The Internet Monk Archives

Another Look: One Human Action, Profound Effects — Jesus and Adam

Note from CM: Since this subject came up in the discussion yesterday, I thought I would re-post a piece that I recommended in a comment (with edits and updates). I have also inserted additional material from another post, called “Paul, Christ, and Adam.”

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Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

• Romans 5:12-14, NASB

[Paul] does not posit a perfect pre-fallen state, nor does he attribute later human sin to the sin of Adam. Rather, he sees Adam as a kind of beginning — the beginning of a death-bound mode of life.

• Peter Bouteneff, Beginnings

Christian tradition has held certain views about “the fall,” “original sin,” and the part Adam played in plunging humankind into ruin on the basis of a few words by the Apostle Paul in the letter to the Romans (5:12-21). There is also a short statement focusing on the resurrection in 1Corinthians (15:21-22, see v. 45). Other than these two passages and the seminal story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-4, the Bible is virtually silent about Adam and the nature and results of his first-recorded transgression.

The only other certain references to Adam in the OT are found in genealogies: in Genesis 5 and 1Chronicles 1:1. In the Gospels, Jesus never mentions Adam and Eve by name or refers to their sin. Matthew and Luke include him in Jesus’ genealogies and Jude names Adam in another genealogical reference. Paul writes of Adam and Eve on one other occasion in a discussion about men and women in the church (1Timothy 2:13-14).

This paucity of material may come as a surprise to some, since the Creation-Fall-Redemption template using the account of Adam and Eve in a prominent role has become part and parcel of the way Christians present the message of the Bible and salvation.

Given this background, why did Paul set his attention on Adam in Romans 5?

First, there was an explosion of interest in the paradise narratives in post-biblical Jewish literature in the intertestamental period.

As Peter Bouteneff writes,

[D]uring the centuries under review, and especially during the first century of our era, several of the key, enduring questions surrounding the creation and predicament of the human person as treated in Genesis 1-3 were already on the table, even if they were not yet receiving clear and consistent answers. (p.25)

A vibrant discussion was taking place in Jewish literature in this period, raising questions (1) about Adam — was he a figure who stood for humanity in general or an individual? (2) about Eve — was she (a woman) ultimately responsible for the entrance of sin? (3) about the state of the first-created humanity — a dual legacy emerged, that of both a glorious Adam and a tragic transgressor, (4) about what the effect was of the first transgression on subsequent humanity — there is a whole mixed bag of opinions and interpretations, from denying that Adam’s sin played any causal role, to exonerating him completely and blaming Cain, to holding him responsible for subsequent human sin because he was the progenitor of all humanity.

One prominent voice was that of Philo, whose view Bouteneff summarizes: “The transgression is regarded neither as the greatest of sins nor as the cause of subsequent sin. Rather, subsequent sin becomes progressively worse, effecting an ever greater distancing from the noble protoplast.” (p. 29) But Philo also set forth allegorical interpretations of Genesis that paved the way for later Christian allegorical thinkers such as Origen.

Paul’s use of Adam must be seen in the context of this discussion. He wasn’t the first to take up the topic.

Second, Paul started, not with Adam, but with Jesus.

It is clear that the primary reason Paul turned his attention on the one man Adam in the biblical story is because he began his thinking with the one man Jesus Christ.

The Apostle’s starting point was Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, who rose from the dead and was thereby declared Son of God and Lord of all, Jew and Gentile alike (Romans 1:1-5). For Paul, one Man now ruled the world, bringing life to everyone. As he sought to communicate this good news to both Jews and Gentiles, he thought through the biblical history and found a type (Romans 5:14) in Adam, one man who likewise had a worldwide influence by his actions.

In Romans 5, Paul is especially concerned to show how the world was filled with sin and death in the beginning, that is, in the time before the Jewish Law was given at Mt. Sinai, which made clear God’s religious, moral, and ethical standards (Romans 5:14). As he writes, “death reigned from Adam to Moses.” By his transgression, Adam set that “beginning” era into motion.

According to Paul, what did Adam do? As the first recorded transgressor, he initiated an ongoing process of sin and death that affects the entire world. Therefore, Adam is the perfect foil for Christ. “Putting Adam and Christ together in Romans 5 is merely a way of showing how the actions of one lone figure can have profound (though opposite) effects on many people” (Bouteneff, p. 40). Paul is not analyzing and explaining Adam’s story as much as he is interpreting Christ through setting up the well-known case of Adam as his antithesis.

It is important that we not take this comparison too far and draw conclusions from it that are unwarranted. Again, Bouteneff: “[Paul] does not posit a perfect pre-fallen state, nor does he attribute later human sin to the sin of Adam. Rather, he sees Adam as a kind of beginning — the beginning of a death-bound mode of life.” (p. 45)

There is nothing here about drastic changes in the world or the nature of humanity after Adam’s sin, nothing about how Adam passed on a newly acquired sin nature to his progeny, or how his children bear original guilt because of the ancestral transgression. Nowhere in Genesis, the rest of the Bible, or in Paul is Adam blamed for any sin other than his own. Sin and death passed to all people, Paul says, because “all sinned,” which is fully consistent with what we read in Genesis 1-11.

In fact, Bouteneff observes that one of the more interesting facts about the “Adam” narratives in Genesis 2-3 is that, in and of itself, the transgression portrayed within “is not portrayed as an anomalous infraction that uniquely and permanently sullies a theretofore perfect humanity” (p. 7). Instead, Adam’s sin-story serves as the first in a series of similar “fall” narratives. These lead to God’s climactic judgment in Genesis 6-9 (the flood), and then the cycle starts again with another “garden” fall narrative in which Noah and his sons are the main characters. Ultimately, all humankind gathers in Babylon to continue the pattern. But God scatters them and chooses Abram as a “new Adam” to begin anew.

All the stories in Genesis 1-11 follow the pattern set by the Garden narratives. God relates to his chosen people, they disobey, and judgment and salvation follow. There is no denying the universality of sin and death, and that story begins with Adam, but we each bear our own blame.

We might also note that the “death” which is described in both the Adam story and in Romans is death of a certain kind, pointing to a reality that goes beyond mere physical human death. The “death” he speaks of, which is the consequence of Adam’s sin, is a “death” that brings “judgment” and “condemnation” from God.

This reflects the emphasis of Genesis itself. God told Adam that he would “surely die” upon eating the forbidden fruit (2:17). Yet Adam did not die physically for more than 900 years, according to the record. However, he was prevented from eating of the Tree of Life and was cast from the Garden into exile.

Some call what he experienced “spiritual death.” I think it is more accurate to call it “covenant death.” God invited Adam and Eve into a covenant relationship with himself. Their disobedience severed that relationship and brought about alienation and separation from its benefits (“life”). Exile portrays banishment from covenant relationship and privileges. Death.

God defined this kind of death as that which would come upon Israel if they failed to keep the covenant: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 —

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

So, in the context of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the story of Adam and the threat of covenant death had its most immediate application to Israel. As God’s covenant people, they were given the Promised Land and God’s Law, with the promise of blessings for obedience and the warning of curses (ultimately leading to exile) for disobedience. In the N.T., in the light of Christ, Paul takes the illustration even further, suggesting that what Adam and Israel underwent is the universal experience of humankind.

All that Paul seems to want to say is that this epoch of human history is characterized and determined by the fatal interplay of sin and death — a partnership first established in power at the beginning of the epoch, through the one man Adam.

• James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC)

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The main adjustment that Paul must instill in Jew and Gentile alike is the establishment of Jesus Christ as not only a prophet and not only a prophet to the Jews but also universal Savior and, still more, the one in whom is founded not just Israel but all of creation.

This is part and parcel of Paul’s transformation of the scriptural message. Genesis becomes the story not just of the origins of Israel but of the beginning of universal humanity, and this in turn paves the way for stressing the universality of salvation in Christ for the Jew and for the Greek. Paul’s universalization of the Scriptures and his understanding of the Scriptures as revealing Christ are thoroughly interrelated. Together they constitute the cornerstone of his work in the establishment of Christian thought. (Bouteneff, p. 38)

Mike the Geologist: Science and the Bible (Lesson 5)

Science and the Bible Lesson 5
By Mike McCann

We have now laid a basic philosophical basis to examine the “Science and the Bible” issues that are controversial to evangelicals. Let’s summarize:

All truth is God’s truth. If something is true in the physical realm then it is true, period, full stop.
The best way to ascertain truth in the physical realm is by doing science i.e. methodological naturalism. A Christian using science should come to the same conclusions about the natural world as a Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist.
A so-called “plain” reading of scripture should not dictate what our scientific conclusions should be.
Proximate causes are the mechanical, secondary, physical, and measureable causes in the physical realm. Ultimate, or teleological causes deal with meaning, purpose, reasons for existing. The proximate cause answers the question; How? The ultimate cause answers the question; Why?
The Bible really doesn’t offer much in the way of detailed proximate causes. It is full of statements about ultimate or teleological causes.
Christians should refrain from using a “God of the Gaps” argument. In other words, just because scientists can’t explain it doesn’t mean that God supernaturally causes it… God-of-the-Gaps unnecessarily pits scientific discovery against God’s ultimate purposes. It’s not only bad science… It is bad theology.
Genesis 1 is at the same time a polemic against the polytheism of the surrounding cultures and a cosmogony (a theory or story of the origin and development of the universe) cast in the form of a temple/palace inauguration. That is the face-value or “plain” reading of the text. This face value reading:
- Recognizes Genesis for the ancient document that it is.
- Finds no reason to impose a materialistic meaning on the text.
- Finds no reason to require the finding of scientific information “between the lines”.
- Avoids reducing Genesis to merely literary, metaphorical, or theological expressions.
- Poses no conflict with scientific thinking to the extent that it recognizes that the text does not offer scientific explanations.

With these points in mind let’s examine the question of the age of the universe/age of the earth. Some say, based on the genealogies and the 7-day creation week that the universe and the earth cannot be older than 6,000 to 10,000 years. That an older age would contradict the Bible. They say the science, properly interpreted, actually shows a young earth. This is the view of such organizations as Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Creation Research Ministries, etc. We will abbreviate their position as Young Earth Creationism or YEC. Others say God created the universe and the earth with an “appearance” of age. This is often referred to as the “Omphalos hypothesis” after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse. Quoting from the Wikipedia page:

Gosse argued that in order for the world to be “functional”, God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for “navel”), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.

Many evangelicals prefer this second explanation because they think it does not put them in the uncomfortable position of opposition to the overwhelming majority of scientists. After all, if the earth and universe “appear” old then that is what science would show and non-Christian scientists would naturally believe. It is only by the special revelation of the Bible we Christians would know that is not true.

So how would you know apparent age from real age then? Of course if you lapse into solipsism I suppose there is no way to know. But let’s assume the best of our evangelical readers who are still with me at this point. Here is a suggestion.

Let’s take an example from the Bible of a miracle where the age of something was apparent.

When Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1-11) the wine had the appearance of age. Although there was an apparent “history” i.e. the wine appeared to: have come from grapes ripened in the sun, was aged in wineskins, etc. Any forensic scientific investigation into the actual history of the wine would have ended at the water jars. Suppose a CSI team was investigating the wine. Detailed chemical analysis would confirm all the organic components of wine. Interrogation of the governor of the feast would confirm it was well-aged: … “Yeah, it’s funny, this was the good stuff, most people serve it first and serve the MD 20/20 for last…” But in the other interrogation room the servants were like: “… we filled the jars with water” Oh, right water, huh, you mean some sort of liquid, don’t you. No, dude, I swear it was water, regular old H₂O, right from the cistern… I want my lawyer.

But suppose our CSI team finds in addition to turning the water into wine, Jesus created empty wineskins and put them in the trash out back? What if he fabricated an authentic looking bill of sale from the local winery and placed in the household ledger? What if the salesman at the winery had his own detailed record of the transaction including records from the farmer who grew the grapes? Our CSI team would conclude that no miracle had occurred just good old fashioned deception.

Why would Jesus fabricate a cleverly crafted cover story that leaves no glorious loose ends… in other words it would not be evident a miracle had occurred? Answer: He wouldn’t because He is God and not an illusionist or a deceiver.

So, the question we have to answer if we want to discern between actual age and apparent age is: what is the level of detailed, complex, coherent, and discoverable evidence that exists? In other words, does a discernible history exist that can be traced or tracked? I submit for your consideration, dear evangelical reader, if such a history exists, then the age is real not apparent. Otherwise you are implying that God is a deceiver.

The argument regarding the apparent age of star light is that God not only created the galaxies in deep space, but He also created all the light between that star and earth. This is why we can see them now even though the universe is young. My question is, how do you know the stars are really there? You don’t see the light of anything that existed. You’re seeing an image created in transit of an event– watch this– that never took place. Doesn’t that throw into question the existence of anything in outer space at all, outside of 6,000 light years away? Because, in fact, since we’ll never see the thing itself– and what we see is not the thing, but an image God created in transit– well then, why would God ever need to create the thing in the first place? The image would be fully adequate for God’s purpose. The only thing God would have to create is the light image, because we’d never see the thing itself anyway. But doesn’t the Scripture seem to indicate that what we see are the very things that God created?

You see, this “God created light in transit” view is kind of misleading, because we think of it like the steady glow of a light bulb. There’s a light bulb way out there in space and just a steady glow in between. God could put that glow from me to it and I could see the glow. But the images we actually see in outer space– that, according to some young earthers, were allegedly created in transit by God– are images of turbulent events, are a history and a story of things happening, not just a steady glow. But those events never really happened, they are, in fact, an illusion if the age is only apparent.

To be fair, some YEC folk have now rejected the “God created light in transition” explanation because they realize such an argument does charge God with deception, and have taken to question the basic uniformity of physical constants such as the speed of light, or appeal to relativistic effects on the passage of time on earth as opposed to the passage of time in deep space. Since I don’t have expertise in astrophysics, I’m going to move on from this but here is a rebuttal of those types of arguments from a physicist who is a Christian.

The Grand Canyon is a wondrous marvel. Multi-colored exposed strata of rock more than a mile deep and 18 miles wide. How long did it take to form? Most people would be surprised to learn that even geologists disagree; some say younger, some say older. Up until 2014 you could buy a book in the bookstore that purported the canyon was REALLY young and was formed in Noah’s flood.

So I wanted to deal with the Grand Canyon in my course for the sake of my fellow churchgoers. Now I and my friends lived in south-central Indiana on the Mitchell Plain, a karst landscape. I knew they would be familiar with what that meant and looked like; and Karst is my geological specialty.

There are well known and documented paleokarst features in the Grand Canyon. Karst features result from the exposure of solid limestone to open-air chemical weathering and above-ground and underground water flow over prolonged time. It is a landscape.

Karst features such as erosional surfaces, river channels, sinkholes, caverns, and collapse structures would not have time to form on soft sediment in the middle of a flood sequence. There are unmistakable paleokarst features in the Redwall Formation, a thick limestone layer in the middle of the Paleozoic sequence of the Grand Canyon. In other words; it was a karst landscape at one time. The Surprise Canyon Formation, which overlies the Redwall, completely fills in the elaborate network of river channels, karst sinkholes, collapse features, and even caverns on the upper portion of the Redwall.

The breccia in the Surprise Canyon formation are Redwall limestone fragments. Breccia is formed when angular solid rock pieces from an older formation is incorporated into the sediment matrix of the younger formation due to the erosion of the older formation.

In other words the Redwall had to be solid limestone rock when the karst features formed. There is simply no other explanation. This is further demonstrated by the presence of sedimentary breccia in the Surprise Canyon formation.

In order to be incorporated in the Surprise Canyon matrix the Redwall limestone pieces had to be solid rock. It is simply physically impossible for the entire sequence to have been soft sediment at the same time.

As you drive from Indiana to Chicago on I-94/I-294, just as you cross the Illinois border you pass over the massive Thornton Quarries. The Thornton quarries are quarrying a coral reef.

Thornton Quarries have been in operation since the 1800’s and the reef structure has been studied in three-dimensions. The coral reef demonstrates a complex 3-D architecture that shows it grew in place. The overall upward transformation in the character of the buildup of the reef and the strong lateral variation in organic composition and degree of buildup closely mimic modern ecological zonation in well-studied reefs. The Thornton coral reef is part of a complex of many well-studied smaller reefs that ring the Chicago area that form a large reef chain, like the Great Barrier reefs of Australia.

So, dear evangelical reader, let me ask you; when was Chicago a shallow, tropical sea for 6000-8000 years? That’s how long it takes to form reef structures that large.
You can take a flight to Japan and observe Lake Suigetsu. You can observe each spring, tiny plants bloom in Lake Suigetsu. When these one-cell algae die in the fall, they drift down, shrouding the lake floor with a thin, white layer. The rest of the year, you may observe, dark clay sediments settle on the bottom. The observation being that alternating layers of dark and light count the years like tree rings.

If you take a core of the lake bed you can observe/count 100,000 layers…

My question to you, dear evangelical reader, is how old is Lake Suigetsu observed to be? It is not a trick question.

Here is a picture of a portion of the core. Notice the embedded twig. The C¹⁴ dates of leaves or twigs embedded in the layers match the layer count down to 45,000-55,000 years (the limit of C¹⁴ dating).

So, dear reader, what is the level of detailed, complex, coherent, and discoverable evidence in the examples above? Does that discernible history exist that can be traced or tracked? I submit for your consideration that such a history exists, and the age is real not apparent.

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Photo by Paul Fundenburg at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Another Look: How the Bible Works in Our Lives Today

Baptistry, Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University

Today we take another look at a post from 2013 about how I think Scripture “works” in our lives today — we who live so far removed from the events it records and who live in a vastly different time and culture.

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First of all, we must be willing to recognize that anyone who begins to take Scripture seriously is immediately immersed in historical questions and questions about the nature of the Bible itself.

In the churches and groups where I’ve been (primarily evangelical/fundamentalist), I don’t think this has been appreciated. Very little thought was ever given to how we came to have the Bible, how and when it was composed and edited, who the audiences were that first received the sacred writings, and how the various parts of the Bible carry on conversations with each other, reflecting diversity and development in the biblical message.

My experiences have led me to lament the Biblical illiteracy of our congregations, and that includes a lack of the most basic understanding of what kind of book the Bible is and isn’t. Most conservative evangelicals have a simplistic Sunday School grasp on the nature of Scripture. It is God’s Word, end of story, and so it is approached with kid gloves, as though saying “God said it” is enough. As though God merely dropped it from heaven. As though every page and every story and poem was not forged in the blood, sweat, and tears of people who believed but needed help for their unbelief. As though the Bible has no human backstory that brought it to us. As though we could merely dust off its historical and cultural and literary characteristics and discover a purely divine message shining beneath.

Out of this naïveté, we fail to appreciate the diversity of genres in Scripture and go on to read its apocalyptic literature and poetry with the same literalistic mindset as when reading its historical narratives. We think anything resembling historical narrative must be always and only the actual reporting of events, and have little patience for anyone who suggests some of these might be folk tales or stories designed to make us think, laugh, or engage in discussion with one another. We flatten Scripture and fail to recognize the progress of revelation and the fact that some Scriptures are more significant than others in contributing to the overall message.

I’m not saying every church ought to be like a seminary, and every Christian an expert in historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, literary theory, Ancient Near East history, Second Temple Judaism, life in the Greco-Roman world, and the traditions of interpretation throughout church history. However, our pastors and teachers ought to be acquainted with such matters and engaged in continuing education about them, and the church must learn not to be afraid of any learning that helps us understand the people, events, and backgrounds of the biblical story better, even if we end up being forced to reexamine some of our long held pet interpretations.

This is only one level of engaging Scripture, however, and for the vast majority of Christians, exposure to such robust and well-informed biblical and theological study will have to come through their teachers and pastors. For their part, the church’s teachers should have as one of their goals making this kind of instruction accessible, attractive, understandable, and applicable to life so that believers can move beyond a Sunday School perspective on Scripture.

My own life, for example, has been enriched immeasurably by coming to understand more about the nature of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). Knowing that it was gathered, compiled, at least partially composed, edited, and put together after the Exile in Babylon by people who were trying to come to grips with their identity before God and in the world after having suffered such devastation has opened up a multitude of new insights for me. The Bible has a human backstory — it is not just divine truth dropped from heaven.

And I think this is where we can make a statement about how the Bible is designed to “work” in our lives.

If we take the life-settings of Scripture, the contexts in which people have witnessed to God acting in the past, seriously…

And if we take the authors and compilers and editors of Scripture seriously, recognizing that they worked in specific settings for particular purposes, to bring a word from God to people who needed to hear it in their context…

Then, we will recognize that the Bible is not a theological textbook characterized primarily by propositional doctrines and ethical instructions written to a universal audience, but a long family story, a narrative about particular people over time, in particular times and places, who experienced God in the midst of their lives and communities.

This means that the Bible was not written to us directly, but it was written for us, for all who are part of God’s family and those to whom we witness. This is our family story. It has been given as a means of shaping our identity and forming our lives in the world.

The Bible “works” in our lives when, through an ongoing process of understanding, internalizing, and contemplating our family story, we embrace our identity as God’s people and seek to live out the family identity in our own time and place.

The main way in which we approach the Bible, then, is not as students, but as heirs together.

The main way we look at the Bible is as a living ancestral record, a story which is continuing in our lives.

The main tools we use are meditation, imagination, prayer and contemplation, discussion, and commemoration.

Churches are called to build the life of the community around an ongoing immersion in the story.

There may be other ways of doing this, but I’ve found nothing better than being part of a congregation that keeps the annual liturgical calendar with a variety of celebrations and customs, following lectionaries and other guides to Scripture, marking the daily hours of prayer and praying the Psalms, using contemplative Bible reading practices such as lectio divina, and participating in liturgical worship that dramatizes Christ and the Gospel every Sunday in words and sacred actions.

The Bible “works” best when we access it in a “family” way.

Another Look: My View of Scripture (updated)

Here is another look at something I wrote back in 2011. I present again, for your consideration and discussion, a summary of my perspective on Scripture (at this point in my understanding). It has increased from ten points to eleven in five years, and has been updated in a few places.

The Bible is from God. It is one of the means by which God has made himself known to human beings. The various books of the Bible were composed and edited and put together under the mysterious method of “inspiration,” by which God worked mostly through normal human processes to communicate his message.

The Bible is incarnational. That is, it comes to us in fully human form, taking the words of people written in their own times, from within their own cultures, according to the genres and literary conventions common to their day, and within the confines of their own limited perspectives, to communicate God’s message.

The Bible involves a complex conversation of faith over time. The Bible contains multiple voices, a diversity of narrative and theological perspectives, and a development of thought over time. For example, Joshua and Judges present two sides of the conquest of Canaan. Ecclesiastes and Job protest the wisdom tradition represented by a book like Proverbs, which even in its own pages presents several points of view. The “history” of Chronicles presents a different scenario of the same events than we see in the books of Kings. This diversity is only a problem if we expect the Bible to be something it is not—a timeless and perfectly consistent, always harmonizable record that is precise in every detail according to modern standards of accuracy.

The Bible came to us through the community of faith. Recognizing that there were human processes involved in the final editing and canonization of the Bible also highlights how God used people to bring the Bible as a final product to the world. The Hebrew Bible was put together mostly during and after the Babylonian exile. The church took nearly four centuries to complete the canonization process for the New Testament. Our understanding of the nature, authority, and message of Scripture must take these human processes into account as well.

The Bible is the church’s primary authority (Prima Scriptura). The fact that the church functioned for the first four centuries of its life without a complete Bible means that it cannot have sole authority apart from the church, the Holy Spirit, and the apostolic traditions (the “rule of faith”). For Protestants, at the very least this means we must make a fresh commitment to learning church history, the creeds, and the early Church Fathers for a fuller understanding and practice of the faith.

The Bible is true. “True” is a better way of describing the Bible than “inerrant” or “infallible” or any such words that grow out of modern categories. After all, what is an “inerrant” poem? An “infallible” story? The Bible is true because it tells the truth about God, the state of the world, human life and death, sin and salvation, wisdom and foolishness. But most of all because it tells the truth about the Truth himself and leads its readers to him.

The Bible is God’s story. Any individual passage or part of the Bible should be read and interpreted in the light of its big picture, its overall pattern and message. This is the point of having a biblical “canon” — an accepted “library” of inspired books that have been recognized to work together to communicate a divine message. The final form of the Bible tells a “Christotelic” story. From “in the beginning” to “in the end of days” the story constantly develops and moves forward to its culmination in Christ and the new creation. This story must always determine our emphases when interpreting its message.

The Bible’s central focus is Jesus. The apostles testify that Jesus taught them to see that the purpose of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings is to point to him and his good news, which restores God’s blessing to all creation. The New Testament, of course, tells Jesus’ story and accounts of the apostolic community that experienced and spread his good news. The Bible is not God’s final word, but is rather a primary witness to Jesus, God’s final Word.

The Bible does not contain every detail of God’s will for his people’s lives. In the Bible, God gives adequate instructions to guide his people to practice lives of love for God and neighbor. On the other hand, God expects that many implications of the Gospel will be worked out only over the course of time, in and through (and despite!) his people, until the consummation of the age. The Bible is not a “handbook” for living, with detailed instructions for every aspect of life. The Bible is not “sufficient” to answer all of life’s questions. It was not designed to do that, and we risk becoming pharisaical if we try to maintain that opinion.

The Bible must be interpreted and constantly reinterpreted. No one simply “believes what the Bible teaches.” People have put together any number of “statements of faith” and doctrinal statements over the course of history, claiming to represent “what the Bible teaches,” and they do not all agree. This should give us pause. Interpreting the Bible means participating in complex conversations and debates akin to the conversations within the scriptures themselves. Furthermore, as human knowledge grows and we understand facts of history and science, etc., more fully, our approach to the ancient writings in the Bible will change too. This does not mean we are ceding “authority” to human disciplines over the Bible itself. It simply reflects the reality of increasing knowledge and the ongoing task of seeking deeper wisdom.

The Bible doesn’t need me or anyone else to defend it. Christians do not need to prove that the Bible is a perfect book, free from “error” (as we define it today) in every way in order to have a secure faith or to present a case for Christ to the world. We need a credible, reliable witness that is self-attesting in its divine truthfulness, beauty, and power. This we have in the Bible.

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Photo by alex.ch at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 16, 2016

Walking Bridge Trail K, Photo by David Cornwell

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 16, 2016

Today we begin a series of Monday posts with excerpts of Michael Spencer’s thoughts about the Bible and what it does and does not promise to do for us.

• • •

One of the aspects of “popular” Christianity that I really struggle with is the belief that the Bible has an authoritative pronouncement on everything. I simply do not believe that. In fact, the pursuit of that assumption has, in my opinion, some particularly bad consequences.

I don’t blame anyone for asking older, wiser, more experienced Christians for their input on difficult questions, but I do have problems with a posse of grinning, Bible-waving, know-it-alls constructing a house-of-verses answer to every question, and then defending their answer as if it were a recording of Jesus accompanied by a signed note from God.

I’ve written elsewhere that the belief the Bible is a collection of verses to be raided, rearranged and republished to answer every question is a misuse of the Bible.

That’s not to say the Bible doesn’t answer questions or that good answers can’t be derived from the Bible, but it’s important to say this: every one of the Bible’s specific answers to our questions must be preceded, surrounded and supported by the Bible’s most important messages: the Gospel, grace, the love of God and so forth. A book like Proverbs doesn’t provide answers for the Christian until Jesus takes us back into the Proverbs and every statement is seen in the light of God’s “final Word” in his Son. The Bible isn’t a grocery store full of whatever we need at the moment, but it is more of a recipe, whose many different parts give us one message: Jesus.

What discourages me most is the way those who believe the Bible answers every question then approach the Christian life. They really believe the Bible removes all the questions and all the uncertainty. With the Bible — and their interpretations, of course — you can calmly endure and experience anything with complete certainty that the answers you find in the Bible are the complete and final answers. The resulting arrogance in approach and manner is one of the most difficult obstacles to being part of evangelicalism.

I believe the Bible gives us complete and final answers, but I believe those answers are not designed to remove the experiences of grief, faith, doubt, risk, questioning or uncertainty, but to give us the ultimate answers from God to our entire dilemma.

Years ago, two boys drowned in a community where I was on church staff. It was an unspeakable tragedy, and no one knew what to say. The minister at the funeral sought to comfort the family with his discovery that “God needed two angels, and he chose these boys.”

Such an answer can be faulted many different ways, but what interests me the most is that the minister believed he MUST say something certain, so he came up with this piece of popular mythology.

In fact, such tragedies are horrible features of a fallen world. They are part of our creaturely dilemma. Accidents happen because of many things that come together, most of them out of our control. We can rail at God for not stopping things, but we could just as easily rail at God for not making us all fish or for giving us lungs or for causing us to feel love.

Our “answer” is the Bible’s message of the human dilemma, the cross and resurrection, and the promise of the Gospel that God is restoring and resurrecting this world as a new heaven and a new earth where death is defeated.

In the meantime, we weep, grieve and lament. Not like those with no hope in Christ, but as those who do.

Pentecost Sunday with Henri Nouwen: May 15, 2016

Solemnity of Pentecost 2012. Photo by Saint Joseph

Pentecost Sunday with Henri Nouwen
On the Eucharistic Life

This is Pentecost Sunday, and today we conclude our series of reflections on his book, With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life.

• • •

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

• Luke 24:33-35

Pentecost marks the end of a wondrous, mysterious season (Eastertide) and the beginning of a new one. Jesus has risen, appeared, and ascended. Today he sends the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower us as we are sent into the world to proclaim the good news of the reigning Christ. This transformation and this sending are portrayed in the story of the two Emmaus disciples.

What a difference between their “going home” and their return. It is the difference between doubt and faith, despair and hope, fear and love. It is the difference between two dispirited human beings dragging themselves along the road and two friends walking fast, running even at times, all excited about the news they have for their friends.

…The Eucharist concludes with a mission. “Go now and tell!” The Latin words “Ite Missa est,” with which the priest used to conclude the Mass, literally mean: “Go, this is your mission.” (p. 80f)

Henri Nouwen reminds us in this final chapter that it is not just the Eucharist but the Eucharistic life that ultimately matters. In our Lutheran congregation, after communion we pray:

O God, we give you thanks that you have set before us this feast, the body and blood of your Son. By your Spirit strengthen us to serve all in need and to give ourselves away as bread for the hungry, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And so we eat and drink at the Lord’s Table not merely for our own satisfaction, but for the strength to provide the Bread of Life to others in days to come.

Forming a community with family and friends, building a body of love, shaping a new people of the resurrection: all of this is not just so that we can live a life protected from the dark forces that dominate our world; it is, rather, to enable us to proclaim together to all people, young and old, white and black, poor and rich, that death does not have the last word, that hope is real and God is alive.

The Eucharist is always mission. The Eucharist has freed us from our paralyzing sense of loss and revealed to us that the Spirit of Jesus lives within us and empowers us to go out into the world and to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, liberty to the captives, and to proclaim that God has shown again his favor to all people. But we are not sent out alone; we are sent with our brothers and sisters who also know that Jesus lives within them.

The movement flowing from the Eucharist is the movement from communion to community to ministry.

• p. 86f

Photo by Saint Joseph at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Saturday Ramblings, May 14, 2016

Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend? Ready to Ramble?

Well, Chaplain Mike should be happy. His beloved Cubs suck much less than usual this year. At least, that’s what I’m told. I don’t watch baseball. Life is waaay too short to watch baseball. A Giant Tortoise’s life is too short to watch baseball. This guy captures my reaction to baseball:

americana-omnomnomnomnomnom

Turning to legitimate sports, we had a first in the NBA: a unanimous MVP selection. Stephen Curry, of course, took the award, his second in a row.

London has become the first major Western city to elect a Muslim mayor. Sadiq Khan, a 45-year-old Labour Party member, trounced his opponent, the Conservative Party’s Zac Goldsmith, 41, a well-known writer on ecological affairs and son of one of Britain’s wealthiest Jewish businessmen.

On Monday, Donald Trump attacked Russell Moore, calling him “truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!” Moore, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, had said” the Donald Trump phenomenon” is an “embrace of the very kind of moral and cultural decadence that conservatives have been saying for a long time is the problem.”

Aside from a few notable holdouts, it looks like the Republican congressmen and other officials are starting to rally around the Donald. In fact, most of the GOP seems to be totally fine with a pro-choice, thrice-married casino owner representing the party of family values. This video is totally unrelated.

Ringling Brothers circus last week announced their circus would no longer have any elephants in them. GOP voters in Indiana the week before announced the White House would have none either.

An attorney in Kyzly, Russia, had a problem: his client’s breathalyzer report was clearly showing the guy was drunk as a skunk while cruising around the town. So he decided to do what any of us would do: eat the breathalyzer report, then, when the prosecuting attorney returned to the room, claim there was no evidence to try his client. Fortunately, the prosecutor’s office had installed a surveillance camera (did they have this problem before?) and the lawyer is now facing two years in prison. That’s him below, in the sweet sweater:

The Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, is shut down for two weeks. The reason: a weasel chewed through one of the power wires. At least they think it was a weasel; the charred corpse was a little hard to identify.

Two weeks ago this column reported on the great test of democracy in the 21st century. No, I’m not talking about Trump again. I’m talking about Boaty McBoatface.

You will recall the British Government, in their stupidest moment since giving us the Spice Girls, decided to let the public name their $300 million polar research vessel. Boaty McBoatface received three times more votes than any other name. But the Royal fun-suckers reneged on the deal, and decided to christen the ship the R.R.S. Sir David Attenborough. The enraged public did something only an enraged British public would do: they immediately started a petition to get Sir David Attenborough (the man, not the ship) to legally change his name to Boaty McBoatface. You can sign here.

Facebook is under fire for dishonesty and bias. The tech website Gizmodo found:

Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.
Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module.

[This] is in stark contrast to the company’s claims that the trending module simply lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook.”

Facebook offered a sincere and remorseful apology:

Budweiser has announced it is changing the name of its beer to “America” for the rest of 2016. Apparently, “Fermented Urine Water” wrapped around the can too much. Drink nationalistically, my friends.

I think they’re going to rename Bud-light as “Canada”

NPR had a special report on how the Red Cross collected 500 million dollars in contributions for earthquake relief in Haiti…and built six houses with that. And you thought housing was expensive in New York!

An Israeli man is seeking a restraining order…against God. The petitioner argued that over a three year period, the All-mighty had displayed a “seriously negative attitude” toward him, but left out the juicy details. He also said he tried to obtain the retraining order from the local police, but they did nothing more than send a patrol car to his home on 10 occasions. A court official noted that God did not turn up for the session.

Chaplain Mike and I have a mutual friend named Bill Brown who just got signed to play semi-professional football for the Marion County Crusaders. He is 54. he hasn’t played since high school. Why, Bill? “A couple years back I had a scare with cancer, melanoma. As soon as they found it, the next day I was in surgery, and they took a big hunk out of my back,” Brown said. “I wasn’t able to really do anything for like a year. This may sound corny, but I felt like I had a second chance. I wanted to play the game that I grew up with one last year. There’s not going to be a second year. This is it.”

Brown said the hardest part of reconnecting with football after so many years away was relearning how to absorb a hit. “Each day I’m getting a little bit better. My mind knows what to do. The body’s just hard to follow. But it’s been great . . . Now when I took my first hit, that was something considering it had been 30 years since I had a helmet and shoulder pads on and been pounded like that.”

How does his family feel about this: “My wife thinks I’m out of my mind. My kids think it’s cool,” Brown said with a laugh. “

Speaking of football, the picture at below is a visualization of a new, 62.8 million dollar stadium being built in Texas . . . for high school football. 63 percent of McKinney’s voters were just fine spending this kinda coin on a new cathedral.

Prenatal ultrasounds are an amazing thing, especially when they contain religious imagery. For those who don’t like to click the links, here is a close-up. I’m a natural skeptic about these things, but, dang…

Want some faith in humanity restored? Give this video three minutes of your life:

Residents of Waldfischbach-Burgalben in southwestern Germany heard a loud bang last Saturday morning. Fireworks? Gunshot? Cow falling from the sky? Actually, that last one is the winner. “A couple found the cow laying on her back in the garden,” local police spokesman Michael Koehler told NBC News. Apparently, the cow plunged off a 10-feet high cliff and damaged the house’s roof gutter. Koehler added that after “a short spell of dizziness,” the bovine was able to get back up and suffered only minor injuries.

Image: The cow behind the house — “Like a bovine boss!”

By the way, while researching that last story, I found that this was not the only time cows have flown over Germany. During World War I, the Germans bombed London from giant airships, called Zeppelins, filled with hydrogen. But, how did they contain all that hydrogen gas? They created enormous balloons made of cow intestines, and placed them in the zeppelins. It took a quarter of a million cows to make just one Zeppelin. Now you know.

The North American bison is officially the national mammal of the United States, after President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act into law Monday. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Missouri, one of the bill’s co-authors: “No other indigenous species tells America’s story better than this noble creature.” Well, since another mammal species (that would be us) practically drove the buffalo to extinction (because of their tasty wings), I suppose that statement is true on some level.
The British Navy used one it its new helicopters this week to score a decisive victory . . . over a row of porta-potties. Thankfully, they appear to have been unoccupied at the time of attack. Wanna see the video? Of course you do!

Well, that’s it for this week. On the Open Mic post on Wednesday, a Swedish reader remembered how much she loved a previous music video from the Ramblings, produced by William Tapley, who calls himself “The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse”. We may not all agree with Bill’s theology (some sort of Catholic-dispensational hybrid) but we can all agree on musical genius when we see it. So I leave you with a fairly upbeat song about the end of the world, titled, Doom and Gloom. Enjoy:

Supernaturally Natural

Early in my adult life, I listened to teaching from a Bible teacher who used to say that God made us to live “supernaturally natural” lives. I’ve always liked that phrase. To all appearances, and in truth, those who follow Jesus are no different from anyone else in the world. However, God’s declaration that “Christ lives in me” means that somehow and in some way the new creation has broken in upon my life and there is something more, though it may be difficult to put one’s finger on it.

The anonymous author of the second century letter, The Epistle to Diognetus, made this point.

For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teaching, as some people do. Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth.

Indistinguishable, yet at the same time giving “proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth.” Supernaturally natural.

Here are a few of the “proofs” that the author tried to impress upon his reader:

They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring [i.e. “expose” — commit infanticide]. They share their board with each other, but not their marriage bed. It is true that they are “in the flesh,” but they do not live “according to the flesh.” They obey the established laws, but in their own lives they go far beyond what the laws require. They love all men, and by all men are persecuted. They are unknown, and still they are condemned; they are put to death, and yet they are brought to life. They are poor, and yet they make many rich; they are completely destitute, and yet they enjoy complete abundance. They are dishonored, and in their very dishonor are glorified; they are defamed, and are vindicated. They are reviled, and yet they bless; when they are affronted, they still pay due respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; undergoing punishment, they rejoice because they are brought to life. They are treated by the Jews as foreigners and enemies, and are hunted down by the Greeks; and all the time those who hate them find it impossible to justify their enmity.

To put it simply: What the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world….

In other words, followers of Jesus are not out to impress. They are quietly, naturally flesh and blood like everyone else. They do not stand out as different or special in any particular way. At the same time they give evidence of a supernatural depth to their lives.

This is one reason I became so dissatisfied with evangelical culture, which in my experience has been all about marketing, attracting, impressing, enthusing, and getting people to participate in various forms of churchianity, promising “transformation” that will lift them out of the realm of the ordinary. It has not, by and large, been about simply living responsibly in the world as regular human beings, supernaturally natural in character and bearing.

In a 1944 letter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed his own sense of discomfort with the outwardly religious life, preferring, he said, to walk among the “religionless.”

I often ask myself why a “Christian instinct” often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don’t in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, “in brotherhood.” While I’m often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people — because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it’s particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) — to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course.

I was visiting with a patient the other day for the first time. I could tell he was uncomfortable. After going through my usual spiel and asking about his faith background and what kind of support he wanted in that respect, the room grew silent. I wondered if we had reached the end of our conversation.

Then, I simply began to ask how he spent his days and what he liked to watch on TV. Turns out he is a huge sports fans, and even played on a professional level and coached at university. It was as though a floodgate opened, and we talked for at least another half an hour, as he shared stories from his experience and his family. All hesitancy completely disappeared, and from then on he seemed happy to have the company. By the time I left, I felt as though we had begun the process of becoming friends.

We may never talk about anything else. Or we might. Who knows? All I know is that if I make a big effort to push “supernatural” matters on this guy, I’ll run face-first into a wall and fast. On the other hand, if I just sit down with him as ordinary, natural Mike, another guy who loves sports and talking about them, then he will respond and might at some point see something of Jesus in and through our discussions. Call it the sacrament of sports-talk.

That’s my daily goal now. To be supernaturally natural. To be a quiet, natural, genuine human being, trusting God to reveal the supernatural depth of his Spirit in my life.

Thomas Merton got it right:

A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual strait-jacket.

• • •

Photo by Hamid Najafi at Flickr. Creative Commons License.

Mike the Geologist: Science and the Bible (Lesson 4)

Science and the Bible Lesson 4
By Mike McCann

Having laid a foundation of how to think about doing science and the relation of the natural world to the supernatural; at this point in my teaching series I turn attention to the Bible. I begin with a basic lesson in hermeneutics and exegesis that I am not going to reproduce here. I go on to talk about the nature of the Bible, what type of book is it, and what we mean when we say it is “God’s Word”.

For example, I make these series of points:

The Bible is both natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal, human and divine.
The Bible is divine because it is the Word of God.
It is God’s message for all human beings for all times. Through the Bible, God speaks to all people of all ages in all cultures.
The message of the Bible is eternal. It transcends time and cultures. It is relevant and speaks during the time of Moses, the time of Paul and to all of us today.
The Bible is human because God chose to speak through human beings who lived in a certain time and culture in history with an specific language
It is temporal because some of its elements such as the original language used in its original writing is not being used today.
So God’s eternal Word and message is conditioned and contained in a specific time in history with its own culture and language, and is recorded by means of ‘human style’ of literature.

I adapted these points from an evangelical teaching source that I should have referenced, because I can no longer recall it. It is a very evangelical and conservative viewpoint. I am still basically on board with it, although if I teach this course again I will have to update it. I think it is better to say that Jesus is the Word of God and that the message of the Bible is eternal because it reveals Jesus and it is Jesus who transcends time and culture. But quibbles aside, I want to engage my evangelical readers to think about it means to say “all scripture is God-breathed”. How is scripture inspired?

Does it mean that a human work is without flaw because God superintended it? – or…
Does it mean that the human flaws do not distract from its TRUTH?

I usually let my class debate and discuss this for a while, and then I’ll go through the laundry list of Bible “errors” and “contradictions” like copyist errors (e.g. 2 Kings 24:8 vs. 2 Chron. 36:9 or 2 Samuel 8:4 vs. 1 Chron. 18:4), New Testament misquotes (Matt. 27:9-10 vs. Zechariah 11:12-13 and Mark 2:25-26 vs. 1 Samuel 21:1,6), NT reporting discrepancies (Mark 16:4-6 vs. Luke 24:4-6) and technically factual mistakes like cud-chewing (Lev. 11:6 says; And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.) and mustard-seed size:

Mark 4:31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:

Then we go back to the two statements on inspiration and I ask them; “Does it really change the meaning or the truth of Jesus’ parable of the Kingdom that there are smaller seeds than the mustard seed? Do you really care how many angels were at the tomb? Or is it that the main point is the tomb was EMPTY! Usually, this will be the first time they’ve thought through these issues, but they appreciate a defense of the Bible that doesn’t “charge God with error” or attempt to arm-wave through the obvious discrepancies.

I then spend the next two lessons on the meaning and interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:4. I begin with the following questions:

What is the genre of Genesis 1-2?
Who was the author?
Who was the intended audience?
What was the intended purpose for the writing?
What was the vehicle (type of writing) that was the means of accomplishing the intended purpose?

I like to use the following illustration to indicate the importance of context (I think I cribbed this from Gordon Glover, but I can’t remember for sure.)

What would you think would be the reason a motel/restaurant owner would post the following sign:

I let them call out various speculations and then tell them:

What if I then told you that the sign is in England where:
“Football” means “Soccer”
“Coaches” means “Buses”
And large busloads of soccer fans are often unruly and destructive.

It is a good exercise in the difference that cultural context can make even when both cultures speak English. It is also a good introduction to the fact that even though you are reading a Bible translation in English, the plain meaning of the English words may not be conveying the cultural context clearly.

I then try to give an interpretation of what Genesis 1 means that is faithful to the original author(s) intent to the original audience and how they would have heard it. My model for this interpretation is freely borrowed from Conrad Hyers and John Walton. My interpretation is that Genesis 1 is at the same time a polemic against the polytheism of the surrounding cultures and a cosmogony cast in the form of a temple/palace inauguration.

I point out that to Moses and Israel exiting Egypt and the Jews returning from exile (the initial author/compiler and the initial audience and the final-form authors and their audience) the main issue to be addressed was not material creation but idolatry. What did exist – what very much existed – and what pressed on Jewish faith from all sides, and even from within, were the religious problems of idolatry and syncretism. The critical question in the creation account of Genesis was polytheism versus monotheism. That was the burning issue of the day, not some issue which certain Americans 2,500 years later in the midst of the scientific age might imagine that it was.

As Hyers puts it:

Genesis 1 is, thus, a cosmogony to end all (polytheistic) cosmogonies. It has entered, as it were, the playing field of these venerable systems, engaging them on their own turf, with the result that they are soundly defeated. And that victory has prevailed, first in Israel, then in Christianity, and also Islam. And thence through most of subsequent Western civilization, including the development of Western science. Despite the awesome splendor and power of the great empires that successively dominated Israel and the Near East–Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome– and despite the immediate influence of the divinities in whose names they conquered, these gods and goddesses have long since faded into oblivion, except for archeological, antiquarian or romantic interests. This victory belongs, in large part, to the sweeping and decisive manner with which the Genesis account applied prophetic monotheism to the cosmogonic question.

In his essay on “Dinosaur Religion”, Hyers says:

For most peoples in the ancient world the various regions of nature were divine. Sun, moon, and stars were gods. There were sky gods and earth gods and water gods. There were gods of light and darkness, rivers and vegetation, animals and fertility. Though for us, nature has been “demythologized” and “naturalized” – in large part because of this very passage of scripture – for ancient Jewish faith a divinized nature posed a fundamental religious problem.

In addition, pharaohs, kings, and heroes were often seen as sons of gods, or at least as special mediators between the divine and human spheres. The greatness and vaunted power and glory of the successive waves of empires that impinged on or conquered Israel (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia) posed an analogous problem of idolatry in the human sphere. In the light of this historical context it becomes clearer what Genesis is undertaking and accomplishing: a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-à-vis polytheism, syncretism and idolatry.

Each day of creation takes on two principal categories of divinity in the pantheons of the day, and declares that these are not gods at all, but creatures – creations of the one true God who is the only one, without a second or third. Each day dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order. And finally human existence, too, is emptied of any intrinsic divinity – while at the same time all human beings, from the greatest to the least, and not just pharaohs, kings and heroes, are granted a divine likeness and mediation. On each day of creation another set of idols is smashed. These, O Israel, are no gods at all – even the great gods and rulers of conquering superpowers. They are the creations of that transcendent One who is not to be confused with any piece of the furniture of the universe of creaturely habitation. The creation is good, it is very good, but it is not divine.

We are then given a final further clue concerning the polemical design of the passage when the final verse (2:4a) concludes: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” So the final clue is a “slap-in-the-face” to the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Canaanite priests and rulers… Why the word “generations,” especially if what is being offered is a chronology of days of creation? Now to polytheist and monotheist alike the word “generation” at this point would immediately call one thing to mind. If we should ask how these various divinities were related to one another the most common answer would be that they were related as members of a family tree.

We would be given a genealogy, as in Hesiod’s Theogony , where the great tangle of Greek gods and goddesses were sorted out by generations. Ouranos begat Kronos; Kronos begat Zeus; Zeus begat Prometheus… Likewise, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians all had their “generations of the gods.” Thus the Genesis account, which had begun with the majestic words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” now concludes – over against all the impressive and colorful pantheons with their divine pedigrees – “These are the generations of the heavens and the Earth when they were created .” It was a final pun or sarcasm on the concept of the divine family tree.”

I then discuss what was the vehicle (type of writing) that was the means of accomplishing the intended purpose. The key to understanding the type of writing that Genesis represents is given in Genesis 2:2: And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

A reader from the ancient world would know immediately what was going on and would recognize the role of day 7, and would conclude this is a text of a temple inauguration. For example consider:

1 Kings 8:65 And at that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt, before the Lord our God, seven days and seven days, even fourteen days. And…

2 Chron 7:9 And in the eighth day they made a solemn assembly: for they kept the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast seven days.

In the ANE when a palace or temple was dedicated the king or god was said to sit on his throne and “take his rest”. It means he has completed his tasks, set everything in order, and now begins his normal rule and reign… For example:

Psalm 132:7 We will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his footstool. 8 Arise, O Lord, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength. 13 For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. 14 This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.

Hebrews 4:10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?

The 7 days relate to the Cosmic Temple Inauguration. Man is installed in the temple as God’s Image i.e. His likeness, representative, priest, caretaker… The most respectful reading we can give to the text, and the most “literal” understanding, is the one that comes from their world, not ours.

Theologian, historian and Christian apologist Dr. John P. Dickson, dealing with the history and interpretation of Genesis 1, notes the following:

” It is well known that in Hebrew thought the number seven symbolizes ‘wholeness’ as a characteristic of God’s perfection. A well-known example is the seven-candle lamp stand, or Menorah, which has long been a symbol of the Jewish faith and is the emblem of the modern State of Israel. In Genesis 1, multiples of seven appear in extraordinary ways. For ancient readers, who were accustomed to taking notice of such things, these multiples of seven conveyed a powerful message. Seven was the divine number, the number of goodness and perfection. Its omnipresence in the opening chapter of the Bible makes an unmistakable point about the origin and nature of the universe itself. Consider the following:

The first sentence of Genesis 1 consists of seven Hebrew words. Instantly, the ancient reader’s attention is focused.
The second sentence contains exactly fourteen words. A pattern is developing.
The word ‘earth’—one half of the created sphere—appears in the chapter 21 times.
The word ‘heaven’—the other half of the created sphere—also appears 21 times.
‘God’, the lead actor, is mentioned exactly 35 times (7 x 5)
The refrain ‘and it was so’, which concludes each creative act, occurs exactly seven times.
The summary statement ‘God saw that it was good’ also occurs seven times.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that the whole account is structured around seven scenes or seven days of the week.

The artistry of the chapter is stunning and, to ancient readers, unmistakable. It casts the creation as a work of art, sharing in the perfection of God and deriving from him. My point is obvious: short of including a prescript for the benefit of modern readers the original author could hardly have made it clearer that his message is being conveyed through literary rather than prosaic means.”

What we find in Genesis 1 is not exactly poetry of the type we find in the biblical book of Psalms but nor is it recognizable as simple prose. It is a rhythmic, symbolically- charged inventory of divine commands. None of this should trouble modern Christians, as if truths expressed by literary device were somehow less true than those expressed in simple prose. In fact the above is the “face-value” or “literal” reading of the passage.

This face-value reading does the following:

Recognizes Genesis for the ancient document that it is.
Finds no reason to impose a materialistic meaning on the text.
Finds no reason to require the finding of scientific information “between the lines”.
Avoids reducing Genesis to merely literary, metaphorical, or theological expressions.
Poses no conflict with scientific thinking to the extent that it recognizes that the text does not offer scientific explanations.

Open Mic: May 2016 (New folks, come join us!)

Open Mic, with a special invitation to new commenters.

It has been awhile since we’ve done an Open Mic. It has also been some time since we’ve extended a specific invitation to those who are new to Internet Monk, or who read but rarely comment.

An Open Forum is an opportunity for you to choose a topic you want to discuss, or simply make a comment, ask a question, or pass along some news or a greeting.

And I would like to especially invite people who are new to Internet Monk or who have not commented before to check in and say hi. We certainly appreciate all of our regulars, but we also know there is a large group of folks out there who simply read and never participate in the discussion. Here’s an invitation for you to put in your two cents worth today, even if it’s just to let us know you read IM.

As always, we expect courtesy, good listening, and thoughtful interaction.

I’ll be on the road, on the way to visiting friends and family, and will check in occasionally to meet the new folks and see how the conversation is going.

But other than that, the day is yours. Enjoy.

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Photo by Daniel at Flickr. Creative Commons License.