What "Really" Happened when God Created the World...

Makes total sense now.

--Nick

When God Can't Win (With Us)

Lately my girlfriend has become a sort of therapist, in that I tend to vent and complain and occasionally curse my way about explaining a theological concept. Usually, this goes over pretty well.

I had a brief discussion with a friend about violence within the Old Testament. Normally, I have no real problem with it and I still don't. But thinking about the idea of promise and marriage and the future involvement of humanity makes for strange bedfellows.

I do wonder about what man truly desires, in that we had so much. I cannot image a "good" or "perfect" relationship with Allison or my parents or my friends.

The very idea is terrifying in that it seems to presuppose some sort of intimacy and openness that, frankly, I don't like. Where wounds are stripped away and you are left bare and alone in the night where all that is you is there.

That scares me. If I knew I could have a perfect relationship with my human friends, the prospect of a very big God being completely open and relational makes me tremble.

George MacDonald said:

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

In some ways, I think this is sadly true. I do wonder about God's emotions and passion for humanity, and what truly pleases him. What is the best we can do but pale in comparison?

What is nerve-wracking about the "best" there is?

--Nick

A Vicarious Creation, or Why Yahweh is Among Us

Credulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of men.
Pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen.
Shouldn't have to say it all again.
The universe is hostile. so Impersonal. devour to survive.
So it is. So it's always been.

Tool -- "Vicarious"

I've been thinking a lot lately, particularly about the proper place of narrative in relation to truth. In many ways, this is a cumulative post of past experiences that haven't made their way to you at this point, but in another way this post is meant more as a summation.

Genesis has been a bit of a hot topic lately, especially with my friends. A great deal of them are conservative Christians and, for many of them, the issue of inerrancy and Genesis has been a splitting headache of a problem. I think this problem should be addressed, so here goes my hat being tossed into the ring.

The stories in Genesis builds heavily off Ancient Near Eastern creation myths, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and others. In fact, it seems to assume certain similarities between them: water, creation from dry land, the sequence of days, etc.

However, I would argue that the writers of Genesis weren't interested in simply copying or rehashing the same themes. If Genesis was written during the Babylonian exile, then Israel would've been bathed in the material and national propaganda of the time, in the same way Americans are.

But, instead of leaving it as such, I think Genesis is far more subversive than that, and has a demythologizing effect on such myths. Questions of origin and salvation aren't of interest to the writers. Instead, they are more focused on the physical creation and what it means to be human and to be made in the likeness of Yahweh. Rather than completely disregard their culture, the remnant seemed quite content to speak in the same type of language and appeal to the same rhetorical devices such as "rest" after a conflict has been resolved and secured (Gen 1:31-2:3) and the use of repeating formula according to Gordon Wenham.

Also, 2:4 has a standard rhetorical introduction with "in the day that Yahweh-God made the earth and the heavens." Peter Van Seters says this is similar to our modern use of "once upon a time." The plural ("Let us make mankind") contains a hint of a divine council or heavenly court. This resembles a Babylonian myth about how the king was a special creation of the gods, all of whom were called upon to contribute attributes and qualities that would equip him to rule (Van Peters). 

Once upon a time, Yahweh created the earth and the heavens.

In many ways, we get quite hung up on myth, seeing it as false. Or, that Yahweh wouldn't tell a story that way. Jesus was quite fond of parables and seemed at ease speaking cryptically, just as a passing example. Or, Icarus flying into the heavens and falling to earth contains profound principles that teach us regardless if the story is historical. Consistency and chronology are not important to myths (Van Peters).

The term "adam" is used in a new sense to include both male and female. This new creature is made in the image and likeness of God, the climax of the first creation story. Instead of creation being hostile and horrific, mankind will have dominion over it via the command of Yahweh.

For myself, I think myth is a profound and powerful method of conveying truth. The principles of the creation story stand as Yahweh being sovereign, powerful, emotive, loving and willing to come among us. In many ways, this looks into the future as well as states a present fact:

Yahweh is loving and powerful, we (male and female) are in His likeness and He has welcomed himself among us.

--Nick

Republicans, Gallup and Young Earth Creationists

According to Charles Johnson:

That’s right — according to Gallup, 46% of the American public are hard core young Earth creationists who believe the Earth was poofed into existence in its present form about 10,000 years ago.

And for Republicans, of course, the numbers are even worse; 58% of Republicans are young Earth creationists.

America, we have a problem.

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.

The picture is awesome. Half the reason I posted this. 

--Nick

Ken Ham's Ninja Defense

A bit cheap, but it made me chuckle.

--Nick

Craig Keener, "Is Young-Earth Creationism Biblical?"

Credit on the bottom of the photo. Epic.

Keener:

Even self-identified evangelicals, who tend to read the Bible more conservatively than most other groups, do not speak with a unified voice regarding the process of creation. Clearly, young-earth creationism, which argues that the world was created in six 24-hour days, is widely promoted on a popular level. Less publicized is that a large number of evangelical thinkers prefer a different range of options. Let me briefly survey some options before turning to Genesis.

For example, like many other evangelical scientists, Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome project, affirms evolution. A 2009 Pew Forum poll suggests that roughly a third of evangelical Protestants agree. More surprisingly, this approach among some evangelicals did not originate recently. For example, one of Darwin's leading U.S. defenders in the 19th century was a committed evangelical. Harvard biologist Asa Gray, featured on a U.S. postal stamp in 2011, never persuaded his friend Darwin that evolution displayed divine design, but Gray defended evolution.

Some prominent evangelical theologians today (such as Alister McGrath) support evolution, but even late 19th- and early 20th-century conservative theologians such as Calvinist B. B. Warfield and Baptist A. H. Strong allowed that God could have used evolution as a mechanism of creation.

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

"What's at Stake in the Doctrine of Creation?"

Tony Jones:

A week from now, I’ll be canoeing through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with ten Fuller DMin students, Brian McLaren, Courtney, and a couple guides from Boundary Waters Experience. Our conversations will center on Christian Spirituality and the Doctrine of Creation.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about the doctrine of creation in preparation, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the doctrine of creation is like an onion: you peel away one layer, and you find an equally significant layer underneath. Another metaphor is dominoes: knock the first one down, and lots more begin to fall.

I’m so intrigued by this that I think my next book after Why Pray? will be on creation. And I see my thoughts falling under these major categories:

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

Peter Enns, "You and I have a different God, I think"

Enns is always interesting.

I’ve been watching the Adam and evolution debates/discussions on line, in social media, and in print. I think I am beginning to see more clearly what accounts for the deeply held, visceral, differences of opinion about whether Adam was the first man or whether Adam is a story.

The reason for the differences is not simply that people have different theological systems or different ways of reading the Bible. A more fundamental difference lies at the root of these (and other) differences.

I think we have a different God.

Christians are supposed to think about God they way Jesus showed us to think about him.

That God does not hesitate to participate in the human drama, to encounter humanity within the limits of the human experience. That means that biblical writers wrote about the God they encountered as they understood him within their cultural limitations.

True encounter with God, expressed in truly human, cultural, terms.

That’s why I have no problem reading the Adam story as a story of origins like other stories of the ancient world, or understanding Paul’s take on Adam as an outworking of his Jewish world (where biblical texts are molded to fit an argument), and calling this kind of writing “God’s word.”

The Gospel teaches me that this kind of Bible reflects the character of God. This kind of Bible is what I have come to expect.

The Gospel does not teach me that it is a problem for God to enter into the human experience and allow that human experience to shape–from beginning to end–how the Bible behaves. The Gospel teaches me exactly the opposite.

And the Gospel certainly does not teach me that God is up there, at a distance, guiding the production of a diverse and rich biblical canon that nevertheless contains a single finely-tuned system of theology that he expects his people to be obsessed with “getting right” (and lash out at those who don’t agree).

When it comes to things like Adam and I hear how people explain their position, the question I ask myself now is “what kind of God are you presenting to me here when you say X….?” Is it

an incarnating God–Immanuel, God with us, or

a Platonic god–where you have to peel off the obscuring “down here” hindrances to get to the untainted “up there” god, with the Bible as an encoded inerrant guidebook to get you there.

I don’t like the platonic god. I don’t think Jesus did either.

You can tell something about the god people believe in by paying attention to how they talk about controversial issues of the Bible–like Adam.  Do you see a system-dispensing administrator who keeps his distance or “God with us”? If you keep your eyes open, my bet is that you will see one or the other coming through loud and clear.

Patheos/Enns

--Nick