As we approach Christmas 2009 it seemed reasonable for The Sydney Daily Telegraph to seek a statement from religious leaders in which they were to testify to the existence of God.
In a preview of this exercise The Daily Telegraph journalist said both the Roman Catholic Cardinal Pell and Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen believed in Theistic Evolution.
However, when it came time for Archbishop Jensen's statement to appear on 23 December 2009 there was no mention of Theistic Evolution. Perhaps it is something he prefers to conceal from general understanding or maybe it was edited out by newspaper.
One thing published that I found quite disturbing was "Furthermore, he [God] delights in his creation. He calls it very good."
How could the former Principal of Moore Theological College and now Archbishop of Sydney make such a faulty statement. Yes, God did say His creation was very good but that was the creation that is no more. That utterance of God was before His creation rebelled against Him, thus introducing death, suffering and continued acts of rebellion against Him. It was also before sin had become so great that God destroyed that world with a global flood.
Nowhere in Scripture does God call post Fall and Flood creation "very good". Even after the Flood, sin and death has continued unabated. You just can't call that creation "very good". Indeed when someone spoke to the Lord Jesus with the opening "Good teacher" our Lord corrected the man with the words "No man is good but God alone". Now, you just cannot deduce from that reply that a creation populated by men who are not "good", is a "very good" creation.
Archbishop Jensen went on to say "He [God] can be relied upon to speak the truth, to always do what is right, to be consistent."
Well now Archbishop, why don't you believe that God was speaking the truth when he said "for in six days I created the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them" (Exodus 20:11). There is no possible way in which such a statement of God accommodates a Theistic Evolution view of creation. At this point then, being a Theistic Evolutionist, the Archbishop must believe that God is not speaking the truth or, for that matter, nor is God being consistent. But, God is being consistent here with his record of creation in Genesis 1 and in Exodus 31:17.
One can only stand back and wonder what a tangled web compromisers spin for themselves when they start pushing their ideas onto the clear Word of God.
Surely Archbishop Jensen stands on shifting sand and is vulnerable to Atheist argument when he mishandles Scripture as he does in his statement to The Daily Telegraph.
Neil
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14 comments:
Neil, I think you will find the Archbishop and his ilk have to develop their own theology once they adopt Theistic Evolutionism.
Having imposed on the Godhead a creative process involving death and struggle the Archbishop & Co have to invent a theology of death and struggle being a good, even very good.
Makes you wonder what they anticipate the New Creation to be like when Scripture says there will be no death, suffering or tears. Sublime? superlative? Certainly not very good because that, in their mind, involves death and suffering.
Sam Drucker
Sam,
I have some sympathy for Atheists and the world view they adopt if Christians present a Creator God who used an evolutionary process for creating.
It means that same Creator God was the cause of death and suffering in the world, not mankind.
Who would want anything to do with such a rotten God.
Thankfully, that is not the one true God revealed in Scripture and in Jesus Christ.
Neil
Perhaps what disturbs me most of all from the mouth of these men who espouse this other Gospel is that they have imposed something other than Christ between the creation and God.
Paul and John are adamant that it is THROUGH and BY Christ that everything HAS ALREADY come into existence. If evolution, another principle, is the basis by which everything IS BEING brought into existence, then it's no longer Christ.
Atheists have asked me on many occasions, if evolution isn't true, then how did God bring the cosmos into existence. They are looking for a mechanical, material and/or reductionist process. And that's the difference: God doesn't require a process as he just thinks it into being, and it is so, whole and complete. It's an entirely different ballgame and the Christian doesn't need to allow the atheist to set the rules of the game.
Logically, there is nothing irrational in a Creator having no need of secondary principles to create by. It's not like I can't imagine another world scenario in which the Creator says something and that immediately comes into existence. It's certainly not like thinking of a world where there are bachelors with wives.
Yet, the Sydney Anglicans, philosophically supported by their atheist-inspired theology, must have something other than Christ being the Creator. They have to have a process doing God's work. This is nothing but a return to paganism. Jensen, within a single generation, has repaganised the Church.
There's more to the creation now being not 'very good': God repented of making man prior to Noah's flood; this creation now groans and awaits its redemption; Christ died to bring its redeption; it contains sin: that which opposes God!
Peter's gone mad in his old age, from such a distortion of theology.
But there's more; to call the creation now fallen 'very good' makes a mockery of the proclamation and comforts people that all is right with the world and sin is a minor inconvenience; this of course makes Christ's sacrifice a superfluity.
Thus Connect 09 draws to a close in vain, because it cannot be that which connects people to Christ via their need shouted very day by a fallen world!
As both John and Eric describe, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His redemptive work is being undermined from within fortress Sydney Anglican Diocese.
The works of Incarnate God were all emblematic of the capacity of the One who created in the beginning and in whom all things hold together. On exhibition is completeness or wholeness in creation and recreation. It is not an extended process of creation/recreation. Anything proposed along the lines of the latter is a blatent misrepresentation of Jesus Christ.
It is a serious theological pit the Sydney Anglican Diocese has prepared for the unwary.
Neil
Just further to my last comment and in relation to Eric's comment, why would God bring people into His Church (via Connect 09) when they will only be taught a false Gospel?
Neil
'very day'; I meant 'every day', of course!
John's comment has touched something very interesting, I think.
If a 'principle' comes between God and his creation that is not Christ, then something other than God is basic to creation. That is, there is something else that is self-, or at least pre-existent apart from God.
If it is pre-existent to the creation, then God created before he created (or did some creating that we don't know of; maybe when he created the spirit world, but that's speculation). It seems that the cosmos of our experience is that which is created in its entirety, and no principles can be interposed between God's speaking and result in Genesis 1. The other scripture that can be brought to this theme would support this, I think (subject of a future post).
To suppose the contrary is to disregard the scripture, or to have a basic belief structure that is pagan, if not materialist, rather than Christian theist; If PJ is a theistic evolutionist, then he courts a very much anti-biblical position, to my mind.
Eric said "If a 'principle' comes between God and his creation that is not Christ, then something other than God is basic to creation. That is, there is something else that is self-, or at least pre-existent apart from God."
If it is not the "Logos" then belief in that alleged "principle" is derived outside of Scripture and, being contrary to the Word of God at a vital point, is heretical.
Neil
Neil, I think that you are right on that. The point for reflection is that it is difficult to conceive of how 'basic' the creation is: that is, there was nothing before it but God in triune community (aside from not knowing about the creation of the unseen world). Everything that wants to add to or go where the Bible does not go either purposely or accidently makes an assumption about something other than God, or requires something aside from God being independently real and 'necessary'. That is they put something beside God as being un-created.
Eric, I was reminded of this situation during a time of bible reading yesterday.
I was reading Matthew's account of the temptation of our Lord (Matt. 4:1-11). I noted that each temptation of Satan obtained a response from our Lord which was a direct quotation of the Word of God found in Deut. 6&8. It is significant to note that, when under test of obedience, He resorted to the Word of God and there took up His defence. In this He succeeded over Satan. It is a sad pity that the Church, when tested by the world (under influence of the prince of this world) distrusts the Word of God at Genesis 1 and does things to it that it does not do with other parts of the Word of God.
Significant to note also that Don Carson, theologian endorsed by Sydney Anglican Diocese, when commenting on the brevity of Mark's account of this incident compared to Luke and Matthew says: "The account could only have come from Jesus [because there were no human witnesses], given to his disciples after Caesarea Philippi." After having given His account to His disciples we find some variation (albeit inconsequential) in the telling of it by the disciples. How much more so is it that the events of Genesis 1 were witnessed by God and passed on by God to the one appointed to record the events for posterity viz., Moses.
Then when you have God speaking later about the events of Creation, recorded by Moses at Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 you get nothing by which you can argue a discrepancy.
The same rule of understanding ought to be applied to the record of the Temptation of our Lord as with the record of the Creation of the world. However, in sucking up to the world on origins, Sydney Anglicans sell out God at Gen. 1, Ex. 20:11 and 31:17.
There is no escape for them - guilty as charged!
Neil
I think it's partly due to a Barthian unrealism that results in the creation being an event in some other world than this one, leaving the world to be containing things apart from God that are 'necessary'; thus not everything in creation is contingent; hiding somewhere in it are other necessary entities (princples, as discussed above). Sad, because this does damage to the gospel, because it does damage to God.
Barth is favoured reading for several Sydney Anglican chiefs. So it all fits.
Neil
Yes, Barth, the mystic, the man who was basically a gnostic i.e. could simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive propositions, just like the Sydney Anglican heretics i.e. God somehow created but it was also a metaphysical principle of chance which somehow does it because the all-knowing scientists have told us it does. Reminds me of the Greek Epicureans' philosophy of origins.
Like I said, Jensen and his coterie of like-thinking heretics are taking us out of Christianity and returning us to paganism. I pity the next generation of "Christians" after Jensen retires.
Yes, it will be 'Generation Who' for the Sydney Anglican Diocese in future years unless there is a drastic reformation.
Surely, a church that presents an inconsistency in the means of interpreting Scripture will be seen clear through and cast off.
Who could blame the thinking person for doing this. Commonsense must prevail.
Neil
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