A pictorial representation of a Hebrew Cosmology

In my previous post I made the point that assuming that Genesis 1 is attempting to be "Scientifically accurate" just doesn't work. This is not just because of the chronology of Genesis 1, but, even more obviously, because of its topology. Today I came across this picture that makes the point well.

HT: Mark Meynell

Confusing Converstions 9: Clicher Texts

We should certainly take every verse of the bible seriously. However, we should also ensure that we do not "expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another." (article XX, 39 articles)

So, when people claim to have "the clincher" verse on either side of the debate, we should certainly listen, but we should certainly also weigh with other Scriptures.

A clincher verse for some creationists is Romans 8:20-21.

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

The argument is that this shows that all decay and death (whether animal, plant??, radioactive??) is all a result of the fall. Even the second law of thermodynamics, it's argued, is a result of the fall. Perhaps this is why it is difficult to read the "science". Before the fall there would have been an entirely different science in place. (As far as I see, perhaps even a different mathematics, as the second law of thermodynamics is essentially the result of statistical mechanics)

The clincher for the non-literalist might be Genesis 1:6-8

⁶ And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." ⁷ So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

I would argue that there are not merely temporal problems in understanding the Genesis to be a literal scientifically accurate account. There are also spatial problems. Where is this place beyond the sky where these waters may have been stored (albeit possibly temporarily). It cannot be the upper atmosphere on a literalist reading, because the known universe is within the expanse/firmament, not beyond it (the sun, moon and stars are set within the expanse, not above it in 1:14-17).

I cannot see any way in which this makes sense within a scientifically accurate topography of the cosmos. It makes perfect sense if Moses borrowed the widely accepted topography of the universe in the Ancient Near East without challenging it, because that wasn't his point.

But I want to be cautious in suggesting that it is an absolute clincher. If other factors were to convince me of the necessity of the literalist view I would, by faith, have to trust that there was some way in which this did make sense within the early topography of the universe - a universe that was certainly a very different place to the one we know now, if there was not even any second law of thermodynamics.

Another Great Passion for life video. Science this time

Hasn't Science disproved God? from A Passion for Life on Vimeo.

Confusing Conversations 8: The apologetic imperative.

Apologetics is an important discipline. We should consider carefully how to answer questions that the non-believer might have concerning biblical truths that we hold. Yet we should never hold truths just so that our apologetic response would be easier.
I've come across people from both sides of the creationist/theistic evolution debate who use as an argument for holding their position that it is an apologetic imperative.

The creationist might say, "It is an apologetic imperative that we hold to a six day creation. If we take a non-literal reading of Genesis Chapter One, the very first chapter of the bible, it will be impossibly complicated to then argue why we insist on taking a literal reading of the virgin birth, the sacrificial death and the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus. I just don't think that I'd be able to explain that to my next door neighbour."

The theistic evolutionist might say, "It is an apologetic imperative that we hold to an old earth, and some form of macro-evolution. There is such clear scientific evidence for them that if we don't follow that evidence where they lead, we will show ourselves to be obscurantists; I don't think I could even get a sounding for the gospel if I were to believe things like that."

Now, once one has decided whether or not one is going to take a literalistic view of Genesis 1, one could use these arguments to show why you think that view makes an important difference to your apologetics. But you should never start with the apologetic ease of a position and then decide whether you will hold it or not.

We should first be convinced by the text of Scripture one way or another, and then begin to think through the apologetic implications. Truth first, and then its defence.

Confusing Conversations 7: Symbolism

This week I'm back in the pulpit, returning to the series on Genesis 1-3
One of the things that I've noticed as I've preached through the series is the rich depth of symbolism throughout the chapters.
I've noted in a previous post the symbolic imagery of the temple, certainly in Genesis 2-3, and possibly in Genesis 1. God is building for himself a tabernacle: this tabernacle is to be the source of all life within the cosmos, and as such functions as a miniature cosmos.
But the symbolism doesn't stop there.
This week, I'm preaching on Genesis 3:8-13. There are some points that are so deeply inlaid with symbolism, that I feel we end up missing something if we move from the rich language of the narrative and try to reduce it to an historical account: 'what it would have looked like if we had been there.'
Even translation of some of the phrases in 3:8-13 leaves you having to make hard choices that limit the symbolic richness of the passage.

e.g. 3:8. Here are some decisions that must be made in translation "And they heard the voice/sound of the Lord God['s] walking in the garden in the spirit/wind/cool/evening/early morning of the/that day. And the man and his wife hid themselves amoungst/between the tree(s) (singular but is plural signified, or just one tree? If just one, which tree was it? Was it the one they ate from or the one that would have given them life, or just one of the other trees that they were free to eat from?)of the garden."

If one says that this must be a straight historical narrative, the best way to understand the "voice" is that it is the sound of the Lord's walking: as it were, his footsteps among the fallen leaves. Hamilton translates it "rustling sound". But if one allows this to be a symbolically-laden retelling of a real event: one where the symbolism is so rich that one is not supposed to reconstruct the actual historical line of the event, where we are not supposed so much to picture it in every detail, but explore the theological significance of it all (rather like, as we said in a previous post a Judges 5 rather than Judges 4 type account) then we have no problem in understanding this as the very voice (word?) of God walking in the garden.

Another factor that has led me more towards such a reading are the many parallels between the opening chapters of Genesis and the book of Revelation. Revelation is without doubt the book of the New Testament with the richest and most frequent use of the Old Testament. (See Greg Beale's excellent introduction in the Revelation entry in the "Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament"). Much of the significance of the theology of Revelation is that the visions that I believe John truly saw, are written in language that picks up huge amounts of symbolism from the Old Testament. The symbolism then becomes the point. We are not somehow supposed to try to reconstruct the actual details of the visions, as if we need to know the exact visual experience of John. The symbolic narration of the visions is God's intention for us in the visions. But I'm seeing more and more similarities between the realities portrayed in Revelation and realities portrayed in the early chapters of Genesis.


There seem to be two approaches to the symbolism of Genesis 1-3.

First approach says, that unless the account is also historically accurate in every detail, the symbolism loses its significance. Historical truth is the truth that is being portrayed. If we cannot 'trust' the account in its historical details, how can we 'trust' the symbolism.

The second approach says, that for the purpose of symbolism that gives a trustworthy theological account of the real historical events, a trustworthy author might employ language to describe an event that is not strictly historically accurate. But that the way in which the symbolism is so clearly being employed means there is no deception; we are to trust the author because the symbolism takes us deeper into the theological realities of the situation than a straight historical account would be able to do. Judges 5 is in many ways theologically richer than Judges 4, yet necessarily less "realistic".

So, whatever your take on the literalism of Genesis 1-3, I urge you not to miss its symbolism, where much of the richness of the theology of the text will be found.

Confusing Coversation 6: Must a real event be told in an unstylised narrative?

When people are trying to pin me down exactly where I stand on a lot of the questions concerning the historicity of Genesis 1-3, I'm often asked, "Do you believe in the special creation of man."

The simple answer to the question is, "Yes, absolutely." It is very clear to me from Genesis 1:26-31 that there is the WORLD of difference between human beings and the other creatures. We are specially and uniquely created in God's image. I preached on this a couple of weeks ago at Twynholm.
However, what is often meant in the question behind the question is this: "Do you believe in the special creation of man, and none of that nonsense about shared descent from apes?"
Here is another issue where I think there is unnecessary division between Christians who have the same anthropology of believing that all humans are made in God's image, no other creature is, and would have a very similar theology of what that means.
We all believe that human beings are not made "ex nihilo" but from pre-existent material. We are made from the dust; but God has so breathed life into us that we have become living beings of incredible value and worth. We all agree that we are "descended" from dust physically, but spiritually specially created. Does it diminish the value of human beings if God took his time in bringing us from dust to image bearing just as he took his time in forming and filling the universe?

I can understand the arguments on both sides when it comes to whether Genesis 2 should be taken as an entirely literal historical account in every detail. I am not yet utterly persuaded either way.

Take the rivers for example. Some people take those to be a sign that we could actually fairly accurately locate Eden to somewhere near the source (and others suggest near the mouth) of the Tigris and Euphrates. We can then make some guesses as to which rivers the Pishon and the Gihon are (or suggest that they no longer exist as their course was so altered by the flood.) If this is the reading, the point being made would be that this is a real place that existed at a real time, yet, due to the expulsion we cannot return there (though, why not, if we can locate it - would we still find a cherub stationed with a flaming sword, or has the tree of life died? or been removed permanently in order to be planted in the New Jerusalem?).

Others believe that Eden is much more of an idealised picture of the original dwelling place of man with God, rather than a literal account. The four rivers then might be Tigris, Euphrates, Nile (making a much more straightforward reading of 'Cush' as its normal location in Ethiopia) and Indus. The whole land - the whole ancient near east - thus receives its blessings from the place where God dwells with his people.

I think that there are New Testament controls that make it essential to believe in a literal Adam and Eve from whom are descended all people (I disagree with Denis Alexander on this). Just as we all sinned in the one man Adam, so in the one man Christ we are all made alive. Also, even if one takes much of the detail in Genesis 2 as figurative, the genealogies in Gen 5, and particularly the assertion in Gen 3:20 that Eve would become the mother of all the living, convince me that we have real events being described, even if the description is stylised.

It is possible for real events to be described in a stylised fashion; one might think of the description of the stars fighting against Sisera in Judges 5:20. Was it a real event? Yes! It's just been described in a more literal historiography in Judges 4. Does that mean that it cannot be described in stylised terms in chapter 5? Do we have to rethink our cosmology in order to accommodate fighting stars? No!

Christians can disagree as to the genre of Genesis 2, and still agree on its theology of man, of marriage, of the relationship between man and God, of work, of worship, and a hundred other central things. Let's not make it an issue to divide over.

Confusing conversation 5: What God did, and What God could have done.

"So you think that God took 14 billion years to make the world, not just 6 days. Don't you believe God is powerful enough to do it quicker?"
I have heard young earthers ask old earthers such questions.
But I hope that no self-respecting old earther would imagine for a moment that God couldn't have done it in 6 literal days, 6 literal seconds or 6 literal picoseconds.
Similarly I hope that no self-respecting young-earther would for a moment imagine that God would have shown himself more glorious had he chosen to create in less time than six days, but somehow he didn't because he couldn't.
If one is going to take Genesis 1 literally, the strange thing is not that God takes such a short time to form and fill the whole world, but that he takes such a long time. After all, he is the one who creates time - he doesn't need it! His whole infinite life does not experience the passing of time at all.
Somehow, God is bringing more glory to himself by taking his time.
Old earthers would argue that God brings even more glory to himself by taking billions of years temporarily, just as he brings more glory to himself in creating ten billion times ten billion suns.

Confusing Conversations 4: Literally true, and truly literal.

"If you don't believe that the first chapter of the bible is literally true, then how can you believe that the rest of it is?"

I hope that every Christian believes that the bible is literally, true. That is absolutely and entirely truthful in everything it affirms. So, wherever the bible affirms something as scientific fact, then it is scientific fact. Wherever it affirms something as accurate history, it is accurate history. But, the Good Samaritan is not historically accurate (it is a parable). Ezekiel 1 is not scientific fact, it is a vision.

However, this doesn't mean that to truly understand the bible, one must take the most literal interpretation possible. It is always literally (in the sense of totally and utterly) true; the truth is not always literal (in a sense that excludes all metaphor, parable, poetic licence, verbal imagery etc.)

Obvious other examples of this in the realm of cosmology are found in Psalm 19:6

"[the sun] rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat. "

Are we to believe that the sun literally moves from one end of the heavens to another? No! We don't have to believe in a geocentric universe in order to believe that Psalm 19 is utterly true. It is just not true in a literal sense. In fact, to try to understand it as a true scientific account of the orbit of the sun is to utterly misunderstand it; to miss its truth; to distort it. This is fairly easy to see, as Psalm 19 is undeniably poetic. The sun has already been described as a bridegroom, and champion. Are we to envisage a marriage to the moon, or a little horse that the sun rides on? No, it's poetry that teaches how this majestic sun, seen everywhere, giving heat and light shines for the glory of God. But the poetry is more than just those statements; as poetry it attaches an appropriate emotional response of awe and wonder and splendour to those truths. The poetry conveys the truths in exactly the inspired fashion that its divine author intended.

Is Psalm 19 made more problematic had many (or all) of the early readers would have believed in a geocentric universe, and thus, if read literally, understood it to correspond better to the cosmology they held than we would understand it to. No: for that is not the intention of the passage.

What then is the intention of Genesis 1? Is it true literalistically? Does it employ poetic imagery? Does it even employ culturally accepted views of the world in order to convey truths?

These are legitimate questions to ask in bible interpretation. Let's not assume that if we come to different conclusions as to the intention of a passage, and therefore a different conclusion as to which truths are being affirmed in a passage, that we therefore have a different understanding as to whether the text is truthful. Let's all agree to trust what the bible really teaches and then work jolly hard at trying to understand it on its own terms.

Confusing Conversations 3: "Deism" is an accusation that can cut both ways.

It seems common among Christians on both sides of the "Creationist vs. Theistic Evolution" debate to accuse one another of Deism rather than Theism. Deism is the idea that, while God was intimately involved in the creation of the world, he is largely, or totally uninvolved in the intricacies of its ongoing existence. This is contrasted with Theism, in which God not only made the world, but sustains its existence. He remains intimately involved with everything that continues to happen in his creation. The contrast is therefore the difference between a watchmaker who made it, wound it up and let it go and a composer who note only wrote all the notes, but also conducts the orchestra.

Some creationists accuse theistic evolution of deism: so, Wayne Grudem writes "The fundamental difference between a biblical view of creation and theistic evolution lies here: the driving force that brings about change and the development of new species in all evolutionary schemes is randomness.... But the driving force in the development of new organisms according to Scripture is God's intelligent design." (Systematic theology, 276)

Yet it seems here that Grudem has assumed, a priori, that the view of "randomness" that theistic evolutionists tend to believe in is one that is outside of God's theistic design. Yet every theist ought to believe that though there are apparently "random" and "chance" events the Lord is utterly sovereign in them all. The Lord has "designed" intentions in them. From the roll of the dice to the decision of free agents the Lord has intentions that are most certainly NOT random.

Proverbs 16 reminds us of both of these facts

⁹ In his heart a man plans his course,
but the LORD determines his steps.

³³ The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the LORD. (NIV)

Undoubtedly there are some who hold to theistic evolution who themselves tend towards deism. I have had conversations with people who suggest that God set it up in such a way that he knew something good would come out of it, but could not be sure what. So, Deistic Evolution posing as Theistic Evolution exists. But, I fear that it may betray some deistic assumptions on the part of creationists if they will insist that apparent randomness is incompatible with intelligent divine design.

On the other hand there are those who hold to theistic evolution who accuse creationists of deism.
Ever since Henry Drummond coined the phrase "the god of the gaps" it has been used as an accusation against those who hold to creationism, and more recently Intelligent Design. The idea is that people seem to think that science runs itself quite nicely, thank you very much, but there are a few things that cannot be explained without some kind of miraculous intervention from God. Like Drummond, they urge instead belief in "an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."

Well, though once again this accusation of a God only occasionally involved in His world may be fair for a few creationists, sure theistic creationism is also possible: that God is utterly involved in every moment, but differently involved in the miraculous.

Whichever position you take on the Creationism vs. Evolution debate, make sure that in avoiding falling into materialism, you don't inadvertently fall into deism: that would be a far more serious error than getting the Creationism vs Evolution question wrong.

Make sure also that you don't wrongly accuse a brother or sister in Christ who believes in the same God as you do of a theology to which they do not hold.

Confusing Conversations 2. "Creation vs. Evolution" is not a conversation

I think it was Thomas Renz, a then lecturer at Oak Hill, who was the first to point out to me that Creation vs. Evolution really isn't a real conversation. It is the confusion of two conversations.

Really there is one staggeringly important conversation: Creation vs. Evolutionism

And one real, but far less important conversation: Creationism vs. Evolution.

The first conversation is vitally important because it is a conversation about worldviews. Is there a creator or not? Is the world utterly dependent upon that creator, or is "evolutionism" (the idea that evolution can explain everything) true? "Evolutionism" is a term used in different ways, but where used appropriately and not merely as a sneer, it is a materialistic philosophy that believes that evolution is not merely an historical explanation of what has happened, but also a philosophical explanation. Matter is all there is; matter happens to have thrown up these incredibly evolving organisms that have eventually, through an entirely materialistic process, led to the existence of humans.
By contrast, "creation" presupposes a theistic worldview: it assumes that the world is created by a divine being who is utterly in control of whatever processes have taken place to bring about humanity, and every other thing in existence, from the smallest molecule to the largest supercluster of galaxies. Whatever processes there may have been to get to where the creation is now, in a very real sense these processes can be described as his acts of creation.
All Christians should obviously be in agreement that "creation" rather than "evolutionism" is alone a satisfactory worldview that makes sense of the existence of our universe and everything in it.

The other debate is not about worldviews at all, though it is often confused as being so. It is a debate about ancient (Natural) History, the debate between Creationism and Evolution. It is a debate about the age of the earth; the time it took for certain species to come (be brought) into being. It is a debate about taxonomy: are the species fixed, or can there in time be sufficient divergence within a species that eventually one has multiple species.

These are, of course perfectly valid questions to be asking. But I hope that every theist at least recognises how these questions are far far less important than the questions of worldview.

The methodology by which we come to a particular conclusion on this second question might betray a worldview, and more of that anon; but it is inaccurate to imply that either position, in and of itself, encapsulates a worldview.

So in summary, we have two debates.

1) Worldview Debate: Creation (theism) vs. evolutionism (materialism)
2) History / Taxonomy debate: creationism (young earth / fixed species) vs. evolution (old earth, unfixed species)

Two questions to think about.
a) which debate is more important?
b) which debate is nearer the centre of the force of Genesis 1?

I think that all Christians who have read Genesis 1 carefully should be in no doubt at all that the answer to both these questions is (1)

For other posts in this series see here

Confusing Conversations about Creation

In preparing for preaching a sermon series on Genesis 1-3 I thought it would be good to get a little more up to speed on where the lay of the land is at the moment in the debates between creationists / intelligent design movement / theistic evolutionists and the new atheists.
I have to admit, that the issues involved, and particularly their relationship (or lack of it) to a right understanding of Genesis One can be enormously confusing. Many people seem to be talking past each other. They thing they are having one conversation when their discussion partner thinks it is an entirely different conversation. The conversations are confusing, precisely because one conversation is being confused with another.
I thought I'd do a few posts to examine the confusing of the conversation conversations and how confusing it can be. And if you are not confused yet, just wait!