation of God]
'Control'
The notion of God being 'in control' comes up frequently, and appears to be used by Christians, in many cases, as the final support for their confidence in God's capability to finally save them. However, the glibness of its expression conjures up for me the image of God as puppeteer; which I don't find in the Scriptures.
Without grappling with the vast world of debate on this topic, and its many colours and flavours (canvassed in Christian Determinism, as one example served up at the top of a recent Google search); I will put down but a few notes.
God's being 'in control' strikes me as a god disengaged from his creation, and one who imposes on his creation or people (those in his image, and therefore not made to be 'controlled') the events and circumstances of their lives.
But God our creator represents himself differently to this. I think of Romans 8:28 where Paul tells us that God (actively) works all things together for good...so, God engaged, at work and, I think one can extend to him working in the world that we are working in, he to reliably bring about what he wills not necessarily over against us, but through and by us, even if we intend otherwise.
The way the teleological dimension of God's relationship with the cosmos is expressed in Job, is I think, what is largely in mind when people talk of him being 'in control'; but the biblical expression is far more helpful: Job 42:2, for instance, where God's ends will out: but reading this with the Romans passage, it is not, I suggest, by 'brute force' fiat, but by his working, by his Spirit in and with the minds and motivations of his creatures in all their circumstances.
I find myself discomforted by the absolutist terms that speak more of a Greek philosophical tradition ('in control' being of this ilk), and am more comfortable with God as represented in the Bible as living with us, and taking a part in the pattern of life, albeit a supreme part, by which his objectives are never thwarted and always achieved: so in these terms, he is not a puppet master, but the supreme moulder, leader, guide and 'captain' of the way of his creation; even his creation marred in rebellion and seeking to be against him.
We, though, in his church, are part of the new creation, seeking not to be against him, but to be entierly for him; but the new creation has intersected with the old, and God achieves his goal while we are wading still through the mess and sometimes horror of life in this now broken creation. We live, as it were, in two creations at once, and this living sustained in God's light by his indwelling Spirit and engaged by the life of prayer.
Just as an aside, I think that some confusion arises when people think of pre-destination, in this context, and perhaps think the Bible teaches that God has pre-destined 'you', the individual, to share eternity with him. I don't think this is so; rather, the destination of the 'train' of the church is eternity with him; but who is on the train is a different matter: not entirely different, but nevertheless, different, as God seeks and saves those who are lost, and would that all come to know him.
28 May 2011
No longer part of eternity
From a recent article by Elizabeth Farrelly (touted as an architect on the Herald's website, but she isn't: not registered in NSW so cannot be one!)
It captures very nicely the wrong-headedness that parlously descends upon as by evolutionary fictions, and spreads through the church due to its faustian bargain in 'theistic evolution' reconfiguring Genesis 1 into a metaphor for something else!
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/mystery-dies-when-we-dont-see-ourselves-as-part-of-eternity-20110427-1dwmy.html?posted=successful#ixzz1KlKuot6U
It captures very nicely the wrong-headedness that parlously descends upon as by evolutionary fictions, and spreads through the church due to its faustian bargain in 'theistic evolution' reconfiguring Genesis 1 into a metaphor for something else!
For in big, fat, rich modernity, as you know, time is money. We may live twice as long as those mediaevals, but our time cannot be wasted on the merely beautiful or the merely worshipful. This is because we no longer see ourselves as part of eternity but simply as the poor, bare, forked animals that Darwinian modernism bequeathed us. Our allotted span is all we have, so it matters...
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/mystery-dies-when-we-dont-see-ourselves-as-part-of-eternity-20110427-1dwmy.html?posted=successful#ixzz1KlKuot6U
27 May 2011
Facts from non-facts
There are a number of views of Genesis 1 that fall into a basic conceptual approach to the text. It is this: the information contained in the passage is not factual. It does not correspond to events in the real world in either sequence or substance. However, Genesis 1 does teach that God is creator, that he is (somehow) sovereign over creation and that he has created a cosmos that is consistently well ordered, predictable and is subject to uniform causal regularities.
What is not explained by this basic view is how all this fact is derived from something that is non factual on its face!
It seems that to hold that one can draw the factual from the non-factual; denying that the material on its face conveys facts, but that somehow underneath it reveals something that it does not do on the surface, in the direct meaning of the text, is not a mark of thought, but of conjuring!
What is pretty obvious to me, is that this program requires the material to be sorted into that which has objective meaning and that which does not, not on its own grounds, but by some criterion that is private to the interpreter.
But how would we know that interpreter A, in rejecting that the direct reading of the text is factual, is able to know that other matters in the text, not directly accessible to the direct reader, are where its facticity lies? Indeed, how would we know that interpreter A has anything of value to say against interpreter B who responds to the text on its face? Or is it just that one garners credentials from the occult act of finding something beneath the text (occult here referring to 'hidden')? What is the basis either in the text or by reference to something outside the text to say that a fact can be deduced from a text which itself contains no facts?
That doesn't sound like even a rational reading of a text, let alone a spiritually responsive one!
So, lets get it straight; most modern post/neo/quasi evangelicals would say that Genesis 1 teaches us that God is creator, but does not provide any factual material, any reliable content, which communicates that! So where does the idea that God is creator come from if that creator cannot communicate the basis of the attribution to those he created in language which is the medium presumably created for communication between persons, or, if the Bible is right, is ontologically basic?
This is a particularly pointed question when most such PNQ evangelicals fall into line with the idea of evolution being thoroughly (or not quite thoroughly) explanatory of origins; an idea which in itself seems to feel no epistemological deficiency; and actively denies that personhood is basically real, but rather, that material is; personhood being a mere outworking of an assembly of material.
John Dixon, who I mentioned in my previous post might be one of these non-facts teach facts chaps. I'd ask him: by what criterion do you draw from a text whose facticity you deny, conclusions which are only validly available by reference to the very text you deny can provide them.
The decision to claim that some facts are established in the face of the rejection of their medium is arbitrary; those who espouse it don't have any substantial ground to reject the contrary view, that the fact they claim is carried only by the facts that convey it. To deny this is more than perverse, it is crazy.
What is not explained by this basic view is how all this fact is derived from something that is non factual on its face!
It seems that to hold that one can draw the factual from the non-factual; denying that the material on its face conveys facts, but that somehow underneath it reveals something that it does not do on the surface, in the direct meaning of the text, is not a mark of thought, but of conjuring!
What is pretty obvious to me, is that this program requires the material to be sorted into that which has objective meaning and that which does not, not on its own grounds, but by some criterion that is private to the interpreter.
But how would we know that interpreter A, in rejecting that the direct reading of the text is factual, is able to know that other matters in the text, not directly accessible to the direct reader, are where its facticity lies? Indeed, how would we know that interpreter A has anything of value to say against interpreter B who responds to the text on its face? Or is it just that one garners credentials from the occult act of finding something beneath the text (occult here referring to 'hidden')? What is the basis either in the text or by reference to something outside the text to say that a fact can be deduced from a text which itself contains no facts?
That doesn't sound like even a rational reading of a text, let alone a spiritually responsive one!
So, lets get it straight; most modern post/neo/quasi evangelicals would say that Genesis 1 teaches us that God is creator, but does not provide any factual material, any reliable content, which communicates that! So where does the idea that God is creator come from if that creator cannot communicate the basis of the attribution to those he created in language which is the medium presumably created for communication between persons, or, if the Bible is right, is ontologically basic?
This is a particularly pointed question when most such PNQ evangelicals fall into line with the idea of evolution being thoroughly (or not quite thoroughly) explanatory of origins; an idea which in itself seems to feel no epistemological deficiency; and actively denies that personhood is basically real, but rather, that material is; personhood being a mere outworking of an assembly of material.
John Dixon, who I mentioned in my previous post might be one of these non-facts teach facts chaps. I'd ask him: by what criterion do you draw from a text whose facticity you deny, conclusions which are only validly available by reference to the very text you deny can provide them.
The decision to claim that some facts are established in the face of the rejection of their medium is arbitrary; those who espouse it don't have any substantial ground to reject the contrary view, that the fact they claim is carried only by the facts that convey it. To deny this is more than perverse, it is crazy.
15 May 2011
Why age?
Comment I posted on a recent article on John Dickson's teaching about earth and its age.
It is saddening to see Christian teachers like John Dickson wanting to support a conceptualisation of the world that separates it from God, indeed, wants to make it independent of God's revelation in a fashion that has more to do with paganism than Christianity. The pagan worldview typically sees the world either as 'given' or as independent of any intelligent cause or agency. Long ages abet this idea.
Further support for paganist ideas comes in denying that the Bible could or would want to include information about our physical cosmos or world; yet the physical setting is clearly significant in the scriptures: it shows us our very tangible connection with God, and God's direct connection with his creation, thus establishing who he is for us, and who we are before him.
In denying that the opening chapters of Genesis have anything concrete to say about these topics people like Dickson, etc. effectively say that the 'god' they conceive is very different from the God of the Bible, who sets out his program for relationship with us in terms parameterised in the terms by which we know the very world that he says that he created.
Moreover, the approach that severs the direct genetic connection between God and his creation, and ultimately us, de-personalises the connection God declares through Genesis 1:1 to 2:4; de-personalisation is precisely the fruit of pagan ideas. I wonder if this implication is seen by others?
It is saddening to see Christian teachers like John Dickson wanting to support a conceptualisation of the world that separates it from God, indeed, wants to make it independent of God's revelation in a fashion that has more to do with paganism than Christianity. The pagan worldview typically sees the world either as 'given' or as independent of any intelligent cause or agency. Long ages abet this idea.
Further support for paganist ideas comes in denying that the Bible could or would want to include information about our physical cosmos or world; yet the physical setting is clearly significant in the scriptures: it shows us our very tangible connection with God, and God's direct connection with his creation, thus establishing who he is for us, and who we are before him.
In denying that the opening chapters of Genesis have anything concrete to say about these topics people like Dickson, etc. effectively say that the 'god' they conceive is very different from the God of the Bible, who sets out his program for relationship with us in terms parameterised in the terms by which we know the very world that he says that he created.
Moreover, the approach that severs the direct genetic connection between God and his creation, and ultimately us, de-personalises the connection God declares through Genesis 1:1 to 2:4; de-personalisation is precisely the fruit of pagan ideas. I wonder if this implication is seen by others?
27 April 2011
The 5-fold formula
There have been a few schemes that apply a structure to Genesis 1; usually they are schemes to avoid the direct reading of the passage (e.g. the 'framework' hypothesis), but oddly, the authors of these schemes usually fail to deal with the passage's most obvious structuring scheme.
Joseph Pipa in his lecture on the doctrine of creation puts it this way:
Moses adopts a formula much more powerful and pervasive than the parallel between the days 1-3 and 4-6. It is a five-fold formula that is used fairly consistently with each of the six days, the work of each day is described by the five-fold formula:
1. the act of creation,
2. the declaration of fulfillment,
3. the statement of purpose,
4. the expression of delight and
5. the indication of time.
In each event the act of creation is described in a two-fold manner: firstly the word of creation, and that is complimented by the particular works of creation.
The word predominates as we read this chapter: "and God said", shaping the particular out of the initial 'mass' of creation.
Joseph Pipa in his lecture on the doctrine of creation puts it this way:
Moses adopts a formula much more powerful and pervasive than the parallel between the days 1-3 and 4-6. It is a five-fold formula that is used fairly consistently with each of the six days, the work of each day is described by the five-fold formula:
1. the act of creation,
2. the declaration of fulfillment,
3. the statement of purpose,
4. the expression of delight and
5. the indication of time.
In each event the act of creation is described in a two-fold manner: firstly the word of creation, and that is complimented by the particular works of creation.
The word predominates as we read this chapter: "and God said", shaping the particular out of the initial 'mass' of creation.
18 April 2011
Real Public Events
I've recently been listening to a lecture by Thomas, until recently, of Durham (Tom Wright: recently stepped down as bishop) 'Can a scientist believe in the resurrection?" In it he makes a couple of remarks that I'd like to use to consider how we might think about Genesis 1/the creation.
1. He says that the question of Jesus' resurrection was not a question about the internal state of his followers, but about something that happened in the real public world.
That is, the resurrection as an event was accessible to anyone who was there at the time, independently of that person's views, beliefs or prejudices.
2. He also said that the disciples' transformed world view was only explicable on the assumption that something really did happen (really = an event in material space-time which objectively occurred independently of any observers)
Here it is clear that people's approach to life and their thoughts about their own circumstances and personal trajectories through life were reoriented by something that really happened.
Christian faith is thus not some rarified 'faith in faith', but confidence in the actuality of events that have an affect upon us.
So, the creation, if not something that happened in the real public world in the terms in which God portrays it, is not something that happened meaningfully at all! If it was not accessible, in principle, to anyone who read the text, and could make sense of it, then it is not revealed, but obscured!
Then, the world view that the creation account sets out to create is one that depends on something really having happened. Not something that we are free to characterise ( and therefore characterise God) any way we please, but something that is bound to the context of the revelation; otherwise, it is not this creation that we are talking about, but some other source of the world, built on some other premise, and connected historically to some principle other than the God who has taken pains to tells us the basis for the connection between us and him from which flows the entirety of redemptive history.
1. He says that the question of Jesus' resurrection was not a question about the internal state of his followers, but about something that happened in the real public world.
That is, the resurrection as an event was accessible to anyone who was there at the time, independently of that person's views, beliefs or prejudices.
2. He also said that the disciples' transformed world view was only explicable on the assumption that something really did happen (really = an event in material space-time which objectively occurred independently of any observers)
Here it is clear that people's approach to life and their thoughts about their own circumstances and personal trajectories through life were reoriented by something that really happened.
Christian faith is thus not some rarified 'faith in faith', but confidence in the actuality of events that have an affect upon us.
So, the creation, if not something that happened in the real public world in the terms in which God portrays it, is not something that happened meaningfully at all! If it was not accessible, in principle, to anyone who read the text, and could make sense of it, then it is not revealed, but obscured!
Then, the world view that the creation account sets out to create is one that depends on something really having happened. Not something that we are free to characterise ( and therefore characterise God) any way we please, but something that is bound to the context of the revelation; otherwise, it is not this creation that we are talking about, but some other source of the world, built on some other premise, and connected historically to some principle other than the God who has taken pains to tells us the basis for the connection between us and him from which flows the entirety of redemptive history.
10 April 2011
Canards
In the most recent Southern Cross; the journal of our (Sydney) anglican diocese, a letter was published in reply to an earlier one on Genesis 1.
The earlier letter used Genesis 1 to be able to draw conclusions about life on earth; the latter letter denied this was possible, but that information could only come from outside the Bible.
Specifically, the author, one Stenning, asserted that Genesis was but poetry; and presumably could have no truth content in its own terms, and that armed with 'two books' to 'read the world' we could be content to relegate the Bible (Genesis 1) to other than concretely informative.
Both assertions are, in my view, erroneous.
Firstly, it is hard to understand how anyone could think that Genesis 1 is poetry. It is obviously not! So obvious, I'll not rehearse here what I've covered previously.
The second assertion is a little trickier, although I've touched on it previously too.
Are there two books? One of 'nature' (and that word gives the game away instantly: its not 'nature' but the 'creation' that should concern us), and the other of God's word? The so-called book of nature only becomes such, that is, nature is only 'en-booked' in the propositions formulated by people, with all the prejudices, errors and fabrication that people are prone to. Hardly something to use over against the Bible!
Reference to a second book in this context is almost invariably to off-set the biblical information about origins, and render it meaningless by comparison with modern 'majority' views. So the second book is not really the book of the creatures, to express God's power, as Francis Bacon put it, but the book of 'God cannot communicate his work of creation to us'; with us relying instead on constructions that start, not with God, but with asserting his irrelevance. This is canvassed in another recent post.
Second book reference also usually indicates a view that the Bible has no business talking about the material cosmos, and that any such talk is usually irrelevant to spiritual matters. But the Bible would have it otherwise. In the creation do we learn of the close connection and historical continuity of redeeming relationship between God and man, and that it is this world, this setting, in which we encounter God; not some other, less concrete, less do to with 'our' world, world. The pastoral implications of this can be quite dramatic, in my own experience.
The earlier letter used Genesis 1 to be able to draw conclusions about life on earth; the latter letter denied this was possible, but that information could only come from outside the Bible.
Specifically, the author, one Stenning, asserted that Genesis was but poetry; and presumably could have no truth content in its own terms, and that armed with 'two books' to 'read the world' we could be content to relegate the Bible (Genesis 1) to other than concretely informative.
Both assertions are, in my view, erroneous.
Firstly, it is hard to understand how anyone could think that Genesis 1 is poetry. It is obviously not! So obvious, I'll not rehearse here what I've covered previously.
The second assertion is a little trickier, although I've touched on it previously too.
Are there two books? One of 'nature' (and that word gives the game away instantly: its not 'nature' but the 'creation' that should concern us), and the other of God's word? The so-called book of nature only becomes such, that is, nature is only 'en-booked' in the propositions formulated by people, with all the prejudices, errors and fabrication that people are prone to. Hardly something to use over against the Bible!
Reference to a second book in this context is almost invariably to off-set the biblical information about origins, and render it meaningless by comparison with modern 'majority' views. So the second book is not really the book of the creatures, to express God's power, as Francis Bacon put it, but the book of 'God cannot communicate his work of creation to us'; with us relying instead on constructions that start, not with God, but with asserting his irrelevance. This is canvassed in another recent post.
Second book reference also usually indicates a view that the Bible has no business talking about the material cosmos, and that any such talk is usually irrelevant to spiritual matters. But the Bible would have it otherwise. In the creation do we learn of the close connection and historical continuity of redeeming relationship between God and man, and that it is this world, this setting, in which we encounter God; not some other, less concrete, less do to with 'our' world, world. The pastoral implications of this can be quite dramatic, in my own experience.
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