Baddeley Award Citation part the first

This is the first in a multipart citation for the 2007 Baddeley award. It is long, unfortunately, Mr Baddeley is prolix, to say the least, but I've tried to make it fun as well.

The citation is in double brackets, usually in a new paragraph, bold if 'in line'. The other stuff is MB's work taken from his blog at the time of original posting.

Problems With Creation Science I: Absence of a Theology of Creation

My encounter with this anti-Sydney Diocese blog [[a mistake here: the blog is not anti-Sydney Anglican Diocese, but anti the heresies promulgated, perhaps unwittingly, but sometimes very wittingly, by the Diocese care of its educational arm and prominent ministers (we eschew the worldy titles the diocese uses)]] has strengthened my concerns about Creation Science [[which, oddly, the blog is not about]]. As I’ve indicated, I don’t have a problem with the idea of a literal six day creation in the abstract [[the Bible is not 'in the abstract' but the 'historical']]. What does concern me is that, almost without exception in my experience, people who are into creation science seem to be disinterested in theology [[I think he means 'uninterested']], and in understanding the world theologically.

I have lost count of the number of videos, magazine articles, internet articles, and teaching sessions I’ve been part of that have gone over Genesis 1, the Flood, and Behemoth from Job 40. And it is always the same. These passages are mined [[is this an intentional perjorative?]] to show:
1. That the world is 8 000 years old [[where did this number come from? Ussher's date puts it at about 6000 years old.]]
2. That if we had been there, we would have seen that Genesis 1 gives us a journalistic [[wrong word, noting the nonsense that some journalists write! I think we'd prefer to say that Genesis 1 gives us a report of the events of creation]] account of how creation came about [[I think that's in there; the method appears to be "God said . . it happened", refer also to Hebrews 11:3]]. That is, it is pretty much what we would have seen with our own eyes [[I don't know that this is either implied by the account or possible. On some 'creationist' views, the period of rapid time-space inflation that may have occured would not be amenable to observation, and we certainly could not see (with our post-fall limitations) the making of stars, etc. I think this remark by MB is just silly.]]
3. That there was a flood that covered the world with water, and so contemporary geological theories are fatally flawed. [[actually, no; it is contemporary geological time-scales that are!, conflation doesn't help your case MB, 'creationists' have no problem with most of contemporary geology, only its timing.]]
4. That there were dinosaurs still in existence at the time of Job. [[I wonder where *did* all those dragon stories come from?]]

These might be true or not, but none of them really touch on the core concerns of the Bible [[no, these are precisely the concerns of the Bible: that we have true knowledge about our world, and our relationship with God, our 'reality-standing' if you like; if they are not true, the Bible does not give us information to allow us to understand our selves, our position, and our origin and therefore, connection with God; it is also hubristic to state the core concern of the Bible if it becomes less that the full spectrum of the Bible: it is all its core concern; I refer to Jesus' 'jot and tittle' quote; otherwise, you are taking away from scripture!]]. These are the kind of questions that are of interest primarily to post-enlightenment empiricism. They are scientific questions about the world. [[Unfortunately, some of an academic turn of mind see reality only in terms of a mosaic of disciplines; but the real world is not so; it is a continuous reality, 'ontologically isotropic', if you like. The questions are not 'scientific' questions: that conceptualisation is itself one that can only be made with a post-enlightenment mindset; rather, the world of the Bible is that all matters of God's revelation and action are germane. It is a mistake to apply a modern category to parts of scripture and suppose that this limits the application of the scripture in some way: Paul tells us that all scripture is there for teaching, it is not the 'story artform' that Laurie Anderson, for instance, claims it is (her CD "The Ugly One with the Jewels") etc.]]

What is always passed over (and so one presumes [[ah, no, what is important is that Christian theology is about what really happened, not mere talk]] that it is considered uninteresting or unimportant) is the theological interpretation of the world. Some examples include:

The way in which creation comes about in the first three days by creating order through making divisions—light versus day, heaven versus earth, land versus sea. And then the second set of three days seems to return to these basic structures and fill them: sun, moon on day four; birds and sea creatures on day five, land creatures and humanity on day six. This suggests a basic understanding of creation as being structured through binary opposition and then filled. Thus, in Genesis 1 we get a move from the original state: formless (no structure) and void (empty) and finish with a structured universe in which entities exist. When one sees that making a separation between two things is fundamental to creation, then, for example, the holiness laws, with their separation into holy and profane, clean and unclean, make far more sense.

[[Now, the odd thing here is this. Firstly, it is a little like the tail wagging the dog: creation is set out so that the holiness laws work? Too much reading Augustine, IMO. Does this mean that the creation account is a mere artifice, a piece of fiction to pave the way for the holiness laws that won't stand on their own account? Secondly, and I think I'll keep coming back to this; none of these observations apply if creation did not occur as stated.

I think MB has fallen here into a pagan way of thinking (not trying to play the man here, btw) and doesn't follow the way of the Bible. That is, no words are empty, or without real reference; creation is not a side show, but is the very start of, and circumscribes the parameters of, our relationship with God. To think that creation could have really occured in fashion 'a', but is revealled as happening in fashion 'b' makes nonsense of the concept of revelation, and questions the validity of any interpretational approach: indeed, it seems more like the Eastern approach to matters of religion, perhaps its the Zen of Biblical Interpretation!

But, that aside, I note MB's nice slide over to the framework hypothesis, flawed as it is.

Some links on this, without necessarily endorsing all of the material:

Reference 1
Reference 2
Reference 3
Reference 4
Reference 5

There is also a lenghty article by Dr. Pipa which is no longer on the net, but a chapter in the book (I think): “Reading Genesis 1:1–2:3 as an Act of Communication: Discourse Analysis and Literal Interpretation,” in Did God Create in Six Days? ed. Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. and David W. Hall [Taylors, SC: Southern Presbyterian Press, 1999]

I think Mr B misses the point, though, of the 'creation science' movement, as he puts it. I must also clarifiy here, that this blog is not a 'creation science' blog, but a biblical one. We want to unpick the heresy, not open a lab.

The 'concern' with the CS movement as expressed, is like quibbling that the dentist isn't interested in your tinea: refer to the mission of the CS movement.

The core of it is twofold. 1. to expose the presumptive materialism that underpins and constrains dogmatic evolutionism, and 2. to show that theology has realist underpinnings, not idealist.

If we surrender to pagan idealism, othodox theology will collapse and MB's brief recital below will become mere vain postulating, without content. The point of the movement, and the talks he has attended (clearly he's not found any theological ones; more his limitation than that of the movement, IMO) is to challenge materialist orthodoxy that says the Bible is fictional, that it touches on the real world history erroneously and it is necessary (practically) rather than contingent, and being necessary is 'natural' and not supernatural in origin.

It also, in doing this, must attack the approach to the study of the creation that starts with the assumption that there is no God, or if there is, there is no practical consequence to his existence. All this is necessary before there is a theology of creation that is worth our attention, because Christian theology is the study of God in what he has done (as reported) and said, not the study of stories about God or what God has not done. If the Bible's contact with the real world is false at every turn, particularly on the question of origins, then no theology is possible; which I suppose is why there is scant regard for a theology of creation in the Sydney Diocese that (table thus turned)!]]

What is also passed over is the way in which creation exists to serve humanity [[again, but only if the account is factual, and only if the real fall can play a part in our real history and 'destiny'; otherwise, we have, among other things, the evolutionary picture, where 'creation' does not serve humanity, but is troublesome]]: Genesis 1:14-18 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

Here the existence of the sun and the moon are explained simply as to give light to the world and to regulate day and night. They, along with the stars exist simply to regulate seasons, days and years. They are the celestial equivalent of a wrist watch.

That’s hardly a scientific answer. What about stars we never see on earth without the aid of, very, very powerful telescopes? What about the sun’s role in keeping the solar system stuck together, and providing energy for the other planets? What about the other planets in the solar system, or asteroids? What about the fact that the stars are actually other suns?

But it is a powerful theological answer. Humanity regularly falls into worshipping the sun, the moon, and the stars or awarding them immense power over our lives, as astrology indicates. Here Genesis 1 shows us that they are not lords over the earth. They are mere servants. Night lights for human beings. They exist for our sake.

[[Partly an exercise in missing the point, partly an exhibition of the shell game (which shell is the die under?). The mistake a lot of neo-orthodox critics of the bibilical creation movement make is to assume that Genesis 1, etc. is taken as a 'scientific' treatise. This could not be further from the truth. It is an historical record: it tells us what happened in terms that are of significance and sensible to us; it also provides the intellectual context for the mandate given in Gen 1:28a; to the extent that it gives information about the creation, it is arguably, and I suggest obviously, from an 'earth gravitational frame of reference' position.
To the extent that it touches on events, it relates them truthfully, if not exhaustively. It's like looking at historical records to establish that the dioxin at the Rhodes redevelopment site in Sydney comes from a now demolished chemical plant. The formulae for dioxin is not given, but the fact of its presence is explained.
MB again in this complaint makes the academic mistake of thinking that the Bible can have theological content independently of 'reality' content. This is the 'story-art' mistake; and a common one.]]

And this is the clear teaching of the NT:
1 Timothy 6:17 Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.

1 Timothy 4:3-5 …men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

Everything made by God is good, and so nothing is inherently off limits. The fact that this world has been filled with good things (as Genesis 1 painstakingly shows with it’s enunciation of the six day process of setting the universe up) tells us something about God, that God ‘richly supplies us with all things’. That is, that God is superabundantly generous to the human race.

It also tells us the stance we are to have towards the world. God has given us all things for us ‘to enjoy’. Christianity is pro-aesthetic. Things in the world are good and so should be enjoyed for their own sake. Christianity is anti-ascetic: advocating the abstaining from foods and forbidding marriage (and I would suggest that these are indicative examples, not intended to exhaust the kinds of things people who teach demonic doctrines (from 1 Tim 4:1-2) might say) is criticised in some of the harshest language Paul ever uses.

The purpose God had for creating things was so that those of us who believe and know the truth (i.e. are Christians) would gratefully share in them, sanctifying them by our reception of the word of God (believing the gospel) and prayer. That is, we are to enjoy things, and to enjoy things in a non-secular way. We are to enjoy the world as a gift from God, and so be grateful to God for it, and pray to use things for the purposes God gave them for. What we don’t do is find our security, or place our hope in the abundance of good things we have. We recognise God alone as the giver of life, and the giver of all good things.

Hence, the call on Christians to deny themselves, to pursue Christ wholeheartedly, to live a life of sacrificial love for others, needs to be understood against this backdrop. Christians are to forego enjoying the things of this world. But that is because of the demands of faith and love in the last days—the days when the ascended Christ rules over this rebellious world and all his enemies are being put under his feet. It is forgoing the good out of love, it is not asceticism for asceticism’s sake. Because everything is given for our good, we are free to use or not use them, depending on the demands of the circumstances in the context of love.

For me, this has transformed the way I relate to creation and tackle issues from alcohol, to culture and art, to work, and love of money. And I haven’t even begun to touch on the strong NT teaching about the relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and creation!

And here’s the problem. It was only after I stopped reading Creation Science stuff on the topic and started reading material that they consider to have fatally compromised on the doctrine of creation, that my eyes were opened to begin to grasp this much bigger vista of a theological approach to the world.

Even if Genesis 1 is intended to be taken literally, I am very grateful that God has allowed me to grasp this way of seeing the world as existing as his good gift to his people, to be enjoyed with gratitude. I consider myself to have gained by losing the one to gain the other. Grasping this world as God’s good gift changes everything. It gives purpose and meaning, not just to human beings, but to all things.

[[All well and good, but he's got the corner if it. Augustine thought that the creation account was to let the Sabbath law make sense; Baddeley things its to tell us that the creation is there for our pleasure. It is, of course, but that's hardly the point of the Creation account. Jesus did not use it in that way.

Furthermore, as I know the creation is from God's loving hand and that reality is finally personal, not material, I am confident that God's relationship to it and us is concrete and open, not occult and mysterious, and certainly not through the 'demiurge' of time and 'chance'.]]

Here ends the first part of the award citation.

EXILED IN [HIS] REFLECTIONS

One of the more common reptiles on the east coast of Australia is the blue-tongue lizard. Despite its ubiquity, this rather beautiful and familiar animal has an identity crisis. A central component of this problem is that the blue-tongue frequently thinks he’s a snake. Growing up to 30 cm in length, if disturbed it will hiss, and if this defensive act occurs in long grass where its body and legs are obscured, a surprised and inexperienced person may mistake its thick, triangular head for that of the deadly death adder’s. Sadly, this confluence of circumstances has on the odd occasion contributed to its meeting a premature death by a solid whack from a man’s spade or axe.

It’s the opposite with Mark Baddeley and his incoherent “theology” drawn from his expurgated, postmodern Bible. Mark, unlike our venerated reptile, is a snake who thinks he’s a lizard. I suppose I shouldn’t be too harsh with Mark because, give him his dues, he’s done some of the requisite homework that makes him close to an expert on the creationism case for a young earth (he was one after all…or so he says). You can see the evidence for his comprehensive grasp of the subject in his first statement. Mark believes that creationists hold to an 8,000 year old earth. That’s a mere 33 per cent out - not too far off the money!

Though it is often quite difficult to extract from his sermons what he actually believes – I sometimes think he holds to very little – it would be fair to say Mark supports the following four propositions about the earth and its biological and geological history:

(i) The earth is extremely ancient

(ii) What happened over this long age bears no relationship to the putative chronological sequence of Genesis 1

(iii) There was no universal flood and in any case the geological record cannot be reconciled with such a catastrophe

(iv) God’s biological creative efforts were spread out over millions, if not billions, of years

Despite the Bible’s making clear and lengthy statements to the contrary, Mark’s primary justification for his position is that final knowledge about these issues can only come from science. I don’t necessarily object to his reliance on science per se (and by ‘science’ I mean knowledge in its broadest sense), but Mark’s use of science here is limited to the circularly utilized and defined data which appear to only support the long-age view. Mark’s a priori commitment to an old age earth means he will not acknowledge the myriad of evidence that can only be explained by a young earth. There are enormous numbers of young earth scientists throughout the world who have multiple postgraduate degrees in science and who work in their specialized areas, routinely publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals. Mark’s silence says more about his unchristian lack of respect for his Christian brothers than the correctness of his case.

But perhaps the most disquieting aspect to Mark’s poor scholarship is his belief that theology (i.e. the Bible) is not the relevant analytical tool to decide whether or not the above 4 propositions have any historical truth value. Mark not only draws a line and says “God, you must remain on that side of the line, for now we humans in our scientific enterprise must drive the quest for truth”, he also is claiming, rather perplexingly, that the Bible does not clearly address their historicity.

Before I address my concerns I want to quote Oxford’s Oriel Professor of Hebrew, James Barr: ‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

Barr’s words sound like those of a typical creationist fundy, though one who is both articulate and educated. Interestingly, the theologically liberal Barr has written a book attacking the fundamentalist approach to the Bible; yet he can recognize on language grounds alone that the Genesis chapters cannot be manipulated to return Mark’s liberal de-historicised version. Ironically, Barr accepts that Genesis is pushing the historical line but rejects it on “scientific” grounds, and so in this respect the very liberal Barr is less liberal than Mark!

The one common thread of all 4 of Mark’s propositions is ‘Time’ (note the capitalization of this word, something I’ll return to shortly), and certainly ‘time’ is something the Bible considers an extremely important commodity. In fact, one would be hard pressed to indicate another culture that was more concerned with ‘time’ than the Jewish one. One can identify a subtle hint to its importance in the following Gospel incident.

Toward the end of Matthew’s gospel Jesus and the disciples are walking in the countryside and feeling hungry. Matthew writes that,

‘[S]eeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” And the fig tree withered away.’

“What’s your point?” asks the atheist, to which the Christian responds, “Can’t you see that that’s a miracle?”
“Not really,” replies the atheist. “It could have died 6 weeks or 6 months later. The text tells you nothing about how long it took and so there really is nothing saliently miraculous about this incident. All trees eventually die.”

The atheist has a point. Not mentioning how much time passed between Christ’s words and the tree dying raises immediate doubt that the event was miraculous. If the disciples had passed by the same tree, say, 5 years later, would the writer have been justified following up with, ‘And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?”?

Thus, it seems quite sensible that increasing the amount of time cannot serve as the conduit for the miraculous to reveal itself. Quite the opposite: slashing time is the agency by which miracles are discerned. A person slowly regaining their eyesight over a ten-year period hardly warrants an exclamation of “It’s a miracle!” However, it would be clear that a miracle had occurred when, for example, a person was diagnosed blind one moment and the very next he was able to see.

I would suggest that brief moments of time, particularly as they approach instantaneity, are the most visible means by which the hand of God is recognised working in nature, extraordinarily. Natural laws, as they are metaphysical, can’t be seen and thus it could never be apodictically demonstrated whether Jesus in any one particular case actually held the apposite natural law(s) in abeyance. However, these laws can be accelerated, either forwardly or in reverse, and this conspicuously reveals itself when time is reduced. Then we can discern when a miracle has occurred. Without this compression of time a phenomenon can be explained away merely as the natural outworking of regular, chemico-physical laws.

So now I have a confession to make as I’ve purposely misled. I omitted one word from Matthew’s record. The final line should have read, ‘And immediately the fig tree withered away.’ The addition of this one adverb now sends an unequivocal statement that a miraculous intervention had just occurred. Big things come in small packages, and a lone adverb is certainly a modest box - yet what significance!

Quite naturally I would assume that Mark has no quarrel with Jesus’ instantaneous, and hence miraculous, killing of the tree; so this makes Mark’s attitude all the more peculiar when it comes to understanding Genesis 1. According to Mark’s cataracted hermeneutic, the inclusion of tens of temporal limiting words and phrases (i.e. ‘an evening and a morning’, ‘day 1’, ‘2nd day’ etc) merely signifies atemporal beauty. Mark, the aesthete, ignores the information that points to God’s immediate and miraculous involvement. Ideas have consequences, and Mark’s belief in long ages, when they are plainly not in the text, brings with it some rather unpleasant religious ramifications.

Once Hesiod’s and Homer’s gods were sent packing, the Greeks recognized time as a key explanatory constituent for change within their various cosmogonic accounts. The Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians and Epicureans incorporated vast ages into their systems and through these eons it was supposed that the one and the many could be manifested. Though differing slightly, ‘Time’ in each of these pagan philosophies was a co-equal to, or surrogate for, God. ‘Time’, as Mark’s religious outlook has it, purposes exactly the same by setting up another “god” or power to perform the work of God. Inserting this demiurge-like principle between God and the creation, after all, must contribute something. By partially buying into the evolutionary myth, Mark’s theology, somehow, has long ages allowing the extraordinary to take place. Just how this miracle of life actually occurs in Mark’s philosophy, and how God’s majesty or presence is specifically demonstrated by these purported excessive eons of time, are never quite explained. As Socrates might have said, an unexamined philosophy is not worth espousing.

Blog Management

For all contributors: I've put the labels list on the blog: might make things easier for readers. Please remember to apply a label to your posts. Just type the label in the box at the bottom of the 'create' window. Try not to introduce new labels, but use existing ones. Go to the dashboard if you need to.

Psalm 104

There was a reference on Craig's blog to the ConfessingEvangelical blog on Psalm 104. An interesting discussion then ensued. As it was in September last year (an eon ago in Internet time) I thought I'd take it up here, rather than attempt to join an old discussion.

As a matter of interest, I googled over to Spurgeon's Treasury of David on the psalm.

From the introduction:

"Here we have one of the loftiest and longest sustained flights of the inspired muse. The psalm gives an interpretation to the many voices of nature, and sings sweetly both of creation and providence. The poem contains a complete cosmos sea and land, cloud and sunlight, plant and animal, light and darkness, life and death, are all proved to be expressive of the presence of the Lord. Traces of the six days of creation are very evident, and though the creation of man, which was the crowning work of the sixth day, is not mentioned, this is accounted for from the fact that man is himself the singer: some have ever, discerned marks of the divine rest upon the seventh day in Ps 104:31. It is a poet's version of Genesis. Nor is it alone the present condition of the earth which is here the subject of song; but a hint is given of those holier times when we shall see "a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, "out of which the sinner shall be consumed, Ps 104:35. The spirit of ardent praise to God runs through the whole, and with it a distinct realization of the divine Being as a personal existence, loved and trusted as well as adored."

The original blog on this was a question about the use of this psalm in our reflections on creation, and that it had not figured in much of the debate. Interesting thought. While my reading is slowed down by the demands of my work (paid work, that is; I've got a pile of articles, theses and books to get through before I retire), I hope to get to recent theological reflection on the creation. I must say, I agree with Mr Baddeley that there is a dearth of theological work done in this area and because, as Baddeley says, we are of puny mind, we daren't even think of undertaking it. The dearth results, perhaps, from the widespread acceptance of the assertions of materialism as being conclusive and factual, and so eliminating the need to consider Genesis 1-3 theologically; also, of course, if this passage is not the account of creation, then theological work is sort of pointless, because it makes no contact with our real world, it becomes a sort of story telling: comforting, perhaps, but of no concrete relevance to us here and now.

Nevertheless, there is grist for the mill in Psalm 104.

I think that Spurgeon gives a lead in that the Psalm makes assumptive reference to the creation, and is more concerned with straddling from normal providence (that is, post creation) and the new creation. However, it underscores the biblical signficance of the creation account and encourages us to deal with that account seriously; not dismissing it as some sort of side show, which Jensenism tends to do; making its content subservient to current materialist conceptualisations.

One of the comments on the original blog related to animal carnivory mentioned in the psalm (v. 21) as somehow undermining the contention that a 'very good' creation excluded animal carnivory (on the basis of Genesis 1:30). It was a long bow, I think, as the psalm clearly refers to the world as it stands, while harking back to the orginal creation of it. As it stands now, the world bears the marks of that great cataclysm, the fall; the rejection of relationship with God. The psalm is a 'post fall' document and so recognises the world post fall, wherein, by the operation of common providence, animals must 'look' to the creator for sustenence: see Spurgeon on this, for example.

Some of the comments on confessingevangelical suggested that Psalm 104 shows that God's sustaining work (in common providence) is behind the normal flow of 'cause and effect'/'purpose and result' in our everyday experience, non-miraculously; so simultaneously, as if in two parallel realities, there is God over there, and there is nature over here. Therefore, it seems some might hold that God's statements about creation in Genesis 1 can take the same form: God's action and its results as stated in the account coexist with but are separate from the normal flow of cause and effect described by Evolution as we would see it. So yipee (as my young son says) we can both be right!

The trouble is, for practical evangelism, both being right just leaves the average materialist with his/her materialism and no compelling reason to question or reject it. After all, it simply means that some story has been crafted to 'stand behind' the real world but the real world is what it is, independently of the story. The dependence of the world on God, at least at its creation, is therefore, in real terms, obscured. And so, our connection with God, is similarly obscured and the whole salvation project is thrown into the dark.

I think it is the notion of independence which is critical for Christian reflection. If the real world can be conceived of as independent of God, and practical denail of the concreteness of the creation account results in such a conception, then we are truly cut adrift, theologically and evangelistically. Paul the apostle certainly thinks that we are, in fact, not cut adrift (Acts 14 & 17 as examples of his reliance on the creation account, by implication, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, for his reliance on the fall in his theology); nor does the author of Hebrews (4:3, 11:3). Wright has an essay (chapter from his book on Paul) that touches on this in some ways.

Moreover, the 'stand behind' theory of interpretation gets us nowhere if it cannot make the case that the genesian text gives due reason for that theory. I don't think it does. The grammar of Genesis 1, as I read, is not consistent with metaphor, but with historical account. Taking a more theological perspective, as the Genesis 1 account is the only point for an ontological link between us and God, it must make the link in terms that are congruent with our current time-space world and not need to transmogrify that world into some spiritualised thing that we would find in neoplatonic thought.

Just as an aside:
Found on Jordon Cooper's site:

" 'Jews see water, sea as dark and evil. Look at Noah, Jonah, Moses and the sea as the dark chaos of creation. '
My apologies, but you misunderstand Wright.
Jews thought of the material world as good. They did not believe God had created an evil thing.
It was Gnostics who thought of the material world as evil, created by a Demiurge."
a comment on his blog.

Heroes of Faith (or "On this Rock I Will Build My Church")

Sam Drucker recently drew attention to the decline in belief in the chronology of the Bible. Earlier, I had cited extracts from "The Great Turning Point" written by Terry Mortenson and published by Master Books in 2004. Sam cites other sources for his case but Terry Mortenson has more to say and I would like to bring it to readers' attention here.

In concluding his book, Terry Mortenson attempts to offer explanation for the sudden emergence and demise in the 19th Century of the Scriptural Geologists (those with geological training, experience or interest and compulsion to defend the Word of God). Various helpful insights are provided but for my exercise I take up part of what Mortenson says from page 235.

"Finally, in the period 1820 to 1845, the scriptural geologists were writing toward the end of a debate among geologists about the physical effects of Noah's flood. Some, such as Hutton and Lyell,were saying that it was geologically irrelevant. Other such as Cuvier, Buckland, Sedgwick, and Jameson, were insisting for a time that the Flood was responsible for at least some of the geological phenomena. The scriptural geologists' most intense reaction came in the wake of recantation (of belief in the Flood) of Buckland, Sedgwick, and others, and the publication of Lyell's "Principles of Geology".

In this context the scriptural geologists felt compelled to write. They believed that the old earth theories and the resulting reinterpretations of Scripture would have long-term catastrophic effects on the theological and spiritual health of the Church and her evangelistic mission and subsequently on the social and political life of the nation. But this was precisely because they believed these issues were related to a person's response to the inspired and infallible Word of God. As [Henry] Cole put it:

'Many reverend geologists, however, would evince their reverence for the divine Revelation by making a distinction between its historical and its moral portions; and maintaining, that the latter only is inspired and absolute Truth; but the former is not so; and therefore is open to any latitude of philosophic and scientific interpretation, modification and denial! ... According to these impious and infidel modifiers and separators, there is not one-third of the Word of God that is inspired; for not more, nor perhaps so much, of that Word, is occupied in abstract moral revelation, instruction and precept. The other two-thirds, therefore, are open to any scientific modification and interpretation; or (if scientifically required) to a total denial! It may, however, be safely asserted, that whoever professedly, before men, disbelieves the inspiration of any part of Revelation, disbelieves, in the sight of God, its inspiration altogether. If such principles were permitted of the most High to proceed to their ultimate drifts and tendencies, how long would they be sweeping all faith in revealed and inspired veracity from the face of the earth? ... What the consequences of such things must be to a revelation-possessing land, time will rapidly and awfully unfold in its opening pages of national skepticism, infidelity, and apostacy [sic], and of God's righteous vengeance on same!' (Popular Geology Subversive of Divine Revelation, London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1834)

It would appear that subsequent developments in the church and society in Britain (and other so-called Christian lands of Europe and North America) over the last 170 years has confirmed the scriptural geologists worst fears.

So it was the undermining of Scriptures, far more than the undermining of the political and social status quo or their own personal positions in society, that was their shared concern. Also, as scientific knowledge was rapidly expanding and leading geologists and other scientists were claiming massive evidence in favour of an old earth, the scriptural geologists felt compelled to defend the traditional interpretation of Genesis, in part by attempting to show that much of what was being claimed as "evidences" of an old earth were really theory-laden inferences from the geological facts, with the theory being rooted in anti-biblical philosophical assumptions.

Finally, the scriptural geologists and their opponents also collided in their views on the very nature of geology. It was not an experimental science, such as chemistry or physics, seeking to discover how the present creation operates, but a science concerned with the historical question of origins. All of the scriptural geologists recognized, and some of their opponents attempted to articulate, this special characteristic of geological science. But the ambiguous definition of this historical nature of geology at its early stage of development added to the confusion and hindered the serious consideration of the best arguments of the scriptural geologists by the geological opponents. As the 19th century progressed, the question of origins (astronomical, geological, and biological) was moving rapidly away from assumptions rooted in Christianity to a semi-deistic, agnostic or atheistic framework. The rear-guard action of the scriptural geologists was too little and too late to stop this cultural shift in the world view."

With these men we stand. They did not fight in vain. More later.

Neil Moore

Creation & Corporations

A mention of Genesian belief in Ackoff, R. L. The Democratic Corporation, OUP NY 1994:

"Most people in the West also believed the claim made in Genesis that people had been created in the im age of God. (This claim was not surprising, considering its source.)" p. 6.

He refers here to the pre-nineteenth century modern period.

In a number of pieces written by Ackoff, I've come across his references to Genesis. He makes other biblical and/or religious references too. One of the best in this book is on page 10:

"Nineteen hundred years earlier, a Western God disappeared and became an abstract spirit with whom ordinary men could not communicate directly. An institution and a profession -- the church and the clergy -- were created to bridge the gap. Similarly as the 19th century drew to a close, management (the church) and managers (the clergy) were created to control enterprises in the alleged interest of their owners and to discern and communicate their will to the employees. Managers came to know the shareholders' will in the same way the clergy claimed to know the will of God, by revelation."

While Ackoff has some things wrong, in my view, as an outsider (I surmise) of the church his observations are interesting. He touches on one of the predominant heresies in the Anglican church which we've not discussed here, but perhaps that's for another day.

I think his reference to Genesis, while brief, suggests that he observes that its direct meaning is taken by its believers and not as meaning something completely else because he implies evolutionary ideas further on in this chapter. He uses these to illustrate a particular conceptual model of organisations that differs from the model he attributes to a mechanical view of the cosmos deriving from Newton. All a bit 'potted' but as an indicator of what 'outsiders' understand in Christian history and thought, just a tad fascinating.

Unsurprisingly, people like Ackoff never jump from Genesian creation to purposeless evolution as being compatible bedfellows: only (some) Sydney Anglicans (Jensenites) seem to manage that trick.

Blue Poles and other things.

A few snippets from the media over the Christmas break and comments thereon:

1. 'Watch the Skies' by Richard Schickel 2005

This was a doco on 1950s sci-fi films with interviews of Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott . . .

'our religion is impotent against the invaders' (just a line from one of the films quoted)

Clearly an evolutionary view of religion with 'god' within the cosmos, not its creator.

I was taken by Spielberg's discussing his War of the Worlds (2005):

"...because I was sort of stepping out of character to do War of the Worlds, these were not malevolent aliens which I identified with, I identified with ET and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind; as a director this was my first departure to looking up in the sky and not seeing hope and peace but seeing hate and war raining down on upon us that was a big departure for me to step out of character to go against my real beliefs that there is only hope and peace from above..."

I wonder what his 'hope and peace from above' is? Is it alien visitors: is earth the only place where there is evil and suffering . . .why would aliens not bring just more evil and suffering . . .does he think that 'advanced' races would have gotten past the evil and suffering we know? Whatever it is, his saviour is readable within an evolutionary conception as being part of the random material dance, and so without finality or any reference. Is God just an add on, as the materialists conceive, or is he the Creator, as he reveals in his 'Big History' (see below) that connects us and him.

2. From Ghost Dog, a film by Jim Jarmusch (I saw this years ago on the big screen, but SBS re-screened it recently)

Text from 'The Way of the Samurai' as presented on screen"

"Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase 'form is emptiness'. That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase 'emptiness is form'. One should not think that thse are two separate things"

The film is about a paid killer working for a petty mafia family and his final demise. The text is the conclusion of the movie, that the deaths either done by or done to are equal and empty. But in true Zen fashion, the emptiness is meaningful (means nothing, of course, also in the fashion of most Zen nonsense). Consistent with there being no creator, not consistent with there being an objective, loving creator. Now those who bring materialism together with biblical creation might answer along the lines of 'god used evolution', but the logic of materialism clearly doesn't drive Jarmusch to theism, the very opposite, in fact.

3. From Sydney Morning Herald 'Spectrum' section (5-6 Jan 08), a mini review of "Big History"

"Did you know that the term "Big History", which is now widely used to describe any study of history which moves from the beginning of the universe to the present day, was invented by Prof. David Christian at Macquarie University?

In 1989 Christian launched a course called Big History, "as a way to show colleagues what he thought an introductory course in history ought to look like" [presumably it was also for students to have an introductory course in history!]. This book is the latest interpretation of Chistian's idea. It is a history that bridges the gulf between scientific knowledge and human history by starting with the Big Bang and the expanding universe, moves on to the formation of planet Earth, continues through the emergence of human beings and then focuses on the past 10,000 years.

This sounds like an impossible task but Brown has read widely, has an elegant writing style and her central thesis is built around the impact of humanity on the natural world. It is very much a book for our global warming and environmental times."

Big History hits the nail on the head. These writers (Christian, Brown, and the reviewer) see it very clearly. Running history back to the origin defines our collective 'life-world': it tells us who we are and puts us in a moral and ontological setting; and of course, as a setting, it gives us clues as to how our story might play out. If the clues, if the 'big history', do not start with the personal in a loving God (and for materialism, why would it), then they will result in a final denial of the personal, or at least the inconveniently moral, replacing it with the amoral pragmatism of the powerful, and a type of nihilism in the everyday: converting upon application to practical epicurianism (if it feels good, do it).

Pauls starts his gospel proclamation to pagans with 'big history'; the true big history, revealed by the creator (see Acts 17, but refer to the broad contours of Paul's theology, such as sketched by NT Wright -- ducks for rain of hail); so to deny the importance of who we are, defined by our origin is simply silly and passess up many evangelical points of contact for want of a little biblical knowledge and critical participation in current debates: all passed by in Jensenism.

I think most Jensenites (my term for anglican theistic evolutionists/the Genesis creation account doesn't matter-ists) follow the reviewer and fail to distinguish scientific knowledge and the materialism in which it is so often embedded: of course, strip away the originating theism from modern science, and the seeds of its destruction are possibly sown, because the starting point of all enquiry is belief.

The uncriticality of accepting a materialist cosmology and scientific conclusions is astonishing: it is where theologians let materialists into the driving seat of the popular mind: without a struggle, let alone a fight, and so frustrate many opportunities to proclaim, discuss and debate the gospel, and its implications for us all. It says "oh yes, your 'big history' is right, and our's is wrong (that is the one with a recent and rapid creation); which of course, means that our theology is within their big history, and fails to stand against and overturn it for God's glory and the salvation of his people.

4. From a Sydney Morning Herald letter (December 27, 2007)

The writer raised the question of moral epistemology (rather a complex question for a letters page), ending with the following paragraphs:

"If there is no judgment, no consequences beyond this life, no eternity and no God to set us straight, then we don't have much more than "survival of the fittest".

To suggest that you can have Christian values without God is philosophically unsound and ultimately futile, because it is obvious that we don't and can't live up to those values anyway. Not only do we need God's laws, we also need his mercy and forgiveness."

Now, I wouldn't have quite put it as in the final paragraph, but the idea is heading in the right direcction (God's 'laws' . . .where does that fit in??).

The letter attracted the usual misunderstood half-baked responses, typically along the lines of 'I'm an atheist and a good guy", or "if God is so good, why are Christians so rotten?", only providing further evidence that questions of moral philosophy are poorly placed in a letters column, but the original author made a very salient observation: moral questions can be seen to fall down to (Christian) theism or 'survival of the fittest', as he puts it. Or the outworking of philosophical materialism, as I might put it.

But what catches my attention is that the letter makes its appeal by the separation between materialism and theism. The point the writer makes cannot be sensibly made, I think, if the theism is melded with the materialism: neither in its own terms, nor in any more rigorous moral epistemic fashion (how could it?). Yet, the Jensenist school would have us think that the two disparate origin frameworks co-exist, as in 'God used evolution'. Which is just like saying that we use atom bombs for infrastructure re-construction projects (I was going to say, "do paintings by splattering paint", but some wit would attempt a counter by referring to Blue Poles, which some consider to be splattered paint, but is in fact an astonishing work of art of great intellectual depth: go see in the National Gallery).

[Aside: It is an historical anomoly that people equate 'survival of the fittest' with (neo-Darwinian) evolution, when the concept was invented by a Christian 'creationist', Edward Blyth (see here for instance). In the popular mind 'survival of the fittest' drives evolution, but it doesn't, imagined mutational novelties drive evolution, survival simply weeds out what doesn't work, but itself is not a creative force.]

News Flash, January 8, 2018: Moore College takes its lead from science – It’s official: “Jesus did not resurrect,” says new principal, Mike Paget

It appears that our amicable and open-minded Sydney Anglican Heretics’ representative, Mike, has strung together a mini-treatise criticising our use of Lactantius and Theophilus as evidence that the belief in a young earth was the norm rather than the exception for the early Church. (Of course, Mike and his Moore mates would prefer to convince us that, just as they see it today, the issue of age was not an issue way back then. But even Mike’s chutzpa wouldn’t extend that far; for the mere fact that it was brought up by these first Christians evinces it WAS an issue.) I’d like to closely examine Mike’s [para]logical thoughts because like all sophists their strength never lies in what they say but in their capacity to make a listener lose sight of his own argument.

Mike’s attitude to Lactantius, to contextualize it, is that he regards him as somewhat of a dropkick loser, theologically speaking that is. From this Mike concludes that Lactantius can’t be trusted regarding the earth’s age. What can I say, old chap? Well, if you were in one of my logic classes I’d make you sport the dunce’s hat and, mirroring your own paternal discipline, have you sit in the corner for a lesson or two!

You see Mike has just committed the classic fallacy of argument ad hominem in which irrelevant circumstances are thrown in the ring and then the actual argument is dismissed as though these circumstances have somehow weakened or even overturned the argument. Mike’s attitude to logic at this point reminds me of the man who took his car to his local garage but was warned off by a friend because “Joe, the mechanic there, bashes his wife.” Mike presents exactly the same obtuse rationality when he claims that “Lactantius was a B-grade public debater whose extant writings are about as useful for determining early church thought as my quiet time notes would be for understanding early 21st century eccesiology[sic].” Thus, according to Mike’s specious insight, before one is granted imprimatur a man’s theological credentials must be of a certain standard [non-Moore graduates need not apply, thank you very much!], in addition to possessing silver-tongued interlocutory skills.

Apart from his fishy response that begs the question that there is a plethora of early Church writing attesting to Mike’s long-age view, Mike willfully disregards the implicit point of Lactantius’ statement: If you read God’s Word free of external philosophical influences it plainly says that the world is young. Here are Lactantius’ words once again:

"Therefore let the philosophers, who enumerate thousands of ages from the beginning of the world, know that the six-thousandth year is not yet complete.”

By now Mike’s sour grapes are fairly well obvious to those who have been following the debate. The challenge from the heretics was that our position is somehow the new kid on the block (in some quarters of his tribe our crime of speaking out loudly is perceived as that of an enfant terrible!), yet we’ve shown that on the contrary theirs is the novelty (not to mention being the unorthodox and embarrassing view). What rattles Mike – though he can’t admit it - is that even a theologically impoverished bloke like Lactantius took at face value the biblical passages that dealt with the age of the earth (after all, from where would he obtain the 6,000 years?). So to cripple Lactantius’ testimony Mike has to accuse the man of committing the theological equivalent of wife bashing or tax cheating. The question was not whether a man gets all his theology perfect, but whether the text at Genesis 1 can be read as Moore College heretics teach. The historical testimony of the Church says it wasn’t. To repeat our argument: the Moore College view of Genesis 1, that it is not an historical report, is a modern perversion.

Mike’s next attack is even more unacceptable. But before demonstrating Mike’s illogic on this matter, I want to point out another instance of his dishonesty.

Mike, like his heretic mates, misrepresents young earth creationists and constructs a straw man. He implicitly argues that because we hold that Genesis 1 should be read straightforwardly, then, in order to be consistent, it follows that all passages of the Bible should be read that way. (This is the enthymematic message behind his frequent mention of geocentricity, domes of water encircling the earth and flat earthism.) Others on this site have reacted to this clear deception by demonstrating that this is a caricature of our position so I won’t spend any time going over the same ground. However, I need to stress that this display of intellectual lassitude toward our actual argument is more or less indicative of the character that Moore College produces in its graduates. (Hence Mike’s alarming remonstration that he is not on earth to jump through, what he perceives as, my hoops.)

Mike imputes to an early Church father – this case, Theophilus – flat earthism. Mike’s general disregard of scholarship raises its head once again. For if Mike had read the whole of the 32nd chapter (in addition to several preceding ones) in Theophilus’ 2nd book, he would of understood that Theophilus was making a rhetorical point. I know that the subtlety of this argument will escape Mike because like all cult members they only want to prove what they have been told to stand up for. And judging by Mike’s attribution of flat-earthism to Theophilus’ text, when it clearly does not even mention these words, I suspect Mike’s source is one of the atheist or heretical theistic evolutionary websites.

So what did Theophilus actually say?

While Theophilus’ entire book is an attack on the competency of pagan ability to accurately record history, the 32nd chapter acts as a mini-conclusion to a very long argument that he has set down prior to that chapter. Unlike the followers of Jensenism (that eponymous heresy sourced in Moore College’s then principal’s Doctrines 1), Theophilus took the first 11 chapters of the Bible as straightforward history. In the 27th chapter he begins to discuss the creation of man. He follows with chapters that carry the reader through all the ancient historical characters, tribes and places mentioned in Holy Scripture. Along the way Theophilus periodically ridicules pagan writing and its erroneous statements which masquerade as true “history”. It is at this point in his 32nd chapter that Theophilus mentions the world being viewed by pagans as a sphere or a cube. By unconscionably ascribing flat earthism to Theophilus Mike misses the wit of the rhetorical purpose behind his statement. After all, no where does Theophilus actually state the world is flat: that’s something Mike has deliberately and erroneously inferred (through mimicking his atheist bovver boys’ websites).

The statement that Mike rips from its context shows that Theophilus is mocking the pagans at this point because they are unable to accurately record even a small “visible” thing as the history of man, yet they issue apodictic statements concerning a far more complex subject, namely the shape of the world. Hence, “But how can [the pagans] say what is true regarding [the shape of the earth] when they do not know about the creation of the world and its population.” In other words, are we really sure we can trust the pagans for cosmological truth when they present such an emaciated understanding of our own history.

One last thing. Mike states that “the only way we can recognize these statements as metaphorical is by the benefit of modern science.” Elsewhere he writes, “I guess my understanding of the mechanism or physical process of creation is quite shaped by contemporary science. A lot of that is obviously highly provisional and still in debate, but I'm happy with current proposals, for example, of lengths of time.” He then goes on to claim, “I would characterise Gen 1-3 as a kind of impressionistic portrayal of the truly important aspects of that creation, drawing attention to it as something genuinely creative, in a language accessible to believers throughout history. These aspects which have been highlighted are almost entirely theological rather than, for example, methodological.”

At last, here we have it: Mike admits that his epistemology is that science should control the Bible’s meaning. In this instance, the short age earth isn’t true because science says the earth is old. All those passages taken at face-value, which appear to say that the world is young, must be understood to be merely a picture of reality and do not contain a straightforward history of events.

Of course, Mike’s epistemology is inconsistently applied. This is exactly what Bultmann, Spong etc take as their epistemological basis for understanding the Gospels: According to science dead people don’t walk out of tombs and so we should take the resurrection accounts as metaphor. It’s the Christ event which is the important thing, not whether Jesus really resurrected and the Gospels are an impressionistic portrayal of the truly important aspects of that seminal moment, drawing attention to it as something genuinely creative, in a language accessible to believers throughout history. These aspects which have been highlighted are almost entirely theological rather than, for example, methodological.

Well done, Mike. You’ve just taken an axe to the tree of Christianity. A heretic you remain.

Is there anything wrong with “biting at the heels of men far greater in the Kingdom” than we?

Like Heidegger, who regarded it as “the fundamental question of metaphysics”, the philosopher Robert Nozick concluded that it impossible to answer why there is ‘something rather than nothing’. Both men’s voluminous writings were complex, distanced from the concrete and actual that this “something” primarily referred and, in their own peculiar way, became increasingly attracted to an abstruse mysticism.

Christianity, in its orthodox version, is eminently up to the task of answering this question. Its centerpiece discourse with the world is an historical event in which God, as man, allows himself to be murdered and by this sacrifice of love is able to effect reconciliation of the whole cosmos to himself. Far from being “foolishness” in which rationality departs, the Christian argument is that this act of God freely exposes itself in order to be understood. Unfortunately, one scion of Christianity has been recently performing public sleight-of-hand artifice and replaced comprehension with nonsense. Almost Marcion-like in its approach to Old Testament history, the Sydney Anglicans have deracinated the apotheosis of God’s appearance in the world from its historical backdrop. Now robbed of meaning and significance, these men try to convince their followers that their mystical theology is Christianity’s genuine article while ignoring the voluminous weight of historical testimony and rational argument that stands in opposition to their claims.

I’ve previously referred to Bishop Rob Forsyth’s address to ISCAST on the putative dangers of looking to science to prove God. The problem, Rob says, “is that this attempt to directly derive strong grounds for the existence of God from the existing state of science, usually by postulating a point at which ‘then a miracle occurs’, has some very significant dangers for the Christian faith.” The main “danger” is the god-of-the-gaps-argument which, as knowledge about our physical world increases, leaves less room for God as Creator. Traditionally, so Rob believes, God was regarded as principally transcendent, though of course immanent in that he somehow held everything together. As science developed and causes of the phenomena were given physico-chemical explanation, and naturalism began to be synonymous with the scientific method, Christians in their apologetics had to place God somewhere at the beginning of a line of cause and effect situations. With this increase in knowledge God was pushed farther and farther away as more material causal factors were discovered. Thus, the ‘then there was a miracle’ moment of invoking God became more and more irrelevant. Eventually, as can be appreciated from the scientific enterprise to develop a Grand Unified Theory for everything, God has become but a reminder of our society’s primitive past, a mere invocatory lucky charm for those who are superstitiously religiously inclined.

Rob’s address, it may be demurred, is a doleful harbinger of Christian bad times ahead. On the contrary: he actually hints at a solution. Rob wants us to return to the good old days when God knew his place in the scheme of things and respectfully allowed man to get on with his business of making scientific discovery. It’s horses for courses with Rob: No more God talk in the lab because science is science, and theology, theology. Science has limits and in order to understand God the religious person must down the tools of his trade, take a running jump across some mythical epistemological divide, and only then experience the transcendent. Rob believes that the universe, the world of scientific investigation, is just a “brute fact” and that it does not fall under science’s terms of reference to evince evidence for the things around us being ultimately explicable by God. Fair enough if you’re into a form of mysticism. By stating this, however, Rob’s church sits astride a pagan epistemology and cannot help but tether itself to an equally pagan worldview.

In his paper to the pagans at ISCAST, Rob favourably cites William Placher’s ‘The Domestication of Transcendence’. Placher’s argument is that if Europe had followed Calvin’s and Luther’s respect for God’s sheer otherness and left science to its own business rather than finding a place for God in the creation, atheism wouldn’t have the hold on the Western mind as it now enjoys. Although I may quite speedily be accused of “biting at the heels of men far greater in the kingdom” than I (surely to go down as one of Sydney Anglicans’ humblest self-assessments!), I want to suggest that Placher, Rob, Calvin and Luther are really part of the problem of why there is far too much atheism in the West.

These men’s two-tiered epistemology is a thorough-going Greek view of knowledge and is not the one presented in the Bible. The compartmentalization of reality into separate realms of transcendence and immanence reflects the Aristotelian and Platonic belief structure in which, notwithstanding their idiosyncratic differences, God was irreconcilably distinct from the creation, if creation is indeed even the appropriate descriptor. Both Greek philosophers could never manage to somehow bring everything together. Aristotle, arranging everything in concentric spheres according to the degree of materiality, had “God” outside and omitted any worthwhile explanation how the things of this world began. This world, our world, may have been “created” by God, but Aristotle’s philosophy could not provide true causality because of God’s being ultimately transcendent and other. Plato, on the surface, appears to be saying something far different to Aristotle. However, world of Ideas and Demiurge notwithstanding, the argument and effect were intending nothing different from his pupil: God and the source for creaturely blueprint were taken as a matter of faith to lie across a metaphysical and epistemological divide.

Both Calvin and Luther held a disparaging attitude to any attempt to understand God. For Calvin, God did not speak clearly about himself and what knowledge he did divulge was merely an accommodation to our “slight capacity”. Despite his acceptance of a young world, Calvin held, like the Sydney Anglicans, that the ancient Jews were primitive and did not have a sophisticated mind for understanding higher order truths. As a result, he believed that God did not speak “according to how things are” but lisped for the ordinary people. Faith for Calvin did not involve knowledge and understanding but a mystical tautology of the “mind ha[ving] to go beyond and rise above itself in order to attain [faith]. Even where the mind has attained, it does not comprehend what it feels. But while it is persuaded of what it does not grasp, by the very certainty of its persuasion it understands more than if it perceived anything human by its own capacity.” (Institutes 3.2.14)

Luther, a chap occasionally and favourably quoted on various Anglo-blogs, was less abstruse and cut to the chase by declaring reason a whore. Speculation about God was dangerous because Luther’s was a “hidden God” and “must therefore be left to himself in his own majesty”. (There is a line in Rob’s address to the ISCAST heathen which reflects this Gnostic elitism. Rob primarily lays the blame for the rise of atheism in Europe on “a desire to make all the reasons for the belief in God publicly accessible”. Once more Rob’s sacerdotal mien wants to shut the door, lock it with the key of knowledge, stand guard and keep the unworthy out.)

As is well known, Rob and his followers’ first and only response to atheist attacks on the orthodox understanding of Genesis 1 is to capitulate. The modern (as well as ancient) creationist, in contradistinction, does not fear contemporary views on origins and does not compromise the Bible’s historical accuracy by performing tendentious and unwarranted linguistic gymnastics, as is demonstrated by the Sydney Anglicans’ cowardly retreat of recategorising narrative as poetry or some other figurative form. Rather, creation apologetics encourage the thinking Christian to meet the challenge head-on and speak out with confidence about the plethora of scientific data that support a young, created earth.

In further support for his attack on contemporary creation apologetics the bishop’s address also pusillanimously relied on Michael Buckley’s ‘At the Rise of Modern Atheism’. Rob attempted to demonstrate that when early modern creationists, like Newtown, proposed a natural theology from their scientific discoveries this inevitably led to a viable and convincing atheist backlash. The atheists countered that there was increasingly less role for God to be God in his role as Creator and sustainer because the data could, with equal rationality, be understood through a materialist model. However, the good bishop shortchanged his listeners by overlooking the finer details of what this atheist “backlash” consisted. Two incidents mentioned in the book, and the reaction to them, are significant.

It was reported in 1741 to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris that a Swiss zoologist, Abraham Trembley, had split a hydra in half and watched as both halves grew their missing pieces. Creationists, in opposition to the chance-filled universe of the then Epicurean influenced materialist world-view, had been arguing that life can only arise from seeds which contain the design for their final form. The materialists unwisely and unscientifically viewed Trembley’s work as evincing the wholesale pagan idea that matter had some sort of internal vital force that produced life. By doing this they ignored the much earlier evidence of Francesco Redi and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek who had overturned and replaced the deductive proclamation of Aristotle that life arose from decaying matter with their experimental work that correctly demonstrated life cannot arise from non-life. These two creationists were resolute that science supported the biblical assertion that life can only come from life, God being the ultimate giver of all life. Equally importantly, they challenged, rather than ceding to, the then widespread pseudo-scientific pagan worldview of life having ontological independence. (As an aside, it is clear, too, “from “[Leeuwenhoek’s] stand against non-Christian superstitions such as the doctrine of spontaneous generation, that he held to a Biblical doctrine of creation. He believed it foolish to think his little “animalcules” could have formed by chance, and he worked diligently to prove that all things reproduce after their kind, as the book of Genesis teaches. For example, after working for weeks observing the propagation of insects, Leeuwenhoek stated confidently, “. . . This must appear wonderful, and be a confirmation of the principle, that all living creatures deduce their origin from those which were formed at the Beginning.”” Schierbeek, A., the Editor-in-Chief of the collected letters of Leeuwenhoek, p. 137.)

The other incident centered upon the blind genius Nicholas Saunderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Saunderson vociferously argued for an atheist worldview which substantially centred its attack upon his predecessor Newton and his idea that the mathematical arrangement of the cosmos clearly demonstrated design. Like most atheists who make it a life’s pursuit to loudly deny the existence of a Creator, there frequently lie personal reasons for this career choice. Saunderson, as a baby, had been attacked by the smallpox virus which not only took away his sight but had actually removed his eyes. Saunderson, brilliant as he was, used his deformity and misfortune to bolster his belief that the universe was nothing but the result of eons of blind chance tossing up endless possibilities and permutations of matter that eventually formed life. The key for Saunderson was his own disability. He argued that if a creationist is going to argue design from nature’s exquisite beauty and remarkable intricateness, then he has to find a place for monsters like himself: if God exists, he must have permitted the horror of Saunderson. Saunderson’s argument was but a more pointed version of why there was something rather than nothing. His atheism quite reasonably argued that an evolving universe has to churn out beauties and beasts for no other reason than the interplay of chance, time and matter. Now here is something entirely ironic.

The Sydney Anglicans, represented by men like the bishop Rob Forsyth and his boss Peter Jensen, have declared that God has purposed the principle of evolution as the guiding hand in nature. God is now responsible for Saunderson’s misery and unbelief because, according to their Christian version of evolution, God from the start wanted the mutations and deformity caused by evolution to be a part of his “very good” world. Rather than tackle the validity of evolution being a genuine scientific description of the world, the Anglicans have been seduced by it, accepted it, and then stated that it is “a fatal mistake amongst Christians…to try to attempt to make the Christian faith believable or defensible within the limits imposed by science.” By artificially opening a divide between theology and science, one area of knowledge cannot converse with another. One can talk scientifically, but to talk on matters of God, one has to take off the lab coat, take a running jump across a chasm and land in the theology box, then, and only then, begin a separate discourse. What would have been our good bishop’s best response to Saunderson’s argument if the two had been contemporaries? Not much that would have made a whole lot of sense, I’d imagine.

On other entries I’ve contended that the Anglo-heretics present a quasi-Gnostic view of Scripture and the world. One latest version of this departure from orthodoxy is found over at our old mate Mark Baddeley’s site. Mark writes that, “[t]he point from this is that Creation Science is a natural theology par excellence….Creation Science tries to move to God’s glory by reading it off those things that we find glorious, and explain away those things that offend our notions of good and the like (like suffering).”

One distinguishing outworking of Gnostic thought is a disdain for the creation and Mark’s proposition is nothing more than a veiled version of this. (A less oblique attack on God’s creation, the reader may recall, comes from the Anglican minister Gordon Cheng who found in the koala clear evidence of God’s incompetence. Gordon’s armchair observations discovered that baby koalas have a tendency to fall out of their mommas’ pouches when climbing through the trees because evolution made the koala’s pouch the wrong way around.) Creationists on the other hand, involve themselves in the creation in order to discover the wisdom of the Creator, believing that there will be a plausible direct link between the creation and the Creator (after all, He made it!). Furthermore, creationists have no need to explain the evil in the world away – we actually search for reasons why, knowing that God is not responsible and that there will be indirect scientific argument for evil’s being non-natural (e.g. Haldane’s Dilemma or the clear scientific data which demonstrate the truth of a young world.). It’s actually the theistic evolution heretics who explain it away either falsely and indirectly attribute it to God, or, as is so often the case, present an insipid theodicy by shrugging their shoulders and claiming it’s all one big mystery.

As is the case in their compromising commitment to long ages and evolutionary mechanism, the Anglo-heretics have also joined with the atheists in other matters. One such noteworthy aspect is seen in Baddeley’s subtle distinction in his italicising the ‘we’ in “those [created] things that we find glorious”. What this obscures is the Anglo-heretics’ widespread criticism of the validity of analogous reasoning, part of the logical machinery that drives so much of the philosophy within the creationist and intelligent design. Analogous reasoning is a perfectly reasonable way for the mind to rationally secure a bridge from creature to Creator. Of course, the heretics inevitably end up dismissing this example of rationality as salvation based on our own efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking our lead from Genesis 1’s “made in the image of God”, creationists hold that logos is one of the components of this “image”. As a result man can rationally adduce from the things that are made, which are obviously not eternal, to the eternity of the Maker of these things. (Analogous reasoning allows us to establish that just as we utilise our wisdom, knowledge and understanding to plan our houses, construct our machines and to, “out of nothing”, bring forth our inventions, God also creates by using the same attributes. When we apply our intellect to our constructive tasks in effect we are following God’s own method of applying his intellect in a three-fold way. The pagan searches for wisdom; the Christian has been given this jewel; yet the Sydney Anglican heretics bury it when they replace God’s creative method with a pagan worldview.)

This raises the other reason why Baddeley stresses the ‘we’. Generated and sustained by his non-biblical belief system is his acceptance that the creation, from the beginning, had the good, the bad and the ugly. As a consequence of routinely ignoring or sophistically reworking the wisdom and knowledge of Genesis 1, Baddeley accuses creationists of only seeing God in the beautiful aspects of the world while explaining away the not-so nice through fanciful aetiologies resulting from the Fall. As someone profoundly influenced by evolutionary thinking this is to be expected; for why else would Baddeley hold that carnivorous animals were what God originally created.

But at this point there is an even more reckless outworking of his pagan theology, his downplaying of the intrinsic evil of suffering. Sure, he does commit to a pain-free world in eternity; but the concern I have is his acceptance of it in the present. He writes, “I still want to claim that our obsession with pain is wrongheaded. We elevate it way too high in the ‘evils’ that exist in our world (and I say that as someone who has an embarrassingly low pain threshold). When Romans 8 looks at the ‘good’ for God’s people, suffering is actually an instrument in accomplishing the good…Pain is not the great evil we make it out to be, even though it is part of the glory of the new creation that there will be no suffering. It’s part of the parochial patheticness of our day and age that our existence is getting increasingly defined by the attempt to avoid deprivation at all costs.”

Well, here we have it on his expert testimony that suffering is jolly well good. Note his astute theological underpinning, as well as the objective disinterest, almost stoic in its acceptance of pain being good for the soul. Do tell us Mark, ol’ chap: Just how many visits to the children’s oncology ward have you recently made? Watched anybody die a lonely, painful death this weekend? Been on the receiving end of any beatings lately for giving a testimony for Christ? Been in jail for Christ? Death threats? Spied on? Had your house burned down lately? Or what about your family executed in front of you? I guess not, eh? (Let me help you out. How about you bend over son and I’ll give 6 of the best, you take it like a man, and then I’ll consider you better equipped to write further theologically profound comments on your blog.)

But I digress. Let me conclude with the following.

Of course, such a god of the Sydney Anglicans was completely unknown to the Apostle Paul. In opposition to the Bishop of South Sydney and his supporters, Paul declared that from a deep knowledge of the creation and its components one can reason to some fairly dependable and accurate information about the Creator. Indeed, Paul argues that our minds are sufficiently perspicacious to comprehend something about the dunamis, or miraculous element, in creation and God’s deity and nature. (Paul quite astutely had also observed that some men attempt to foolishly argue away these facts but the truth is inescapable because it is the truth and God’s creation makes it quite plain to them.) The Sydney Anglicans have long ago swapped their inheritance of gold and pearls for atheistic dross and in the process emptied the scientific world of God. They have accomplished this by bringing into the Church a belief that the world is ancient and that God used an unscientific and ungodly method of creating called evolution.

ABANDON SHIP!!! ... Episcopalians First, The Rest Can Make Their Own Arrangements!

In the comments section of a recent blog I asked a person named Geoff to indicate where in the Bible he got support for a long age view of the world. His short reply was "Nowhere."

This blog attempts to outline how the Church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came to overthrow the Scriptural chronologies which support an earth commencement date measuring something in the thousands of years. Space prevents all players being mentioned but sufficient are included to fairly represent the course of events. Remember, I take up events from the late eighteenth century because prior to that contrary views to a young earth (under 10,000 years) were not influential.

William Whiston (1667-1752) was Isaac Newton's successor in Mathematics at Cambridge University. He argued for a global Flood but added 6 years to Archbishop Ussher's earth commencement date of 4004BC because he held that each day of creation week was of one year's duration. His interpretation of Creation week was later used by those who supported a day-age theory for Genesis 1.

Alexander Catcott (1725-79) used geological arguments to defend the Genesis account of a recent creation and global Flood which produced the geological record. However, John Whitehurst (1713-88) argued that the earth was much older than humans and that, although the Noachian flood was a global event it was not responsible for most of the geological record. Certain geologists on the continent denied the global Flood and argued for a much older earth. Comte de Buffon (1708-88), Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) and Jean Lamarck (1744-1829) developed philosophically naturalistic explanations for earth history, each accommodating a long age for the earth.

The faith of Christians in a straight-forward reading of the biblical narratives concerning Creation and the Flood was under attack. Deists worked with atheists to shake the confidence of Christians in the Genesis cosmology.

In the years 1790-1820 geology became a separate field of scientific study. Also at this time the Neptunist-Vulcanist debate emerged . Neptunists believed water was the principal cause for geological change whereas Vulcanists held to internal heat of the earth being the major factor. Abraham Werner (1749-1817) of Germany and James Hutton (1726-97) of Scotland were the respective founders of the two positions. Each mostly studied the rocks in their own locality and developed their 'world view' of geology from this. Hutton's work remains most influential because of its uniformitarian proposition ie everything in the rock record can be explained by present day processes such as erosion, sedimentation, volcanoes and earthquakes. Hutton was a deist. His work allowed for a very long, virtually limitless, age of the earth.

In 1807 the Geological Society of London was established. The 13 founding members were wealthy, cultured gentlemen, who lacked geological knowledge but made up for it by their enthusiasm to learn. From the outset the Society was dominated by men who held to a long-age view of the earth. This then introduced the stage when dismantling of Christian faith in the Scriptural chronology of earth history really accelerated.

In the early 1800s George Cuvier (1768-1832), working from the study of fossils in the Paris basin, developed a theory which sought to reconcile science with religion but only from a post Flood history. He regarded the fossils to be the remains of creatures created then subsequently destroyed by catastrophic events prior to the Flood. By necessity he believed the earth had a long antiquity prior to the Flood. William Buckland (1784-1856) was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was also a leading geologist as well as lecturer in mineralogy and geology at Oxford University. He spread the catastrophist message initiated by Cuvier. Two of his students, Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison went on to be leading geologists and destroyers of faith in the Genesis record.

Initially, Rev Buckland held that geology was consistent with Genesis and that there was a global Flood. However, his position was weakened by accommodation of 'day-age' but preference for the 'gap theory' of origins. Later, after criticism, he abandoned his initial weak attempt to reconcile Scripture and his observation of the world. His position now became that of relying on geological 'evidence' over textual evidence (Biblical) because, as he disclosed in personal correspondence, the latter was susceptible to deception or error.

Rev Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was Buckland's counterpart at Cambridge University. He too was a strong advocate for old-earth catastrophism. They were supported by Rev William Conybeare but catastrophists were 'knocked for six' in the period 1830 to 1833 when Charles Lyell published his three volume Principles of Geology which was strongly uniformitarian in its approach to geology. Lyell had a supporter in Presbyterian Minister Rev John Fleming. It is Lyell's (and Hutton's) uniformitarian view which prevails in most circles although the Church still has those we would call catastrophists, particularly those who are gap theorists.

Perhaps few in the Church who support Lyell's uniformitarian view are aware of his disclosure in correspondence 11 Aug 1829 to his ally Roderick Murchison "I trust I shall make my sketch of the progress of geology popular. Old [Rev John] Fleming is frightened and thinks the age will not stand my anti-Mosaical conclusions and at least the subject will for a time become unpopular and awkward for the clergy, but I am not afraid. I shall out with the whole but in as conciliatory a manner as possible."¹ and to fellow uniformitarian George Scrope on 14 June 1830 he said "... If we don't irritate, which I fear we may (though mere history), we shall carry all with us. If you don't triumph over them, but compliment the liberality and candour of the present age, the bishops and enlightened saints will join us in despising both the ancient and modern physico-theologians. It is just the time to strike, so rejoice that, sinner as you are, the Q[uarterly] R[eview] is open to you."²

The Church was not without clergy and laymen who defended the Scriptural chronology of earth history. Some were both theologically as well as geological trained and experienced. However, they lacked support and the 'day' was carried by the long agers. The 'ship of faith' in the word of God had been dealt a serious blow. Significantly, it was clergy of the Church of England (call it Anglican, call it Episcopalian) such as Rev William Buckland, Rev Adam Sedgwick, Rev William Conybeare, Rev George Stanley Faber, Bishop John Bird Sumner and E.B. Pusey who aided and abetted, who abandoned ship. The sorry state continues today with Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia churning out old earth believers. They are aided and abetted by an Archbishop and Bishops who think likewise. As occurred in the past, they are quick to run with deists and atheists to reject theologians and scientists who point to Scripture and geology demonstrating an earth only thousands of years old.

I close this blog with some insightful words of Rev Granville Penn (1761-1844), grandson of William Penn of Pennsylvania fame. Rev Penn was an upholder of the Scriptural chronology. For those who profess to have a reasonable theology of God and yet propose an old earth chronology he said "The vast length of time, which this sinistrous choice is necessarily obliged to call in for its own defense, could only be requisite to the Creator for overcoming difficulties obstructing the perfecting process; it therefore chooses to suppose, that He created obstructions in matter, to resist and retard the perfecting of the work which He designed; whilst at the same time he might have perfected it without any resistance at all, by his own Creative act ... To suppose then, a priori, and without the slightest motive prompted by reason, that His wisdom willed, at the same time, both the formation of a perfect work, and a series of resistances to obstruct and delay that perfect work, argues a gross defect of intelligence somewhere, either in the Creator or in the supposer; and I leave it to this science, to determine the alternative.³"

References

1. The Geologic Column - John K. Reed and Michael J. Oard, Creation Society Books, 2006, p17
2. Ibid, p18.
3. Comparative Estimate - Granville Penn (1825) Vol. 1, p124-127

Sam Drucker

Purpose is what purpose does.

Another interesting quote from a management book (well, interests me . . .).

Now, why I'm doing this is to show examples of how thinkers outside our particular debate appreciate, understand, refer to and use the idea of 'evolution'. I also note that their implication of evolution never (so far in my reading) leads to the awe of God.

From Ansoff again (op cit p. 127), talking about adaptation in organisational development:

"The concept of adaptation used here is much richer than the one used in association with the theory of evolution. In that theory, adaptation refers to only involuntary responses to external changes, and the responses consist of internal changes. This restricted connotation of the concept derives from the fact that the theory of evoution is preoccupied with nonpurposeful systems, and when it deals with purposeful systems it is not concerned with their purposfulness . . ."

Who's A Hypocrite Then?

In his blog of 10 December 2007 at reflectionsinexile.blogspot./ the author, Mark Baddeley, offers another disclosure of his view on position of Biblical Creationists.

As with his earlier posts he misrepresents Scripture and Biblical Creationists. He really should leave the subject alone.

His exposition of the words of our Lord (as recorded in Matthew 19:23-24) concerning a camel passing through the eye of a needle is fundamentally flawed. That his sycophantic supporters at his blogspot have not picked him up on this shows they are similarly theologically lame.

Mr Baddeley's suggested interpretation that our Lord might have been referring to a (hitherto undiscovered) real "Needle Gate" is inconsistent with the wording applied to the text by most bible translators. If there was in the mind of our Lord a real "Needle Gate" then 'the' would replace 'a' preceding the word 'needle' in verse 24.

The context of our Lord's words here is the need to address the misconception in the then Jewish culture that wealth is a demonstration of God's blessing and thus being right with God.

Calvinists such as Mr Baddeley (albeit he is part-time) have traditionally accepted that neither rich or poor can enter the Kingdom of God without intervention from God and Calvinists have believed that this is what our Lord is teaching in this incident.

Discard Mr Baddeley's argument on this point and therefore take no notice of his supposition of how Biblical Creationists might apply the reading of our Lord's teaching here.

Next Mr Baddeley asserts Apostle Paul's advice to Timothy (1Timothy 5:23) to "... use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses" is a prescription for Biblical Creationists to "hold that regularly taking a little wine is an important aspect of dealing with frequent ailments." I won't spend much time on this foolishness. The text does not disclose the nature of Timothy's health problems. We must accept that Paul knew more than we know about the complaint. I'll just respond by suggesting that if we found a doctor's script for Joe Bloggs to take aspirin for his throat complaint we wouldn't assume that all throat complaints are to be treated by aspirin. Perhaps Mr Baddeley, the fount of all wisdom, would! It begs belief as to what level of thinking Moore Theological College lets loose on unsuspecting students.

Then Mr Baddeley raises that old chestnut - 'the sun standing still' (Joshua 10:12-14), deemed to be 'a nail in the coffin' of Biblical Creationists. It draws from the geocentric/heliocentric controversy in Galileo Galilei's (1564-1642) time. Skeptics run this argument and compromisers in the church do as well. What these people fail to mention is that, initially, Roman Catholic authorities accepted Galileo's assertions as compatible with the teachings of the Church. However, Jesuit university professors later mounted opposition to Galileo and the momentum went with them.

What doesn't appear to be known by such poorly read people as Mr Baddeley is that Galileo interpreted the account of the miracle of the long day of Joshua 10:12-15 as literal history, though he explained the stationary position in terms of Copernican theory and the language of appearance ie to the eyewitnesses and recorder of the event it appeared as if the sun stood still in the sky. Much has been written about the Galileo affair. I draw from "The Great Turning Point" pages 20 and 21 written by Terry Mortenson, published by Master Books. In the book Terry Mortenson cites several references.

Next Mr Baddeley dangerously uses words of Deborah's song found at Judges 5 to set it against an elsewhere historical record. He forgets that caution needs to be used in the use of poetry to thoroughly understand history. Many compromisers have sought to regard Genesis 1 as poetry so that they can justify not accepting this testimony as describing a historical event. Funny that to dilute the Genesis 1 testimony of its historical worth Mr Baddeley sets poetry up as having equal historical worth.

In closing I would like to comment on the tendency of the world and those in the Church who love the world, to selectively use the writings of influential people of the past. Flimsy citing of a writer presents a flimsy argument. I allude to this concerning abuse of Galileo Galilei. It has been said by me and others elsewhere concerning Martin Luther and John Calvin. I mention it now concerning Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

Those within and outside the Church who oppose Biblical Creationists draw from Bacon's work "Novum Organum" (1620) to argue for the separation of the two books - Scripture and Nature. Bacon's earlier work "Advancement of Learning" (1605) is also much drawn upon - indeed the term "the two books" derives from this. Mr Baddeley comes to mind here.

But little attention is given to a section of "Advancement of Learning" p43-44 (Book 1, part VI.9-11) wherein Bacon affirms the merit of Scripture in expounding on issues of health, natural philosophy and history. Earlier in the book (p. 40-42 Book 1, points VI. 2-8) he seems to express his belief a literal six-day creation, after which the creation was complete. He also believed that the Flood and the confusion of the languages at Babel were judgements of God. Some of these beliefs were expressed in more detail in his "Confessions of Faith", first published posthumously in his "Remains" (1648), but written some unknown time before the summer of 1603. This eight page confession reads like a detailed, orthodox creed. Again I draw from "The Great Turning Point" (pages 21-23) for help in addressing this.

I urge those who purport to represent God to trust God. Greats of philosophy, science and theology such as Bacon, Galileo, Luther and Calvin made statements in the past which today are applied against their faith in the Word of God and on interpreting (thus believing) Genesis 1 teaching God created the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them in six days around 4,000 years BC. Mark Baddeley is a serial offender here. He abuses the mind of those of the past.

We have a principle applying in life. It was affirmed by our Lord Jesus Christ and it is this - If a person says something but acts in a different way then that person is a hypocrite.

God is the author of Scripture. God is the author of Nature. If you like - two books. Whatever God says in Scripture must be consistent with what God has done in Nature and vice versa. Christians do not believe God is a hypocrite. The hypocrite must then be the person who applies the two books differently.

Neil Moore

Machine-Age God

This was written in Ackoff, R, Creating the Corporate Future (John Wiley 1981:19)

[following a discussion of the use of ‘systems’ as means of thinking about relationships, and mention of Heisenberg as destroying confidence in being able to comprehensively explain anything]

“This means that we are free to believe or not in an all-containing whole. Since our understanding will never embrace such a whole, even if it exits, it makes no practical difference if we assume it to exist. Nevertheless, many individuals find comfort in assuming existence of such a unifying whole .Not surprisingly, they call it God. This God however, is very different from the Machine-Age God who was conceptualized as an individual who had created the universe. God-as-the-whole cannot be individualised or personified, and cannot be thought of as the creator. To do so would make no more sense than to speak of a man as creator of his organs. In this holistic view of things man is taken as a part of God just as his heart is taken as a part of man".


Just thought it interesting; as it always is to see how people use the ideas of 'God', 'creation' and (sometimes) evolution as springboards for discussion.

More Bad News For Moore Theological College

In recent blogs at his site (in exile,) Mark Baddeley continues his muddying of the waters on Scriptural interpretation to enable lovers of the world to keep a foot in both camps viz the Kingdom of God and the world. The Moore Theological College of today might be proud of him but those true to the Word of God past and present would rebuke him.

Again he selectively uses Martin Luther to mount an argument against Luther's position on the interpretation of Genesis 1. Just quickly, to dismiss some irrelevant arguments made by Mark Baddeley against a straightforward reading of Genesis 1, I cite him and respond hereunder. Mark Baddeley says:

"1. The deep waters of verse 2 existing before God says anything in verse 3.

2. The fact that in verse 2 ‘darkness’ exists before God says anything in verse 3 to create anything which could be dark. (After all, you can’t have darkness without space, and space—physical dimensions—is one of those things that is created in verses 3 and following).

3. The firmament separating the waters above from the waters below in verses 6, which is an expanse in which floodgates are opened in 7:11 to bring about the Flood.

4. The fact that all celestial objects only exist to give light and regulate human time in verses 14-18.

5. The fact that the seventh day doesn’t end. It’s quite noticeable, if you have your eyes open. Every day has the same refrain:

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.

No wait. My mistake. Scratch the last one. The refrain is not repeated on the seventh day, the day when God rests from his labours of creating. It is repeated six times and then missed out on the seventh day."

In response, I say:

1. So what! There is no problem here unless you are mischievously trying to invent one. If you can accept that verse 1 is a summary statement (as Bill Dumbrell, a once favoured lecturer at Moore College allows) and verse 2 identifies a stage of the creation as God begins to fill the earth then verse 3 and following is the account of God speaking to fill the earth and make it a habitation for man and creature.

2. Same again! As a sign of Mark Baddeley's inattentiveness he makes no mention that in verse 2 the earth, water and hovering of the Spirit of God suggest space as well.

Nothing in my aforesaid two points should be seen to deny (and certainly Scripture does not deny it) that verse 2 identifies a circumstance occurring on the first day of creation week. Hebrews 11:3 and 2 Peter 3:5 are certainly not against it.

3. Not an issue. Biblical Creationists have differing views as to whether verses 6-8 refer to a water canopy within or beyond earth atmosphere or whether the verses refer to cloud cover or whatever. Little is known about the physicality of the present universe let alone being precise about the universe at the end of creation week. Does much hang on this?

4. Like other issues raised, this is making a mountain out of molehill. There is no reason why the seasonal and time functions of the celestial bodies couldn't be principal functions with other intended functions not identified in verses 14-18. On the other hand we are, today, experiencing a world somewhat different to that which was first created and later altered due to the Fall and subsequently destroyed in the time of Noah. Proponents of the canopy theory might argue that the warming effect of the sun's rays would have been less demonstrable on earth prior to the Flood.

5. Another instance of majoring on the minor or making a mountain out of a molehill. As if the description of events on the seventh day deny the unity and veracity of events described on the previous SIX days? Biblical Creationists have only ever argued (from Scripture) that God created the heavens, the earth and the sea and all that is in them in six days - not seven days. Extrapolating Mark Baddeley's (and others) argument, is it contended that there was no eighth or ninth day after God commenced creating? Are we, today, in no point of time since God created the world?

Greater Hebrew scholars (both evangelical and liberal) than Mark Baddeley have no problem believing the author of Genesis intended the reader to understand God created in six days as we experience the duration of a day eg Luther, Calvin, Archer, Waltke, Sailhamer, Hamilton, Barr, Leupold, Wenham, Kidner, Arnold, Speiser, Young and Davis. The scientist Sir Isaac Newton, regarded roundly as the greatest scientist to have ever lived, had no problem believing the world was created in six days as we experience them.

People such as Mark Baddeley really tie themselves into knots when they try to reinterpret Scripture to 'run with the hounds' ie to suck up to the world. He makes the claim "First and foremost we need to grasp that the word of God is self-interpreting." However, he denies this principle time and time again. Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:15-18 give unequivocal endorsement to Genesis 1. How foolish one can make oneself out to be when they setting oneself up against God and those God has used to give life and vigour to the church such as Luther and Calvin.

He has his devotees, however, those who love this world. They go on his blogspot urging him on and in this they act like Saul of Tarsus holding the cloaks of those who would put down those holding to the truth. Their own capacity to see the truth is blinded by their hatred of us. We are not of this world as they are. They hate us for this and they hate us for speaking out strongly against them. Some of them forget that the Sydney Anglican Heretics blogspot only arose after they insulted and derided gentle Biblical Creationists on the Sydney Anglican Forum - 'Peace With Evolution'. This site then is only a product of their making. With some petulance they criticise commentators here for getting tough with their deceptive ways. Yet one of them, Gordon Cheng, said on one of their own supporter's blogspot that there must be some scope for Christians to go so far as Apostle Paul and say such strong words as "I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves." Strong words indeed. Okay for Apostle Paul, something of the like okay for Gordon Cheng but lesser words by commentators here deemed vile. Hypocrites!

They hate better than they love.

Sam

Sydney Episcopalians Fall Moore

Mark Baddeley, on staff at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, demonstrates a low standard of theological scholarship required these days at that institution. Episcopalians around the world should note what damage awaits if they are entertaining thoughts of their son or daughter enrolling at Moore College.

Neil Moore in a recent blog identified one characteristic of a cult as being that of taking bible texts out of context. Mark Baddeley grossly commits that offence in a blog at http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/ when quoting Romans 8:28-30 and 35-37as making the case for suffering being part of God's creation prior to the Fall.

The Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome is almost entirely about the i) corrupted creation after the Fall of Adam, ii) God's gracious reconciliation through Jesus Christ and iii) life thereafter for those receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Only Romans 1:20 makes any direct reference to a pre-Fall situation (note this also has application post-Fall). The suffering referred to by Paul in Romans 8 is therefore within the context of the fallen world not the pre-fallen world. As shown throughout the bible and therefore in earth history God works out his plan of salvation using consequences of the Fall eg suffering and death.

Hebrews 2:5-18 further explains well enough that consequences of the fallen state of man viz lost place, suffering and death are reversed by Jesus Christ in his office as Saviour. Pre-fallen creation was not in need of a Saviour because there was no sin, no suffering, no death. Adam, the son of God and the rest of creation were in their odered place (Hebrews 2:8a,b). Only after the Fall did the circumstance of Hebrews 2:8c arise.

A potential world-wide audience is not the place for Mark Baddeley to air his ignorance and expose Moore Theological College to criticism.

Sam

The Making of a Cult

Cults are exclusive. Cults using the Bible as their authority selectively use Scripture for their end. Cults tend to almost, if not completely, deify their earthly leader.

In my view there is something cultish about on Mark Baddeley's http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/

Only allowing certain commentators to comment on his blogs. Selective use of Scripture to the exclusion of that which undermines his point. His almost worship of the present Archbishop of Sydney.

He extends himself to protect the Diocese and its Archbishop from criticism. He will not have mention of sydneyanglicanheretics.blogspot.com/ on his blogspot. You will note I have no difficulty mentioning his blogspot. We have no fear of people going and seeing what he writes. Our case will always stand on its merits. It is not really a case we can claim of our own. It is the case of Luther and Calvin and other faithful Christians of the past.

For many years the Diocese has been cautious of anyone not trained at Moore Theological College. This can be a sign of a problem within the Diocese if it thinks that all truth resides in the Diocese.

Mark Baddeley's attempts to theologise against Creation Scientists will I suspect be dealt with here in coming weeks. Funny how he calls us Creation Scientists. I am not a scientist nor are one or two others I know who contribute to sydneyanglicanheretics blogspot. Mr Baddeley falters at the very beginning by applying an incorrect label to those he criticises.

What is more disturbing is Mr Baddeley's elevation of the man, Peter Jensen over other men. It is almost cultish!

A lesson from history is needed here to help the reader understand what is going on in the Sydney Anglican Diocese.

Some, perhaps only a few, who read this will have encountered a man in Sydney called Mark Kay. He seems to be everywhere, especially around universities in Sydney. I have seen him at the University of Sydney. I got into a conversation with him one day. He informed me of an incident once when he was in conversation with two young women who were members of Evangelical Union (an Anglican inspired outreach on campus). Mark Kay told me the topic got onto the belief of Peter Jensen in a Theistic Evolution. As is reasonable, Mark Kay was critical of Peter Jensen on this matter. The reaction of these young women to any notion of criticism of Peter Jensen was astounding. There were no raised voices but criticism of Peter Jensen reduced one young woman to tears - to tears! There is something very wrong here. It was almost as if Mark Kay was destroying her Christian faith by pointing out a doctrinal fault held by Peter Jensen. I may be wrong on the following point but, as I recall the story, I think following the incident another Evangelical Union person tried to have Mark Kay banned from the University of Sydney even though he was a registered student there.

This is worrying but it sheds light on something working itself out within the Diocese and thus the motivation driving Mark Baddeley's baseless interpretation of Scripture to defend a) the position of his Archbishop on origins and b) the (proud) name of Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

It is almost cultish.

Just a quick word about one of Mark Baddeley's blogs, the one about 'death and suffering as a good' (part ii) in his musings.

One must remind oneself that the multitude of words contained therein are the thoughts of Mark Baddeley laid over the word of God. Also, I say "The multitude of words smothers wisdom."

Let a few words of Scripture suffice as reply - "When Jesus saw their weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked. 'Come and see, Lord.' they replied. Jesus wept." John 11:33-35.


Neil Moore

Polemic is as polemic does

One of the comments on the previous post mentioned the view that Genesis creation accounts are a polemic against other creation accounts.

This got me thinking.

Here's a polemic against the bombing of Hiroshima (apologies to any Japanese readers who may find this touches on some unwanted memories).

"In my aviary I have a bird. Its called Enola Gay. The bird has been trained to drop seeds on the cavy I also keep in the aviary. The cavy is called HIroshima.

From now on, we can be content that the story of Enola Gay dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima is a myth, because our polemic uses a different story but features the same names."

There, its done. The polemic crafted!

Now, try telling that to a victim of the atom bomb. Think they'll thank you?