It doesn't hurt to ask

The Anglican Church in Sydney is running a campaign called "Connect09". I'm a little wary of campaigns, let alone those attended by slogans (change management by slogan is the most arid and pointless exercise of organisations without ideas). Nevertheless, I think our parish is hitting a few good bases.

Along the lines of connecting with people Seth Godin posted this blog a while back.

Cole's on fire

The other evening I attended a lecture at St. Swithun's Anglican church at Pymble. The lecture was given by Graham Cole and it had the title "The Grandeur of God's Atoning Project.

I'd love to link to the lecture, but unfortunately it hasn't been made available for the web. The number of references that Graham made to God's creation surprised me a little (or maybe it shouldn't have, with the creation-new creation line permeating Paul's theology).

He referred to the basic Christian framing of history: not only salvation history, but history in toto: the sequence of our experience:

Harmony: God created the world
Dis-harmony/rupture: The world goes wrong
Higher harmony: God restores the creation, but better!

He saw creation as a great act of generosity on God's part, an act of love; he didn't 'need' to create, but he did, because it would bring life and greater love-events. The fall, of course changed all that, but God out did the fall in Christ.

But love goes to life, not death; it is the contraversion of love that brings death; this struck me as a great indicator of the basic incompatibility of death and God's very good creation. This leaves heterodox approaches to Genesis 1-3 in a pickle, to my mind.

Man being in God's image also presents a problem for the 'death is basic' crowd. Death is not basic to man, as being in God's image would present a front of incompatibility between God's being and man's reflection of that. The image marred results in God's being spurned and death coming by curse: to the unity of the creation, over which man was God's caretaker. How could death a) not go everywhere in creation at the curse, when the relationship between caretaker and creator was broken: image defaced and life undone; therefore death! and b) preexist the rupture in the creation brought by the primary rupture between image bearer and creator. Pre-fall there is no room for death in the unity of the unruptured creation.

Again, the death is basic crowd has, I think, missed a basic premise of theology and the scriptures.

Interesting to reflect in this connection the historical unity of man's creation and his image-bearing. Genesis 1:26-27 is in mind, along with Genesis 2:7. It seems to leave no room for man to 'emerge' from the creation through a chain of death to be the caretaker of a unified creation giving God pleasure: in that it contains no 'not-God'. The fall turns that around!

The idea that death is the engine of creation (as horrible as this is) comes from within the context of the ruptured world, and so must, I think, but set to one side.

PS

At his lecture on Thursday evening, Graham offered two post scripts. I'll offer one, starting with a quote that unfortunately applies to many conservative evangelicals when it comes to their interpretation of Genesis 1:

In too many quarters we see "sterile supernaturalism" giving rise to "practical deism" working itself out in a "moral stoicism". Or something like that. Its the first two steps that attracted my attention in this connection: denying that God could create as the surface reading of Genesis 1-3 reveals leads quickly to a deistic view of the world and God, which removes God from us and invites in ideas such as theistic evolution, in my view.

Head

This morning (31 May 09) one of our ministers talked about Colossians 2:13-23. The talk was on 'true spirituality' which reminded me of Francis Schaeffer's book of the same name.

The mention of Christ our head in Colossians 2:19, however lead my thoughts.

I thought about it with the other 'head' passages: 1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 1:22; Ephesians 4:15; Ephesians 5:23.

Head here is, I think, not about 'rule' or 'authority' which is how it is from time to time seemingly regarded in conservative churches; particularly with respect to an 'order' or even a hierarchy in relationships between the sexes, that goes on to, in my view, distort the biblical teaching about husbands and wives, men and women in general, and overseers and churches (clergy and churches in the parlance of some, including some Anglicans). Taken to an extreme, this has implications for the relationships within the trinity too...dangerous and concerning ones which undo this particular theological line, I think.

But I doubt, therefore, that this is the point of the verses. Response to 'head' is a response that recognises unity, an organic unity brought by new birth into the church (in the references to Christ as head of the church). It is about harmony and support, not power. Power implies opposition and conflict, even coersion, and the need to overcome discord! and I don't think that this is present between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So how could it be conceived as being given such an orientation as between husbands and wives, men and women, and overseers and churches? Not, I think.

No Small Jesus?

In the sermon on 10 May 2009 (mothers' day, 10:15am service) there were some thought provoking matters raised. Check here for the sermon.

The sermon outline as provided is below.

Christ over all
Colossians 1:15-23

Introduction: Is Your Jesus Too Small?

1. Christ and the Creation (vs. 15-17)

• The image of God
• The firstborn over all creation
• Christ and all things

- all things were created by and for him
- in him all things hold together.

2. Christ and the new creation (vs. 18-20)

• The head of the "body"; the church
• The firstborn from among the dead
• To reconcile to himself all things.

3. Christ and the Christian (vs. 21-23)

• Before -- alienated and enemies
• Now -- reconciled through Jesus/ death, holy in God's sight
• How -- faith grounded in the hope held out in the gospel.

Some comments:

This is a rivetting passage for many reasons, but I want to touch on a few related to its implications for Christ's being our creator (of course, given the topic of this blog).

The centrality of Christ is firstly opposed to the pluralism of today. The sermon made this point well, I thought. What it didn't explore was 'why pluralism'?

I think that underneath pluralism, in the West, at least (Eastern pluralism may be a different matter) lies a meta-religous position that is not scrutinised (see my Fundamentalism 2 blog). Modern Western pluralism would regard faith in Jesus as merely one of a number of religious choices all being of equal value; that is, none, outside the person and their span of influence. That is, as it touches on what is really real, of no value at all. The position, the 'meta-religious' position defaults to materialism. With reality being really no more than matter in various arrangements resulting from the outworking of the nature of matter itself, any beliefs that emerge from this matter that are not necessarily dependent on it are mere decoration; they have no more to do with what is true than the colour of carpet in a hospital has to do with the success of surgery.

The challenge for materialism is, of course, to doubt its own axioms.

The Christian stand against pluraism turns on Christ, and in this passage on Christ as creator.

And this takes us to the next thing.

Paul delineates Christ's place and work for us by reference to him as the image of God (the successful image, counter to the failed image of Adam and Eve, representing God the source (head) of life and love to the creation) preeminent in all creation, creator, firstborn from the dead with respect to the church and reconciler.

The interesting connection that I see is that between death and Christ, and that in terms of Christ as creator.

The contrast between the life giving Christ (John 1:4) and death and its ramifications could not be clearer. (1 Cor 15:21 and 26). It is too easy for us to think of death as a part of the creation, after all, it dogs us all and we cannot but not conceive of it; but it crushes life, it stands in opposition to God; is the antithesis of creation because it undoes creation: runs creation in reverse and produces not-life: and it therefore starkly denies Christ in whom is life.

But I think that death, in any form, cannot be part of creation. Indeed, its introduction is the result of undoing the relationship between man and God (Gen 2:17, 3:19 and with 1 Cor 15:21 with Romans 5:12) and results in breaking creation; it is in direct opposition to Christ.

Thus I find it problematic that some Christians can see death in the creation between its initiation and the fall, which is required if the life of Adam and the fall is pushed forward to a date after death is surmised to be in the creation (but not of it, which I think the Colossians passage indicates) thus having the creation including death being for Christ. The incongruousness of this is such as to deny the words of scripture and plant at its heart, in Christ, a (fatal?) contradiction.

But Christ repairs the creation, he overcomes death which is out of step with creation, confronting creation with its negation, and setting aside its power and destructive place, over us and the whole cosmos (Roms 8:22).

Dinosaur Bells

In my church news this week:

"Bell Ringing - 24 May
This afternoon, a peal will be attempted between 4pm and 7pm. If successful, the method, composed by a Sydney Ringer, will be called Muttaburrasaurus Delight Major; named for a a Cretaceous dinosaur fossil found at Muttaburra, North Queensland. This will be the first peal in the method in the world."

There seems to be a view in some quarters that dinosaurs present some sort of challenge to the Bible's reliability. See here, for instance.

Not so, of course, but intriguing that the conceptualisation of the history of the world that starts with the absence of God (in idealist rejection of the physical validity of the Bible) is given credibility. I refer to the uncommented mention of 'Cretaceous' in the quote. It is in a publication by a church that claims to accept the Bible as the authoritative word of God spoken into the material cosmos he created as the setting for his relationship with us!

Philosophy

A fascinating evening was had by all at our home group, where we are discussing Colossians. The discussion questions (well, not really discussion questions, more like comprehension questions, IMO, that tend to reduce rather than promote discussion) one touched on Colossians 2:8. Two people offered examples of philosophy that had taken people captive. I was not one of the two. The offered examples were the 'prosperity' gospel, so called and Darwinism!

I was gratified to hear that; there aren't that many Christians who are tuned into that as a philosphy that displaces Christ, conceptually, if not actually in all cases, and substitutes the worship of the creature for the creator.

Shoe colour?

“Differences in beliefs about origins reflect a diversity of attitudes toward reality in general. For atheists the universe is governed by impersonal forces of attraction and repulsion. There exists neither supernatural planner nor supernatural implementer. Rather, forces of nature, chance and the passage of time bring about worlds such as ours, provided all necessary conditions for life exist.

In contrast [we as Christians] attribute everything in the universe to an original cause, the will and ability of the creator as described in the Bible. [This] world is filled with evidences (sic) of superb design and grand purposes.”

From Javor, G. “The Scientific Case for Creation” in Westacott and Ashton, The Big Argument, Strand Publishing, Sydney 2005.

…God is the one who sits on the throne and rules over His creation. This information makes a tremendous difference in the way that people view their place in the universe.

“You’ve likely also understood that the creation-evolution debate is more than just an argument over scientific “facts”. Evolution is a pervasive worldview with far-reaching tentacles into virtually every aspect of our culture. At its very basic level it claims there is no Creator and that all living things (including human beings) have come about through blind chance random processes over millions of years. Our brain and even our very thought processes have also evolved; we can, therefore, choose what is right and wrong in our own eyes…The demeaning of human life can be traced back to an evolutionary worldview.”

This quote is from a creation ministry newsletter a friend handed to me.

It doesn’t go far enough for me. The choice of views about origins leads not just to moral outcomes (and I am a little wary of anything that reduces Christian faith to mere moralising, when all our righteousness is as filthy rags, to quote Paul, but beliefs do tend to produce moral outcomes) but to two opposed views of the world. For the Christian, life, love and relationship, in short God, comes before the world. For the materialist, life, love and relationship, indeed, the very idea of belief, come from within the world and are a consequence of material. They are therefore on a par with choice of shoe colour in basic significance.

I don’t think that theistic evolution really grapples with the divergence, at a basic level, between the two different views it pretends that it can bridge. I also don’t think that modern evangelism has properly analysed western culture to make meaningful contact with it; rather, it avoids the structure of modern western ‘religious’ belief and pretends that it shares the very Christian world view that it in fact rejects out of hand.

Just after I'd written this I heard about the mistreatment of children in Irish RC run institutions: I wonder what their beliefs really were!!

On Time

My previous post discussing the question of method, deals by implication with a related matter. That is, if there was no ‘method’, then there was no need for delay in the creation. Time is needed if there is method, but if there is no method then the supposed period required for the execution of the creation collapses. This brings us back to Augustine’s query as to why the creation took any time at all. However, it did, and in so doing shows us the orderly system of dependencies that exist in the creation.

This connects with Proverbs 3:19f telling us exactly how God did the creation:

The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
By understanding he established the heavens;
By his knowledge the depths were broken up,
and clouds drop down the dew.

The relation between understanding and the time taken to do something is roughly that with an increase in understanding, there is a decrease in time required. For us, there are limits: some things will take a minimum amount of time, no matter how much understanding is brought to the task; some people have so little requisite understanding that there are some things they could not do, no matter how long they tried. Therefore, taking large amounts of time to do something is not a mark of the doer’s understanding of the task, but quite the reverse.

For God, the lower limit need not apply, as it is related to our finitude, so one could assume the shortest time God, with infinite understanding would take would be instantaneous.

There is certainly no requirement from God’s side to take any particular length of time at all. However, he worked with understanding, knowledge and wisdom maximally, that’s the ‘method’ if there was one, but not method as we would understand it, but the connection of his capability to its object by his will.

I also remarked some time ago that time is the 'existential removalist.' The passing of time breaks the relationships between entities (including causal relationships). It dissipates connection, memory, relevance, affection, and detail disappears; the past is blurred and the factors that played are forgotten, while conclusions are crowded by subsequent motives and interests; the past, the very deep past, becomes such a distant country that all things must be different now because we've all moved on.

The long time between creation and now is the pagan view that admits lack of knowledge, to put it in the best light, or sets out to prevent knowledge, to put it in its worst light, of our creation; because the biblical view is that the creation is the direct link between God and us, featuring immediacy (6 days! and not that long ago) and close relationship.

As an instance of the operation of 'great' time, this quote from a history documentary on India I saw on ABC2 on Sunday evening (29 March 2009):

In the tale of life on earth the human story is brief. A few hundred generations cover humanities’ attempt to create order, beauty and happiness on the face of the earth.

The beginnings for most of us are lost in time, beyond memory. Only India has preserved the unbroken thread of the human story that binds us all. According to the oldest Indian myths the first humans came from a golden egg laid by the king of the gods in the churning of the cosmic ocean. Modern science works in a less poetic vein but no less thrilling to the imagination…

Interposing vast periods of time between God's action and our coming into existence pushes God out of our historical-existential range; he ceases to have any realistic involvement with our lives: consistent with a deist view, facilitative of a pagan view, but alien to a Christian one.

Looking from the other direction, if God did take vast periods of time to bring about the creation, which is the both the conventional pagan view often adopted by Christian, unwittingly, perhaps, then his action (in understanding) is indistinguishable from action without understanding, but by the mute creation being the outcome of physical processes; that such processes are remote from God is indicated by their contemplation rarely resulting in repentance, but often resulting in the denial or rejection of God as loving person.

It would seem hardly likely then, that a ‘method’ (or time process) which deflected attention from God would come from the hand of God. Some may argue that this simply leaves room for faith. However, this is faith conceived as fairy tale (faith as response to denial), and not faith as response to knowledge coming from God’s account of the creation. Hebrews 11:3, again.

Big Questions

Another in the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Spectrum' magazine on 9 May 09: in its 'Big Questions' column (where people ask 'big questions' and various answers are published) a recent question about swearing on the Bible by atheists was asked.

The answer published was the legal answer; in brief, whether you swear on the Bible, irrespective of your belief, or make a declaration ('affirmation' in NSW) you have a legal obligation to tell the truth and can be punished if you have not.

But the question is bigger for Christians; at least, for this Christian.

I think of Matt 5:33-37 and 23:16ff when this comes up. The basic point of these passages is that you tell the truth and it doesn't need quasi magic actions to guarantee that you are telling the truth!

Putting one's hand on a Bible and swearing that you will tell the truth both treats the Bible like some sort of talisman or charm, and ignores its statements about itself; that it is communication about the relationship between God and his creation, not a way for his creatures to garner benefits in their own statements.

For this reason I don't make an oath in court; I've always taken the affirmation. I imagine that some Christians will fill with pride and solomnly make an oath on the Bible, thinking that this is somehow a witness to their faith and evidence of their godliness: quite the contrary, IMO. Non-believers using it similarly is simply ludicrous. Imagine putting your hand on a book that means nothing to you and saying that you will do what you are obliged to do!

I wonder if a cunning court clerk made a book full of blank pages and put a Bible cover on would the incidence of perjury increase?

Does this make me a fundamentalist (see previous blog)?

Fundamentalism #2

In a previous blog, continuing from Michael Jensen's 'Blogging Parson' I made some remarks about fundamentalism and orientating frameworks of belief.

In this very connection, a review in Spectrum (Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 09) of ex-bishop, now 'theologian at large' Richard Holloway's book "Between the Monster and The Saint: Reflections on the Human Condition" (Spectrum's odd capitalisation aside) I think we can see where doubting basic revelation leads to a completely alternative world view. But what I suspect he didn't doubt was the materialist framing of his views; even if unconscious.

He has ended up with 'religion' as being nothing transcendental, but a mere cultural invention; that is, its belief system being an arbitrary (?) collection of mutterings that occur within a meta religious framework set by the predominant materialism of the day (in our case). So what he really really believes is that the scope of our being (our origin, destiny and relationships) is set by materialism.

Oddly, I would agree with him on 'religion' in general, but as he was an Anglican bishop, I guess he is referring to Christianity, or at least including it when he refers to religion. Now, I'd like to see his doubt exercised toward the materialism that he may be using to frame his position. Tough call. Atheists of whatever stripe seem to baulk at this depth of doubt.

If I can obtain permission I'll post a PDF of the review. If I can't I'll put up excerpts in discussion.

On Method: did God need one to create?

One of the most interesting questions raised by the average theistic evolutionist is that of the ‘method’ God employed in creating the cosmos and life within it. It is offered as an apparent challenge to the reading of Genesis 1 that takes the direct meaning of the text as substantiated, proposing, it would seem a flaw in the content that prevents the direct reading from credibly recounting events as they occurred. Or, in other words, it might be the truth, but it cannot be the whole truth. What is missing, the question implies, is information about the method by which God brought about his creation. Without a method, it seems, the text is not acceptable, can be set aside, in its detail, if not in its generality, and requires other information to lend it any credibility.

It appears that it is held, that in the face of Genesis 1, where no ‘method’ is evident to produce the creation, and the postulations of contemporary science (or what is accepted as contemporary science) which makes out that it has identified a method by which life was brought into the cosmos (which it has not, but that’s another matter and there’s plenty of material elsewhere on this, so I’ll not touch on it), there appears to be a need in some minds for a method of creation to be found or surmised for the creation account to gain our attention, and that method is supplied by the substantial materialist dogma of biological evolution.

It is said, in this line of thought, that because no method is evident in Genesis 1, one is needed, or must be assumed, or is possibly unstated allowing, in this instance, the introduction of a method from what is considered to be the conclusions of modern science to fill out the account in Genesis 1 and blend its lofty language, taken to be restricted to a theological sphere, with the concrete facts brought to us by science. Hey presto, the two are now one and together satisfy the questions of science and the demands of theology.

But, of course, this is a confused line of reasoning.

It confuses fact and idea, it considers theology to be like philosophy, or even like poetry or mythology (a striking confusion for Christians to encourage), it confuses science and philosophy, or even religion, and it confuses God with his creation.

I’ll elaborate my thoughts on the ‘four confusions’ later.

My interest in the question arises from the its supposing that there is a need to have a method underlay the bare words of Genesis 1. Similarly there is an occasional quest for the method behind the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues in Egypt. Oddly, there is less frequently a quest for the methods Jesus might have used in stilling the storm (although some might put this down to foresight, which is not quite what we are told in the gospels), walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick, or converting water to wine; his first recorded miracle. I have heard some explanations of the Cana miracle, but against the text they are lame.

In fact, it was a striking illustration depicting Jesus walking on water questioned by one of my children that leads to this short essay. Seeing the illustration for the first time lead to a spontaneous exclamation “What’s that?” in an amazed tone of voice. I explained what it was, and there followed a question “How did he do it?”, as though knowledge of method might enable replication; or it might have been a guileless enquiry as to how this act, so contrary to our experience could come about.

I think the only explanation, and the one that I used was that he wanted to, and what he wants to do he does without restraint.

Cana allows a similar observation. There is nothing special about water turning into wine: it is done frequently and the method is well known: plant vines, ensure they have adequate water, harvest grapes, crush them, extract juice, ferment it, and there we are: wine. What is special at Cana is that there was no ‘method’. It was the bare direct response of the creation to the will of the creator. If you want a method, it is the exercise of will and nothing more.

To propose that there are subsidiary methods underlying the exercise of will threatens the simplicity of God, making him a complex of parts and motions, of will and methods, one who must fabricate using fundamental components. If there were any such components to the exercise of will (or its expression in word, which amounts to the same thing: a direct extension of the will arising from the self-ness of God), they would have to be either already in God simply, and therefore having the same locus as the will, or be a complex within God (the possibility of which I have already disregarded), or external to God, and if not created by him (method rises its head again in a fatal infinite regress), then created by another, or self existent, and if so, God evaporates in a puff of logic. If something apart from God can be self-existent, then either it is God, and God whom we know is a creature, or there is no God at all. But we know of nothing self-existent that has a beginning, and all things we know, apart from God do have a beginning, so until this is unwound, the proposal fails.

The requirement that there be a method in creation underneath the account we have in Genesis 1 is to say that the account is not enough to explain the creation: God’s exercise of his will is not adequate for the questioner to understand that God willed, his will was his act, and his act brought forth the cosmos and life in the manner given in Genesis 1.

If there is something deficient in this, it is a deficiency in God who must rely on processes or parts external to himself to bring forth the cosmos and its contained life; or God is not capable to produce effects by will, and must rely on intermediaries. The intermediaries are either within him and so have the same origin, and are thus not necessary, or God is not simple but of parts and having variation within, and so is not the God of the Bible or he is not God at all and relies for the effect of his will on other things.

Whatever it is, the God of the Bible is denied by the requirement that a ‘method’ is required for the creation as set out in Genesis 1 that is additional to what we are told: that God spoke, it occurred and it was good, or very good. One might also refer to John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3.

Indeed, it could well be that one of the points that is made in Genesis 1 is that no ‘method’ was used or was necessary for God to achieve the object of his will, thus showing that the dynamic between creator and creation was unmediated.

Addendum on the four confusions.

1. Fact and idea
These two are confused because the idea of evolution is taken to be factual. In most formulations this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent writ large. That is: “life as we see it could be produced by evolution as we state it, therefore, because we see life evolution has occurred. However, the facticity of evolution must be established independently of the boosterism that normally accompanies it.

2. Theology and philosophy, or even poetry or myth
Theology seems to be given the status of philosophy at best, poetry or myth at worst. But philosophy is content with building an intellectual system on basic premises; it is derivative from our knowledge and thinking. Theology is the work of understanding the Bible and making its application to our life and experience. Philosophy starts within us and is developed through our chosen frame of view of the world; theology, while it is often influenced uncritically by philosophy, does not start with us, but with the objective content of the Bible. Any choice to set aside the objective content is a choice to move from theology to philosophy. This choice is often taken when materialism is substituted for theism in reading the Bible.

Even more contestably, is the confusion of theology with the art forms of poetry or myth, the later of which I take as a sort of culturally comforting story telling. This means that theology is less a reflection on the objective text of the Bible (the only job of theology), and takes the text on an impressionistic adventure that expresses the artistic urges of the ancient Hebrews and on a level with the dream time tales of Australian aboriginals.

3. Science and philosophy, or even religion
On the other hand, it confuses science and philosophy by conveniently overlooking the materialist bones of modern evolutionary thought (and, for that matter, of historical evolutionary thought in most cases) and thinking ‘science’, when reading ‘philosophy’; the materialist basis of much modern scientific discourse, particularly in this area where anything but the material is denied (reducing ideas to the level of material interactions, and no more), is ignored and the successes of modern science where it is doing its proper job are used to bolster its claims in this area, which is not a scientific area at all. Incidentally, modern science stands with feet firmly planted in an approach to the world that emerged from taking the creation account in Genesis seriously, and setting out for us that the world is objectively real and capable of reasonable investigation.

The science-religion confusion occurs where materialism has moved from being a philosophical matter to being a religious matter. It is an easy move to make, but I would call it a religious view rather than a philosophical one where, in Closer’s terms (The Myth of Religious Neutrality – Closer is ironically a theistic evolutionist!) the axioms of the system are taken to represent what is independently real: basic beliefs, and where those beliefs are isolated from critical evaluation. To adopt a metaphor from another context: philosophy is building a view of the world to think about; religion is when one is living by that view. A further irony here is that Christian belief is subject to intense critical scrutiny by its adherents, on the basis, I would surmise, of the apostle Paul saying that if the resurrection did not occur, we are deluded and of all men to be pitied. Try to catch a materialist making a similar observation.

4. God and his creation
The final confusion occurs when God is merged with his creation, and must use ‘method’, which only would be sought if his separateness from his creation were not understood. If this is the case, we don’t have a ‘god’ worth talking about and may as well, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, and dust is the end of us.

The big BUT is that no one lives as though their fate is dust. Most people live as though (their) life and others’ has a value that is independent of its material existence.

Fundamentalism

Not feeling a need to restrict this blog to matters strictly concerned with creation and its theology, I picked up this recently on Michael Jensen's website.

The blog by Michael seems to have attracted a lot of debate, and I added my two bits worth. Below for ease of reference.

"I note that there is a cross current of arguments about fundamentalism, but no real definition. Is the word used here as journalists typically use it: with a range from 'bible believing' to simply kooky, and melding all together, or is it used with reference aperjoratively to the set of books issued in the 1930s as a statement against modern North American liberalism of the fundamentals of christian faith; a set of propositions that largely, at the time, I understand, defined orthodox evangelicalism. See here.

If it's the latter, then I guess I'm a fundamentalist, but that does not mean that I fall for faith as the atheist would accuse me (believing with no evidence, which is not biblical faith at all), or that I see answers to everything in the Bible. What it does mean is that I take the Bible as definitonal of my view of the world and its relationships. It sets up a framework by which I attempt to construct understanding: these understandings I am wont to doubt, but their basis I am probably not.

So what is the argument between Sam, John and the others?

BTW, I would agree that orthodox Christianity provides a better position from which to doubt than atheism (and I think that modern atheism is a weird type of Christian heresy anyway) because at least it provides a basis for persons that extends validity beyond the merely material and elevates doubt to the level of meaningful, rather than the random."

I known it is not possible to read too much into blog posts, but it seems to me that there is something missing from the analysis implicit in Michael's blog. That is, our 'first motion of the intellect' is belief. We can get nowhere if we do not first believe...something. All else follows, but our beliefs will determine finally how we see the world and our place in it. So, in a sense, everyone has a religious position. Everyone bases their thought life on taking something as having an independent reality. For most of us, this is sub-articulate, that is, taken, but not stated.

Thus to accuse 'fundamentalists' such as myself, but with the definition, that I take the Bible to be inerrent and the inspired communication of God to humanity, and so the statement from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: "2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises."

I hope Michael had this in mind, and did not fall into the trap of taking the popular definition, that 'fundamentalists' are socially or politically militant or archly conservantive, or somehow hard against human frailties. Not so in my case, but I don't want to go to politics or social questions here.

My concern is that Michael seemed to allow himself a fairly uncritical engagement with the structure of theoretical thinking that must start with a belief position, and for Christians above all, that belief position has to be found in the Bible, and nowhere else. A number of statements in the Bible, by Paul and others, bolster this view. I think particularly of Col 2:8, and 2 Cor 10:5.

The Loch Ness Monster

In an aside in a recent sermon (in our series on the theology of the atonement: March 2009), one of our ministers said something like “I can assure you that the Lock Ness monster is not a dinosaur left over from Noah’s ark, apologies to those who are upset by that.”

I can’t remember if he mentioned Noah’s ark, but if not, it logically underlays the statement.

Now, I couldn’t care less what any one thinks of the Lock Ness monster, or what it might be. The evidence is so unreliable as to leave any views in the realm of speculation; and as we all know, we can speculate until the cows come home and still know nothing.

What intrigued me is the incongruity of the remark and its internal baselessness. If this is an example of how theologians think, then no wonder we cannot communicate hope to a world without it!

The starting point is how did he ‘know’ that the Lock Ness monster (if it exists) is not any particular thing? He must have seen it to make that statement, and know what dinosaurs were at the time of Noah’s Ark. This is, of course, impossible.

I suppose if he was referring to some contemporary stories about the age and history of the biosphere, he might have thought that he could make that statement with confidence. He might even have a theological theory that would lend the statement some credibility. But, as none of this was stated, the remark was disingenuous, at worst, meaningless at best.

If he accepted contemporary stories, I suppose he would have structured his declamation on the basis that dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, long before mankind was created, and therefore there were no dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, irrespective of his beliefs about the ark and the flood.

But his is basing a claim on a set of assumptions that commence with the assumption that there is no God, or the softer, but still highly unchristian assumption, that God relates to his creation as deism describes. So he possibly attempts to overturn a view that could be a logical outworking of a view of the history of the world drawn from biblical data using views that reject the Bible. Nice!

On the other hand, he could be letting the deist basis of the modern chronology of the world sit to one side, while denying that the Bible has any content that relates to the world we are in, but only has content that is theological in character. But this amounts to arbitrarily imposing a filter on the scripture that doesn’t emerge from the scripture itself; a striking move when the Spirit very explicitly puts the covenant between God and man in its physical setting, so as to provide the ground of the covenant (pun intended) and the locus of the relationship.

As I’ve argued elsewhere in this blog, the soteriological arc extends from the initial conditions set out in Genesis 1. If it doesn’t, and the initial conditions are fictional, at some level, then we have theology that has become story-telling, in the fairy story sense of the phrase.

Not good!

Enuma elish

From time to time discussion of the status of Genesis 1 swings round to its alleged similarity with the Babylonia tale Enuma elish. I’ve seen such discussion on the Anglican Forum sponsored by the diocese, although ‘discussion’ is not the ideal description for the exchanges I’ve read, where the parties sometimes talk at cross purposes (particularly if they disagree with a point advanced) and without really attending to the points made by the other.

In that context, an article by Hasel, G. “The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis 1 in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Parallels” from 1971 is interesting.

I’ve included some pertinent excerpts from the paper here.

…[B]y the turn of the century and continuing into the twenties and thirties the idea of a direct connection of some kind between the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts of creation was taken for granted, with the general consensus of critical opinion that the Hebrew creation story depended on a Babylonian original.
…
[But] it is no longer scientifically sound to assume that all ideas originated in Mesopotamia and moved westward as H. Winckler's "pan-Babylonian" theory had claimed under the support of Friedrich Delitzsch and others. The cultural situation is extremely complex and diverse. Today we know that "a great variety of ideas circulated in ancient Mesopotamia…”
…
N. M. Sarna, who wrote one of the most comprehensive recent studies on the relationship between Gn and extra-biblical sources bearing on it, states: "... to ignore subtle differences [between Genesis and ancient Near Eastern parallels] is to present an unbalanced and untrue perspective and to pervert the scientific method." The importance of difference is, there- fore, just as crucial as the importance of similarity. Both must receive careful and studied attention in order to avoid a misreading of elements of one culture in terms of another, which produces gross distortion…
…
On this basis there is a growing consensus of opinion that the Biblical term tehom and the Babylonian Tiamat derive from a common Semitic root. This means that the use of the word of tehom in Gn 1:2 cannot be used as an argument for a direct dependence of Gn I on the Babylonian Enuma elish.
…
In contrast to the concept of the personified Tiamat, the mythical antagonist of the creator-god Marduk, the tehom in Gn 1:2 lacks any aspect of personification. It is clearly an inanimate part of the cosmos, simply a part of the created world. The "deep" does not offer any resistance to God's creative activity. In view of these observations it is un-sustainable to speak of a "demythologizing" of a mythical being in Gn 1:2. The term tehom as used in vs. 2 does not suggest that there is present in this usage the remnant of a latent conflict between a chaos monster and a creator god. The author of Gn 1 employs this term in a "depersonalized" and "non-mythical" way.
…
In short, the description of the depersonalized, undifferentiated, unorganized, and passive state of tehom in Gn 1:2 is not due to any influence from non-Israelite mythology but is motivated through the Hebrew conception of the world. In stating the conditions in which this earth existed before God commanded that light should spring forth, the author of Gn 1 rejected explicitly contemporary mythological notions.
…
These notable differences have led T. H. Gaster to suggest that "the writer [of Gn 1] has suppressed or expurgated older and cruder mythological fancies." But these differences are not so much due to suppressing or expurgating mythology. They rather indicate a radical break with the mythical cosmogony. We agree with C. Westermann that the Biblical author in explaining the creation of the firmament (expanse) "does not reflect in this act of creation the contemporary world-view, rather he overcomes it.
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N. M. Sarna considers the similarity between the Egyptian notion of creation by word and the one in Gn 1 as "wholly superficial." In Egyptian thought the pronouncement of the right magical word, like the performance of the right magical action, is able to actualize the potentialities inherent in matter. The Gn concept of creation by divine fiat is not obscured by polytheistic and mantic-magic distortions.
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With von Rad and others we may conclude that "the entire passage vs. 14-19 breathes a strongly antimythical pathos" or polemic. Living in the world of his day, the writer of Gn 1 was undoubtedly well acquainted with pagan astral worship, as were the readers for whom he wrote. The Hebrew account of the creation, function, and limitation of the luminaries demonstrates that he did not borrow his unique thoughts from the prevailing pagan mythical views. Rather he combats them while, at the same time, he portrays his own picture of the creatureliness of the luminaries and of their limitations.
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But when it comes to defining the purpose of man's creation, he [the scriptural writer] makes a supremely significant advance upon the time-honored pagan view. In contrast to the doctrine enunciated in the Mesopotamian myths. .. , man is here represented, not as the menial of the gods, but as the ruler of the animal and vegetable kingdoms (1:28).
…
On the other hand, in Mesopotamian mythology the creation of man is almost incidental, presented as a kind of afterthought, where he is a menial of the gods to provide them with nourishment and to satisfy their physical needs. The author of Gn 1 presents an antithetical view. The very first communication between God and man comes in the form of a divine blessing.

Order of Creation
A comparison with Enuma elish indicates certain analogies in the order of creation: firmament, dry land, luminaries, and lastly man. These orders of creation certainly resemble each other in a remarkable way. But there are some rather significant differences which have been too often overlooked. (1) There is no explicit statement in Enuma elish that light was created before the creation of luminaries. Although scholars have in the past maintained that Enuma elish has the notion of light before the creation of the heavenly luminaries, such a view is based on dubious interpretations of certain phenomena. (2) There is no explicit reference in Enuma elish to the creation of the sun. To infer this from Marduk's character as a solar deity and from what is said about the creation of the moon in Tablet V is too precarious. (3) Missing also in Enuma elish is the creation of vegetation, although Marduk is known to be the "creator of grains and herbs." Even if the creation of vegetation were mentioned in the missing lines of Tablet V, its appearance would have been after the luminaries whereas in Gn it is before the luminaries. (4) Finally, Enuma elish knows nothing of the creation of any animal life in sea and sky or on earth. A comparison of creative processes and their order indicates the following: (1) Gn 1 outlines twice as many processes of creation as Enuma elish; and (2) there is only a general analogy between the order of creation in both accounts; it is not identical.
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E. Wurthwein suggests that the placing of the creation accounts in Gn at the beginning of a linear history emphasizes a contrast to the cyclical nature of mythology, which is especially significant in view of the fact that creation in Gn 1 comes to a close within a certain non-repeatable period of creative time that closed with the seventh day. In his view this should be under- stood as a polemic which marks off, defends, and delimits against such mythical speculations that maintain a constantly repeating re-enactment of creation. Furthermore, it should not go unnoticed that the creation of the tanninim, "sea monsters," in Gn 1:21 reflects a deliberate effort to contradict the notion of creation in terms of a struggle, which is a key motif in the battle myth of pagan cosmogony. It also puts emphasis upon the creatureliness of the tanninim as being identical to that of other created animals
…
Gn cosmology as presented in Gn 1:1-2:4a appears thus basically different from the mythological cosmologies of the ancient Near East. It represents not only a "complete break" with the ancient Near Eastern mythological cosmologies but represents a parting of the spiritual ways which meant an undermining of the prevailing mythological cosmologies. This was brought about by the conscious and deliberate antimythical polemic that runs as a red thread through the entire Gn cosmology. The antimythical polemic has its roots in the Hebrew understanding of reality which is fundamentally opposed to the mythological one.

This is also mentioned in a paper on the St Mark's Avalon site.

Men, Women and Genesis

Interesting couple of articles on the CBE website:

One, on the equality of men and women, argued from Genesis 1-3, and the other on the implications Paul draws from the new creation. Have a read.

Odd that my most conservative views about the creation go to my (for a conservative) somewhat 'radical' views about the relation between women and men, some would say. To that I say (nicely, I hope), go read your Bible.

Dinosaur photo.

Well, the title is just to get some attention…it’s a photo of a piece of graffiti about dinosaurs. It is on a tree in a car park near my local Uniting Church premises. I’ve walked past it for years without noticing until now.

If you’ve trouble reading it, it says: “Why aren’t dinosaurs in the Bible?”

Answer 1: The word ‘dinosaur’ was invented in the 19th century, so the word couldn’t be in writings composed prior to that date.

Answer 2: Given that the word was not used prior to the 19th century, we could look at descriptions of animals in the Bible.

For some commentators, the descriptions of leviathan and behemoth in Job are consistent with what we know of some dinosaurs from their fossils.

Job 40:15 describes an animal that is sometimes thought to be an elephant, but the description of the tail eliminates that possibility.

Job 41:1 describes a more unusual animal, sometimes thought to be a large crocodile, but that doesn’t fit, with description including: ‘outer armour’, ‘double mail’, ‘strong scales’, ‘out of his nostrils smoke goes forth’.

It is the inconclusiveness of these descriptions that lends verisimilitude, in my view. If a writer was trying to invent a creature, they would be more likely to give a thorough description to ensure their readers understood them. But here, because Job is referring to creatures that are known to his readers, his description can be effective in abbreviated form, simply brining to mind the aspects of the creatures he is interested in.

Similarly today, if we were talking of an elephant, we might only mention its trunk, or thick legs, or big torso, or little tail, not giving a comprehensive description, and we would all know what we were talking about. But to someone who had never encountered the animal it would not be adequate to give a mental impression of the animal’s appearance.

Genealogy does...

Flicking through my notes on the sermon series that started this blog: that on Genesis, I had recorded the speaker's remark: the purpose of the genealogies is to find the 'serpent crusher', that mentioned in Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel."

Their work is to connect the arrival of the serpent crusher to the events that gave rise to the fall, curse and promise, and to direct us to undoing of our basic fear, that of death.

If there is no historical thread between the serpent crusher and Eve, that is, if the events of the garden are mere story...myth, then there is no point to the serpent crusher being in historical continuity with that which he will crush; and death is not undone, because death is in our historical context, not in a story world.

Pre-eminence

In the passage below (Col 1:9-20-Green’s Literal Trans.), I think that some interesting cross lights are thrown on the relations between Jesus as redeemer, the father, his work as creator and his pre-eminence.

It seems that it would deflate Christ’s pre-eminence (v.18c) if all things created by him and for him included the death that he came to end, wresting us away from the accuser. Those who want to meld the revelation of creation in the Bible with materialist constructions and say that materialism gives us the ‘means’ while the Bible gives us the ends, fail, I think to see the dominance of means over ends, if the means includes the very destruction that the end puts away for ever. Given that this passage links together Christ as creator, sustainer, head of the Church, redeemer and the one who ends the reign of death their linking draws together these lines of thought within the Bible, including, obviously, the creation. The very point seems to be that death is an intruder, which we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Cor 15:26) and Christ’s victory over it is of vast significance. To have death within Christ seems ridiculous to the point of theological self-destruction.

The full passage:

For this cause also, from the day in which we heard, we do not cease praying on your behalf, and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 for you to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing into the full knowledge of God; 11 being empowered with all power according to the might of His glory, to all patience and longsuffering with joy;
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, 13 who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; 15 who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation. 16 For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and all things consist in Him. 18 And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He be preeminent in all things; 19 because all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, and through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.

A Question of Hope

Hope is one of the significant aspects of our relationship to God. Paul regards the pagans as being without hope because they are without God (Eph 2:12). Hope is the function of faith looking to what God promises on the basis of what God has done (Heb 6:19); it is universally contingent on God’s demonstration of his capability within history, both explicitly, and implicitly in the teaching of Jesus, and it is all referred back to God’s prime capability demonstrated in his creating this world that we experience and in which our relationship with God has its setting and is exhibited.

Hope comes to us, however, not only by action, but by God’s word encapsulating and communicating his actions. Without his word, if we were not historically located at the point of his action, we would not strictly be aware of it; although the flow of biblical history (to adopt a title of one of Schaeffer’s books) would give us some confidence in God’s actions by virtue of the logic of the historical flow.

Hope arises from the link between action and word, filling actions with content and reflexively pointing us back to God’s word as the originator of his actions.

This is demonstrated nowhere better than in the creation. The creation is brought by God’s word: he speaks, it happens. He is immediately (that is, with no mediation apart from Christ, q.v. John 1:3) the author of the place that we live in and we ourselves. His authorship and revelation give us sufficient information to understand God, ourselves, the world we are given into and the noetic engagement with that world provided (Adam's naming the animals is an indicator along this line). No agent stands between us and God, and no process separates us from God.

Our confidence in the word of God and our hope is built on the continuity of God’s demonstrated connection with us and the world he created for us as the place where relationship and covenant is brought into being and played out. The three critical points in this are creation, incarnation (death pointing back to sin, and the contrast thrown starkly against the ‘very good’ preceding it, resurrection pointing forward to the new creation which envelops, reflects and extends the 'very good' now marred) and in the future, the new creation itself.

To remove God from his creation, which occurs when there is any interjection in the creation account and its significance as an anchor point for the historical 'flow', that dilutes the presence of God or the effect of his word also historically detaches him from the horizon of our existential placement. It brings uncertainty rather than certainty, because God’s relation to this world becomes uncommunicated and unknown, perhaps unknowable; this pushes God away from what he says and demonstrates (if words have meaning) is his closeness to us.

In some views this goes hand in hand with God’s actions being regarded as not only not being by God, but coming about by some mediating process not mentioned by God (and the mystery thus thickened by the uncertainty and speculation required by this argument from silence), but far removed from us in time, as though time might introduce the very process that is unstated by God (!). The function of time in this scheme is not only to provide the ‘time’ for the unstated to mediate between God’s word and its result in our time-space experience, but to push the question beyond any hope we would have of coming to knowledge of the creation as God's work: the intellectual process at work seems to be, ‘first deny the event, then insert a speculative component to assert sense in the event, then remove the event from our historical horizon with the effect that God is no longer the God of the Bible (where chronological information is almost pedantically set out) but a deist God who is uninvolved, or a Gnostic God who cannot be involved. Either way, not the God who is in intimate covenantal relationship with us; denoted with consistent historical reference to the world we are in and endorsing that world as the world that is from God to and for us; the one that we experience by the same mental organs and system of representation and logic by which we can come to have experience of God.

The upshot of pushing God out of the stream of being that puts us in the creation that he created and he has recorded requires some other creation to have occurred, which makes it call some other ‘god’ and invoke some other intervention than the incarnation of the creator amongst his creation.

Thinking about Leadership #2

The conventional image of the leader is the person ‘out front’, leading the way; someone with the ideas, the capability, the vision, the understanding and the will to achieve something and that actually achieves it, or gets out of the way so that others can and moves on to some other activity where they can make a difference.

It is an image of an isolated and remote figure, detached from others. It is an image that has been formed from fictional portrayals of military leaders or explorers. It is wrong.

In church circles it seems that there has been a recent recognition of a lot of contemporary business discussion about leadership; but the recognition seems to be picking up the early discussions in the business literature, and not the more recent material which puts the leader more and more into the picture in terms of functional contribution, not figure-head, as one who activates and supports people rather than dominates them.

It is the functional contribution of leadership that is of more importance, and functional contributions are always situational and occur in the context of a community of interest. Like a church, for example.

One of the most useful approaches to the idea of leadership, in my view, comes from Ronald Heifetz of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. An article that gives a helpful summary of his view is here.

Heifetz characterises leadership as an activity, that is, it is doing something, rather than being something. Thus it is situational not organisational. It is not (necessarily) a title on an organisation chart, but it is the nature of an individual’s particular actions in a particular circumstance, with conjoined motivations of other individuals:

“Leadership is what individuals do in mobilizing other people, in organizations or communities, to do what I call "adaptive work." Adaptive work can mean clarifying a conflict in values, or bridging the gap between the values that we stand for and the current conditions under which we operate. When you have a problem or a challenge for which there is no technical remedy, a problem for which it won't help to look to an authority for answers - the answers aren't there - that problem calls for adaptive work.”

Adaptive work is required more broadly when there is a disjunct of some sort between desired outcomes and current performance.

In church activities, this can occur at many points, but none of them require the attachment of a title to a person or even a role. That destroys the situational dynamic through which leadership emerges, passes from person to person from time to time, and dissolves when the adaptive work is completed. This may be one reason we are warned against calling ourselves ‘leaders’ (‘teachers’ or ‘masters’) as formal appellations in church community (Matt 23:10), and instead told to regard our role with respect to others as fundamentally service: thus the word ‘minister’. And we all have a ministry of some sort!

There are two basic organisational functions: maintenance and change; those we anoint as ‘leaders’ in our mistaken echoing of worldly proclivities are often maintenance people; true leadership is required where there is change of some sort required. These are not titled people but people who’ve made an observation, seen an opportunity, or seek a benefit where there is currently detriment. The need to be supported by the maintenance people and their change function given a home in the organisation by the maintenance people (church staff, for instance), who will also give the change program a context. In some cases the change will be such that it should be separated from the mother organisation for the sustenance of both the mother organisation and the daughter initiative; a church plant is possibly an example of this.

What is referred to, inaccurately from a biblical basis, as a leadership team or role is better characterised as a maintenance team or role. Terms to refer to such people might be convenor, organiser or co-ordinator. Facilitator would do in a pinch, as would even the older title of secretary. More traditionally, ‘minister’ would be fine, as in the church all we have is ministries, and we all have a ministry. Just title the ministry: small group minister (convenor), children’s minister (the one who organises it would be the children’s ministry coordinator) (In fact, such terms could well be used in all organisations designed for Christian or church purposes, such as missionary organisations, and so on. The use of hubristic corporate titles such as director, chief executive officer and the like are in opposition to the operation of a community of Christian purpose).

The Bible has provided us with the perfect model for organisational life under the auspices of the Holy Spirit: that is of ministry. Note the consistent emphasis in the NT on this as the basic function within the church; and we all have a ministry. The idea of one ‘minister’ or an isolated ‘ministry team’ is not biblical; nor is the idea of a ‘leader’ or ‘leadership team’. If a person is truly leading in Heifetz’s terms, then no title or label to the effect is necessary.