Tag Archive - creation

Hope, Resurrection, Posture

November 29, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

On Sunday, I posted some thoughts about hope–Christian hope as resurrection hope, followed yesterday by some reflections on the significance of Jesus’ full humanity.

Taking hold of the far-reaching implications of Jesus’ restoration project is something I continually harp on because it can play an important role in transforming the posture with which we hold the gospel.

My experience within evangelical Christian circles has often been one in which followers of Jesus envision themselves as the small, minority truth-holders, struggling to cling to what it right, and ever cautious and even fearful about fully engaging in other “worlds” that might be tainted by godlessness, or liberalism, or the like (since those to are “alike,” right?! *ahem*).

Image: markuso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last night I had the opportunity to participate on a panel that was responding to questions posed by a group of college students. We fielded questions such as, “What are Christians supposed to do about evolution, especially science majors?” “What should Christians think about environmentalism?” “What about people who never hear the message of Jesus?”

The questions are important ones in many respects. But the overall sense I got from the questions was that Christian faith is a small fortress to be guarded carefully. And I wondered if we didn’t need to start reimagining a capacious vision of the reign of God as our gospel.

I think the problem of a small, carefully guarded fortress starts early. In youth group we learn that the gospel means: (1) Jesus died for your sins; (2) you shouldn’t sleep with your boyfriend or girlfriend; and (3) drinking is bad.

There’s not much good news in that, except in the hope that if you can control your hormones you get to be with Jesus drinking grape juice one day.

But what if we begin, instead, with, “God was, in Christ Jesus, reconciling all things to himself”?

Then the world of nature and science does not stand as a looming threat to our faith, but as a witness to the breadth of the saving care of God.

Then the preservation of the environment becomes not merely a fleeting liberal hobby-horse, but a crucial pillar in the eternal plan of God. You think you care about the environment? Well, you’ve got nothing on the creator.

Maybe even questions about sex and sexuality can be received, gratefully, as gifts, rather than fearful lands to be trod, if at all, with extreme caution.

Paul talks about the reception of the Spirit as a transforming moment that moves us from slavish fear to the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It moves us into the realm where we know ourselves to be members of God’s family and instruments in the turning of the ages.

Posture, it seems to me, is as important as details. If we cannot posture ourselves with arms wide open to the cosmos that God has reconciled to himself, then we are not so positioned as to come to faithful answers to the questions that plague us. And we might not even be in the position to be plagued by the right questions.

Ordering Chaos

October 22, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 10 Comments

Genesis 1 is magnificent: from tohu vebohu, desolation and deserted, the world is given order. Chaos is pushed back. Life emerges.

I like to imagine that imitation of God includes little acts of bringing order out of chaos.

I’m not a clean freak, or a tidy freak. But when the chaos has encroached too long, I find myself oriented by a day of tidying, putting away, and organizing. For a few brief months in 2009 we were actually able to park our car in our garage, and today I brought us halfway to the point of being able to attain to such heights of glory again.

People like to look at Gen 1 and talks about creation as a crucial part of what it means to act out our identity as those who bear God’s image.

I prefer to think about ordering the chaos. Creating space for life and peace where before there was disorder and disturbance.

Good exegesis? Probably not. But I sure feel oriented when I can see the floor of the garage. Or the top of my desk.

And I’m sure there’s something spiritual about it.

Adam: Back in the Saddle Again

June 9, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 26 Comments

‘Adam and Eve are back in the saddle again. The cover story of this month’s Christianity Today details the ongoing debate about human origins.

This is an important conversation for us to have.

As I read this article and talk about these issues with my friends and colleagues, I am increasingly struck by two things. First, as I accept the conclusions of scientists I am increasingly consenting to things I know nothing about. I do not now, and probably will not ever, have firsthand knowledge of DNA sequencing, pre-genome project evolutionary evidence and theory, or archaeological evidence of hominoid development.

I anticipate that I will always be dependent, at some level, on some sort of scientific consensus to tell me what the origins of humanity are, even as I anticipate that my friends who are not in the theological studies academy will always be dependent on me to tell them about the ins and outs of making sense of the New Testament as a set of first century documents.

With such dependence on the professionals, why do I not exercise a bit more reserve in my affirmation of evolution theory, and old earth, and the like?

Image: twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is my second point.

Evolution, as a theory, has created expectations that later scientific research, even brand new scientific fields, has confirmed, whereas literal creationism and attempts at biblically created depictions of the world are always having to adjust dramatically to account for the new evidence.

Darwin came along and said that species evolved from one another. This is a process that would take millions (at least) of years. Biologists begin postulating relationships among species. Heredity and change are explored.

Paleontologists and archaeologists dig and explore. They discover early signs of tool use that seems to go back tens of thousands of years–humanity in particular and certainly the earth in general seem older than 6,000 years.

Researchers build on evolutionary theory, and discover that cancer cells evolve–and develop cancer treatments.

A brand new field of genome mapping comes onto the scene, and the results confirm the expectations of evolutionary biology: not only do humans share functional DNA with other primates, we also share the sequences that don’t seem to do anything.

Translation: things that would be part of us if we have evolved from something other than precisely what we are right now were, in fact, discovered in the DNA sequences–and these “somethings” are shared with primates. And, there is no reason on theories of direct creation why God would put such unnecessary ingredients into his humans, or chimpanzees.

What this tells me is that scientific accounts of human origins are on the right track in way that a literal biblical rendering of human origins is not. The latter fails in the role of accurately predicting what the evidence will demonstrate–which is precisely the role of a good scientific theory.

No, the earth is not flat. No, the earth is not a land mass supported by pillars that stand in the midst of the sea. No, there is no firmament holding back the waters of the heavens. No, the sun does not race back around to its starting point every night so that it can make its course over the earth’s sky once again. No, the earth is not 6,000 years old.

So what about humans?

The Reality of Adam and the Story of Christ

October 25, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Science with 37 Comments

On Friday of last week, David Opderbeck asked a challenging question. I had posted on “Anthroposis,” the idea that what we really need is to become more truly human than we already are. Or, in the biblical narrative, to return to the humanity from which we have fallen. David asked,

Here’s a question: anthroposis Biblically is a recapitulation of the first man before sin. But, scientifically, there was no “first man”. How do we hold this missional narrative together if human evolution is true?

I have been wrestling with this question quite a bit lately. I just finished a book on narrative theology, and found that I couldn’t tell the story of Jesus without constantly conversing with Genesis 1-3. The Adam theology of the NT, the Jesus theology of the NT, is written in innumerable ways as an echo of the creation narratives of the first few chapters of Genesis. What, then, if these aren’t literal accounts of what happened? Where does that leave the story?

This is a difficult question, and I want to try to hold onto two things at the same time.

First, to say that they are not literal or historical accounts of how things came to be as they are now is not to say that these stories are not true. They are true narratives about the world. But how are they true and what truth do they teach is a more complex question.

Second, one of the ways that these stories work is that they tell the story of the past in such a way that it becomes clear that the people telling the stories are God’s present means for bringing the world/humanity to a destiny something like what the stories depict.

Genesis 1 uses sonship language to describe humanity as kings, ruling the world on God’s behalf. And what do you know? The Davidic kings are envisioned as God’s specially chosen agents who are enthroned to be God’s sons, ruling the nations for God.

Genesis 1 borrows the imagery of the Ancient Near Eastern creation myths that would place humanity in perpetual servitude, enslavement to the gods, and Marduk in particular. And what do you know? In this retelling of the story not only is Israel’s God shown to be the real creator, and one much more powerful than the other gods who have to fight their way to victory, but humanity is the pinnacle and glory of creation, not ever-oppressed slaves. When God’s purposes for humanity are realized, Israel will not be enslaved to Marduk in Babylon, but participating in the reign of its king, the reign of humanity over the earth.

The point is that stories of beginnings are written to plot a trajectory for the story that follows. Genesis 2 is a bit more on the descriptive side, indicating why the world is the way it is. But even there, I think there are indications of this story of origins setting a trajectory for a world that Israel is at the middle of.

For me, once we realize that these stories were not made to give a disinterested account of some hoary past but rather to speak to God’s plans for a particular people to bring the world from a certain kind of disorder into a certain kind of (what we now see as) restored and glorious future, the historicity question takes a back seat.

The story is still true, and we still plot the story of Jesus within that story, recognizing now that he is the surprising answer to the unrealized destiny of Adam. If we can recognize those pictures as idealized projections into the past of what God intends for the future given his present commitments, then I think we can keep moving forward with them firmly kicking off our story.

I think that some such process is tied up with God’s binding himself to this particular story of Israel.

What do you think? Can something like that work, based not on “we have to trash these stories because of evolution,” even, but “we have to rethink these stories based on what we know about their place in the history of Israel and their ancient environment?

Genesis 1 & Biblical Authority

October 6, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 21 Comments

Yesterday someone tagged me on Facebook, asking what I made of the following quote:

If we can set aside the six-day creation doctrine, we have asserted our supremacy over Scripture. Our mind and our convenience now have a higher authority than the Bible, so that we have denied its authority totally and asserted our authority instead. If we claim the right at any point to set aside Scripture, we have established ourselves as the higher authority at every point. Clearly, therefore, the question of authority is at stake in Genesis 1: God or man? Whose word is authoritative and final? -R. J. Rushdoony, “The Necessity of Creationism”

There are a few reasons why I do not find this argument compelling.

First, I am uncomfortable with the way the issue of interpreting one passage of scripture is tied to the entire question of biblical authority. This problem is made repeatedly in conservative Christian circles: it is claimed that failure to adopt one particular interpretation is a denial of the authority of the text itself. A more recent example is the Al Mohler article in Christianity Today, in which he states his belief that one must be a complementarian with respect to gender roles in order to affirm the inerrancy of the Bible. No, that just means you are choosing to weigh certain biblical evidence more heavily than other evidence.

It is crucial when discussing the authority of the Bible to distinguish between biblical authority / theological positions (inerrancy, infallibility, inspiration) and our interpretation of that authoritative text. Or, to allude to the title of that book that only people from Westminster Seminary know about, we have to keep discussions of inerrancy and hermeneutics distinct. I will never find it persuasive that you have to hold to any particular interpretation of any particular passage in order to believe in the authority of the Bible. Because Bible-believing Christians have disagreed over just about everything.

Also, if conservative and/or Evangelical Christians are ever going to start demonstrating the kind of John 17 unity that would impress the world with our Christ-promoting oneness, we have to stop making such ultimatums of one another.

The second reason I don’t find the quote compelling is that both your average lay person reading the Bible and biblical scholars with access to more historical resources have a tremendous number of reasons for reading Genesis 1 differently than literal six-day creation as a historical account of how the earth started.

Read through Genesis 1-2 and make a list of what happens when. Even a casual observer notes that there are two accounts of the creation of humanity. Things are created in different orders.

Go back and reread Genesis 1 asking what all this might mean. Make a list of when things were created. Huh–the story is telling me that there was no sun, but that there was light. Fascinating.

The very fact that there are two different creation stories, and that the facts they tell are in different sequences and not indicative of how the universe actually operates, are all pieces pointing a faithful reader of the Bible, who is listening to the text itself for clues about how to interpret it, that Genesis 1 is not a text that should be read literally.

Yes, you can make the opposite argument. But the point here is that the Bible itself invites other ways of interpreting it. These are the kinds of clues we always look for when reading a text–we seek to understand its genre, and treat its contents accordingly. It is quite possible to submit to this text as an authoritative text whose genre one takes to be other than literal history. This is not an act of hubris, it is an act of humble listening.

These clues that the texts are not meant to be taken literally are confirmed from other directions once they are placed in their Ancient Near Eastern setting, something that even conservative biblical scholars attempt to do through their “grammatical historical exegesis.” The “historical” part is a confession that we have to understand the context within which the text was written to understand how God was intending to speak through it. ANE parallel texts help fill out the genre category of creation story that affirms the layperson’s instinct that these texts are not to be read as history.

A third significant problem I have with the quote is that it does not wrestle with the fact that Christians have read Genesis 1-3 as non-literal since at least the second century. It is quite possible to honor the Bible-honoring Christian tradition and not require that the earth was created in 6 24-hour days 6,000 years ago. Lack of such sensitivity in a quote like this has the, perhaps unintended effect, of creating the impression that what is actually only one Christian voice among many holds the lone key to faithful participation in the Christian narrative. And that is simply not the case.

So while I find the commitment to scriptural authority admirable, I do not find its way of linking it to this issue to be exegetically sound, pastorally wise, or ultimately honoring to Christ. I think we need to start taking much more seriously the theologically problematic assertion that people have to agree with any one of a list of particular, usually socially conservative interpretations of scripture in order to really believe the Bible or to “protect the gospel.”

The theologically and missionally imperative summons to Christian unity around Christ himself needs to take precedent over such amendments to the Christian constitution as we see in the Rushdoony quote.

Adam Theology Hits the Evolutionary Fan at Calvin

September 29, 2010 in Academia, Science with 14 Comments

In the Chronicle of Higher Education there is an editorial about the recent work of Calvin College professors on the issue of scripture and science. In particular, this makes public the rumor that I have heard from other quarters as well: these research projects, that were approved by the administration, are now coming under fire from Calvin’s president.

The work comes out of a sabbatical project, validated by his college (at a committee which included the provost).  The president however was absent and now he has returned and read what Schneider has written and published does not like it at all.  He thinks that Schneider is going against the strict understanding of what it is to be a Calvinist, and as such is grounds for dismissal, which is his aim.

This is disheartening, to say the least.

I am wary of Christian college in general, but have had my confidence in Calvin bolstered by several friends whose children have recently attended. The atmosphere at the school, in particular its willingness to teach science in a way that would allow a science graduate to continue doing main stream scientific research, has a reputation for being both deeply Christian and rigorously and honestly academic.

If these rumors are true, if this is what the president is aiming to do, then that atmosphere has been changed and Calvin has become yet another casualty of the rigorous scholarship of its faculty.

The editorial focused on John Schneider. I don’t know if the same heat is being applied to Daniel Harlow who has commented here a couple of times in the past week.

Either way, I hope that this course is reversed, not because I necessarily agree with the projects of either scholar but because we need faithful, even confessional Christians working out the issues of faith and science. Too many people are saying have to go one way or the other if we are going to keep affirming the Bible as the word of God or the Christian confessions as our faith tradition.

When will we as evangelical Christians get it through our heads that as long as we force people to choose between science and the Bible that we are going to lose more and more as we lose our ability to control the narrative within which scientific data is assimilated and interpreted? We don’t live in Christendom anymore. We don’t have that kind of control. If we force people to choose, and tell them that only one can be true, they will, more and more, go with science.

If you have a minute, I’d encourage you to drop an email to the president’s office at Calvin (offcpres@calvin.edu) and tell them how important it is that the work of such professors be allowed to continue–not necessarily because you agree with the conclusions of these professors, but because academically rigorous Christianity, and the Christianity our children will grow up to either accept or reject, needs to affirm the process in which they are involved.

CRC on Scripture and Science

September 26, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Science with 10 Comments

After I posted last week about the recent publications by a couple of Calvin College professors on the issues of evolution and biblical interpretation, a friend linked me to the Christian Reformed Church’s statement on this issue. It reads:

Position

All of life, including scientific endeavor, must be lived in obedience to God and in subjection to his Word. Therefore we encourage Christian scholarship that integrates faith and learning. The church does not impose an authorized interpretation of specific passages in Scripture; nor does it canonize certain scientific hypotheses. Instead, it insists that all theological interpretations and all scientific theories be subject to Scripture and the confessions.

Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.

There is quite a history behind this, but the minimalism of the statement leaves a lot of room to ask questions and explores possible answers within a biblical framework.

In a comment over the weekend, Daniel Harlow brought it back to that biblical framework. “I’ve been discussing Genesis.” Indeed. That’s the point in a number of these discussions: how do we best read Genesis, how do we best understand its genre, how do we best understand why these stories begin our Bible and what we are intended to learn from them?

The CRC has determined that the statement of humanity in the image of God is at the heart of what is true about these creation narratives.

The Intelligent Design Detective

March 12, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

Over on Biologos they posted a couple of videos of “The Intelligent Design Detective”. O My.

From the crime scene, to the lab…

Adam Is Israel

March 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 12 Comments

Over on Biologos Pete Enns has a post arguing that Adam is Israel.

YES.