I can't see any real difference in their appraoch to 'religion' and the world between that of Theistic Evolutionists and, say, Buddhists; or Hindus, or animists, or Aboriginal dream-time story tellers.
All of them separate religion from the real world and make claims that lie outside the world we are in!
Yet the world-concept of Christianity is that the real world shares the contours of existence with the God whose speech is his actions, and his actions occur in the world of common causality that we inhabit; and its a 'real' world, not a lesser world that we can disregard, with the really real world elsewhere.
Theistic-evolution, along with Buddhism, discounts the real ness of the world we are in and has it that 'holy books' as a class (the Bible, for TEs) are about somethiing other than the real world, which therefore, must be other than the real setting for the ontological play between what is basically real, and our life-experience.
Bollocks, of course, because Christ emptied himself of God-claims to be one of us, for our sake!
11 September 2012
3 September 2012
The Perils of Theistic Evolution
Any critique of Theistic Evolution has to start behind the direct facts that might be contested (that is, 'science' and the Bible), and with the philosophical position that underpins the theology which allows the Bible to be relegated to a set of ancient stories and legends that may convey spiritual truth, but have no necessary relationship to the space-time world of common causality, even in the view of some evangelicals.
The theology is more about a Barthian approach to the Bible than the world-concept of the Bible, where words connect only to ‘faith’ ethereally and do not do so by way of depicting or explicating anything in the real-world of "A does not = non-A". The ‘real’ in this formulation, is not of this world, but in a philosophically idealist move is elsewhere, so the Bible, to communicate its ‘truth’ in this higher manner does not need to tell us anything about what has really happened; and in fact, in this view both need not, and probably cannot!
The counter to this is that the very account of creation shows that God and we participate in the same real world where words relate to events and actions that are denominated in the common causality upon which we depend, and, created by God, mediates our concourse with God as well as each other.
It is actual events and actions that are real, and that instruct our apprehension of the ontological coordinates that bring us to encounter God in action by which he demonstrates who he is and who we are in relationship to him. The idealist would have it otherwise, of course, but to attempt to impress them with science, while it may influence some, will probably have little effect, as they consider that we have missed their point that the Bible is a 'faith' book, not a 'fact' book; of course, it is only a faith book because it is a fact book, otherwise faith would be in irreversible dis-connect from the world in which we act and is the scene for our encounter with God, our salvation and for God's covenants.
To encapsulate this with an illustration, you may know the old Goon Show where a bank holdup involves the use of a picture of a gun. The theological idealist would have it that the Bible is a ‘picture of a gun’; but of course, this can have no real-world effect; what we need to hold up a bank (and to make a creation by fiat that delimits the world we are in) is a real gun (and a real creation in events that make sense in the world in which they are set, and which they define).
In short, the Bible is only theologically meaningful if it is meaningful in the real world terms by which it denominates itself. God is thus creator, not by weaving a symbolic story, that point to something or other, but because he created. He identifies himself with the sequence of fiat acts, not becuase they are symbolically meaningful, but because they occured. They are meaningful, then, because they occured, and not because they did not.
An example of how this plays out was in a post and exchanges on Michael Jensen's blog, the bloggin parson. (Jensen is a lecturer at Moore College, and son of the current archbishop of Sydney, Peter J.)
Jensen was asked if he thought that Noah, of flood fame, was a real person, and by implication, that the account related events that occured. Jensen avoided a direct answer, instead asking what the text was telling us.
Now, if the text is not telling us that there was a global flood and only Noah, his family, and the animals listed were saved, then it is not telling us anything and is just a story, 'made up', with no real world referents! The point of the account is that the events recounted really happened and had a real effect on the world: thus is scripture linked to the world we are in.
The alternative, that the text is 'telling' us something based on non-events, or events mis-recounted, then it has no content relevant for our consideration as it is not about anything real, and anyone can 'make up' a story. That's the easy part.
The theology is more about a Barthian approach to the Bible than the world-concept of the Bible, where words connect only to ‘faith’ ethereally and do not do so by way of depicting or explicating anything in the real-world of "A does not = non-A". The ‘real’ in this formulation, is not of this world, but in a philosophically idealist move is elsewhere, so the Bible, to communicate its ‘truth’ in this higher manner does not need to tell us anything about what has really happened; and in fact, in this view both need not, and probably cannot!
The counter to this is that the very account of creation shows that God and we participate in the same real world where words relate to events and actions that are denominated in the common causality upon which we depend, and, created by God, mediates our concourse with God as well as each other.
It is actual events and actions that are real, and that instruct our apprehension of the ontological coordinates that bring us to encounter God in action by which he demonstrates who he is and who we are in relationship to him. The idealist would have it otherwise, of course, but to attempt to impress them with science, while it may influence some, will probably have little effect, as they consider that we have missed their point that the Bible is a 'faith' book, not a 'fact' book; of course, it is only a faith book because it is a fact book, otherwise faith would be in irreversible dis-connect from the world in which we act and is the scene for our encounter with God, our salvation and for God's covenants.
To encapsulate this with an illustration, you may know the old Goon Show where a bank holdup involves the use of a picture of a gun. The theological idealist would have it that the Bible is a ‘picture of a gun’; but of course, this can have no real-world effect; what we need to hold up a bank (and to make a creation by fiat that delimits the world we are in) is a real gun (and a real creation in events that make sense in the world in which they are set, and which they define).
In short, the Bible is only theologically meaningful if it is meaningful in the real world terms by which it denominates itself. God is thus creator, not by weaving a symbolic story, that point to something or other, but because he created. He identifies himself with the sequence of fiat acts, not becuase they are symbolically meaningful, but because they occured. They are meaningful, then, because they occured, and not because they did not.
An example of how this plays out was in a post and exchanges on Michael Jensen's blog, the bloggin parson. (Jensen is a lecturer at Moore College, and son of the current archbishop of Sydney, Peter J.)
Jensen was asked if he thought that Noah, of flood fame, was a real person, and by implication, that the account related events that occured. Jensen avoided a direct answer, instead asking what the text was telling us.
Now, if the text is not telling us that there was a global flood and only Noah, his family, and the animals listed were saved, then it is not telling us anything and is just a story, 'made up', with no real world referents! The point of the account is that the events recounted really happened and had a real effect on the world: thus is scripture linked to the world we are in.
The alternative, that the text is 'telling' us something based on non-events, or events mis-recounted, then it has no content relevant for our consideration as it is not about anything real, and anyone can 'make up' a story. That's the easy part.
31 August 2012
If true, then unimportant!
A very apt comment on this article about Richard Dawkins:
The great irony of views such as Dawkins' is that, if they are correct, they are at once unimportant! How so? No arrangement of atoms has a value privilege over any other arrangement; value refers to something external to the arrangement, which the materialism that Dawkins espouses denies exists.
7 May 2012
Are you kidding?
This line of thinking is known as "Theistic Evolution." But its followers are kidding themselves if they think it is compatible with Darwinism. First, to the extent that anyone--either God, Pope Mary's physicist, or "any being...external to our universe responsible for selecting its properties"--set nature up in any way to ensure a particular outcome, then, to that extent, although there may be evolution, there is no Darwinism. Darwin's main contribution to science was to posit a mechanism for the unfolding of life that required no input from any intelligence--random variation and natural selection. If laws were "implanted" into nature with the express knowledge that they would lead to intelligent life, then even if the results follow by "natural development," nonetheless, intelligent life is not a random result.From Behe, The Edge of Evolution.
12 April 2012
16 March 2012
atheist speaks
Couple of letters to papers:
As for the existence of God, the question to which no theologian has ever given a satisfactory answer - ''why does God permit natural evil (all the suffering of humans and animals caused by natural disasters and disease) to occur?'' - is sufficient to make the existence of any God extremely unlikely, to say the least.
Dennis Biggins Cooks Hill
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/pleasing-no-one-maybe-rescue-plan-is-on-target-20111129-1o5aw.html#ixzz1f89erRKH
And that about says it!
As for the existence of God, the question to which no theologian has ever given a satisfactory answer - ''why does God permit natural evil (all the suffering of humans and animals caused by natural disasters and disease) to occur?'' - is sufficient to make the existence of any God extremely unlikely, to say the least.
Dennis Biggins Cooks Hill
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/pleasing-no-one-maybe-rescue-plan-is-on-target-20111129-1o5aw.html#ixzz1f89erRKH
Dennis Biggins has to explain what he means by 'natural evil' in a material world. He is clearly referring to something outside the natural world to say that some things are 'evil'. Of course they are not; the notion of evil is at best a mere social convention for events that are outside an organism's adaptive range. Evolution will, in time, deal with it through the death of mal-adapted organisms, or their eventual adaption to the natural world. The atheist position has to do away with any concept of evil, because the concept itself implies a divinity outside this world!
And that about says it!
14 March 2012
Theistic evolution? You're kidding!
"God is the Creator of heaven and earth. If God produced the universe by a single creative act of His will, then its natural development by laws implanted in it by the Creator is to the greater glory of His Divine power and wisdom" (the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia).
To which Behe responds:
From "The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe.
To which Behe responds:
This line of thinking is known as "Theistic Evolution." But its followers are kidding themselves if they think it is compatible with Darwinism. First, to the extent that anyone--either God, Pope Mary's physicist, or "any being...external to our universe responsible for selecting its properties"--set natuer up in any way to ensure a particular outcome, then, to that extent, although there may be evolution, there is no Darwinism. Darwin's main contribution to science was to posit a mechanism for the unfolding of life that required no input from any intelligence--random variation and natural selection.
From "The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe.
12 March 2012
The first theistic evolutionist: Darwin?
From the last sentence of The Origin of Species:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.And we know where that ended up: not with the Creator's enduring praise, but with Dawkins referring to Darwinism as allowing him to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist!
8 March 2012
Walton's lost world
Copy of a letter I sent following on from this sermon.
I was recently reminded of a part of your sermon on Genesis 1 that I had not discussed with you. Your reference to ANE cultures forming their conceptualisation of reality by creating stories about it (much like, and precisely as useful as Aboriginal 'dream time' myths), and this being the function of Genesis 1 (if I recall it accurately) came back to mind as I read a review of a book by Walton "The Lost World of Genesis 1" (reviewed here, which covered this very topic. The review, I think, deals reasonbly well with Walton's failure to comprehend the biblical data on creation, but it doesn't go far enough in philosophical terms, and lets Walton get away with his framing the creation account on a materialist basis, rather than a biblical one. This is dangerous territory as it immediately gives materialism primacy in our approach to the scriptures, and fails to use the scriptures prophetically to instead unseat materialism and make the way for their repentance.
As I read it, Walton effectively makes the Genesis account a 'story' that socially realises the cosmos and our lives and relationships within it. This is reminiscent of the much more circumscribed thesis of Berger and Luckman's book 'The Social Construction of Reality', which does have some applicability to social systems, but does not, however, apply to the external objective world.
The reason I say that Walton defers to a materialist basic philosophy in his work (although as far as I know he's a creationist, of sorts), is that his approach to Genesis 1 is conceptually congruent with one of the most significant implications of the evolutionary world view: that there is no necessary connection between our sense perception, our mentalisation of sense perceptions and the external real world. This arises because the evolutionary world view has as its only essential reproductive success, everything else is an accident, including the viability of our sense perceptions and the accuracy of their mentalisation! This of course is the unavoidable 'self-defeater' of materialism.
But the biblical world view is contrary to this, and it sets a necessary connection, not just an accidental correlation, between external real world constituents, features and relationships and our sensory-mental response to them. Therefore, in a biblical world view, things in the world have existance and relationship to other things even before they are named, and our perception of them is reliable. While we use langauge to identify objects, categories (and only in the social world, might we 'create' them in Berger and Luckman's terms) and relationships, naming is only used to identify particular charcteristics of relationships for specific purposes (e.g. Adam names the animals, but doesn't find a companion); the limit of naming is that it presumes the prior existence of the things named, their external relationships and the external real world that they occur within. It has a 'concrete realist' (as opposed to an 'idealist') conception of the world because the creation account sets out that this is the actual real world and how it works; Adam's 'naming' episode is an event within and predicated upon the real external world. The naming is to pursue a much more limited objective than a grand cosmogony: identifying his companionship need.
Walton's claim might be true of pagan ANE cultures, but I don't think he's provided evidence, either biblical or historical, that these cultural practices were applied to Genesis 1. Indeed, the fact that we see an instance of naming and construction in Genesis 1, and in highly circumscribed terms against a context of external objectification, indicates, I think, that Walton's appraisal is misplaced even on textual grounds, let alone by the philosophical abyss that he leaps into.
Walton has failed to deal with the materialist-evolutionary world view which has in fact been the basis of his thinking (every thought not being conformed to Christ: [Roms 12:2), and which sets out in question begging fashion to actually deny the biblical world view, so when taken up theologically, it sets aside the base data of theology, relying on a stance that denies that there is any theological data at all. Naturally, Walton ends up with the conclusion he does, because he starts from an assumption that only leads to that conclusion.
I was recently reminded of a part of your sermon on Genesis 1 that I had not discussed with you. Your reference to ANE cultures forming their conceptualisation of reality by creating stories about it (much like, and precisely as useful as Aboriginal 'dream time' myths), and this being the function of Genesis 1 (if I recall it accurately) came back to mind as I read a review of a book by Walton "The Lost World of Genesis 1" (reviewed here, which covered this very topic. The review, I think, deals reasonbly well with Walton's failure to comprehend the biblical data on creation, but it doesn't go far enough in philosophical terms, and lets Walton get away with his framing the creation account on a materialist basis, rather than a biblical one. This is dangerous territory as it immediately gives materialism primacy in our approach to the scriptures, and fails to use the scriptures prophetically to instead unseat materialism and make the way for their repentance.
As I read it, Walton effectively makes the Genesis account a 'story' that socially realises the cosmos and our lives and relationships within it. This is reminiscent of the much more circumscribed thesis of Berger and Luckman's book 'The Social Construction of Reality', which does have some applicability to social systems, but does not, however, apply to the external objective world.
The reason I say that Walton defers to a materialist basic philosophy in his work (although as far as I know he's a creationist, of sorts), is that his approach to Genesis 1 is conceptually congruent with one of the most significant implications of the evolutionary world view: that there is no necessary connection between our sense perception, our mentalisation of sense perceptions and the external real world. This arises because the evolutionary world view has as its only essential reproductive success, everything else is an accident, including the viability of our sense perceptions and the accuracy of their mentalisation! This of course is the unavoidable 'self-defeater' of materialism.
But the biblical world view is contrary to this, and it sets a necessary connection, not just an accidental correlation, between external real world constituents, features and relationships and our sensory-mental response to them. Therefore, in a biblical world view, things in the world have existance and relationship to other things even before they are named, and our perception of them is reliable. While we use langauge to identify objects, categories (and only in the social world, might we 'create' them in Berger and Luckman's terms) and relationships, naming is only used to identify particular charcteristics of relationships for specific purposes (e.g. Adam names the animals, but doesn't find a companion); the limit of naming is that it presumes the prior existence of the things named, their external relationships and the external real world that they occur within. It has a 'concrete realist' (as opposed to an 'idealist') conception of the world because the creation account sets out that this is the actual real world and how it works; Adam's 'naming' episode is an event within and predicated upon the real external world. The naming is to pursue a much more limited objective than a grand cosmogony: identifying his companionship need.
Walton's claim might be true of pagan ANE cultures, but I don't think he's provided evidence, either biblical or historical, that these cultural practices were applied to Genesis 1. Indeed, the fact that we see an instance of naming and construction in Genesis 1, and in highly circumscribed terms against a context of external objectification, indicates, I think, that Walton's appraisal is misplaced even on textual grounds, let alone by the philosophical abyss that he leaps into.
Walton has failed to deal with the materialist-evolutionary world view which has in fact been the basis of his thinking (every thought not being conformed to Christ: [Roms 12:2), and which sets out in question begging fashion to actually deny the biblical world view, so when taken up theologically, it sets aside the base data of theology, relying on a stance that denies that there is any theological data at all. Naturally, Walton ends up with the conclusion he does, because he starts from an assumption that only leads to that conclusion.
1 March 2012
Why Theistic Evolution is rubbish
I would hope that Christians who think that biblical creation and evolution could be coupled ponder this quote:
From a biography of G. E. Moore
In general we can be assured that we know what things are good in themselves, he submits, if what we think is in harmony with what 'other people think': "For what we think has...been determined by the course of evolution" But what we think, even if it is harmonious with the thoughts of others, does not by itself support the view that we think rationally or truly, or even that we probably do so; and appeals to "the course of evolution" in this quarter only thicken a philosophical plot already gone wrong. Unless we have independent reason to believe that what "the course of evolution" leads us to believe is, or is likely to be, correct or rational, the appeal to "evolution" is logically illicit. To suppose that some things are good because evolution leads most of us to believe that they are grievously flaunts Moore's stern requriements that we avoid naturalism in ethics.
From a biography of G. E. Moore
16 February 2012
The pagan world
I mentioned the review of Walton's book in my post on the dangerous sermon, but would like to discuss it futher.
I think that Walton must be the source of much of the sermon in question. Walton's mistake however, is that he adopts a pagan framework from the start, and fits the Bible within it, ending up not with the God of creation, but a God within creation, who adheres to the categories of modern atheistic materialism, not the categories of the Bible. The Bible's categorical structure has will exercised in love basic to all being. A pity the speaker did not explore this, or start his thinking from the Bible instead!
Walton's view is founded on the great irony that the creation account is not about creation, but something else, also called the creation, but not the creation that we are talking about (if that seems 'double-dutch' it is). It requires creation to be independent (effectively asserting a prior material creation); he also, like most today, misunderstands the creation as an exercise in only material formation (it is far more than this), and the world view that is required to sustain his position (a pagan world view) either deifies the material creation, or regards it as a ‘given’ and does not conceive of it as having been originated in the will of one who is love.
Like many other moderns, he wants to split the creation into categories that evacuate it of meaning: some split ‘how’ and ‘why’ as the domains of science and theology, respectively. Walton, likewise splits function and being, but being is function in the unified creation that comes from God’s hand. To suppose otherwise is to fall into the pagan error, now repeated in the use of materialist categories, that the creation is otherwise originated, this origination so remote from us in every way as to be an impersonal given, destroying God’s representation to us as creator of a world where his words have real meaning in terms that make sense to us within the world (as it is from his hand, and we, his image bearers, can make sense of the words God gave to us) relating to him. In effect he ‘de-gods’ the world in its totality. This makes God not the creator of a world that is dependent upon him, and part of the means of his relating to us and extending his love to us, but a being derivative of, or referred to from the world which is beyond him.
On these grounds, who, then, are we, who is this god and whence relationship, if there is one that has any meaning at all?
The proposal is pagan from start to finish, and even if Walton truly understands ANE culture, he understands a pagan culture, against which the Bible stands and the word of God confounds! To take this as a reference is to set to one side the work of the Spirit of God in communicating the word to us and the relegate the Bible to merely another meaningless ANE curiosity of history.
And the creation account opposes both these errors in its unification of ‘how’ coupled with ‘why’, and function being part of formation.
'How’s' coupling with 'why' is made in the creation being about the relationships between persons, by the will of the almighty person, exercised in love for the bringing about of other persons to participate in that love, with all the other-centredness of love. The 'function' being part of 'formation' is made in the creation leaving God’s hand caused only by his word (will) and not an interposed mechanism so beloved of materialists who must split off matter from love to make it pre-eminent, and love subservient, and then seek a machine to do the work that the Bible tells us is the work of God’s loving mind!
Walton’s proposal, like every other attempt to defuse Genesis 1, etc. simply represents an embarrassment from pitting Genesis 1 against modern conventional materialism and wanting materialism to have the first and final word!
I think that Walton must be the source of much of the sermon in question. Walton's mistake however, is that he adopts a pagan framework from the start, and fits the Bible within it, ending up not with the God of creation, but a God within creation, who adheres to the categories of modern atheistic materialism, not the categories of the Bible. The Bible's categorical structure has will exercised in love basic to all being. A pity the speaker did not explore this, or start his thinking from the Bible instead!
Walton's view is founded on the great irony that the creation account is not about creation, but something else, also called the creation, but not the creation that we are talking about (if that seems 'double-dutch' it is). It requires creation to be independent (effectively asserting a prior material creation); he also, like most today, misunderstands the creation as an exercise in only material formation (it is far more than this), and the world view that is required to sustain his position (a pagan world view) either deifies the material creation, or regards it as a ‘given’ and does not conceive of it as having been originated in the will of one who is love.
Like many other moderns, he wants to split the creation into categories that evacuate it of meaning: some split ‘how’ and ‘why’ as the domains of science and theology, respectively. Walton, likewise splits function and being, but being is function in the unified creation that comes from God’s hand. To suppose otherwise is to fall into the pagan error, now repeated in the use of materialist categories, that the creation is otherwise originated, this origination so remote from us in every way as to be an impersonal given, destroying God’s representation to us as creator of a world where his words have real meaning in terms that make sense to us within the world (as it is from his hand, and we, his image bearers, can make sense of the words God gave to us) relating to him. In effect he ‘de-gods’ the world in its totality. This makes God not the creator of a world that is dependent upon him, and part of the means of his relating to us and extending his love to us, but a being derivative of, or referred to from the world which is beyond him.
On these grounds, who, then, are we, who is this god and whence relationship, if there is one that has any meaning at all?
The proposal is pagan from start to finish, and even if Walton truly understands ANE culture, he understands a pagan culture, against which the Bible stands and the word of God confounds! To take this as a reference is to set to one side the work of the Spirit of God in communicating the word to us and the relegate the Bible to merely another meaningless ANE curiosity of history.
And the creation account opposes both these errors in its unification of ‘how’ coupled with ‘why’, and function being part of formation.
'How’s' coupling with 'why' is made in the creation being about the relationships between persons, by the will of the almighty person, exercised in love for the bringing about of other persons to participate in that love, with all the other-centredness of love. The 'function' being part of 'formation' is made in the creation leaving God’s hand caused only by his word (will) and not an interposed mechanism so beloved of materialists who must split off matter from love to make it pre-eminent, and love subservient, and then seek a machine to do the work that the Bible tells us is the work of God’s loving mind!
Walton’s proposal, like every other attempt to defuse Genesis 1, etc. simply represents an embarrassment from pitting Genesis 1 against modern conventional materialism and wanting materialism to have the first and final word!
10 February 2012
Inconvenient Information
The trouble with many parts of the Bible is that the information it contains is inconvenient to the aims and objects of fallen mankind.
Thus it is with Genesis 1. Many Christian commentators undertake, with great effort, the exercise of telling us that Genesis 1 doesn't say what it clearly does say. Because it is inconvenient.
It is inconvenient to smart modern people (imblued with or cowed by materialist views) that God created by his will (the method) within the span of 6 days. So much effort is put into explaining that this information, which structures and upon which the text depends, is not an essential part of the information conveyed.
Indeed, it must end up being held that Genesis 1 conveys no actual information, but merely allows the impression that God is creator, with the text providing no evidence fo the fact.
Extrodinary. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
In this vein, I'd refer to a book review by Howard Van Til: [title], where Van Til does just this, and fails to bring a Christian world-view to his work.
Thus it is with Genesis 1. Many Christian commentators undertake, with great effort, the exercise of telling us that Genesis 1 doesn't say what it clearly does say. Because it is inconvenient.
It is inconvenient to smart modern people (imblued with or cowed by materialist views) that God created by his will (the method) within the span of 6 days. So much effort is put into explaining that this information, which structures and upon which the text depends, is not an essential part of the information conveyed.
Indeed, it must end up being held that Genesis 1 conveys no actual information, but merely allows the impression that God is creator, with the text providing no evidence fo the fact.
Extrodinary. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
In this vein, I'd refer to a book review by Howard Van Til: [title], where Van Til does just this, and fails to bring a Christian world-view to his work.
5 February 2012
Creation and agency
Letter I sent to the speaker of a recent sermon:
Thank you for your sermon on Genesis 1 recently at church. I was very taken by your approach, and pleased with your conclusion that the pinnacle of creation is not the creation of man, on day 6, which is often stated (although among created things man does represent this, given his role in naming the animals and God giving him the garden to tend), but God resting, in his holiness and glory. I think this notion is quite important, as it makes the climax of creation symmetrical with the opening of the account in Genesis 1:1: ‘In the beginning God....at the end, God’.
There were a couple of points you made where I didn’t see the connection with the text so easily.
I liked your illustration of agency and will by referring to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. But this does not, I think, throw light on how we are to regard agency in the Genesis account. The ‘five-fold’ repetition in the account that Joseph Pipa notes in his essay in “Did God Create in 6 Days” is such a tight concatenation as to prohibit the entry of non-divine (and therefore, mindless) agency. Indeed, taken together Psalm 33:6, John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3b would seem to eliminate the need for and possibility of such agency altogether. And particularly agency from within the creation to effect the course of creation unfolding between the word and conclusion (“it was so”). This applies something that God has created (at best): an impersonal principle from within the creation (or even independent of the creation!), to do the work of creation, the outcome of which the Bible clearly attributes to God, or requires an anachronistic recursion as something ‘not yet’ is used to produce that which will come to be. I don’t think this stacks up logically.
This also couples with your suggesting that science tells us the ‘how’ of creation as act, or perhaps as achievement (that is, the cosmos we are in and the reality by which we and it are drawn into a structured set of causal relationships), but the Bible tells as ‘why’.
I don’t think that God’s act and its realization can be so easily severed, and certainly not from what is set out in the Bible itself; nor can the component parts of creation be allocated to different frameworks so easily in theological terms.
The very mental act of separating aspects of the creation and giving them separate identities is itself seems to be conceptually contrary to the creation as it is set out in the Bible, and must assume, implicitly if not explicitly, that there is some uncreated ‘reality’ to which both God and his creation separately refer. This is because the creation account as it stands makes the ‘why’ depend totally on the ‘how’. That is, God’s speaking the creation into existence, and concluding that his word has achieved its object without reference to any principle or mechanism external to himself. There is, therefore, not only no place for something interposed between God and his creatures, but no reason for it. In similar terms, some have said that the details of Genesis 1 do not correspond with events in time-space, but nevertheless identify God as an orderly creator. However, this is incoherent. One cannot deny the basis for a conclusion’s reality (events on days) yet persist that the conclusion itself has an objective status (what only events on days can indicate).
If the biblical ‘how’ is a nullity, then the ‘why’ is hollow and cannot promote either God’s glory or his worship by his creatures, contrary to its purpose throughout the Bible (that is, God’s being creator, in biblical terms, being that which calls us to worship of him).
But it is also at odds with its place to think that science does tell us the ‘how’ of creation, as science deals in the repeatable and observable within the completed (and fallen) creation. The creation is not accessible to ‘science’. Ideas of evolution, which are often regarded as explaining how life, or organisms as we know them, or indeed the entire cosmos came about does not in fact do this. It is not science, but religious materialism. To think that the variation we do see in organisms reaches back into their origin moves from science to unfounded belief almost instantly, and a belief that has its feet in the idea that there is no God, or if there is, he is the remote and uninvolved deist god. Not the God of the Bible who created in love for relationship.
To even look for a ‘mechanism’ that would execute the creation beyond the terms of scripture misunderstands both the account itself and its theological place. The account is not, and the cosmos and us in it, are not about ‘mechanism’ in some materialist vision of how the world is, but about relationship: that between God and what he has made to glorify himself and give us life to live in his presence. Science and mechanism occur post-creation, and any light they are thought to throw does not illumine the creation account or our understanding of it, but colours it to the detriment of understanding and in congruence with a prior materialist conceptualisation.
Blessings
David Green
PS. Some references that may be of interest are:
http://creation.com/john-dickson-vs-genesis
http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/?speaker=mohler2
(Al Mohler’s talk at the 2010 Ligonier conference, summarised here:
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2010-ligonier-national-conference-albert-mohler/)
http://www.grbc.net/sermons/index.php?action=by_conference&conference=5
http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?keyword=GPTS%20Conference%201999
http://www.stillwaterrpc.org/genesis.php
A recent book review reminded me of another point that the speaker made: he spoke of Genesis 1 being about 'funciton' not origination in material/cosmic terms. I didn't pick up on this, but a review of Walton's book on this matter reminded me.
The fatal flaw in this line is the pagan separation of being and action (or pure origination and function). It encapsulates a world-view that is not biblical, where only God is 'pre-supposed', but where a cosmos is regarded as a 'given' and not something that results from the will of God who is love. It depersonalises the basic nature of 'being' and ultimately 'de-god's' our world.
Thank you for your sermon on Genesis 1 recently at church. I was very taken by your approach, and pleased with your conclusion that the pinnacle of creation is not the creation of man, on day 6, which is often stated (although among created things man does represent this, given his role in naming the animals and God giving him the garden to tend), but God resting, in his holiness and glory. I think this notion is quite important, as it makes the climax of creation symmetrical with the opening of the account in Genesis 1:1: ‘In the beginning God....at the end, God’.
There were a couple of points you made where I didn’t see the connection with the text so easily.
I liked your illustration of agency and will by referring to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. But this does not, I think, throw light on how we are to regard agency in the Genesis account. The ‘five-fold’ repetition in the account that Joseph Pipa notes in his essay in “Did God Create in 6 Days” is such a tight concatenation as to prohibit the entry of non-divine (and therefore, mindless) agency. Indeed, taken together Psalm 33:6, John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3b would seem to eliminate the need for and possibility of such agency altogether. And particularly agency from within the creation to effect the course of creation unfolding between the word and conclusion (“it was so”). This applies something that God has created (at best): an impersonal principle from within the creation (or even independent of the creation!), to do the work of creation, the outcome of which the Bible clearly attributes to God, or requires an anachronistic recursion as something ‘not yet’ is used to produce that which will come to be. I don’t think this stacks up logically.
This also couples with your suggesting that science tells us the ‘how’ of creation as act, or perhaps as achievement (that is, the cosmos we are in and the reality by which we and it are drawn into a structured set of causal relationships), but the Bible tells as ‘why’.
I don’t think that God’s act and its realization can be so easily severed, and certainly not from what is set out in the Bible itself; nor can the component parts of creation be allocated to different frameworks so easily in theological terms.
The very mental act of separating aspects of the creation and giving them separate identities is itself seems to be conceptually contrary to the creation as it is set out in the Bible, and must assume, implicitly if not explicitly, that there is some uncreated ‘reality’ to which both God and his creation separately refer. This is because the creation account as it stands makes the ‘why’ depend totally on the ‘how’. That is, God’s speaking the creation into existence, and concluding that his word has achieved its object without reference to any principle or mechanism external to himself. There is, therefore, not only no place for something interposed between God and his creatures, but no reason for it. In similar terms, some have said that the details of Genesis 1 do not correspond with events in time-space, but nevertheless identify God as an orderly creator. However, this is incoherent. One cannot deny the basis for a conclusion’s reality (events on days) yet persist that the conclusion itself has an objective status (what only events on days can indicate).
If the biblical ‘how’ is a nullity, then the ‘why’ is hollow and cannot promote either God’s glory or his worship by his creatures, contrary to its purpose throughout the Bible (that is, God’s being creator, in biblical terms, being that which calls us to worship of him).
But it is also at odds with its place to think that science does tell us the ‘how’ of creation, as science deals in the repeatable and observable within the completed (and fallen) creation. The creation is not accessible to ‘science’. Ideas of evolution, which are often regarded as explaining how life, or organisms as we know them, or indeed the entire cosmos came about does not in fact do this. It is not science, but religious materialism. To think that the variation we do see in organisms reaches back into their origin moves from science to unfounded belief almost instantly, and a belief that has its feet in the idea that there is no God, or if there is, he is the remote and uninvolved deist god. Not the God of the Bible who created in love for relationship.
To even look for a ‘mechanism’ that would execute the creation beyond the terms of scripture misunderstands both the account itself and its theological place. The account is not, and the cosmos and us in it, are not about ‘mechanism’ in some materialist vision of how the world is, but about relationship: that between God and what he has made to glorify himself and give us life to live in his presence. Science and mechanism occur post-creation, and any light they are thought to throw does not illumine the creation account or our understanding of it, but colours it to the detriment of understanding and in congruence with a prior materialist conceptualisation.
Blessings
David Green
PS. Some references that may be of interest are:
http://creation.com/john-dickson-vs-genesis
http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/?speaker=mohler2
(Al Mohler’s talk at the 2010 Ligonier conference, summarised here:
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2010-ligonier-national-conference-albert-mohler/)
http://www.grbc.net/sermons/index.php?action=by_conference&conference=5
http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?keyword=GPTS%20Conference%201999
http://www.stillwaterrpc.org/genesis.php
A recent book review reminded me of another point that the speaker made: he spoke of Genesis 1 being about 'funciton' not origination in material/cosmic terms. I didn't pick up on this, but a review of Walton's book on this matter reminded me.
The fatal flaw in this line is the pagan separation of being and action (or pure origination and function). It encapsulates a world-view that is not biblical, where only God is 'pre-supposed', but where a cosmos is regarded as a 'given' and not something that results from the will of God who is love. It depersonalises the basic nature of 'being' and ultimately 'de-god's' our world.
2 February 2012
scientific knowledge
"Scientific knowledge occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant" F. Hayek's critique of 'scientism' quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald's Weekend Business by Nicholas Gruen, 21 Jan 12.
If only my Anglican colleagues in this diocese had the courage to assert this in favour of theological knowledge!
If only my Anglican colleagues in this diocese had the courage to assert this in favour of theological knowledge!
30 January 2012
History: event or interpretation?
Some quotes from Elton, The Practice of History, that touch on, and raise questions about the way Genesis 1 is approached by many commentators today, who deny that it is history, or take it as a type of verbal gloss on an underlying but unnominated set of events:
A long one which is interesting in the difference between ‘natural’ science and history:
When it comes to views of Genesis 1 that see it not as an account of time-space events in the sequence given, but a sort of meta-historical account that abstracts from events to convey some inferred ‘truth’ that lies beneath them, I can’t but help think that such views consider God to be a historical relativist: a position that has to be argued and demonstrated, rather than asserted glibly and taken for granted as though there are no alternative positions:
So those who think that Genesis 1 is a late Jewish ‘interpretation’ of what they think happened, against the conceptions of the day as to origins, have succumbed to the notion that it is interpretation (the ancients’ or theirs) that matters and not the facts. But this is a perspective, not itself a self-evident fact, and it is what actually happened that is important, because this is reflective of who God is and what we are in relation to him, in every aspect and dimension of our being. To think that the interpretation is more significant than the events is to express a view that the cosmos and its ‘reality’ is something other than what is from God’s hand, somehow independent of God and that principles and mechanisms have an independent existence to which God in his creation tale also makes reference. But this undercuts the whole notion of a meaningful creation account and leaves us knowing nothing about ourselves or our world, subject to the changing whims of contemporary ideas: currently, of course these are materialist.
The task of history is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must be given full respect in its own right. And unless it is properly understood, any use of it in the present must be suspect and can be dangerous.p. 47.
A long one which is interesting in the difference between ‘natural’ science and history:
As a matter of fact, in a very real sense the study of history is concerned with a subject matter more objective and more independent than that of the natural sciences. The common argument that, unlike the scientist, the historian cannot verify his reconstruction by repeating the experiment at will can be turned round to give him greater assurance of objectivity...All scientific experiments are essentially constructs, and this applies to both the physical and the biological sciences...Of course, he obtains his problem by asking questions of nature--of something outside himself--but his method enables him to treat nature willfully and to compose for himself the argument which he wishes to resolve...scientific experiments are...artificial; theses things would not have happened but for a deliberate act of will on the part of the experimenter; the matter studies may be taken from nature, but before it is studied it is transformed for the purposes of the investigation. It is not going too far to assert that nearly all scientific study deals with specially prepared artificial derivatives from what naturally occurs.pp. 52-3.
The historian’s case is different...he cannot invent his experiment; the subject of his investigation is outside his control. When the problem of truth is under consideration, his essential difference from the natural scientist works in his favour...the matter he investigates has a dead reality independent of the enquiry.
When it comes to views of Genesis 1 that see it not as an account of time-space events in the sequence given, but a sort of meta-historical account that abstracts from events to convey some inferred ‘truth’ that lies beneath them, I can’t but help think that such views consider God to be a historical relativist: a position that has to be argued and demonstrated, rather than asserted glibly and taken for granted as though there are no alternative positions:
Interpretation, or general acceptance of a thesis, has nothing whatever to do with its independent existence...others who think that history is what historians write, not what happened, come dangerously close to suggesting either that it does not much matter what one says because (interpretation being everything) there are always several reasonably convincing interpretations of any given set of events, or that history is altogether unknowable, being merely what happens to be said by a historian at a given moment.p. 56.
...but that men cannot ever eliminate themselves from the search for truth is non-sense, and pernicious nonsense at that, because it once again favours the purely relativist concept of history, the opinion that it is all simply in the historian's mind and becomes whatever he likes to make of it.p. 57.
So those who think that Genesis 1 is a late Jewish ‘interpretation’ of what they think happened, against the conceptions of the day as to origins, have succumbed to the notion that it is interpretation (the ancients’ or theirs) that matters and not the facts. But this is a perspective, not itself a self-evident fact, and it is what actually happened that is important, because this is reflective of who God is and what we are in relation to him, in every aspect and dimension of our being. To think that the interpretation is more significant than the events is to express a view that the cosmos and its ‘reality’ is something other than what is from God’s hand, somehow independent of God and that principles and mechanisms have an independent existence to which God in his creation tale also makes reference. But this undercuts the whole notion of a meaningful creation account and leaves us knowing nothing about ourselves or our world, subject to the changing whims of contemporary ideas: currently, of course these are materialist.
27 January 2012
CMS Summer School
A friend who'd attended the school sent me a copy of his letter to the Archbishop, who addressed the attendees on the subject of creation.
http://www.gty.org/resources/Sermons/90-359
I would also add that to argue for any mixture of evolution and creation removes God from creation: as many published works attest, as does the lack of movement to God brought by expousal of evolution. My posts on de-godding God and the Creation discuss this.
Furthermore, to claim that the text is empty of historical content, but still serves to show God as creator, fails. If the content is inaccurate, then nothing is communicated but puffery, and it is empty of information that relates to the creation in which it is purported to make sense: that is connects with the categories, relationships and common causality of the creation. It is a sad sign of theological neglect to let this hollow argument pass into print, or sermons, which it does from time to time.
I am very glad that you broached the controversial question of creation at the CMS Summer School.
The question is often delimited in the terms that you used in your talk: that is, both by science and theology, thus your deferral to science, I would expect, on the scientific questions.
This represents, I think, a profound mistake! The question of our origin is not a scientific question at all. It is, from start to finish, a theological question and its answer has only theological implications.
The question has only become regarded as a scientific one by a sleight of hand to which the church has caved in from the day of its active promotion by Darwin and his supporters in the mid 1800s and resiled from its prophetic function ever since. The great sleight of hand is two-fold: firstly that processes within the creation can throw light on the supernatural act of creation, and that something must be interposed between the word of God and the effects of that word, some ‘mechanism’ to give life to what God has called to be! How extraordinary for a Christian theologian to buckle before the puffery of materialism and its typically atheistic proponents (or unwitting Christian fellow-travellers) and agree that our God needs a ‘mechanism’ to achieve his ends; particularly when he has gone out of his way to tell us precisely what happened in sufficient detail to eliminate the role of any subsidiary mechanism.
And just think what a mechanism might imply for the doctrine of creation itself? It might imply that agency apart from God was necessary for creation: so whence this agency? It might imply that God made something in order to make something else, as though ordinary providence operated in the extraordinary period of the creation, ending as it does with God in his glory! It might imply things that exist that are outside God and outside the creation: some principle, power, or ‘mechanism’ that is uncreated? What does this say, then about God? But what, also, of us? The effect is to immediately de-personalise the creation work and destroy the filial relationship between us and God. We would be the sons of a machine, not God if he interposed a mechanism between himself and us; yet the only mediator is Christ!
Clearly, this opens up a can of worms.
The reason creation is a theological matter, and one of prime importance is because the creation both shows and defines our relationship with God and sets the entire cosmos and all that is within it in theological context: arising only from God, for God’s purpose and reflecting God as ‘very good’, then to be under the stewardship of his creature that is in his image.
Importing evolutionary ideas into this is not innocuously adding a ‘scientific’ explanation, but is mounting an attack on the sovereignty and capability of God, if not his very being; re-founding humanity as a mere assembly of material, and making the cosmos the foundation of being, with person-hood, shown in will and love relationships and actions occurring within this and not prior to it, in the three-person God. Apart from this, it is also allowing a fiction to explain God’s supernatural acts, a fiction for which there is no evidence, any actual evidence cutting off after it has explained the variation in creatures (but not their origin).
I would ask you to re-consider your position on creation and re-take it as a theological question, because those who deny God see the theological issue very clearly and make materialism the engine of their view of humanity. The two do not co-join. Materialism, how ever it trumps itself up, does not mix with Christian supernaturalism. Each places man and the cosmos on utterly different trajectories.
A sermon that deals with this topic which may be of interest is at:
http://www.gty.org/resources/Sermons/90-359
I would also add that to argue for any mixture of evolution and creation removes God from creation: as many published works attest, as does the lack of movement to God brought by expousal of evolution. My posts on de-godding God and the Creation discuss this.
Furthermore, to claim that the text is empty of historical content, but still serves to show God as creator, fails. If the content is inaccurate, then nothing is communicated but puffery, and it is empty of information that relates to the creation in which it is purported to make sense: that is connects with the categories, relationships and common causality of the creation. It is a sad sign of theological neglect to let this hollow argument pass into print, or sermons, which it does from time to time.
21 January 2012
Creation, but not as you know it
The sermon on Genesis 1, to which I referred the other day, started off very well, I thought, and it ended well too, for that matter. It was the middle that was the problem; or where there were a number of problems, to my mind.
At one point the speaker made an analogy by asking if we believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews. Of course, most people affirmed. He then told us that in fact all Hitler did was give orders. The killing was done by others. He extended this to say that creation was similar. God gave the orders, but other factors did the work.
There are a couple of basic problems with this: there is no biblical evidence that God used intermediaries, or had to rely on agency (apart from Christ, the only agent mentioned in the Bible: John 1:1-3) particularly noting Hebrews 11:3 and Psalm 33:6 and 9. There is also an irrationality in God having to rely on, or use, something from within the creation to recursively do the creating itself, when God's resting on day 7 marks the division between creating and the world as created. It means that God used something from what was not there do make what became there. Simply unworkable!
The speaker also brought up the notion that the creation account gives us the 'why' or the meaning behind it all, but 'science' gives us the 'how'.
Again, this fails. The failure is a basic linguistic one, as the account clearly provides the 'how' (God spoke, it happened) as the 'why'. The two are inseparable. But the failure is also logical: if it is imagined that a materialist, de-godding doctrine (evolution) which relies on observations within the completed (but fallen) creation gives the detail of the pre-fall, pre-normal-providence creation acts, then we are using imaginary paddles on this particular canoe!
One remark perhaps gave the game away. The speaker mentioned 'intelligent design' which, to my mind is a non-Christian approach to origins, when it is extended past the observation that the creation is replete with the characteristics of design. ID does not a theology make, nor is it adequate to inform theological work. Our consideration of creation must start with the Bible, as for instance this sermon on the theology of creation demonstrates.
Underlying the speaker's thesis, I think, was a misunderstanding of the creation account itself; which is about relationship and soverign action, not providing openings for us to 'grope' for 'mechanisms'. And, as I've argued, the quest for a mechanism is itself recourse to materialism and rejection of the biblical world view, sith its use of history to establish the basis for relationship and the connection between creator and creation, and gives primacy to materialism as basic within the creation and probably prior to it!
One of the nice touches in the sermon was how the speaker characterised the pinnacle of creation. Usually it is said that this occurs on day 6, with the creation of man. But Duncan suggested that it is day 7, when God rested. And this has a symmetry to it (in chiasmic fashion) with it a book end to God being the focus of the start of the passage in Genesis 1:1.
Thus, it is all about God, and the detail of the account is even less some literary artifice to convince us that God is creator, but is very much about God creating: about what he, as God, did as the work of God in bringing a creation into being as the place where he would be in relationship with his creatures.
At one point the speaker made an analogy by asking if we believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews. Of course, most people affirmed. He then told us that in fact all Hitler did was give orders. The killing was done by others. He extended this to say that creation was similar. God gave the orders, but other factors did the work.
There are a couple of basic problems with this: there is no biblical evidence that God used intermediaries, or had to rely on agency (apart from Christ, the only agent mentioned in the Bible: John 1:1-3) particularly noting Hebrews 11:3 and Psalm 33:6 and 9. There is also an irrationality in God having to rely on, or use, something from within the creation to recursively do the creating itself, when God's resting on day 7 marks the division between creating and the world as created. It means that God used something from what was not there do make what became there. Simply unworkable!
The speaker also brought up the notion that the creation account gives us the 'why' or the meaning behind it all, but 'science' gives us the 'how'.
Again, this fails. The failure is a basic linguistic one, as the account clearly provides the 'how' (God spoke, it happened) as the 'why'. The two are inseparable. But the failure is also logical: if it is imagined that a materialist, de-godding doctrine (evolution) which relies on observations within the completed (but fallen) creation gives the detail of the pre-fall, pre-normal-providence creation acts, then we are using imaginary paddles on this particular canoe!
One remark perhaps gave the game away. The speaker mentioned 'intelligent design' which, to my mind is a non-Christian approach to origins, when it is extended past the observation that the creation is replete with the characteristics of design. ID does not a theology make, nor is it adequate to inform theological work. Our consideration of creation must start with the Bible, as for instance this sermon on the theology of creation demonstrates.
Underlying the speaker's thesis, I think, was a misunderstanding of the creation account itself; which is about relationship and soverign action, not providing openings for us to 'grope' for 'mechanisms'. And, as I've argued, the quest for a mechanism is itself recourse to materialism and rejection of the biblical world view, sith its use of history to establish the basis for relationship and the connection between creator and creation, and gives primacy to materialism as basic within the creation and probably prior to it!
One of the nice touches in the sermon was how the speaker characterised the pinnacle of creation. Usually it is said that this occurs on day 6, with the creation of man. But Duncan suggested that it is day 7, when God rested. And this has a symmetry to it (in chiasmic fashion) with it a book end to God being the focus of the start of the passage in Genesis 1:1.
Thus, it is all about God, and the detail of the account is even less some literary artifice to convince us that God is creator, but is very much about God creating: about what he, as God, did as the work of God in bringing a creation into being as the place where he would be in relationship with his creatures.
17 January 2012
Creation in pictures
Not quite clear in the picture (using phone not camera) but this shows a children's activity at a church I was visiting today (15 Jan 12). The chart was divided into 7 sections, and children were asked to stick pictures of what God created on each day in the appropriate section. Was very enjoyable as Alison, the moderator (I hate, as you know, the word 'leader' in a Christian context), led us through the questions, answers and sticking up.
The sermon that followed (thanks Duncan) took us into some interesting territory, but included, I think, some views that are not defensible from the Bible.
More on this in a later post.
12 January 2012
evolutionary history
“The evolutionary theory of history has a good deal in common with that which sees the hand of God in history; after all, evolution was thought to explain the facts of natural creation in default of the existence of a creator.”
Elton, G The Practice of History p. 31
Elton, G The Practice of History p. 31
The suppression of Christianity
In "The Good Weekend" of 17 December 2011 Greg Bearup wrote:
Bearup also downplays Schweitzer's musical capability. He indeed was a great musician, but he was also a noted musicologist, with a two volume work on Bach.
Typical atheistic revisionism that attempts to erase the Christian heritage from the popular mind.
...he remembers being fascinated reading about the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer, a German philosopher, physician and musician who set up a hospital in Africa and supported it by performing organ recitals.Note, no mention of Schweitzer's christian devotion being the major factor in his life and work or the sacrifice of his opportunities in Germany for the work in Africa. Note also the 'on purpose' mistake to call him a philosopher, but to not mention that he was a theologian, and a significant one!
Bearup also downplays Schweitzer's musical capability. He indeed was a great musician, but he was also a noted musicologist, with a two volume work on Bach.
Typical atheistic revisionism that attempts to erase the Christian heritage from the popular mind.
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