What is Peter Doing?

My comments to the post on Peter Jensens vacuous talk at Synod were a little cryptic, I admit; so what was I saying when I wrote:

It amazes me that PJ does not see:
(a) that he is buying into a religious belief system when he supports materialist contentions about the nature of the real;
(b) the Bible's structuring of the real from the revelation of God in Gen 1, etc, and the words of the Bible elsewhere that clearly eliminate both long ages and evolutionary ideas...both of course being long standing pagan notions anyway!

Let me put it another way.

When Peter discounts the direct meaning of, say, Genesis 1, and the chronogenealogies of Genesis, plus the Lukan genealogy, etc. he is saying that God has connected himself to us in a way other than the way he has stated. So Peter, what is the way...via pond scum and the random pain of billions of years of evolutionary chance...gag me with a spoon!

Peter has stepped straight past some critical aspects of the scriptures when he thinks that their time and world-frame has no real part to play in their theology, the basic covenant between creator and creature, or the interaction between creator, creation and creatures.

There is probably a pile of aspects to this set of connections, but I'll mention only a couple.

The incarnation is set in the Bible in identical terms to the creation and its events: that is, both occur as discrete event sequences within the contiguous time-space that we inhabit, and are constrained by. If the creation is a reference by imagery of some other thing that happened, then it ceases to act in counterpoint to the incarnation, which was an event in 'dateable time', to quote John Dickson's recent video.

If the creation was outside the concrete and direct realism by which it is related to us, then it seems hard to pin down the precise connection between us and God, which connection is important for the incarnation: thus Luke 3, as cited above. Otherwise, the whole enterprise is based on a tale of mythic proportions that cannot argue a direct and close connection with our lives, or our collective life-history. We are no better off than ancient mystery religion worshippers.

But, if God did create in dateable time, and in the world constrained as we experience it, then he could say so, putting his work, our lives, and the incarnation both on the one time-line, and in the one time-space world, meaning, pretty directly, that our collective life is from God, before God and in relationship to God (either good or bad, now bad, of course, but for Christ) in the most palpable way. Myth, the vageness of chance and the 'fates' have no space in which to intervene and push God's realness out of our realness.

All this goes, of course, if God does evaporate into the never-never past. He becomes one with the dreamtime tales of Australian aborigines and his connection with our lives is mythic, not real, his salvation is just words, and not lives reborn.

Peter must be relying on a description of our collective history that is other than from the hand of God. His reliance is on a materialist myth to which he adds God, but fails to make God critical to the success of the tale: God in or God out of the materialist story, and you still have the materialist story; 'God' as an idea doesn't make the story change or show us where the lacunae are repaired. At root Peter calls on a materialist account of the cosmos to which God is a foreigner.

But God's story is different, and he makes that difference connect with our world by showing that he is the creator of what we are standing in, in the same terms that operate within the world we experience: ontological contiguity is the prime frame of Genesis 1, and we jetison at the peril of a meaningful Christian theology and proclamation of our Lord's salvation.

Sydney Archbishop Jensen Avoids Conviction

The Sydney Episcopalian Diocese is holding its Annual Synod and I was interested in some comments from Archbishop Peter Jensen in his Presidential Address. An audio version of it can be downloaded from the Diocesan website.

It is common knowledge that the Diocese has shed about $100M of the value of its investments. The Archbishop referred to this in his Presidential Address and indicated he has reflected for a while on why it happened. Was it a judgment from God or a testing from God?

The Archbishop seems to have come down on the side of the latter because nowhere in his address does he call for repentance from a known sin. He is obviously ignorant of the singular and loud charge against the Diocese emanating from the Sydney Anglican Heretics blogspot or he rejects our charge. Instead, Archbishop Jensen defers to the experience of a Bible study involving leaders of the Diocese and their wives some months back where Deut. 11 was considered with Moses offer to Israel at the verge of the Promised Land of "blessing or curse" according to the nation's obedience or rejection of the commands of God. Apparently conversation at the Bible study quickly turned to innocent Joseph being punished with imprisonment for rejecting an adulterous relationship with Potiphar's wife and then mention was made of innocent Jesus Christ being punished for sins he did not commit.

Notice what happened in that Bible study to encourage the Archbishop that the Diocese under his leadership was not under judgment from God? Participants immediately shook off any question of guilt and looked to the suffering of innocents for explanation of the plight of the Diocese. It is, in effect, a repeat of "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD " cries of Judah when rejecting any notion they were out of step with the word of God - all the while doing that very thing (Jer. 7:4).

Archbishop Jensen gives the game away as to his readiness to reject the word of God when he makes the following statement about climate change:

"Every time the weather behaves erratically, we are reminded of climate change and its likely consequences. The authoritative scientific consensus to the fact of change is so strong that it would be folly to ignore it."

The opinion of a noisy and, seemingly, surrounding scientific view is enough to influence the Archbishop as to what he and the Diocese should think about climate change. In other places and in other times Archbishop Jensen has made it clear the same is true for the question of origins even though that opinion runs up against the express word of God. However, in his address to Synod Archbishop Jensen somewhat schizophrenically says: "It would not be right, for example simply to express our own prejudices and guesses and to confuse them with the word of God" and "Our access to the mind of the Lord is through his word and we must look there for our answers, not to speculation." While the Archbishop is not discussing the question of origins here he is, nevertheless, pointing to the word of God for direction in understanding the difficulties facing the Diocese. He goes on to say "Their [Israel's] enjoyment of the fruit of the land depended on their continual obedience to the word of God."

That latter statement we can agree with. If only the Archbishop would back up the rhetoric with obedience.

Further comment warranting mention is "Our reading of God’s word, our preaching, prayers, singing, and fellowship, including our sacramental fellowship, must be honoring to God and edifying to his people." How is it honoring to God to massage, twist, smother or reject God's word when it clearly indicates a creative process and duration in stark contrast to the current world view synthesized by Archbishop Jensen to allow some involvement of God? How is such a 'dog's breakfast' edifying to the people of God?

Archbishop Jensen goes on to ask a question and proffer an answer as follows:

"Where will we be fifty years from now? We are up against a large challenge and there is no guarantee whatever that we will survive except as a small but wealthy cult. The cultural mood is not flowing with us, and immigrant numbers are also not in our favor. I realize that for many, Pentecostal Christianity is the answer and they will extol its attractions and its capacity to attract some of the very people who are missing from our churches. My problem with that suggestion is in the nature of Pentecostalism. I judge that its love-affair with modern culture will leave it insufficiently tied to historic Christianity, and that there is a chance that it will not be recognizably Christian in fifty years. That is a harsh judgment and I hope that I am wrong; but there are already signs of diversion from the fundamentals.

I do not doubt, therefore, that our commitment to conservative theology and to a high view of scripture is entirely correct. Only this will carry Christianity forward in a culture such as Australia in the next fifty years."

The stone thown at Pentecostal Christianity is thrown from within a glass house. While Pentecostal Christianity does have aspects of a "love-affair with modern culture" it is not as complete as Archbishop Jensen would have us believe. It is my observation that, on the subject of origins there is, in Pentecostalism, a broad and healthy adherence to the word of God. In contrast, the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese is far more inclined to have its own "love-affair with modern culture" which "will leave it insufficiently tied to historic Christianity, and that there is a chance that it will not be recognizably Christian in fifty years."

Finally, Archbishop Jensen urges "a commitment both to biblical theology and purity of doctrine, also to our neighbours." He cites four things to be done to achieve this. It is the first of these four things that catches in our throat like rancid meat.

He says: "First we must continue to cherish and support our College. But this is as long as, and only as long as, it embraces the heart of the theology of the Bible as expressed in the English Reformation. I wish you could all see the powerful effect which Moore College is having all around Australia and the world. Its teaching is the guardian of our theology and hence our life as a network of churches. More than that, the College has recognized as never before its duty to contend in the world of ideas, to speak for Christ and his word in the sphere of academic theology, of secular humanism and of world religion."

Whew! What can you say in dealing with those points one by one? I have to be brief.

1) The Diocese must immediately spurn or reform Moore College because the College has rejected Reformation principle of "Sola Scriptura" on origins and has departed from Luther and Calvin on origins.

2) The asserted "powerful effect" Moore College is having around all around the world on origins will only be destructive.

3) In its present doctrinal position on origins Moore College is as much a guardian of Diocesan theology as King Zedekiah was guardian of the future of Judah (Jer. 52)

4) Moore College does not contend with but absorbs academic theology, secular humanism and world religion on the subject of origins.

Throughout the history of pre-exile Israel and Judah there was a recurring theme of practicing ritual of belief in the word of God while often synchretising with the beliefs of the nations around them. Moses had warned against this before they entered the Promised Land. God sent prophets in warning once synchretism had commenced. Israel and Judah scorned the prophets because they believed they were right with God. As such, the word of God was treated with disdain.

The Archbishop of Sydney and the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney must learn from the error of Israel and Judah. Cast off the notion that you are innocent. Examine your behaviour. See where you have departed from the way. Repent and believe in the word of God otherwise doom awaits.
It is not just that the word of God is cast down in this sin. It is the unmistakable corrupting of the attributes of God revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ that offends most. One only need look upon Jesus Christ in all he said and all he did to see that Theistic Evolution removes one so remotely from our Lord.

Surely our Lord will, in no wise, endure indefinitely an offence like the threefold corrupted representation of his Person by his people as occurred with the golden calf at the base of Sinai, at Bethel and at Dan.

Sam Drucker

Anglican Genius

The ABC's Compass program on Sunday 'did' Sydney Anglicans.

Peter's best line, I think was in connection with his rejection of homosexual practice: "I’m going to be faithful to the word of God, even though in terms of the popular culture I’m a villain or I’m an idiot or I’m all the other things that people say." Now, I'm all for Peter's views on homosexual practice and the Bible's teaching on it. Only I wonder if Peter applies the blow torch of the Bible to his teaching (non) on Genesis....not, of course!

So he talks 'Bible' but does 'conformity to the dominant paganism'. Thanks Peter.

I've got a couple of comments on the program: the 'high' Anglican church in Hurstville doesn't need any opposition; from what I saw, it is on the way to imploding, with NO young people in any of the scenes that I saw...even despite their little rainbow that is supposed to make the self-sexual feel good to be there! Get real!

Then, I was unimpressed by the shallowness of insight of the evangelicals, busily relating to their figment of the 1950s, IMO.

All I can tell about Connect09 is that it's not 'we connect with you', but 'hey, why don't you come and connect with us?'

The big channel for connecting, as recent letters to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald indicated, is Anglicare; that is making well regarded 'connections'. Now, if the SADs levered off this, they might get somewhere, and do good, and provide a big fat channel for the gospel...but that would take work, and commitment, and sacrifice, and couldn't be compressed into a slogan-driven year long flash.

A pagan hits the spot

This popped up on the Anglican Origins blog: its so good it called for a link from here.

Put simply, its a letter to a local newspaper where someone denies a gospel approach because of disbelief in Genesis having any real world truth value! Sad, but a true conclusion abetted by a church that doesn't seem to know either what or why it believes!

Leupold Genesis part 20 Cosmogonies

If at this point we append a summary of certain of the better known cosmogonies, or at least of those which have a certain affinity with the Biblical account, anyone can judge for himself whether the Biblical account in any sense seems to be a derivative. The most famous of the non-biblical cosmogonies is the Babylonian or the so-called "Chaldean Genesis," which created such a stir at the time of its publication in 1876 after it had been unearthed as a part of the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh by George Smith in 1873. The several tablets on which the account is written are in a fairly good state of preservation.

The story begins with an account that is a theogony--an account of the origin of the gods--in itself already an indication of a far inferior level. The true God did not come into being by a certain process, nor were there originally several deities. Now of these various deities one stood out as particularly aggressive and ferocious, the unsubdued Tiamat--again a decidedly inferior point of view. For the struggle that impended Tiamat, the old mother of gods, enlists as many of the old gods as she can and a whole crew of horrid monsters. The resulting conflict for supremacy (note the low moral level even among gods) is a truly titanic struggle in which the forces of the opposition are led by the great Babylonian deity Marduk. Marduk proves himself the stronger. He prevails over Tiamat, cleaves her into two montrous halves, the upper of which he fixes in place as the heavens, in which in turn he fixes the heavenly bodies; and the lower of which halves, on the other hand, he sets in place as the earth. Then he compounds material of his own blood for the creation of man, the chief purpose of whose creation is "that the service of the gods may be established." This account of creation is so pronouncedly different from the Biblical account that the points of difference completely overshadow the incidental points of resemblance. To speak of a "striking resemblance between the two cosmogonies" certainly is a partisan overstatement of the case; and to go on to say that "the cosmogony of Genesis I rests on a conception of the process of creation fundamentally identical with that of the Enuma elis (the opening words of the Chaldean Genesis) tablets" is simply a distortion of the truth.

Of the Phoenician cosmogony it is sufficient to remark that it contains the idea of the world-egg, hatched out to produce the world. Analogous to this from this point of view is the Indian conception. The uncreated Lord appeared in chaos. The next step was to render this world visible by means of the five elements, by shining forth in brightest light and dispelling darkness. Into the water, which he creates first, he lays a germ cell. This becomes a gleaming egg in which Brahma is found, the source principle. A protracted period of hatching brings him to light. Aside from fantastic and confused elements it may well be that even this cosmogony carries within it certain echoes of the Genesis account which are all but forgotten.

The Parsee Genesis, appearing in a late book of the Bundehest, has at least this sequence of created things: 1. heaven, 2. water, 3. earth, 4. planets, 5. animals, 6. man. Nothing is said concerning the creation of light. The partial correspondence with the account of the Bible is obvious. But since this is a late book, this correspondence may have resulted from an acquaintance with the Biblical record.

Still more nearly parallel to the Biblical account is the cosmogony attributed to the Etruscans by the writer Suidas, who lived in the tenth century A. D. For the sequence runs thus: 1. heaven and earth, 2. firmament, 3. sea and water, 4. sun and moon, 5. souls of animals, 6. man. To the six items six `periods of a thousand years each are assigned. Yet the influence of the Bible record is so very likely in the case of a writer of the tenth century of the Christian era that there is great likelihood that the writer's Christian ideas will `have led him to find these successive items, which another might not even have noticed in the same material. Or else the ancient Etruscan tradition had absorbed a high percentage of Biblical thought on matters such as these. One would expect the Persian cosmogony to be radically different and in conformity with the principles of dualism.

In the Avesta time and light and darkness are uncreated. These constitute the true spiritual world. They are eternal because Mazda, the god of light, is himself eternal.

Hesiod informs us how the Greeks conceived of the origin of things. First there existed Chaos; there-upon the earth; next Tartarus; then Eros (Love), the most beautiful of the deathless gods. Out of Chaos night is born. The earth begets the heavens; then the ocean comes into being. After these Saturn, father of gods, existed. The rest of the pantheon follow him.

To the Egyptians several views on the origin of the earth are to be attributed. Some regarded the god Ptah as the craftsman who built the world. Others held that it was the goddess Neith who wove its fabric. The fundamental principle from which all things take their origin was thought to be water, for in it were fancied to be the male and the female germs of life. Even the great god Ra was supposed to have sprung from it, though others believed that he had been hatched out of an egg. We may well say that these cosmogonies are the best available outside the Genesis account.

A man does not need any supernatural enlightenment to discern that not one of all these can compare even remotely with the scriptural account for depth of thought, simplicity, propriety and beauty. All the others disappoint us by their incompleteness, or by their confusion, or by their lack of sequence, or as being the embodiment of some deep-seated error. Their conception of God is most unsatisfactory and unworthy. Or if they rise to a higher level, we have reason for believing that the better element is traceable to the Bible as the source.

King Midas in Reverse!

Well, the end was like the beginning. The Jesus Racing Team crashed out again - on lap 28 of the Bathurst 1000. It is difficult to see what good was done in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ through this exercise.

The 'anchor' for Channel 7 News (Sydney) on Friday night jibed "The Jesus Racing Team will need a resurrection" after the crash in practice on Friday. The car got onto the track for the big race on Sunday but, unlike our Lord Jesus who was resurrected in glory in 3 days, the Jesus Racing Team were put completely out of business in 3 days (Hebrew days).

Year 2009 is really establishing itself as an Annus Horribilis for the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Why is it that all that is touched is turning to mud?

Neil

A Passion ... for Evangelism?

The crowd in the mall stood still as the group of both male and female teenagers organised themselves into their respective positions. Then one of the teenagers stepped forward and took up a microphone. He announced they were a group of young people who were about to do some dance moves and they were doing it all for Jesus. They then went into action but the thought somewhat uncomfortably swam around in my mind "Is this reaching the lost in the Name of Jesus Christ?... How effective is it?" I must confess the whole scene had a 'cringe' effect on me. Anyway some water has passed under the bridge since that spectacle.

Today my thoughts were thrown into a similar quandary while watching the television news. There was a 'trailer' to the sporting section of the news showing a car at Mt Panorama, Bathurst, NSW, emblazoned with the message "Jesus, all about life". Sadly, the film clip was of the "Jesus" car crashing out of practice and going backwards into a wall. When the sporting section came on, the voice-over journalist quipped (as the image was again shown of the "Jesus" car crashing into the wall) "The Jesus team will need a miracle to be in the field on race day." There was then a quick interview of the leader of the "Jesus Racing Team" who said the damage to the car was minor and they will be right for race day." When the news segment covering the Bathurst car races finished the 'anchor' in studio said the the voice-over journalist "the Jesus team will need a resurrection to be there race day."

Well, all this made me wonder "Is God with the Jesus Racing Team?"

"Is this the way to evangelise?"

"Is more harm being done than good?" After all, the "Jesus" car was the subject of jibes in the television studio and would surely have attracted laughtere and perhaps scorn from the hard cases assembled up there on Mt Panorama.

"Is this just a group of rev-heads 'legitimising' their motoring interest by slapping the logo "Jesus, all about life" on their vehicle and saying they are evangelising?"

Maybe the Lord will be with them and a miracle will occur - the "Jesus Team" will perform well and attract some credible interest. I have my doubts though. Further, I suspect more harm than good may be done to the Name of our Lord and to cause of reaching the lost.

Time will tell.

Neil

Sydney Anglican Bulverism

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant – but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father – who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third – “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.”

I saw this quote from C.S. Lewis on one of our linked sites and immediately thought just how relevant it was to our disagreement with the Sydney Anglican Diocese. I’ve never met a SAD who has honestly engaged with the young earth case, either scientifically or theologically. They periodically paint us as some sort of inbred hillbilly, to partially borrow Peter Jensen’s choice of words. They do as Lewis argued: don’t worry about the facts of the case, rather set your sight upon their psychological state. I suppose it's a version of that old standby tactic for people who have no argument,'play-the-man-not-the-ball'.

Even the pagans can understand, so why can’t Jensen and his allies?

A friend of mine, who is professionally involved in training people to enter the media or to improve the existing skills of those already in front of the camera, passed onto me a book called The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories?. The book’s really not my cup of tea, except for a section of a chapter dealing with origins.

The author, Christopher Booker, realising just how important this issue is, states in his opening sentence, “One of the deepest human needs met by our faculty for imagining stories is our desire for an explanation and descriptive picture of how the world began and how we came to be in it.”

Of course this runs antithetically to how the SADs see it. It is our experience that SADs seek to downplay the significance the author of the Bible places upon the creation week historiography.

What’s far more interesting, however, is Booker’s clear insight into the absolute difference between the Judeo-Christian account and the other category of origin explanation. (Booker actually says there are two others, but he errs in as much as these are, from a methodological aspect, synonymous.) He stresses that in Genesis 1, personal Mind was internally present, and that this Mind, God, took 6 days to create everything (note, Booker doesn’t call them a symbolic or poetic 6 days!). He calls this account untypical. This once again raises the question, one which many of the Moorites and their followers have assiduously refused to answer, Why do these heretics strive so zealously to compare Genesis 1 with pagan accounts (e.g. Enuma Elish) when it is obvious to the pagan Booker, for example, that they are to be contrasted?

Booker also notes that God in the Genesis 1 account miraculously creates and all life and non-living entities are brought into being fully-formed. In contradistinction to this are the other explanatory stories, “found in almost every other creation myth in the world, [which] give the impression of a process infinitely more laborious, mysterious and long-drawn-out.” He then continues with a further differentiating quality: in the pagan accounts, “the emergence of our recognisable world takes place by what we would call an ‘evolutionary’ process, as each new component develops out of what came before.”

There you have it: a pagan who can read Genesis 1 and understand that the text says that God created quickly and perfectly.

Why then are Moorites and the Sydney Anglican Diocese seeking to remove the unique qualities of the Genesis 1 historical account and by doing so paganise the Christian origin explanation?

Leupold Genesis part 19 value of

9. Value and Importance of Genesis

In a general way it would be correct to say that this book is singular in its kind, for it offers the only correct and satisfactory information that we possess concerning prehistoric times and the Urgeschichte ("history of the primitive ages"). It goes back beyond the reach of available historical sources and offers not mythical suppositions, not poetical fancies, not vague suggestions, but a positive record of things as they actually transpired and, at the same time, of matters of infinite moment for all mankind. But more specifically, all this material relative to prehistoric times and the Urgeschichte really provides the most substantial and even fundamental theological concepts. The major theological concepts are incomplete and leave much to be desired, if the content that Genesis offers should be subtracted. Before God can be known as Saviour, He must be understood as the Creator of humankind and of the world. Just what manner of Father and Creator He is we find displayed in the two Creation chapters, Genesis I and 2. In like manner no adequate and correct conception of man is possible without a knowledge of the essentials concerning his creation, his original state, the image of God, and the like. Again, the problem of sin will constitute much more of a problem if the origin of sin, that is to say, the Fall into sin be not understood. With that fact correctly apprehended, we achieve a correct estimate of the degree of depravity that is characteristic of fallen men.

Without the promise of ultimate victory through the Seed of the Woman all further revelations concerning the salvation to come must stand minus an adequate base upon which they can successfully build. In other words, certain vital questions in reference to the type of revelation that mankind needs find a satisfactory answer in Genesis and nowhere else. Concerning some of these matters the legends and the traditions of mankind offer a bit of material, most of which is distorted by error; some of which, in the elements of truth that it contains, is too weak to be of any actual value. An illustration of the extent to which this material is available is the vague report current among the ancients that there once had been a Golden Age. The unreliability of such material is demonstrated by the utter absence of any tradition concerning a Fall into sin. Disregarding the material relation to matters theological, we find that Genesis also provides the much needed foundations for all history. The vague surmises as to man's past prior historic times all stand corrected by the story of the beginnings of the human race in Adam, or by the story of the second beginning in Noah. Equally important are the very valid data concerning the unity of the human race as provided basically in Genesis 1 and in greater detail in chapter 10, incomplete though this latter chapter may be in regard to a few matters. So, too, the question as to the origin of the multiplicity of languages is disposed of by the account concerning the confusion of tongues. Similarly, the singular position of Israel among the nations, a challenge to every historian, finds an adequate explanation in the Call of Abraham. Of course, from that point onward Genesis no longer records general history but only the history of the Kingdom of God.