Recent disappointments with a Sydney Episcopalian blogger are a miniature of the bigger problem within the Diocese. It is said that pride goes before a fall but in many instances there is a blow that brings the fall. Nevertheless, that blow can be avoided and the problem of pride rightly addressed.
John F. Brencher became aware of this as did some other notables of the past. Consider the following extract of an essay of John F. Brencher on the matter:
"Dr [Benjamin] Franklin of America related a lesson he had learnt from Cotton Mather in 1724. 'On taking my leave, he showed me a shorter way out of the house, through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning towards him: when he said hastily - "Stoop - Stoop!" I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man who never missed an occasion for giving instruction, and upon this he said to me - "You are young, and have the world before you: Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." This advice, thus beat into my heart, has frequently been of use to me: and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people, by their carrying their heads too high.'
There is a general shallowness with respect to our conception of the Person of God and the nature of His providential works. Glibness of speech in spiritual matters is invariably the product of shallow thinking, feeling and understanding in the things of God. There is therefore nothing more contributory to the holy art of stooping than a good grasp of true theology in all the fulness of its biblical extensiveness. Yet today, there is a treatment of Scripture characterized by a picking and choosing which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God. If people were not so obsessed by that well-meant but prohibitive cliché the 'simple Gospel', doubtless our churches would greatly benefit from preachers who unleashed all of His dynamic Word and not merely favourite parts. Considering the type of preaching which has been so prevalent it is no wonder that modern Christians have often such a poor conception of the immeasurable greatness of Almighty God! Of course not all people have got the time to examine the Scriptures and their original languages as they would like to do, and because of this full attention should be given to the public exposition of the Word and other allied means of grace. Let all the attributes of our triune God be vigorously evidenced in our thinking and prayers, and let the comprehensive workings of His gracious will be known among His people that we may be increasingly brought into conformity with His image by Christ Jesus. Such a goal will leave no room for shallowness and it will certainly encourage a bowing down of the entire personality."
The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney prides itself on its theological seminary and its own self as being a bastion of evangelical conservatism in the worldwide Episcopalian church. All along it is flirting too much with the world.
To maintain such a position it engages in an exercise of "picking and choosing [Scripture] which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God."
Within the Diocese emphasis is placed on Jesus Christ being the Son of God, Priest and Redeemer but His office as Creator is constrained to being fed through the filter of the world's view on Origins so that a distorted view (if anything) of Him as Creator is presented to the pewsitter and the world.
The Diocese needs to stoop. To stoop in prayer, in repentance, in submission to the clear utterances of God. A 'simple Gospel' is no match for the full revelation of Jesus Christ in all His majesty.
Sam Drucker
Showing posts with label Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theology. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sunday, August 29, 2010
History a Warning to Episcopal Diocese of Sydney (Part 6)
This is my sixth and final instalment of "History a Warning to Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney". All quotes (except for the Australian political quote) can be found in and referenced in the first five parts.
R. J. Sheehan provided a helpful analysis of the slide that occurred within the evangelical church in England in the Nineteenth Century. Sheehan drew encouragement from a steadying he saw in the 1980's but I doubt he would be content with the present situation.
Concerning the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney I and many others observe distinct and troubling parallels destroying evangelicalism within what has been termed the largest evangelical Episcopalian Diocese in the world.
To parody the words of an Australian politician who recently and ruthlessly deposed her leader and attempted to justify the action - "A good government had lost its way."
An Episcopalian Diocese which, for approximately two centuries, had seemingly resisted Higher Criticism, Liberal Theology and Anglo-Catholicism proudly presents itself as a bastion of evangelical conservatism. Indeed it would declare itself to be one with evangelicals of early Nineteenth Century England of whom W.R Glover said "The inerrancy of the Bible was so intimate a part of their religious thought and life that a denial of it seemed to threaten the destruction of the faith itself. "
But as R. J. Sheehan observed in England after the attack of Higher Criticism, and objective observers note of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, the rhetoric has failed to match the actions. Old Testament history has been stripped of much of its authority. Concepts and themes prevail over historical events and their timing in earth history. The latter are "questioned, contradicted and reconstructed."
It was too much for Higher Criticism to assault the New Testament first. That had to come later - once the Old Testament battle had been won. Anyone who "preached the Gospel" was a potential prisoner if only their foundation in the inerrancy of Old Testament Scripture was first undermined. The theology of the Old Testament without the "facts" had to be maintained and as Sheehan also observed - "Thus the history of the Bible could supposedly be understood in terms of the theory of evolution and the Book's basic central message remain unchanged."
Just as theological seminaries of Nineteenth Century England became off limits to any Old Testament scholar who didn't espouse the Higher Criticism method so has become the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney's theological seminary, Moore Theological College, off limits to Biblical Creationist scholars. Indeed, students espousing the Biblical Creationist position have been cautioned with serious sanction. I am happy to be corrected on this. Would any reader confirm the presence on faculty of any Old Testament scholar in the past twenty years who has held to the Biblical Creationist position i.e. six twenty-four hour days of creation approximately six thousand years ago?
Just as Higher Criticism conquered evangelicalism in England in the late Nineteenth Century via submission of allegedly evangelical clergy it has likewise triumphed in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. They all declare and "preach the Gospel" but they have already questioned, contradicted and reconstructed to the point of dismissing the foundation of Old Testament history in Creation. External influences opposed to biblical history are given authority to dictate the timing of subsequent Old Testament events and the consequence is a confused and destabilized reading of Scripture.
Not that you would think anything wrong if you read the statements emanating from leaders within the Diocese. "Peace", "Peace" for your evangelical conscience is what you are to receive with utterances such as "And yet this trustworthy, powerful word of God has been entrusted to us, with the responsibility to guard it, to hold firmly to it, to rightly handle it. I can think of no greater human responsibility than to hold firmly to the trustworthy and faithful word of God, taught as a good deposit entrusted to us by the Holy Spirit. Only then will we be able to exhort, to comfort with sound, healthy teaching." and "We are going to beware of intellectual fads." delivered by Dr John Woodhouse, Principal, Moore Theological College in his recent Eternity article.
One could imagine Dr Woodhouse is speaking only of the New Testament because, according to previous statements and actions, he, at best, entertains all views on the matter of the Creation account in Genesis. You see, Dr Woodhouse is firmly in the camp of the "mixed multitude who would not side with either the old evangelical view of Scripture or with the new view of Scripture, who held the key to the decline [in the Nineteenth Century]. They would not discipline error and so they were overwhelmed by it. The consequence of their indecision and cowardice was that whereas, 'The early nineteenth century saw a quickening of religious life all over Europe . . . when the nineteenth century closed Christianity was at a low ebb'."
With influences such as Karl Barth, the "wolf in sheep's clothing", so widely admired within the Diocese, the battleground is about to shift from the Old to the New Testament. The one thing readers can confidently take from Dr Woodhouse's Eternity article is "History suggests what is taken for granted by believers today may be forgotten by the next generation of believers, and denied by the one after that." The rot is well set within. Cowardice has brought the allegedly evangelical Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney to the point reached by the Evangelical Church in England in the late Nineteenth Century.
R.J. Sheehan observed that Calvinism had been something of a stay against the decline in evangelicalism in England in the Nineteenth Century. In the end it did not prevent the decline in England nor has it prevented the decline in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. Unbelief is unbelief no matter what the doctrine.
The "death throws" of evangelicalism within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney are real. New life through the Holy Spirit is the only remedy. Let us pray for such an activity of God's Holy Spirit with urgency. Who knows, maybe some of the alleged evangelicals of the Diocese will stop, look back and see where their cowardice has taken them. Maybe they will repent, believe and be instruments in God's hands for good.
Sam Drucker
R. J. Sheehan provided a helpful analysis of the slide that occurred within the evangelical church in England in the Nineteenth Century. Sheehan drew encouragement from a steadying he saw in the 1980's but I doubt he would be content with the present situation.
Concerning the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney I and many others observe distinct and troubling parallels destroying evangelicalism within what has been termed the largest evangelical Episcopalian Diocese in the world.
To parody the words of an Australian politician who recently and ruthlessly deposed her leader and attempted to justify the action - "A good government had lost its way."
An Episcopalian Diocese which, for approximately two centuries, had seemingly resisted Higher Criticism, Liberal Theology and Anglo-Catholicism proudly presents itself as a bastion of evangelical conservatism. Indeed it would declare itself to be one with evangelicals of early Nineteenth Century England of whom W.R Glover said "The inerrancy of the Bible was so intimate a part of their religious thought and life that a denial of it seemed to threaten the destruction of the faith itself. "
But as R. J. Sheehan observed in England after the attack of Higher Criticism, and objective observers note of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, the rhetoric has failed to match the actions. Old Testament history has been stripped of much of its authority. Concepts and themes prevail over historical events and their timing in earth history. The latter are "questioned, contradicted and reconstructed."
It was too much for Higher Criticism to assault the New Testament first. That had to come later - once the Old Testament battle had been won. Anyone who "preached the Gospel" was a potential prisoner if only their foundation in the inerrancy of Old Testament Scripture was first undermined. The theology of the Old Testament without the "facts" had to be maintained and as Sheehan also observed - "Thus the history of the Bible could supposedly be understood in terms of the theory of evolution and the Book's basic central message remain unchanged."
Just as theological seminaries of Nineteenth Century England became off limits to any Old Testament scholar who didn't espouse the Higher Criticism method so has become the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney's theological seminary, Moore Theological College, off limits to Biblical Creationist scholars. Indeed, students espousing the Biblical Creationist position have been cautioned with serious sanction. I am happy to be corrected on this. Would any reader confirm the presence on faculty of any Old Testament scholar in the past twenty years who has held to the Biblical Creationist position i.e. six twenty-four hour days of creation approximately six thousand years ago?
Just as Higher Criticism conquered evangelicalism in England in the late Nineteenth Century via submission of allegedly evangelical clergy it has likewise triumphed in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. They all declare and "preach the Gospel" but they have already questioned, contradicted and reconstructed to the point of dismissing the foundation of Old Testament history in Creation. External influences opposed to biblical history are given authority to dictate the timing of subsequent Old Testament events and the consequence is a confused and destabilized reading of Scripture.
Not that you would think anything wrong if you read the statements emanating from leaders within the Diocese. "Peace", "Peace" for your evangelical conscience is what you are to receive with utterances such as "And yet this trustworthy, powerful word of God has been entrusted to us, with the responsibility to guard it, to hold firmly to it, to rightly handle it. I can think of no greater human responsibility than to hold firmly to the trustworthy and faithful word of God, taught as a good deposit entrusted to us by the Holy Spirit. Only then will we be able to exhort, to comfort with sound, healthy teaching." and "We are going to beware of intellectual fads." delivered by Dr John Woodhouse, Principal, Moore Theological College in his recent Eternity article.
One could imagine Dr Woodhouse is speaking only of the New Testament because, according to previous statements and actions, he, at best, entertains all views on the matter of the Creation account in Genesis. You see, Dr Woodhouse is firmly in the camp of the "mixed multitude who would not side with either the old evangelical view of Scripture or with the new view of Scripture, who held the key to the decline [in the Nineteenth Century]. They would not discipline error and so they were overwhelmed by it. The consequence of their indecision and cowardice was that whereas, 'The early nineteenth century saw a quickening of religious life all over Europe . . . when the nineteenth century closed Christianity was at a low ebb'."
With influences such as Karl Barth, the "wolf in sheep's clothing", so widely admired within the Diocese, the battleground is about to shift from the Old to the New Testament. The one thing readers can confidently take from Dr Woodhouse's Eternity article is "History suggests what is taken for granted by believers today may be forgotten by the next generation of believers, and denied by the one after that." The rot is well set within. Cowardice has brought the allegedly evangelical Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney to the point reached by the Evangelical Church in England in the late Nineteenth Century.
R.J. Sheehan observed that Calvinism had been something of a stay against the decline in evangelicalism in England in the Nineteenth Century. In the end it did not prevent the decline in England nor has it prevented the decline in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. Unbelief is unbelief no matter what the doctrine.
The "death throws" of evangelicalism within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney are real. New life through the Holy Spirit is the only remedy. Let us pray for such an activity of God's Holy Spirit with urgency. Who knows, maybe some of the alleged evangelicals of the Diocese will stop, look back and see where their cowardice has taken them. Maybe they will repent, believe and be instruments in God's hands for good.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, August 22, 2010
History a Warning to Sydney Episcopalian Diocese (Part 5)
In my earlier blogs I cited the shift which occurred in traditional evangelicalism in England in the Nineteenth Century as observed by R. J. Sheehan in Banner of Truth journal, Issue 278, November 1986. I then, in my blog (Part 4), introduced extracts of an article found in the July 2010 issue of Eternity by Dr John Woodhouse, Principal, Moore Theological College, Sydney, to show a comparison between the compromising evangelicals of England in the Nineteenth Century and the evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney today.
There is a very real similarity and, sadly, it is rife in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. How did it get here? Who was the host who slipped upon our shores unnoticed as the carrier of a theological 'virus' destined to destroy traditional evangelicalism or almost all of it within the Diocese. To achieve this outcome so quietly yet effectively the carrier had to present as healthy and the resort to shape evangelical thinking from the Twentieth Century to the present.
It was Karl Barth, a revered critic of Liberal Theology but within his 'baggage' of thought there lay the seeds of destruction for traditional evangelicalism. It is notable to hear and read of theological influences within the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney who declare their admiration for the work of Karl Barth. One current Bishop within the Diocese puts the works of Karl Barth at the top of his favoured reading. Indeed, this same Bishop unwittingly disclosed his Barthian condition by declaring on this blogspot and elsewhere his doubts about the supernatural miracle of the parting of the Red Sea and, in a less public discussion, questions about the Virgin Birth of Christ Jesus.
Well, what is it that Barth has put upon evangelicalism? I shall defer to Terry A. Chrisope's March 1991 review (Banner of Truth journal) of a paper written by J. Gresham Machen in April 1928. It is repeated here:
Among the papers of J. Gresham Machen (housed at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia) there is a manuscript of unusual interest for the student of Machen's life and work. Running to nineteen pages of typescript, the manuscript bears the title, Karl Barth and 'the Theology of Crisis' A note at the foot of the first page indicates that the paper was 'read to a small group of ministers in Philadelphia, April 23, 1928'
What is so intriguing about the above paper is that J. Gresham Machen is commonly known as the leading evangelical critic not of Barthianism but of theological liberalism during the 1920s in America. Machen had thrown himself into an intense struggle on behalf of biblical Christianity and against the dilution of biblical teaching which he believed was inherent in theological liberalism. He was embroiled in this struggle, both within his own Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and on a broader front as well, throughout the entire decade of the 1920s. As the manuscript under consideration makes clear, however, Machen was keeping abreast of theological developments in Europe and had become aware of a relatively recent protest against liberalism led by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. That Machen, as an American evangelical, should take cognisance of this movement and publicly comment on it as early as 1928 bears testimony not only to his awareness of the European theological scene but also to his concern for the health and well-being of historic Christianity. Machen at that time was engaged in a severe personal struggle, both academic and ecclesiastical in nature, yet his range of vision was not limited to any narrow personal concerns; he addressed broader issues as he saw the need. In the light of attempts in our own day to promote the theology of Karl Barth among evangelicals, Machen's analysis of Barthianism (even in the latter's incomplete form of 1928) may be something to which contemporary evangelicals would to well to give he heed.
Machen began his treatment of Barthianism with a description of the man and the teaching behind the movement. A near contemporary of Machen, Karl Barth, was born in 1886 (Machen was born in 1881) and was educated in German universities before serving in pastorates in Switzerland. Barth eventually revolted against the socialism and liberalism to which he had formerly adhered, and he formed a school of thought which included such men as Eduard Thurneyson, Freidrich Gogarten, and Emil Brunner (though, Machen notes, there were some differences among the views of these men). The literary organ of the school was the journal Zwischen den Zeiten (Between the Times), from which Machen must have derived a good deal of his knowledge of its teaching and direction. With characteristic modesty, Machen in inserted a disclaimer at this point in his treatment, taking note of the difficulty of understanding Barthian teaching, alleging his own incompetence as a critic, and professing the incompleteness of his knowledge of the school. He then proceeded with a description of the Barthian teaching as he understood it.
Several elements of Barthianism emerge from Machen's treatment. First, at the root of the Barthian view was a conviction of 'the awful transcendence of God' (p. 2). This conviction demanded rejection of all forms of liberal theology with its nearly exclusive emphasis on the immanence of God. A second component of this theology was a new found stress on sin and the cosmic effects which sin had wrought, particularly the moral estrangement of the world from God. This estrangement resulted in a gulf between man and God, a gulf that man himself could not bridge; it was merely sinful pride that led man to imagine that he could do so. Thirdly, in the darkness and helplessness of this situation, God himself has bridged the chasm. God has come to man in the revelation of his Word, a word both of wrath and of grace. Fourthly, that Word of the grace of God has come supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation, the coming of God in the flesh, must be received by faith; and only God by his Spirit produces faith in the human heart as the proper response to the incarnation (Machen observed at this point that Barth taught the doctrine of the Trinity, but one that is 'hardly the doctrine that has been held by the historic Church', p. 7). In the fifth place, the coming of the Word of God places man at the point of decision: How will he respond to God and his Word? With obedience or with rebellion? For God or for the world? It is this crisis of decision that gives the 'theology of crisis' its distinctive character and name. Sixthly, the Christian life continues as a life of faith. Christians do not yet live by sight, so Christian theology must be expressed in a series of questions, antinomies or paradoxes. This is what Machen called 'the strange "dialect" of Karl Barth' (p. 7); he confessed his inability to understand it. And yet, according to Barth, the church does have a positive message, a message derived from the Old and New Testament scriptures (which contain the Word of God) and centring on Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.
What, Machen asked, are we to make of all this? It all sounds so orthodox, so like the evangelical Christianity of Calvin or Bunyan or the Shorter Catechism. Indeed, Barth claimed to be a follower of Calvin and of Paul, and, Machen noted, the Barthians had been attacked with the ignominious accusation that their teaching was nothing other than 'orthodoxy' after all. This charge the Barthians had indignantly denied. How then did they differ from historic Christianity? Machen found the difference in two central questions (ignoring for the moment other details of disagreement): 'they differ in the epistemology, and they differ in their attitude toward the plain historical information that the Bible contains' (p. 9).
With regard to the first point, the question of epistemology, Machen expressed uncertainty respecting the true nature of the Barthian position. He suspected that there was 'a large measure of agreement between the orthodox and the Barthians regarding the knowledge that is at the basis of Christianity' (p. 9). In particular, he appreciated their restoration of theology to a place of importance and dignity (in contrast to the centrality of religious experience in liberal thought). He also applauded Brunner's and Barth's serious attitude toward doctrinal differences among professing Christians, especially in the light of liberalism's theological tolerance.
And yet, despite Machen's appreciation of the Barthian reaction against modern theological anti-intellectualism, he questioned whether the knowledge of God contained in 'this new teaching' was 'real knowledge at all' (p. 11). Machen was particularly concerned about the claim that faith must be held distinct from all reasoning, that argumentation and apologetics are unnecessary. While he was more than willing to agree that 'argument alone never made a man a Christian' (p. 11), he was unwilling to concede that argument was therefore superfluous. The Spirit of God operates precisely upon human reason in order to overcome the effects of sin and enable men to grasp the truth. Machen's central concern here was with the objectivity of truth and he confessed to having an 'uneasy feeling' (p. 12) regarding the Barthian epistemology on this score. He was not quite certain that Barth's position did not incorporate a subjectivism which undermined the objectivity of truth by making Christian doctrines true only to the person who accepted them by faith. This, Machen believed, would constitute an 'epistemological abyss' (p. 12), and served to mask, behind Barth's seemingly traditional terminololgy, a profound difference with historic Christianity.
The second of Machen's reservations regarding Barthian teaching was related to the attitude entertained by that school toward the historical information contained in the Bible. In particular, he saw the Barthians as attempting 'to make the Christian faith quite independent of the findings of scientific history with regard to the life of Christ' (p. 13). (As witness to this tendency, Machen drew attention to the inclusion in Zwischen den Zeiten of the work of Rudolf Bultmann, who believed that it was impossible to know with certainty anything about the person of Jesus.) This position, Machen feared, did not mean merely that historical science, conducted on naturalistic principles, could not establish the essential facts upon which Christianity is founded, but rather meant that 'we can hear the Word of God in the New Testament, as addressed to our own soul, no matter what the facts about Jesus of Nazareth were' (p. 14). He thus understood the Barthian position (Brunner excepted, to some extent) as tending toward a sharp division between faith and the facts of history. This, of course, allowed the Barthians to accept the findings of negative historical criticism of the Bible while at the same time maintaining faith intact. But a biblical Christian faith, Machen held, cannot be indifferent to history or to the findings of historical criticism, for the New Testament bears witness to events that purportedly occurred in history.
The problem with the position of Barth and Brunner was not that it was too radical, but that it was not radical enough. Machen applauded their rejection of the 'immanence philosophy' (p. 15) which was at the root of theological liberalism, but he believed that they must go further. They also must attack the immanence philosophy as it was applied to historical criticism of the New Testament, and the particular point of attack must be the presuppositions that underlay modern criticism. 'Modern skepticism is, indeed, imposing, as it is applied to the New Testament field. But it may fall away like a house of cards if once its presuppositions are attacked' (p. 15). Machen was presumably referring to the naturalistic assumptions undergirding much negative criticism of the New Testament. Correct presuppositions, those of biblical supernaturalism, must replace false ones, thus allowing the message of the New Testament to be received at face value. But it was just at this point that the Barthians were silent. Here, then, in 'the attitude of Barth and his associates toward historical criticism', was 'a deadly weakness of the school' (p. 16).
Intimately related to this question was the attitude of the Barthians toward the deeds and words of Jesus as contained in the Gospel accounts. Machen thought he perceived (he expressed himself very carefully here) a tendency in the direction of indifference toward the historical acts and teachings of Jesus. While he again praised the renewed emphasis on the redeeming work of Christ, his death and resurrection, which he observed among the Barthians (though, significantly, he confessed uncertainty as to exactly what they meant by resurrection'), Machen was nevertheless uneasy about how little remained of a positive portrait of Jesus in Barthian hands. 'One has the disturbing feeling that Barth and his associates are depriving the church of one of its most precious possessions, the concrete picture of Jesus of Nazareth as he walked and talked upon this earth' (p. 17. The logic of their position, it seemed to Machen, fostered indifference regarding the question of the kind of person Jesus was during his earthly life. This was something in which he perceived danger. 'In their effort to avoid a clash with naturalistic criticism, these teachers must not be allowed to deprive us of the Jesus whom we love, the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus who spake words such as never man spake, the Jesus who went about doing good' (p. 18). For Machen, it was by just such a Jesus that modern people are confronted with terrible immediacy through the message of the Gospel and thus are brought to the crisis of decision. For all Machen's hesitation regarding the teaching of Karl Barth, he was thankful for Barth's reminder of that crisis. He was simply concerned that it be the full biblical Jesus with which modern people are confronted.
Much could be made of Machen's perceptiveness in treating Karl Barth as a major theological figure in 1928, his acuteness of judgment in suggesting that the Barthian movement may have inaugurated 'a new era in the history of the Church' (p. 15), and his initiative in offering an evangelical critique of Barthianism at a time when few other American evangelicals had taken note of the movement. Machen's response to Barth was timely indeed. And yet it may prove just as timely and relevant in our own day. Observers of contemporary evangelicalism have recently noted a slide away from former stoutly-held positions (see, e.g., 'Evangelical Megashift', Christianity Today, Feb. 19, 1990, pp. 12-17). And calls have issued from some quarters for evangelicals to use Barth's methodology as a paradigm for evangelical theology in the present (see Bernard Ramm's After Fundamentalism, 1983). In the face of such trends, evangelicals may do well to listen once again to the voice of J. Gresham Machen.
Another long post so I must end here without further comment, except to say I will pull it all together in my next and, hopefully, my final blog on the decline of evangelicalism within the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney.
Sam Drucker
There is a very real similarity and, sadly, it is rife in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. How did it get here? Who was the host who slipped upon our shores unnoticed as the carrier of a theological 'virus' destined to destroy traditional evangelicalism or almost all of it within the Diocese. To achieve this outcome so quietly yet effectively the carrier had to present as healthy and the resort to shape evangelical thinking from the Twentieth Century to the present.
It was Karl Barth, a revered critic of Liberal Theology but within his 'baggage' of thought there lay the seeds of destruction for traditional evangelicalism. It is notable to hear and read of theological influences within the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney who declare their admiration for the work of Karl Barth. One current Bishop within the Diocese puts the works of Karl Barth at the top of his favoured reading. Indeed, this same Bishop unwittingly disclosed his Barthian condition by declaring on this blogspot and elsewhere his doubts about the supernatural miracle of the parting of the Red Sea and, in a less public discussion, questions about the Virgin Birth of Christ Jesus.
Well, what is it that Barth has put upon evangelicalism? I shall defer to Terry A. Chrisope's March 1991 review (Banner of Truth journal) of a paper written by J. Gresham Machen in April 1928. It is repeated here:
Among the papers of J. Gresham Machen (housed at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia) there is a manuscript of unusual interest for the student of Machen's life and work. Running to nineteen pages of typescript, the manuscript bears the title, Karl Barth and 'the Theology of Crisis' A note at the foot of the first page indicates that the paper was 'read to a small group of ministers in Philadelphia, April 23, 1928'
What is so intriguing about the above paper is that J. Gresham Machen is commonly known as the leading evangelical critic not of Barthianism but of theological liberalism during the 1920s in America. Machen had thrown himself into an intense struggle on behalf of biblical Christianity and against the dilution of biblical teaching which he believed was inherent in theological liberalism. He was embroiled in this struggle, both within his own Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and on a broader front as well, throughout the entire decade of the 1920s. As the manuscript under consideration makes clear, however, Machen was keeping abreast of theological developments in Europe and had become aware of a relatively recent protest against liberalism led by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. That Machen, as an American evangelical, should take cognisance of this movement and publicly comment on it as early as 1928 bears testimony not only to his awareness of the European theological scene but also to his concern for the health and well-being of historic Christianity. Machen at that time was engaged in a severe personal struggle, both academic and ecclesiastical in nature, yet his range of vision was not limited to any narrow personal concerns; he addressed broader issues as he saw the need. In the light of attempts in our own day to promote the theology of Karl Barth among evangelicals, Machen's analysis of Barthianism (even in the latter's incomplete form of 1928) may be something to which contemporary evangelicals would to well to give he heed.
Machen began his treatment of Barthianism with a description of the man and the teaching behind the movement. A near contemporary of Machen, Karl Barth, was born in 1886 (Machen was born in 1881) and was educated in German universities before serving in pastorates in Switzerland. Barth eventually revolted against the socialism and liberalism to which he had formerly adhered, and he formed a school of thought which included such men as Eduard Thurneyson, Freidrich Gogarten, and Emil Brunner (though, Machen notes, there were some differences among the views of these men). The literary organ of the school was the journal Zwischen den Zeiten (Between the Times), from which Machen must have derived a good deal of his knowledge of its teaching and direction. With characteristic modesty, Machen in inserted a disclaimer at this point in his treatment, taking note of the difficulty of understanding Barthian teaching, alleging his own incompetence as a critic, and professing the incompleteness of his knowledge of the school. He then proceeded with a description of the Barthian teaching as he understood it.
Several elements of Barthianism emerge from Machen's treatment. First, at the root of the Barthian view was a conviction of 'the awful transcendence of God' (p. 2). This conviction demanded rejection of all forms of liberal theology with its nearly exclusive emphasis on the immanence of God. A second component of this theology was a new found stress on sin and the cosmic effects which sin had wrought, particularly the moral estrangement of the world from God. This estrangement resulted in a gulf between man and God, a gulf that man himself could not bridge; it was merely sinful pride that led man to imagine that he could do so. Thirdly, in the darkness and helplessness of this situation, God himself has bridged the chasm. God has come to man in the revelation of his Word, a word both of wrath and of grace. Fourthly, that Word of the grace of God has come supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation, the coming of God in the flesh, must be received by faith; and only God by his Spirit produces faith in the human heart as the proper response to the incarnation (Machen observed at this point that Barth taught the doctrine of the Trinity, but one that is 'hardly the doctrine that has been held by the historic Church', p. 7). In the fifth place, the coming of the Word of God places man at the point of decision: How will he respond to God and his Word? With obedience or with rebellion? For God or for the world? It is this crisis of decision that gives the 'theology of crisis' its distinctive character and name. Sixthly, the Christian life continues as a life of faith. Christians do not yet live by sight, so Christian theology must be expressed in a series of questions, antinomies or paradoxes. This is what Machen called 'the strange "dialect" of Karl Barth' (p. 7); he confessed his inability to understand it. And yet, according to Barth, the church does have a positive message, a message derived from the Old and New Testament scriptures (which contain the Word of God) and centring on Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.
What, Machen asked, are we to make of all this? It all sounds so orthodox, so like the evangelical Christianity of Calvin or Bunyan or the Shorter Catechism. Indeed, Barth claimed to be a follower of Calvin and of Paul, and, Machen noted, the Barthians had been attacked with the ignominious accusation that their teaching was nothing other than 'orthodoxy' after all. This charge the Barthians had indignantly denied. How then did they differ from historic Christianity? Machen found the difference in two central questions (ignoring for the moment other details of disagreement): 'they differ in the epistemology, and they differ in their attitude toward the plain historical information that the Bible contains' (p. 9).
With regard to the first point, the question of epistemology, Machen expressed uncertainty respecting the true nature of the Barthian position. He suspected that there was 'a large measure of agreement between the orthodox and the Barthians regarding the knowledge that is at the basis of Christianity' (p. 9). In particular, he appreciated their restoration of theology to a place of importance and dignity (in contrast to the centrality of religious experience in liberal thought). He also applauded Brunner's and Barth's serious attitude toward doctrinal differences among professing Christians, especially in the light of liberalism's theological tolerance.
And yet, despite Machen's appreciation of the Barthian reaction against modern theological anti-intellectualism, he questioned whether the knowledge of God contained in 'this new teaching' was 'real knowledge at all' (p. 11). Machen was particularly concerned about the claim that faith must be held distinct from all reasoning, that argumentation and apologetics are unnecessary. While he was more than willing to agree that 'argument alone never made a man a Christian' (p. 11), he was unwilling to concede that argument was therefore superfluous. The Spirit of God operates precisely upon human reason in order to overcome the effects of sin and enable men to grasp the truth. Machen's central concern here was with the objectivity of truth and he confessed to having an 'uneasy feeling' (p. 12) regarding the Barthian epistemology on this score. He was not quite certain that Barth's position did not incorporate a subjectivism which undermined the objectivity of truth by making Christian doctrines true only to the person who accepted them by faith. This, Machen believed, would constitute an 'epistemological abyss' (p. 12), and served to mask, behind Barth's seemingly traditional terminololgy, a profound difference with historic Christianity.
The second of Machen's reservations regarding Barthian teaching was related to the attitude entertained by that school toward the historical information contained in the Bible. In particular, he saw the Barthians as attempting 'to make the Christian faith quite independent of the findings of scientific history with regard to the life of Christ' (p. 13). (As witness to this tendency, Machen drew attention to the inclusion in Zwischen den Zeiten of the work of Rudolf Bultmann, who believed that it was impossible to know with certainty anything about the person of Jesus.) This position, Machen feared, did not mean merely that historical science, conducted on naturalistic principles, could not establish the essential facts upon which Christianity is founded, but rather meant that 'we can hear the Word of God in the New Testament, as addressed to our own soul, no matter what the facts about Jesus of Nazareth were' (p. 14). He thus understood the Barthian position (Brunner excepted, to some extent) as tending toward a sharp division between faith and the facts of history. This, of course, allowed the Barthians to accept the findings of negative historical criticism of the Bible while at the same time maintaining faith intact. But a biblical Christian faith, Machen held, cannot be indifferent to history or to the findings of historical criticism, for the New Testament bears witness to events that purportedly occurred in history.
The problem with the position of Barth and Brunner was not that it was too radical, but that it was not radical enough. Machen applauded their rejection of the 'immanence philosophy' (p. 15) which was at the root of theological liberalism, but he believed that they must go further. They also must attack the immanence philosophy as it was applied to historical criticism of the New Testament, and the particular point of attack must be the presuppositions that underlay modern criticism. 'Modern skepticism is, indeed, imposing, as it is applied to the New Testament field. But it may fall away like a house of cards if once its presuppositions are attacked' (p. 15). Machen was presumably referring to the naturalistic assumptions undergirding much negative criticism of the New Testament. Correct presuppositions, those of biblical supernaturalism, must replace false ones, thus allowing the message of the New Testament to be received at face value. But it was just at this point that the Barthians were silent. Here, then, in 'the attitude of Barth and his associates toward historical criticism', was 'a deadly weakness of the school' (p. 16).
Intimately related to this question was the attitude of the Barthians toward the deeds and words of Jesus as contained in the Gospel accounts. Machen thought he perceived (he expressed himself very carefully here) a tendency in the direction of indifference toward the historical acts and teachings of Jesus. While he again praised the renewed emphasis on the redeeming work of Christ, his death and resurrection, which he observed among the Barthians (though, significantly, he confessed uncertainty as to exactly what they meant by resurrection'), Machen was nevertheless uneasy about how little remained of a positive portrait of Jesus in Barthian hands. 'One has the disturbing feeling that Barth and his associates are depriving the church of one of its most precious possessions, the concrete picture of Jesus of Nazareth as he walked and talked upon this earth' (p. 17. The logic of their position, it seemed to Machen, fostered indifference regarding the question of the kind of person Jesus was during his earthly life. This was something in which he perceived danger. 'In their effort to avoid a clash with naturalistic criticism, these teachers must not be allowed to deprive us of the Jesus whom we love, the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus who spake words such as never man spake, the Jesus who went about doing good' (p. 18). For Machen, it was by just such a Jesus that modern people are confronted with terrible immediacy through the message of the Gospel and thus are brought to the crisis of decision. For all Machen's hesitation regarding the teaching of Karl Barth, he was thankful for Barth's reminder of that crisis. He was simply concerned that it be the full biblical Jesus with which modern people are confronted.
Much could be made of Machen's perceptiveness in treating Karl Barth as a major theological figure in 1928, his acuteness of judgment in suggesting that the Barthian movement may have inaugurated 'a new era in the history of the Church' (p. 15), and his initiative in offering an evangelical critique of Barthianism at a time when few other American evangelicals had taken note of the movement. Machen's response to Barth was timely indeed. And yet it may prove just as timely and relevant in our own day. Observers of contemporary evangelicalism have recently noted a slide away from former stoutly-held positions (see, e.g., 'Evangelical Megashift', Christianity Today, Feb. 19, 1990, pp. 12-17). And calls have issued from some quarters for evangelicals to use Barth's methodology as a paradigm for evangelical theology in the present (see Bernard Ramm's After Fundamentalism, 1983). In the face of such trends, evangelicals may do well to listen once again to the voice of J. Gresham Machen.
Another long post so I must end here without further comment, except to say I will pull it all together in my next and, hopefully, my final blog on the decline of evangelicalism within the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, June 21, 2009
USELESS IDIOTS
I almost missed this wonderful blog over at Post-Darwinist on our heterdoxical friends.
Tune in for a boost!
Tune in for a boost!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Disbelief
"There is one race of men, one race of gods; both have breath of life from a single mother [Gaia]" Pindar, Nemean 6.
The question of origins is at root a question of belief.
The ancient Greeks, who invented evolution: that is, what is seen was prepared from things which are visible had to, as they saw their gods as also being within their world; within the cosmos.
Theistic evolution borrows this from materialism which starts from the same place as the ancient Greeks: but without the god bit.
The actions that God takes with his people are uniformily presented as immediate actions: Christ's work was accomplished on the cross at the moment of his death; his status as first born the moment he resurrected; we have new life at the moment of belief as a gift from God; the return of Christ will be an event, not a process, as I take it the Bible says of the bringing of the new creation.
Of course, the creation also was done quick smart (in 6 days, which Augustine thought was rather too long!) too. But this is denied widely in SAD in lieu of the position that derives from non-belief. Ultimately, the SAD, on this point, has to set aside belief on a number of grounds: that God is a reliable propositional communicator, that words have meaning, and that as he refers to the creation as his chief credential in relationship with us. Disbelief here is more complex. God represents his creation as coming from his will (and nothing else, no system or operation, no elaborate machine, which reeks of paganism, not the majesty and power of God). And then going back the other way, consideration of the creation (except that which at first denies God, but even this must finally fail to achieve credibility), leads to recognition of the creator.
But if consideration of the creation leads one to think that the creation could reasonably have made itself, we have come, not to the God of Abraham, but the gods of the Greeks: gods within the cosmos, not independent of it!
The key point at which creation is represented as not possibly being confused for the work of the creation itself, and non-god, is that we are told it happened in 6 days. There's the recipe for creating a cosmos: 6 steps not able to be achieved by other than God. This stands directly in the path of materialist-naturalist alternatives. Which alternatives the SAD seems to seriously entertain as being in the stream of the history of salvation! Well, gag me with a spoon!
To set this as naught, which is the habit in SAD, is to disbelieve God: to disbelieve that he can tell us what he did (ref. Numbers 12:8a), that what he tells as and what he did is unimportant in detail, and finally indistiguisable from that done by non-God.
That sounds a lot like rejection of God, to me!
The question of origins is at root a question of belief.
The ancient Greeks, who invented evolution: that is, what is seen was prepared from things which are visible had to, as they saw their gods as also being within their world; within the cosmos.
Theistic evolution borrows this from materialism which starts from the same place as the ancient Greeks: but without the god bit.
The actions that God takes with his people are uniformily presented as immediate actions: Christ's work was accomplished on the cross at the moment of his death; his status as first born the moment he resurrected; we have new life at the moment of belief as a gift from God; the return of Christ will be an event, not a process, as I take it the Bible says of the bringing of the new creation.
Of course, the creation also was done quick smart (in 6 days, which Augustine thought was rather too long!) too. But this is denied widely in SAD in lieu of the position that derives from non-belief. Ultimately, the SAD, on this point, has to set aside belief on a number of grounds: that God is a reliable propositional communicator, that words have meaning, and that as he refers to the creation as his chief credential in relationship with us. Disbelief here is more complex. God represents his creation as coming from his will (and nothing else, no system or operation, no elaborate machine, which reeks of paganism, not the majesty and power of God). And then going back the other way, consideration of the creation (except that which at first denies God, but even this must finally fail to achieve credibility), leads to recognition of the creator.
But if consideration of the creation leads one to think that the creation could reasonably have made itself, we have come, not to the God of Abraham, but the gods of the Greeks: gods within the cosmos, not independent of it!
The key point at which creation is represented as not possibly being confused for the work of the creation itself, and non-god, is that we are told it happened in 6 days. There's the recipe for creating a cosmos: 6 steps not able to be achieved by other than God. This stands directly in the path of materialist-naturalist alternatives. Which alternatives the SAD seems to seriously entertain as being in the stream of the history of salvation! Well, gag me with a spoon!
To set this as naught, which is the habit in SAD, is to disbelieve God: to disbelieve that he can tell us what he did (ref. Numbers 12:8a), that what he tells as and what he did is unimportant in detail, and finally indistiguisable from that done by non-God.
That sounds a lot like rejection of God, to me!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
From faith to gnosis
From a Christianity Today (I think) a couple of years ago:
What happens when this Christian witness wanes has been the subject of Ratzinger's extensive and uniquely insightful cultural analysis of Europe and Western civilization. The same themes that Ratzinger developed when responding to intra-Catholic debates about faith and reason, philosophy and theology, and the Church and the modern world are fully on display in his diagnosis of the ills of the West. He develops what Rowland calls a "double helix" genealogy of corruption "in which the Hellenic component of the culture was severed from the Christian and in which the Christian component was fundamentally undermined by the mutation of the doctrine of creation … . When faith in creation is lost, Christian faith is transformed into gnosis, and when faith in reason is lost, wisdom is reduced to the empirically verifiable which cannot sustain a moral framework.
Because the starting point of faith is creation (Heb 11:2) and faith here is of course, not the wishful thinking that Mormons, for instance consider it, but the sure hope of God's intervention into (well, creation of, in fact) our world for relationship with him. The 'empirically verifiable' ceases to be accessible without its own faith in the correlation of our sense experience and the external world, which, if not objectively real, evaporates.
What happens when this Christian witness wanes has been the subject of Ratzinger's extensive and uniquely insightful cultural analysis of Europe and Western civilization. The same themes that Ratzinger developed when responding to intra-Catholic debates about faith and reason, philosophy and theology, and the Church and the modern world are fully on display in his diagnosis of the ills of the West. He develops what Rowland calls a "double helix" genealogy of corruption "in which the Hellenic component of the culture was severed from the Christian and in which the Christian component was fundamentally undermined by the mutation of the doctrine of creation … . When faith in creation is lost, Christian faith is transformed into gnosis, and when faith in reason is lost, wisdom is reduced to the empirically verifiable which cannot sustain a moral framework.
Because the starting point of faith is creation (Heb 11:2) and faith here is of course, not the wishful thinking that Mormons, for instance consider it, but the sure hope of God's intervention into (well, creation of, in fact) our world for relationship with him. The 'empirically verifiable' ceases to be accessible without its own faith in the correlation of our sense experience and the external world, which, if not objectively real, evaporates.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Evil Genius
Over at the Evil Genius' blog (Gordon Cheng's oddly named effort) I came across this:
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Genesis 1:28
The earlier post was:
Now, I'm not quite sure why he would post this. Gordon, ol' son, you could have just linked over to us!
But no, that's beyond the pale for the oddly self-labelled 'evil genius' (peculiar nick-name for a paid christian!)
I guess it all come about from the earlier posts on marital relationships in local press articles. And Gordon, if you read this, I must support your conclusions about Arndt's completely destructive views.
Now, to my regular readers, I note a SADist making a reference to Genesis 1, as though it has anything to do with the real world! The problem the SADs face is that at once they remove Genesis 1 (etc.) from having a real world reference, then selectively apply it to the real world; but having evacuated it of contextual contact with the real world, it becomes a long shot, and one that is arbitrarily made, to say that there is an intersection between Gen 1 and the world we are standing in on any particular point.
Along similar lines, a friend asked me about the view of the Bible held by theistic evolutionists (a category that overlaps with SADs, sadly!).
He said, in discussion about a particular minister's views:
Maybe you should ask your minister whether he can find anything in the Bible that supports old age/evolution. If he can't find anything unambiguous, then to me it seems a surprise that the Bible has nothing, zilch, to say about how life came about. After all, the atheists spend an inordinate amount of time trying to prove there was lots of time in order to get God out of the picture yet the Bible, according to the TE view, doesn't discuss it. Now that is a strange state of affairs we have here.
I suggested the following:
I think the answer for the TE-ers would be that the whole question is not in the purview of the Bible; and they must say that because they are, at least incipient neo-Platonists, or some other brand of idealist: that is, they have mixed a paganised view of the world with the Bible, which makes the Bible float above the real world, only connecting at the incarnation (and this only for orthodox Christians, as this is also denied by large numbers of theologians, as we know). But, as the incarnation relies upon the world being as God said it is in Gen 1, and that the Bible structures a realist rather than idealist approach to the world of experience, their scheme will fall apart. In practical terms it has fallen apart already, with the belief widespread, at least in the intelligencia, that the world really is the result of material inevitabilities, and that the idea 'god' is produced from within that world. The whole unravelling that substitutes man for God is before our eyes.
In theoretical terms, the scheme falls apart because it must garner a basis outside the Bible, whereupon the question arises as to the source of that basis, if it does not have its authorship in God. A dilemma for the TE either way.
Similarly I remarked in a related context:
The problem a lot of paid christians have is that they've been trained within a philosophical framework that puts the matters of faith, including the Bible, in a different ontological boundary (or a different type of reality) from the one we occupy, which is a little perplexing, as throughout the Bible the whole point of the creation and incarnation is God's making a setting for covenant and its related communications, prior to the grand communication, which recognises and endorses the ontological credentials of the world we are in (because it is the one He created), the incarnation. I don't think this penny drops easily, or is necessarily easily communicated.
::end of quotes.
The world we are in, and our knowledge of it is referred to by God on numerous occasions as establishing the dimensions of our relationship: God is creator, as he reminds us throughout the prophets, telling us who we are, who God is and why we should trust, worship and seek him.
It seems that the SADs effectively set this aside and go for a 'god' of the philosophers whose link with his creation is basically non-communicable and finally non-credible. Connect09 you go!
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Genesis 1:28
And here, surely, is where creation is leading:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Marriage has a purpose; to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.
The earlier post was:
Genesis 1
It has a beginning, a daily rhythm and a pattern, and a climax that is reached with the creation of the man and the woman, or really I think with the seventh day, a day of rest.
Now, I'm not quite sure why he would post this. Gordon, ol' son, you could have just linked over to us!
But no, that's beyond the pale for the oddly self-labelled 'evil genius' (peculiar nick-name for a paid christian!)
I guess it all come about from the earlier posts on marital relationships in local press articles. And Gordon, if you read this, I must support your conclusions about Arndt's completely destructive views.
Now, to my regular readers, I note a SADist making a reference to Genesis 1, as though it has anything to do with the real world! The problem the SADs face is that at once they remove Genesis 1 (etc.) from having a real world reference, then selectively apply it to the real world; but having evacuated it of contextual contact with the real world, it becomes a long shot, and one that is arbitrarily made, to say that there is an intersection between Gen 1 and the world we are standing in on any particular point.
Along similar lines, a friend asked me about the view of the Bible held by theistic evolutionists (a category that overlaps with SADs, sadly!).
He said, in discussion about a particular minister's views:
Maybe you should ask your minister whether he can find anything in the Bible that supports old age/evolution. If he can't find anything unambiguous, then to me it seems a surprise that the Bible has nothing, zilch, to say about how life came about. After all, the atheists spend an inordinate amount of time trying to prove there was lots of time in order to get God out of the picture yet the Bible, according to the TE view, doesn't discuss it. Now that is a strange state of affairs we have here.
I suggested the following:
I think the answer for the TE-ers would be that the whole question is not in the purview of the Bible; and they must say that because they are, at least incipient neo-Platonists, or some other brand of idealist: that is, they have mixed a paganised view of the world with the Bible, which makes the Bible float above the real world, only connecting at the incarnation (and this only for orthodox Christians, as this is also denied by large numbers of theologians, as we know). But, as the incarnation relies upon the world being as God said it is in Gen 1, and that the Bible structures a realist rather than idealist approach to the world of experience, their scheme will fall apart. In practical terms it has fallen apart already, with the belief widespread, at least in the intelligencia, that the world really is the result of material inevitabilities, and that the idea 'god' is produced from within that world. The whole unravelling that substitutes man for God is before our eyes.
In theoretical terms, the scheme falls apart because it must garner a basis outside the Bible, whereupon the question arises as to the source of that basis, if it does not have its authorship in God. A dilemma for the TE either way.
Similarly I remarked in a related context:
The problem a lot of paid christians have is that they've been trained within a philosophical framework that puts the matters of faith, including the Bible, in a different ontological boundary (or a different type of reality) from the one we occupy, which is a little perplexing, as throughout the Bible the whole point of the creation and incarnation is God's making a setting for covenant and its related communications, prior to the grand communication, which recognises and endorses the ontological credentials of the world we are in (because it is the one He created), the incarnation. I don't think this penny drops easily, or is necessarily easily communicated.
::end of quotes.
The world we are in, and our knowledge of it is referred to by God on numerous occasions as establishing the dimensions of our relationship: God is creator, as he reminds us throughout the prophets, telling us who we are, who God is and why we should trust, worship and seek him.
It seems that the SADs effectively set this aside and go for a 'god' of the philosophers whose link with his creation is basically non-communicable and finally non-credible. Connect09 you go!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Frame Frames it Fittingly
Well, not quite, it’s a bit of an each way bet!
Tom Frame, previously bishop of bullets and guns and now bishop of books and writing has run an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the limits of Darwinism.
One of my favourite review lines applies: “there’s a lot to like about this article” but, and there’s always a ‘but’ after ‘there’s a lot to like’, he runs an each way bet by standing up the variety of Christian views of origins, irrespective of the degree to which they strain their connection with Genesis 1.
He has a slam at Dawkins, which is always fitting, because Dawkins’ usually acts like a bit of a loon; others however, have slammed him more effectively in the past. But I expect Frame was running against the word ration the SMH gave him.
Tom has a number of quite amusing things to say:
“Evolutionary theory does not explain everything we want to know about the natural world or human life, and some of what evolutionary theory purports to explain it hardly elucidates at all. While we might know how some things occurred we still want to know why. Most importantly, why is there something rather than nothing?”
Well, the truth be known, evolutionary theory explains nothing at all. From Darwin on its been smoke screening, equivocation, and argument by personal credulity (Darwin’s Origin is full of it, as Dissenter continuously shows. In thrall to idealism (the dominant philosophy underpinning contemporary theology, in my view, but in vigorous rejection of any biblical realism, the philosophy that should underpin theology), Tom thinks that the basic existiential question can be answered apart from the question of origins, which leads directly to the answer to the basic existential question. I raised my eyebrows too!
In the very next paragraph, Tom asks, as though the question is decided: “So how does a Christian account for the origin of life and the emergence of religious faith in the light of evolutionary theory?”
Well, this Christian is relieved of the conundrum. How does a Darwinist account for the origin of life and the emergence of rationality in the light of there being no evidence, no mechanism and no theoretical means (no, I mean a real one, not the string of empty words that Dawkins and his ilk string us along with) in a materialistic paradigm?
Tom lets us in on the trade secret of modern theologians:
“Evolutionary theory requires creation to be understood as a continuous process rather than an isolated act in the distant past. In this view, God creates in and through natural processes.”
Sure, it’s a view, and its an interesting theological point as to whether God creates in and through natural processes, or by speaking, as Gen 1, 2, John 1:1-3 and Hebrews 11:3 tell us. Here’s the choice: Tom or the Holy Spirt. Any thoughts Tom? And what about continuous (in this 'view') vs Genesis 1: '...and it was so'. Continuous process seems to be at odds with the kinds of actions described in the in the six days and the way the creatures made are described. But then, facts, no matter how perspicuous, have never been successfully able to obstruct the vain speculations of much modern theology.
I could go on and on, but will spare reader and self that detail.
So, the best one for the last:
“I share the conviction of Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge: nature controls the course of evolution but convergence, implying a higher purpose, controls nature.
Conway has argued evolution is not arbitrary and if life were to evolve again, it would look very much as it does now.”
Good, Tom. Now, what experimental evidence do you, or Simon have for this? I could ask much the same question of Barth, who decided that nothing in the real world, could affect the faith world. Did Karl do any experiements...ah, theology is so easy!
Tom Frame, previously bishop of bullets and guns and now bishop of books and writing has run an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the limits of Darwinism.
One of my favourite review lines applies: “there’s a lot to like about this article” but, and there’s always a ‘but’ after ‘there’s a lot to like’, he runs an each way bet by standing up the variety of Christian views of origins, irrespective of the degree to which they strain their connection with Genesis 1.
He has a slam at Dawkins, which is always fitting, because Dawkins’ usually acts like a bit of a loon; others however, have slammed him more effectively in the past. But I expect Frame was running against the word ration the SMH gave him.
Tom has a number of quite amusing things to say:
“Evolutionary theory does not explain everything we want to know about the natural world or human life, and some of what evolutionary theory purports to explain it hardly elucidates at all. While we might know how some things occurred we still want to know why. Most importantly, why is there something rather than nothing?”
Well, the truth be known, evolutionary theory explains nothing at all. From Darwin on its been smoke screening, equivocation, and argument by personal credulity (Darwin’s Origin is full of it, as Dissenter continuously shows. In thrall to idealism (the dominant philosophy underpinning contemporary theology, in my view, but in vigorous rejection of any biblical realism, the philosophy that should underpin theology), Tom thinks that the basic existiential question can be answered apart from the question of origins, which leads directly to the answer to the basic existential question. I raised my eyebrows too!
In the very next paragraph, Tom asks, as though the question is decided: “So how does a Christian account for the origin of life and the emergence of religious faith in the light of evolutionary theory?”
Well, this Christian is relieved of the conundrum. How does a Darwinist account for the origin of life and the emergence of rationality in the light of there being no evidence, no mechanism and no theoretical means (no, I mean a real one, not the string of empty words that Dawkins and his ilk string us along with) in a materialistic paradigm?
Tom lets us in on the trade secret of modern theologians:
“Evolutionary theory requires creation to be understood as a continuous process rather than an isolated act in the distant past. In this view, God creates in and through natural processes.”
Sure, it’s a view, and its an interesting theological point as to whether God creates in and through natural processes, or by speaking, as Gen 1, 2, John 1:1-3 and Hebrews 11:3 tell us. Here’s the choice: Tom or the Holy Spirt. Any thoughts Tom? And what about continuous (in this 'view') vs Genesis 1: '...and it was so'. Continuous process seems to be at odds with the kinds of actions described in the in the six days and the way the creatures made are described. But then, facts, no matter how perspicuous, have never been successfully able to obstruct the vain speculations of much modern theology.
I could go on and on, but will spare reader and self that detail.
So, the best one for the last:
“I share the conviction of Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge: nature controls the course of evolution but convergence, implying a higher purpose, controls nature.
Conway has argued evolution is not arbitrary and if life were to evolve again, it would look very much as it does now.”
Good, Tom. Now, what experimental evidence do you, or Simon have for this? I could ask much the same question of Barth, who decided that nothing in the real world, could affect the faith world. Did Karl do any experiements...ah, theology is so easy!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Jensen says
A recent post on another blog by Michael Jensen (son of the Lord High Poobah Jensen...see Matthew 23:5-12) as a comment on a discussion about imputation.
Who is denying imputation? Not me. Not Bird.
But getting it in its right biblical context is vital. As is understanding the texts in their own context and not squashing them into a pre-fabricated theology, which seems to be the go in some Calvinist circles these days.
Michael, how true, how true! I wonder if theistic evolution is a 'pre-fabricated theology'?
Interestingly in this same thread Michael very nicely mentioned that some ['laypeople' I would guess, in counter biblical terminology] can be quite intelligent. ("Far more dangerous to ordinary believers are those bible teachers who enforce a system on the text and force the text to say what it plainly doesn't. So-called 'ordinary believers', who are usually more intelligent than we give them credit for") See Matt 23:5-12 again...Michael.
Just for the record an excerpt of the blog comments, including the comment in point is here
Who is denying imputation? Not me. Not Bird.
But getting it in its right biblical context is vital. As is understanding the texts in their own context and not squashing them into a pre-fabricated theology, which seems to be the go in some Calvinist circles these days.
Michael, how true, how true! I wonder if theistic evolution is a 'pre-fabricated theology'?
Interestingly in this same thread Michael very nicely mentioned that some ['laypeople' I would guess, in counter biblical terminology] can be quite intelligent. ("Far more dangerous to ordinary believers are those bible teachers who enforce a system on the text and force the text to say what it plainly doesn't. So-called 'ordinary believers', who are usually more intelligent than we give them credit for") See Matt 23:5-12 again...Michael.
Just for the record an excerpt of the blog comments, including the comment in point is here
Monday, January 26, 2009
It's about time!
A couple of recent comments to Neil's recent post point to a factor that might be part of the attraction of theistic evolution in some modern theologies.
If there has been a strong influence from ancient pagan ideas, including both Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, in its various forms, then it is understandable that theistic evolution is, if not welcomed, then regarded as acceptable as a metatheological pathway to regarding Genesis 1-3.
The particular points of possible influence run along the lines of the pagan/Neoplatonic (and Gnostic) disdain for the material and rejection of the idea of the divine having anything to do with it.
Thus, for some lines of thinking, the need arose to separate ‘evil’ from the divine or from ‘spirit’. Ironically, in Christian theology, the problem of evil runs the other way, and it is not the material that is the problem, but the spirit (Jeremiah 17:9)!
For Gnostics this lead to the invention of a demi-urge, a type of sub-god that did the creating that resulted in material, and put the real god at a distance from this distasteful and evil-prone stuff.
Theistic evolution has similar marks to it.
It seems to run from the material in disdain and puts a process between God and his creation that also must push God away from us. This God is no longer close, but far off! It’s akin to pagan gods who are not personable or knowable in love, but distant, remote, devoid of possible relationship and needing to be ‘served’ in all sorts of nonsensical ways.
This theistic evolutionary god is one who doesn’t need to ‘get his hands dirty’ with the mess of creating, but is able to build a cosmos that will run such that a creative outcome results.
But this is not the God of the Bible, a God who is impressively, astonishingly close to his creation, who entered into it by incarnation, and who is separated from his creation not by a great affective distance (or a great time, according to the Bible), but by his creatures’ moral rejection of him.
Indeed, the God of the Bible directly gets his hands ‘dirty’ by making Adam out of soil: if anyone seeks a ‘method’ by which God created (for those unhappy with his word, obviously), then this is it: he formed man by directly acting upon the clay which he also made.
He is also a God who is close to his creatures and concerned for them: he reaches out to them, and meaningfully, not in some mythic manner that pretends to cross the divide of aeons (which the fictional long ages of modern materialism/deism require), but directly, on a time stage that is comprehensible to human history and experience, that makes the personal the core and provides a setting for the formation of covenant between God and man that we can take into our understanding of historical relationships.
A number of theologically interesting avenues of enquiry may be opened by this past paragraph; however, not for theistic evolution, which has already decided that its god is remote and comparatively uninvolved and whose making of a setting for the relationship and covenant is almost an accident of the machinery of some initial creative conditions. This is more like deistic disinterest than a Christian passion for life and redemption. Theistic evolution thus has trouble instantiating the person from which its whole scheme escapes, in idealist rejection of the very material that was expressly created by God; not their god, who is unimaginably and incomprehensibly far away, but our God, who is in consonance with the circumscription of our history for which he formed the setting, origin and end.
If there has been a strong influence from ancient pagan ideas, including both Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, in its various forms, then it is understandable that theistic evolution is, if not welcomed, then regarded as acceptable as a metatheological pathway to regarding Genesis 1-3.
The particular points of possible influence run along the lines of the pagan/Neoplatonic (and Gnostic) disdain for the material and rejection of the idea of the divine having anything to do with it.
Thus, for some lines of thinking, the need arose to separate ‘evil’ from the divine or from ‘spirit’. Ironically, in Christian theology, the problem of evil runs the other way, and it is not the material that is the problem, but the spirit (Jeremiah 17:9)!
For Gnostics this lead to the invention of a demi-urge, a type of sub-god that did the creating that resulted in material, and put the real god at a distance from this distasteful and evil-prone stuff.
Theistic evolution has similar marks to it.
It seems to run from the material in disdain and puts a process between God and his creation that also must push God away from us. This God is no longer close, but far off! It’s akin to pagan gods who are not personable or knowable in love, but distant, remote, devoid of possible relationship and needing to be ‘served’ in all sorts of nonsensical ways.
This theistic evolutionary god is one who doesn’t need to ‘get his hands dirty’ with the mess of creating, but is able to build a cosmos that will run such that a creative outcome results.
But this is not the God of the Bible, a God who is impressively, astonishingly close to his creation, who entered into it by incarnation, and who is separated from his creation not by a great affective distance (or a great time, according to the Bible), but by his creatures’ moral rejection of him.
Indeed, the God of the Bible directly gets his hands ‘dirty’ by making Adam out of soil: if anyone seeks a ‘method’ by which God created (for those unhappy with his word, obviously), then this is it: he formed man by directly acting upon the clay which he also made.
He is also a God who is close to his creatures and concerned for them: he reaches out to them, and meaningfully, not in some mythic manner that pretends to cross the divide of aeons (which the fictional long ages of modern materialism/deism require), but directly, on a time stage that is comprehensible to human history and experience, that makes the personal the core and provides a setting for the formation of covenant between God and man that we can take into our understanding of historical relationships.
A number of theologically interesting avenues of enquiry may be opened by this past paragraph; however, not for theistic evolution, which has already decided that its god is remote and comparatively uninvolved and whose making of a setting for the relationship and covenant is almost an accident of the machinery of some initial creative conditions. This is more like deistic disinterest than a Christian passion for life and redemption. Theistic evolution thus has trouble instantiating the person from which its whole scheme escapes, in idealist rejection of the very material that was expressly created by God; not their god, who is unimaginably and incomprehensibly far away, but our God, who is in consonance with the circumscription of our history for which he formed the setting, origin and end.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sydney Anglicans' Embarrassing Discovery
I am reliably informed that a couple of decades ago groups of Sydney Anglican clergy and parishioners would troop off to the USA to some large and seemingly Lord blessed Baptist Churches for conferences. What the USA churches thought of Sydney Anglicans is cause for wonder given the theological and moral decline of the USA equivalent of the Anglican Church. Best to leave it that there would likely be some serious suspicion.
Anyway, one of the Baptist Churches attended was Grace Baptist Church, Los Angeles, pastored by John MacArthur jnr. Whether the subject came up during the conferences, I am not sure, but if John MacArthur jnr had been given the opportunity to speak on the matter of origins I am confident he would have caused distress to most Sydney Anglicans present.
I provide herewith an extract of a sermon given by John MacArthur jnr in later years. Let there be no doubt, this sermon, if delivered in the hearing of most Sydney Anglicans would have had them quivering and looking for the next flight out of LA.
"Now when you talk about origins you're going to have to go back to Genesis. This is a book of origins. And let me put it again on the line where I put it last Lord's day. Either you believe Genesis or you don't. It's that simple. Either you believe what Genesis says about all of those origins or you don't. And that would include either you believe the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 or you don't. And if you don't believe the Genesis account, then I just...I have to tell you, you have no hope of coming to the truth. You're not going to discover it. Unconverted scientists aren't going to discover it. You either believe Genesis or you don't.
And what is really intolerable is to say you believe the Bible but not just the Genesis creation account. You believe Genesis, you believe about the origin of sin, you believe chapter 3 on maybe. Or maybe you're not sure about that because you don't really believe there was an actual Adam and an actual Eve. You've got a small problem because, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive," and there was a real Christ, so you can be sure there was a real Adam. But just in case you don't believe in a real Adam, maybe you don't sign on until chapter 6, maybe you just believe the Flood. Well, maybe you don't believe that, maybe you believe when the Tower of Babel is described later on in chapter 11, or maybe you don't believe that. Maybe you don't check in until Abraham shows up in chapter 12. Pretty ridiculous, isn't it? Who are you to be sitting in judgment on Scripture?
You know, I'm never going to get caught in the trap of trying to prove to you that Genesis is true by science. I'm just going to proclaim to you what Genesis says and let science bow its knee to that explanation. As you will see, it will do that.
All you can know about how God created is what He said. That's all you can know. And if you don't believe what He said about creation, what kind of precedent have you established for the rest of the Bible?
And what about the end? Do you know how all of redemptive history ends? You know how the whole story of humanity ends? It ends according to 2 Peter when the Lord uncreates the universe, I like to use that word. The elements melt with fervent heat. There's some kind of a...literally an implosion as the nuclear structure, the atomic structure of the universe literally is totally turned against its existence and takes it right back out of existence when He uncreates, when the elements melt as with a fervent heat in that kind of nuclear holocaust that ends human history.
And immediately after that it says in Revelation that He creates a...what? A new heaven and a new earth. Let me ask you this, do you believe He can do that? Or is that going to be another umpteen billion years of evolutionary process to get the new heaven and the new earth cranked up? Is it going to take billions of years to evolve the new heaven and the new earth, or do you really believe God might be able to do that just by fiat, just by making the statement and calling it into existence? If you believe that, then what's your problem in Genesis?
If God can wipe the entire universe out in a split second, if He can dissolve the whole thing, if He can send it reeling in the time of the Tribulation and refurbish it during the time of the Kingdom and then totally uncreate it at the end of the thousand years, if He can do all of that then I don't know why you have a problem with Him creating it all in six days. You see, the implications of rejecting the account of Genesis are profound.
And listen to me because what I'm going to say is very important. It is not necessary to reject the six-day creation. It is not necessary. We have yielded up territory to evolution without cause. Science knows nothing. Science proves nothing that contradicts a six-day creation...nothing. In fact, science as it keeps advancing makes its own claims to evolution ridiculous, more ridiculous all the time.
You know, and having a perspective on this is very important. We've caved in to the scientists too long and it's time to stop. If you want to do some reading on this, get Philip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial, it just devastates the scientific perspectives. Christian people literally accepting the scientific descriptions of origins and come out of an evolutionary bias as if somehow they've been proven and somehow the Bible is going to have to give at that point because a six-day creation is not scientifically possible. That is just not true. But the results are staggering.
Master's College, for example, is a member of the Christian College Coalition. It's a coalition of Christian colleges across America of which there are about 110 colleges. Of the 110 Christian colleges in the coalition, six that we know of believe in the creation account in Genesis. Six out of 110 Christian colleges, that's a small, small fraction. And most Christian leaders and most Christian educators have allowed the teachings of evolution to one degree or another to be added to the Bible. They sort of stuff evolution in between the verses in Genesis. Most Christian leaders have accepted the fact that the universe is billions of years old. Yet clearly from the words of Scripture, God created the universe in six literal days. And Christian leaders can't deny that that's what it says cause that's what it says. You can translate it any way you want, it all comes out...the word yom means day and you have six of them.
But they believe somehow that scientists have proved that the age of the earth must be billions and billions and billions of years old. So they believe you've got to go back to Genesis and fix it. And in so doing they have allowed the authority of the Bible to be undermined, right? It's serious stuff.
If the words of the Bible means six days, and you conclude...but so-called science says that's not true...then science is right and the Bible is wrong. Now if you can't trust the words of Genesis, when do you start trusting the Bible? It's a sad indictment of the church, isn't it? And the humanists even use the compromising the Christian leaders to further their cause to undermine Christianity. And what we have is a kind of Christianity today that loses its absolutes in Genesis 1. That's sad.
Christian leaders might not sign on, of course, to humanistic evolution. They would say, "Yes, there's a God and somehow God's involved in the evolutionary process," that's called theistic evolution, sometimes called progressive creationism, a term developed by Russell Mixter(?) in the science department of Wheaten College a number of years ago. But they would say, "No, there is a God and God is...sort of injects Himself at points at theistic evolution." Says, "God launched it and started it." Progressive creationism says, "He jumps in along the way but it still took millions and millions and billions of years for it to happen." These people call themselves believers in God. They probably would say they believe the Scripture. But they don't want to allow for a six-day creation. This poses immense problems...immense problems.
Here's one of them, I'm not going to give you all, but here's one...just strikes me as a serious problem. If man is created at the end of the evolutionary process, whether it's a naturalistic evolutionary process, or it's a theistic evolutionary process launched by God which some Christians think they have to affirm in order to pay homage to science, or if it's a progressive creationists view where God injects Himself along the way, the problem you've got is evolution is a process...listen carefully...evolution is a process by nature of death. It's a process known as the survival of...what?...the fittest. It's a process of violence. It's a process of bloodshed. It's a process of suffering. It's a process of disease. It's a process of death as the order rises higher and higher and higher until it gets to man.
Now here's a serious problem. You don't have man until billions of years and when man appears he is perfect and he is sinless and there's no such thing as death. Death doesn't even come in to the picture until man does...what?...sins. How can you have death before the Fall? You don't even have a cursed earth. The whole...the whole of the Genesis record is stood on its head. If there's been all kinds of death in this billions of years of evolutionary processing, then what did sin do to the world that hadn't already been done? And how could God who looked over this whole evolutionary deal when it finally reached its completion in man and said, "He saw it and He looked at it and He said it is good." How could God say that?
You see, then the sin of Adam and the curse of death is meaningless because there's been death for millennia and for billions of years, just convolutes all of the biblical record. Cause what you have in Genesis is a perfect world until Adam is confronted by the serpent and falls into sin and God curses the universe and then comes death and disease and suffering and violence and bloodshed and not before. Evolution makes no sense in that perspective.
You know, I...Christians will get out there, you know, and they'll say, "Boy, we're against abortion and we're against homosexuality and we're against Jack Kivorkian(?) because he's murdering people and we're against euthanasia and we're against genocide and, you know, we're against the moral evils of our society, etc., etc., etc.
Why are we against those things? Can you tell me why? Why are we against those things? Give me one reason. Here it is, because they're forbidden in Scripture, is that not true? The only reason we're against abortion is because God's against it. How do we know that? Because it's in the Word of God. The reason we're against homosexuality, adultery, etc., etc., is because of the Bible. You see, we stand on the Scripture.
But the problem is we don't want to stand on the Scripture in Genesis. So we equivocate on whether or not the Bible is an authority at all. What do you think the watching world thinks about our commitment to Scripture? Pretty selective, isn't it? And again I say, such capitulation to evolution is completely unnecessary. Nothing requires evolution. In fact, evolution cannot happen...it can't happen."
Enough said. John MacArthur jnr goes on to quote eminent scientist A.E. Wilder-Smith's account of how the evolutionary model fails to adequately explain the emergence of life on earth.
As far as I can tell, Sydney Anglicans no longer attend conferences at Grace Baptist Church, Los Angeles. Is it because John MacArthur jnr's faithfulness to the Word of God is an embarrassment to Sydney Anglicans' worldly view?
Neil
Anyway, one of the Baptist Churches attended was Grace Baptist Church, Los Angeles, pastored by John MacArthur jnr. Whether the subject came up during the conferences, I am not sure, but if John MacArthur jnr had been given the opportunity to speak on the matter of origins I am confident he would have caused distress to most Sydney Anglicans present.
I provide herewith an extract of a sermon given by John MacArthur jnr in later years. Let there be no doubt, this sermon, if delivered in the hearing of most Sydney Anglicans would have had them quivering and looking for the next flight out of LA.
"Now when you talk about origins you're going to have to go back to Genesis. This is a book of origins. And let me put it again on the line where I put it last Lord's day. Either you believe Genesis or you don't. It's that simple. Either you believe what Genesis says about all of those origins or you don't. And that would include either you believe the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 or you don't. And if you don't believe the Genesis account, then I just...I have to tell you, you have no hope of coming to the truth. You're not going to discover it. Unconverted scientists aren't going to discover it. You either believe Genesis or you don't.
And what is really intolerable is to say you believe the Bible but not just the Genesis creation account. You believe Genesis, you believe about the origin of sin, you believe chapter 3 on maybe. Or maybe you're not sure about that because you don't really believe there was an actual Adam and an actual Eve. You've got a small problem because, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive," and there was a real Christ, so you can be sure there was a real Adam. But just in case you don't believe in a real Adam, maybe you don't sign on until chapter 6, maybe you just believe the Flood. Well, maybe you don't believe that, maybe you believe when the Tower of Babel is described later on in chapter 11, or maybe you don't believe that. Maybe you don't check in until Abraham shows up in chapter 12. Pretty ridiculous, isn't it? Who are you to be sitting in judgment on Scripture?
You know, I'm never going to get caught in the trap of trying to prove to you that Genesis is true by science. I'm just going to proclaim to you what Genesis says and let science bow its knee to that explanation. As you will see, it will do that.
All you can know about how God created is what He said. That's all you can know. And if you don't believe what He said about creation, what kind of precedent have you established for the rest of the Bible?
And what about the end? Do you know how all of redemptive history ends? You know how the whole story of humanity ends? It ends according to 2 Peter when the Lord uncreates the universe, I like to use that word. The elements melt with fervent heat. There's some kind of a...literally an implosion as the nuclear structure, the atomic structure of the universe literally is totally turned against its existence and takes it right back out of existence when He uncreates, when the elements melt as with a fervent heat in that kind of nuclear holocaust that ends human history.
And immediately after that it says in Revelation that He creates a...what? A new heaven and a new earth. Let me ask you this, do you believe He can do that? Or is that going to be another umpteen billion years of evolutionary process to get the new heaven and the new earth cranked up? Is it going to take billions of years to evolve the new heaven and the new earth, or do you really believe God might be able to do that just by fiat, just by making the statement and calling it into existence? If you believe that, then what's your problem in Genesis?
If God can wipe the entire universe out in a split second, if He can dissolve the whole thing, if He can send it reeling in the time of the Tribulation and refurbish it during the time of the Kingdom and then totally uncreate it at the end of the thousand years, if He can do all of that then I don't know why you have a problem with Him creating it all in six days. You see, the implications of rejecting the account of Genesis are profound.
And listen to me because what I'm going to say is very important. It is not necessary to reject the six-day creation. It is not necessary. We have yielded up territory to evolution without cause. Science knows nothing. Science proves nothing that contradicts a six-day creation...nothing. In fact, science as it keeps advancing makes its own claims to evolution ridiculous, more ridiculous all the time.
You know, and having a perspective on this is very important. We've caved in to the scientists too long and it's time to stop. If you want to do some reading on this, get Philip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial, it just devastates the scientific perspectives. Christian people literally accepting the scientific descriptions of origins and come out of an evolutionary bias as if somehow they've been proven and somehow the Bible is going to have to give at that point because a six-day creation is not scientifically possible. That is just not true. But the results are staggering.
Master's College, for example, is a member of the Christian College Coalition. It's a coalition of Christian colleges across America of which there are about 110 colleges. Of the 110 Christian colleges in the coalition, six that we know of believe in the creation account in Genesis. Six out of 110 Christian colleges, that's a small, small fraction. And most Christian leaders and most Christian educators have allowed the teachings of evolution to one degree or another to be added to the Bible. They sort of stuff evolution in between the verses in Genesis. Most Christian leaders have accepted the fact that the universe is billions of years old. Yet clearly from the words of Scripture, God created the universe in six literal days. And Christian leaders can't deny that that's what it says cause that's what it says. You can translate it any way you want, it all comes out...the word yom means day and you have six of them.
But they believe somehow that scientists have proved that the age of the earth must be billions and billions and billions of years old. So they believe you've got to go back to Genesis and fix it. And in so doing they have allowed the authority of the Bible to be undermined, right? It's serious stuff.
If the words of the Bible means six days, and you conclude...but so-called science says that's not true...then science is right and the Bible is wrong. Now if you can't trust the words of Genesis, when do you start trusting the Bible? It's a sad indictment of the church, isn't it? And the humanists even use the compromising the Christian leaders to further their cause to undermine Christianity. And what we have is a kind of Christianity today that loses its absolutes in Genesis 1. That's sad.
Christian leaders might not sign on, of course, to humanistic evolution. They would say, "Yes, there's a God and somehow God's involved in the evolutionary process," that's called theistic evolution, sometimes called progressive creationism, a term developed by Russell Mixter(?) in the science department of Wheaten College a number of years ago. But they would say, "No, there is a God and God is...sort of injects Himself at points at theistic evolution." Says, "God launched it and started it." Progressive creationism says, "He jumps in along the way but it still took millions and millions and billions of years for it to happen." These people call themselves believers in God. They probably would say they believe the Scripture. But they don't want to allow for a six-day creation. This poses immense problems...immense problems.
Here's one of them, I'm not going to give you all, but here's one...just strikes me as a serious problem. If man is created at the end of the evolutionary process, whether it's a naturalistic evolutionary process, or it's a theistic evolutionary process launched by God which some Christians think they have to affirm in order to pay homage to science, or if it's a progressive creationists view where God injects Himself along the way, the problem you've got is evolution is a process...listen carefully...evolution is a process by nature of death. It's a process known as the survival of...what?...the fittest. It's a process of violence. It's a process of bloodshed. It's a process of suffering. It's a process of disease. It's a process of death as the order rises higher and higher and higher until it gets to man.
Now here's a serious problem. You don't have man until billions of years and when man appears he is perfect and he is sinless and there's no such thing as death. Death doesn't even come in to the picture until man does...what?...sins. How can you have death before the Fall? You don't even have a cursed earth. The whole...the whole of the Genesis record is stood on its head. If there's been all kinds of death in this billions of years of evolutionary processing, then what did sin do to the world that hadn't already been done? And how could God who looked over this whole evolutionary deal when it finally reached its completion in man and said, "He saw it and He looked at it and He said it is good." How could God say that?
You see, then the sin of Adam and the curse of death is meaningless because there's been death for millennia and for billions of years, just convolutes all of the biblical record. Cause what you have in Genesis is a perfect world until Adam is confronted by the serpent and falls into sin and God curses the universe and then comes death and disease and suffering and violence and bloodshed and not before. Evolution makes no sense in that perspective.
You know, I...Christians will get out there, you know, and they'll say, "Boy, we're against abortion and we're against homosexuality and we're against Jack Kivorkian(?) because he's murdering people and we're against euthanasia and we're against genocide and, you know, we're against the moral evils of our society, etc., etc., etc.
Why are we against those things? Can you tell me why? Why are we against those things? Give me one reason. Here it is, because they're forbidden in Scripture, is that not true? The only reason we're against abortion is because God's against it. How do we know that? Because it's in the Word of God. The reason we're against homosexuality, adultery, etc., etc., is because of the Bible. You see, we stand on the Scripture.
But the problem is we don't want to stand on the Scripture in Genesis. So we equivocate on whether or not the Bible is an authority at all. What do you think the watching world thinks about our commitment to Scripture? Pretty selective, isn't it? And again I say, such capitulation to evolution is completely unnecessary. Nothing requires evolution. In fact, evolution cannot happen...it can't happen."
Enough said. John MacArthur jnr goes on to quote eminent scientist A.E. Wilder-Smith's account of how the evolutionary model fails to adequately explain the emergence of life on earth.
As far as I can tell, Sydney Anglicans no longer attend conferences at Grace Baptist Church, Los Angeles. Is it because John MacArthur jnr's faithfulness to the Word of God is an embarrassment to Sydney Anglicans' worldly view?
Neil
Friday, October 10, 2008
Studies in Genesis 1
An Anglican church on Sydney's North Shore is studying Gen 1. If the sermons are any good, I'll give a link, if not...
But here's the study.
Let's discuss the answers.
1. For starters: How does our worldview/culture 'change' the way in which we interpret and understand texts?
2. Read Genesis 1:1-2
What was there before creation? How is creation initiatied?
3. What state of creation is verse 2 explaining? How does it help us understand God's creating as an ordered process?
4. Read Genesis 1:1-25
Looking through each of the 6 days of creation how do we see the following pattern repeated:
-+ An announcement: "God said"
-+ An imperative: "Let there be"
-+ A report: "and it was so"
-+ An evaluation: "And God saw that it was..."
5. What does this pattern tell us of the importance of God's word in creation?
6. What does this pattern tell us of God's involvement and purpose in creation? Is he pleased with it? Is it good?
7. How do the following days seem to correspond to each other in the creation process (what is created in each and what relationship do they have):
-+ 7a. Days 1 and 4
-+ 7b. Days 2 and 5
-+ 7c. Days 3 and 6
8. How does this relationship between the days answer the problem in vs. 2 of the earth being 'formless and empty'?
9. What picture of God begins to emerge in Genesis 1? How might this stand against current 'pictures' of God?
10. To discuss: What is the purpose of Genesis 1? How does our worldview help or hinder the way in which we read and interpret it?
But here's the study.
Let's discuss the answers.
1. For starters: How does our worldview/culture 'change' the way in which we interpret and understand texts?
2. Read Genesis 1:1-2
What was there before creation? How is creation initiatied?
3. What state of creation is verse 2 explaining? How does it help us understand God's creating as an ordered process?
4. Read Genesis 1:1-25
Looking through each of the 6 days of creation how do we see the following pattern repeated:
-+ An announcement: "God said"
-+ An imperative: "Let there be"
-+ A report: "and it was so"
-+ An evaluation: "And God saw that it was..."
5. What does this pattern tell us of the importance of God's word in creation?
6. What does this pattern tell us of God's involvement and purpose in creation? Is he pleased with it? Is it good?
7. How do the following days seem to correspond to each other in the creation process (what is created in each and what relationship do they have):
-+ 7a. Days 1 and 4
-+ 7b. Days 2 and 5
-+ 7c. Days 3 and 6
8. How does this relationship between the days answer the problem in vs. 2 of the earth being 'formless and empty'?
9. What picture of God begins to emerge in Genesis 1? How might this stand against current 'pictures' of God?
10. To discuss: What is the purpose of Genesis 1? How does our worldview help or hinder the way in which we read and interpret it?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Philosopher speaks
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Nothing new under the sun
We might think the debate over the age of the earth is modern, attended by the weight and prestige of science on the one hand, and ancient texts on the other.
Ne'er so far from the truth.
From an article in Creation magazine 30(4), the current issue (Sept 08) "Evolution: an ancient pagan idea"
"The early church fathers constantly argued with the pagans about the age of the earth, or about the age of civilization. They were unanimous that God had created the earth less than 6,000 years before they wrote. For example...Augustine (AD 354-430), in his most famous work. City of God, has a whole chapter, Of the Falseness of the History Which Alots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past, where he says:
"Let us, then, omit the conjextures of men who know not what they say, wheh they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. ...They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed."
The article then goes on to catalogue the very ancient times given to the earth by pagans.
It seems to me that the function of giving super long ages to earth history either sets out to, or merely actually achieves one single thing: it puts real contemplation of origins, and therefore genetic connection with God, so far in the past as to be meaningless; lost in the vagueness of unimaginable periods of time. The pagans finally end up with endless cycles of history that render us purposeless pawns in time's dust, with the only connection being ultimate oblivion to join the great roll of senseless time. Precisely the same end that materialism, with its modern long ages, has for us.
That the church connives at this hopelessness is surprising to say the least; betraying a lack of historical sense ironic, if nothing else, in a faith that is historical.
The counter of course, is that the Bible goes against this and connects us in comprehendible history to our creation, and therefore, makes a link for us with our creator; a link that the Holy Spirit frequently reminds us of, when the scriptures declare that God is our creator (referring of course, to the only account of creation in Genesis 1). Inserting eons of time between our creator's act and our history destroys the connection. For the materialist, it pretends to give an impersonal cause to our being, denying any role for a 'god' in our origin or life. The disconnect is fatal, and renders God more a figment than a friend.
Ne'er so far from the truth.
From an article in Creation magazine 30(4), the current issue (Sept 08) "Evolution: an ancient pagan idea"
"The early church fathers constantly argued with the pagans about the age of the earth, or about the age of civilization. They were unanimous that God had created the earth less than 6,000 years before they wrote. For example...Augustine (AD 354-430), in his most famous work. City of God, has a whole chapter, Of the Falseness of the History Which Alots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past, where he says:
"Let us, then, omit the conjextures of men who know not what they say, wheh they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. ...They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed."
The article then goes on to catalogue the very ancient times given to the earth by pagans.
It seems to me that the function of giving super long ages to earth history either sets out to, or merely actually achieves one single thing: it puts real contemplation of origins, and therefore genetic connection with God, so far in the past as to be meaningless; lost in the vagueness of unimaginable periods of time. The pagans finally end up with endless cycles of history that render us purposeless pawns in time's dust, with the only connection being ultimate oblivion to join the great roll of senseless time. Precisely the same end that materialism, with its modern long ages, has for us.
That the church connives at this hopelessness is surprising to say the least; betraying a lack of historical sense ironic, if nothing else, in a faith that is historical.
The counter of course, is that the Bible goes against this and connects us in comprehendible history to our creation, and therefore, makes a link for us with our creator; a link that the Holy Spirit frequently reminds us of, when the scriptures declare that God is our creator (referring of course, to the only account of creation in Genesis 1). Inserting eons of time between our creator's act and our history destroys the connection. For the materialist, it pretends to give an impersonal cause to our being, denying any role for a 'god' in our origin or life. The disconnect is fatal, and renders God more a figment than a friend.
Friday, September 5, 2008
A Roman Catholic view
This page from the Kolbe Centre for the Study of Creation is worth a look. It is a defense of the traditional doctrine of creation (TDC...good abbreviation).
Thursday, August 14, 2008
SOMETHING ROTTEN IN GAFCON
The reading of the Jerusalem Declaration at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in June this year was "greeted with enthusiastic applause and an outpouring of emotion that was truly remarkable." So the August 2008 edition of the Sydney Anglican newspaper "Southern Cross' described the occasion. Our Sydney Diocese was strongly represented at the conference.
At last some future was seen for Anglicanism worldwide. A solution was offered to those pesky Archbishops and Bishops of the Anglican Communion who were acquiescing the culture of the world (and not the Word of God) by ordaining practicing homosexuals.
So there we were, the Sydney Anglican Diocese, expressing our assent to the 14 points of The Jerusalem Declaration, standing there shoulder to shoulder with other evangelicals of worldwide Anglicanism, our Archbishop delighting in it all.
But, we were imposters, wolves in sheep's clothing.
Look no further than Point 2 of the Jerusalem Declaration which, according to "Southern Cross", reads: "We believe the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading."
What? What was that again ... "The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading."
Again and again on this blogspot Biblical Creationists have asserted the plain reading of Genesis 1, its integrity with other canonised Scripture and the church's historic and consensual reading of Genesis 1 (up to the 19th Century). Yet again and again apologists for the 'Name' of the Diocese have come on here urging a-historical, intricate even mystical reading of Genesis 1 - all designed to harmonise Scripture, or more specifically Genesis 1, with the culture of the world.
HYPOCRITES, HYPOCRITES, WHITE WASHED TOMBS!!!
Neil Moore
At last some future was seen for Anglicanism worldwide. A solution was offered to those pesky Archbishops and Bishops of the Anglican Communion who were acquiescing the culture of the world (and not the Word of God) by ordaining practicing homosexuals.
So there we were, the Sydney Anglican Diocese, expressing our assent to the 14 points of The Jerusalem Declaration, standing there shoulder to shoulder with other evangelicals of worldwide Anglicanism, our Archbishop delighting in it all.
But, we were imposters, wolves in sheep's clothing.
Look no further than Point 2 of the Jerusalem Declaration which, according to "Southern Cross", reads: "We believe the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading."
What? What was that again ... "The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading."
Again and again on this blogspot Biblical Creationists have asserted the plain reading of Genesis 1, its integrity with other canonised Scripture and the church's historic and consensual reading of Genesis 1 (up to the 19th Century). Yet again and again apologists for the 'Name' of the Diocese have come on here urging a-historical, intricate even mystical reading of Genesis 1 - all designed to harmonise Scripture, or more specifically Genesis 1, with the culture of the world.
HYPOCRITES, HYPOCRITES, WHITE WASHED TOMBS!!!
Neil Moore
Sunday, July 6, 2008
"When Your Number Is Up" or "Sydney Episcopalian Diocese Set to Deny Physical Birth of Jesus Christ".
It's interesting what you find when you delve back through your collection of books amassed over decades of Christian life. Sometimes you can't remember from where you purchased a particular book and why you purchased it.
Well such was the circumstance when I found a book in my cupboard written by F.C. Payne as the 14th edition in 1978. The book is called "The Seal of God". In his book, the author goes into much detail about the significance of numbers in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The author presents his case that the high concentration of number sequences in both the Hebrew and Greek testify to the Divine inspiration of Scripture and the utilization of various authors over more than a millennium and who, by separation of time, could not have contrived their writings to present such unity of number sequences. I don't know the theology of F.C. Payne and I have not, in the past, made use of his propositions in my theology. I do note now, though, that nowhere does he deny the historicity of Scripture because of number sequences etc contained therein.
Contrast Payne's position with that of John Dickson and his disciples in the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese. These folk see number sequences, in particular the recurrence of the number seven (7), and automatically their brain slips into autodrive repeating "ahistorical", "ahistorical".
Well, in the sight of F.C Payne at least, for John Dickson and his disciples to be thoroughly consistent in their theology they must dismiss the wealth of historical narrative of Scripture widely accepted by the Church.
For example, the ministry of John the Baptist recorded in Mark 1: 1-8 and in John must, be rejected as history because of its overuse of the number seven (7). F.C. Payne provides the following:
"The words number 126 (18-7's)
And the syllables are 294 (42-7's)
The words in the vocabulary number 77 (sum 14) (11-7's)
The letters in the vocabulary number 427 (61-7's)
The vowels in the 427 letters are 224 (32-7's)
The consonants 203 (29-7's)
The vocabulary words used by John are 21 (3-7's)
Which leaves 56 (8-7's)
Those beginning with a vowel are 42 (6-7's)
Those beginning with a consonant 35 (5-7's)"
Payne also applies his mind to the birth of Christ recorded in Matthew 1: 18-25:
"The number of Greek words is exactly 161 (23-7's)
The numeric value of these is exactly 93,394 (13,342-7's)
The number of vocabulary words is exactly 77 (11-7's)
The numeric value of these is exactly 51,247 (7,321-7's)
Here we have a perfect, double, interlocked design covering every word and letter,which must remain constant, whilst the following designs are woven into it, and not a single letter can be altered:
There are six Greek words which are found nowhere else in Matt.
Their numeric value is exactly 5,005 (715-7's)
These six Greek words have exactly 56 letters (8-7's)
Now the first two verses, a natural division, (6-7's)
having exactly 42 words leaving 119 (17-7's)
The last verse, another natural division,
has exactly 14 words (2-7's)
leaving 147 (3-7's of 7's)
Again, the 161 words occur in 105 forms (15-7's)
The numeric value of these forms is exactly 65,429 (9,347-7's)
In these 105 forms are exactly 35 verbs (5-7's)
There are exactly 7 Proper names (7)
The number of letters in these 7 names is exactly 42 (6-7's)
There is one word 'Emanuel' used nowhere else
in the N.T.; its numeric value is 644 (92-7's)
The sum of its figures is 14 (2-7's)
Their numeric value is exactly 8,715 (1,245-7's)
Now we have another remarkable occurrence.
The angel speaks to Joseph, and although his words
form another pattern of their own, they fit exactly
into the whole!
In speaking to Joseph the angel uses of the 77 vocabulary
words exactly 28 (4-7's)
The numeric value of all the angel's words is
exactly 21,042 (3,006-7's)
The angel uses exactly 35 forms (5-7's)
These 35 forms have exactly 168 letters (24-7's)
The numeric value of these letters is
exactly 19,397 (2,771-7's)
Now the angel in using exactly 28 of the
vocabulary words leaves exactly 49 (7-7's)
In using exactly 35 forms he leaves exactly 70 (10-7's)
The sum of the figures 70 is 7, and its factors
7 + 2 + 5 is 14 (2-7's)
This by no means exhausts the passage but enough has been
shown here to show us that the design in it is not there by chance."
In light of the stance taken by John Dickson and his disciples on Genesis 1 - its high usage of the number 7 - and their subsequent consigning of this passage of Scripture to the category "ahistory", they must naturally reject the birth history of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But, "No!" I hear you say, "Because, the other gospel accounts testify to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ." Nay, Nay, I say because John Dickson and his disciples have introduced an anti-Reformation methodology for interpreting Scripture. They will not allow Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17 help interpret Genesis 1 so they cannot allow the other gospel accounts to help interpret the circumstance of the appearance of Jesus Christ on earth, let alone in human form.
This dog's breakfast theology is set to drive the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese into oblivion. Take warning!
Sam
Well such was the circumstance when I found a book in my cupboard written by F.C. Payne as the 14th edition in 1978. The book is called "The Seal of God". In his book, the author goes into much detail about the significance of numbers in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The author presents his case that the high concentration of number sequences in both the Hebrew and Greek testify to the Divine inspiration of Scripture and the utilization of various authors over more than a millennium and who, by separation of time, could not have contrived their writings to present such unity of number sequences. I don't know the theology of F.C. Payne and I have not, in the past, made use of his propositions in my theology. I do note now, though, that nowhere does he deny the historicity of Scripture because of number sequences etc contained therein.
Contrast Payne's position with that of John Dickson and his disciples in the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese. These folk see number sequences, in particular the recurrence of the number seven (7), and automatically their brain slips into autodrive repeating "ahistorical", "ahistorical".
Well, in the sight of F.C Payne at least, for John Dickson and his disciples to be thoroughly consistent in their theology they must dismiss the wealth of historical narrative of Scripture widely accepted by the Church.
For example, the ministry of John the Baptist recorded in Mark 1: 1-8 and in John must, be rejected as history because of its overuse of the number seven (7). F.C. Payne provides the following:
"The words number 126 (18-7's)
And the syllables are 294 (42-7's)
The words in the vocabulary number 77 (sum 14) (11-7's)
The letters in the vocabulary number 427 (61-7's)
The vowels in the 427 letters are 224 (32-7's)
The consonants 203 (29-7's)
The vocabulary words used by John are 21 (3-7's)
Which leaves 56 (8-7's)
Those beginning with a vowel are 42 (6-7's)
Those beginning with a consonant 35 (5-7's)"
Payne also applies his mind to the birth of Christ recorded in Matthew 1: 18-25:
"The number of Greek words is exactly 161 (23-7's)
The numeric value of these is exactly 93,394 (13,342-7's)
The number of vocabulary words is exactly 77 (11-7's)
The numeric value of these is exactly 51,247 (7,321-7's)
Here we have a perfect, double, interlocked design covering every word and letter,which must remain constant, whilst the following designs are woven into it, and not a single letter can be altered:
There are six Greek words which are found nowhere else in Matt.
Their numeric value is exactly 5,005 (715-7's)
These six Greek words have exactly 56 letters (8-7's)
Now the first two verses, a natural division, (6-7's)
having exactly 42 words leaving 119 (17-7's)
The last verse, another natural division,
has exactly 14 words (2-7's)
leaving 147 (3-7's of 7's)
Again, the 161 words occur in 105 forms (15-7's)
The numeric value of these forms is exactly 65,429 (9,347-7's)
In these 105 forms are exactly 35 verbs (5-7's)
There are exactly 7 Proper names (7)
The number of letters in these 7 names is exactly 42 (6-7's)
There is one word 'Emanuel' used nowhere else
in the N.T.; its numeric value is 644 (92-7's)
The sum of its figures is 14 (2-7's)
Their numeric value is exactly 8,715 (1,245-7's)
Now we have another remarkable occurrence.
The angel speaks to Joseph, and although his words
form another pattern of their own, they fit exactly
into the whole!
In speaking to Joseph the angel uses of the 77 vocabulary
words exactly 28 (4-7's)
The numeric value of all the angel's words is
exactly 21,042 (3,006-7's)
The angel uses exactly 35 forms (5-7's)
These 35 forms have exactly 168 letters (24-7's)
The numeric value of these letters is
exactly 19,397 (2,771-7's)
Now the angel in using exactly 28 of the
vocabulary words leaves exactly 49 (7-7's)
In using exactly 35 forms he leaves exactly 70 (10-7's)
The sum of the figures 70 is 7, and its factors
7 + 2 + 5 is 14 (2-7's)
This by no means exhausts the passage but enough has been
shown here to show us that the design in it is not there by chance."
In light of the stance taken by John Dickson and his disciples on Genesis 1 - its high usage of the number 7 - and their subsequent consigning of this passage of Scripture to the category "ahistory", they must naturally reject the birth history of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But, "No!" I hear you say, "Because, the other gospel accounts testify to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ." Nay, Nay, I say because John Dickson and his disciples have introduced an anti-Reformation methodology for interpreting Scripture. They will not allow Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17 help interpret Genesis 1 so they cannot allow the other gospel accounts to help interpret the circumstance of the appearance of Jesus Christ on earth, let alone in human form.
This dog's breakfast theology is set to drive the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese into oblivion. Take warning!
Sam
Friday, July 4, 2008
Bavinck: In the Beginning...book extracts
I’ve just finished reading “In the Beginning” by Bavinck. Bavinck was a well regarded reformed theologian, Dutch, working in late 19C. This book is an extract from his 4 volume systematic theology.
It’s fascinating to read theology that interacts with the concerns of the time, as Bavinck does, so some interesting reflections on science as it was then, and its controversies.
Bavinck was not strict on Genesian ‘days’ being ordinary days. I don’t think that he considered a day to be several millennia, but days 1, 2 and 3 of creation were treated differently by him. He also made the comment that day 6 seemed to have a lot happening…but that’s an arbitrary objection, I think, and really a pretty silly basis for evaluating what Scripture clearly lays before us.
On the other hand, he offers lots of thoughts about creation and its theological significance. I’ve provided some quotes below, with page numbers noted. He treats Darwinism extensively, but I’ve not included extracts of that here. I suggest there is rich food for thought in the connections that run between pantheism, deism, materialism and theistic evolution that Bavinck suggests.
His observations on ‘time’ are fascinating and he gives interesting contemporary information on how the idea of an old earth originated in modern times with the need to accommodate evolutionary fairy tales. The long ages required for evolution were not at the time supported by geologists and others, who saw things very differently: a great example of cultural pressure driving ‘scientific’ consensus as the age of the earth extended to keep up with evolutionary requirements (I’d note that even the current ‘age’ is insufficient given Haldane’s Dilemma.
My comments are in [brackets].
33
Materialism, however, cannot accept a prime mover existing independently of matter. So the materialist has no choice but to also declare absolute and eternal (like the atom) motion, change or with Czolbe, even this existing world.
56
A Creation-Based Worldview
Pantheism attempts to explain the world dynamically; materialism attempts to do so mechanically…In both systems an unconscious blind fate is elevated to the throne of the universe. Both fail to appreciate the riches and diversity of the world, erase the boundaries between heaven and earth, matter and spirit, soul and body, man and animal, intellect and will, time and eternity, Creator and creature, being and nonbeing, and dissolve all distinctions in a bath of deadly uniformity. Both deny the existence of a conscious purpose and cannot point to a cause or a destiny for the existence of the world and its history.
Scripture’s worldview is radically different. From the beginning heaven and earth have been distinct. Everything was created with a nature of its own and rests in ordinances established by God. Sun, moon, and stars have their own unique task; plants, animals, and humans are distinct in nature. There is the most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation of both diversity and unity is in God…Here is a unity that does not destroy [in contrast to all monism] but maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity but rather unfolds it in its riches.
[Thus, in biblical creation we have a worldview that defeats reductionist numbing of diversity into a lesser monistic ‘truth’ of all having ‘emerged’ from the one. Such notions make diversity somehow fraudulent, not real, because what is real is the ‘one’. Whereas God has given us genuine diversity as his creation has come from his hand in splendid multiplicity, where there is relationship, but true difference. The many has come from the ‘one’ not by mechanical or mystical emergency, but by thought and will shaped by love.
By extension, biotic diversity is similarly a genuine diversity: it all shares a maker, and a life ’language’ and systems. Evolutionary thinking eliminates true diversity and for Christians, theistic evolution directly denies Genesis 1: 9 and 20-24, where we are told explicitly and repeatedly (with inescapable emphasis) that plants and animals are made to reproduce after their kind: separation is built in, unlike evolution, where separation has putatively, emerged, as something mechanically inherent and not devised in love. Evolution, of course, has no place for love…it is just a machine]
58
Augustine states that all things are distinct in mode, species [this does not mean modern biological species], number, degree, and order. And precisely by these qualities they bring about that world, that universe, in which God, in his good pleasure, distributes good things, and which on that account is a manifestation of his perfections. For all that diversity can only be attributed to God, not to the merits of his creatures. “There is no nature even among the least and lowest of beats that he did not fashion…the properties without which nothing can either be or be conceived.”
59
As a result of this worldview Christianity has overcome both the contempt of nature [better: creation] and its deification. In paganism a human being does not stand in the right relationship to God and therefore not to the world either. Similarly in pantheism and materialism the relation of human beings to nature is fundamentally corrupted. One moment man considers himself infinitely superior to nature and believes that it no longer has any secrets for him. The next moment he experiences nature as a dark and mysterious power that he does not understand, whose riddles he cannot solve, and form whose power he cannot free himself. Intellectualism and mysticism alternate. Unbelief makes way for superstition and materialism turns into occultism….Here, accordingly there is room for love and admiration of nature, but all deification is excluded. Here a human being is placed in the right relation to the world because he has been put in the right relation to God. For that reason also creation is the fundamental dogma: throughout Scripture it is in the foreground and is the foundation stone on which the Old and New Covenants rest.
Finally, this doctrine rules out an egoistic theology and a false optimism. Certainly there is an element of truth in the view that all things exist for the sake of man, or rather for the sake of humanity, the church of Christ…But that humanity has its ultimate purpose, along with all other creatures, in the glorification of God. To that all things are subordinate.
102
For, according to Genesis, all the creatures which were brought forth in those six days…did not emerge by immanent forces in accordance with fixed laws from the available matter in the manner of evolution. That matter was in itself powerless to produce all this solely in the way of natural progression by immanent development. In itself it did not have the capacity for it; it only possessed a capacity for obedience. From the primary matter of Genesis 1:1, God, by speaking and creating, brought forth the entire cosmos. While in every new act of formation he linked up with what already existed, the higher phase did not solely proceed by an immanent force from the lower. At every stage a creating word of God’s omnipotence was needed.
[He then goes on to criticise Herder’s separation of the work of creation into “two ternaries”…foreshadowing as it did the ‘framework hypothesis’…but sees the six days as representing days of ‘separation’ followed by days of ‘adornment’ with a general progression from “a lower level to a higher level, from the general conditions for organics life to this organic life itself in its various forms.”]
Influence of ANE myths (97f)
The derivation of the creation story from the land of the Tigris and Euphrates therefore is only a small part of this pan-Babylonianism. What we are dealing with here is not an isolated instance, but a general intellectual trend which, after the literary-critical school had displayed its impotence, attempted to explain the problem of the Bible along religious-historical lines. [Then discussion of historical and linguistic questions]…But upon a careful reading none of these passages yields virtually any ground for the assertion that belief in creation in Israel still in many respects bears a mythological character. For, in the first place, it cannot be denied that these representations serve to describe very different things…Second, when these words are used as descriptions of natural powers, they never in Scripture refer to the natural power that the Babylonian creation story introduces as Tiammat…But we are nowhere told that at the creation there was a natural power opposed to God which he had to overcome.
120
But when Scripture, from its own perspective precisely as the book of religion, comes in contact with other sciences and also sheds its light on them, it does not all at once cease to be the Word of God but remains the Word. Even when it speaks about the genesis of heaven and earth, it does not present saga or myth or poetic fantasy but offers, in accordance with its own clear intent, history, the history that deserves credence and trust. And for that reason Christian theology, with only a few exceptions, continued to hold onto the literal historical view of the creation story. [Remember, he writes in late 1800s]
147
There is no advantage for people to say that it is better to be a highly developed animal than a fallen human. The theory of the animal ancestry of humans violates the image of God in man and degrades the human into an image of the orang-utan and chimpanzee. From the standpoint of evolution humanity as the image of God cannot be maintained. The theory of evolution forces us to return to creation as Scripture presents it to us.
The Age of Humanity
In connection with the theory of the origin of man the doctrine of evolution also tends to conflict with Scripture in regard to the age, the unity and the original abode of the human race. Great age was attributed to the human race by many peoples, including the Japanese, the East Indians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, who spoke of several world ages and of myriads and hundreds of thousands of years. Modern anthropology has from time to time returned to these fabulous figures but is no more consistent than pagan mythology; it ranges between 10,000 and 500,000 years and more.
In recent years there is a general tendency to observe greater moderation in calculating the age of the earth and humanity. Darwin, of course, demanded an incalculable number of years to allow for the origination of species by minute changes, for if evolution never proceeded faster than it does now, the origin of life and of every type of organism required an extraordinarily long time. When scientists began to compute, consistently with this theory of evolution, how long it would take for the human eye to develop from a tiny spot of pigment and for the brains of animals to develop from an original ganglion, they automatically arrived at immensely long times, which had to be multiplied a number of times for the duration of all of life on earth. Some of them along with Darwin himself in the first edition of his Origin of Species therefore came to a figure of 300 million years for the age of life on earth and the majority used even higher figures.
But gradually physicists and geologists began to register objections to these figures. They themselves began to calculate, attempting in various ways and by various methods to estimate the age of the earth, the ocean, the moon, and the sun. And although they differed among themselves over millions of years, still the time they assumed for that age was generally much shorter than that demanded by biologists. They spoke at most of 80 or 100 million, and sometimes went down as low as 10 re 20 million years—and as is clear from this difference, the calculation is again highly uncertain and subject to modification at a moment’s notice—it is self evident that the origin of life and humanity is much less remote…Of more value for that determination of the age of the human race are the chronological data that are furnished us by the history and monuments of different peoples…[a number of authors are then cited with ages within the biblical range and he discusses a number of factors that point to a recent age for the human race…]
165
This view then unwittingly prompts them to accept the theory of evolution, according to which the essence of man is situated not in what he was or is but in what he, in an endless process of development and by his own exertions, may become. Paradise lies ahead, not behind us. An evolved ape deserves preference over a fallen human. Original bearing the image of an orang-utan and chimpanzee, man gradually pulled himself up from a state of raw brutishness to that of a noble humanity.
It hardly needs saying that Holy Scripture is diametrically opposed to this theory of evolution. Christian churches, almost unanimously rejected the naturalistic Pelagian view of the image of God and man’s original state. Aside from the arguments for the Darwinian hypothesis…there are actually no direct historical proofs for the animal state…as far as we go back in history we find a condition of relatively high levels of civilization…
237
The Problem of Pantheism
Pantheism knows of no distinction between and the being of the world and—idealistically—lets the world be swallowed up in God or—materialistically—lets God be swallowed up in the world. On that position there is no room for the [act of] creation and therefore no room, in the real sense, for preservation and government. Providence then coincides with the course of nature. The laws of nature are identical with the decrees of God, and the rule of God is nothing other than “the fixed and immutable order of nature” or “the concatenation of natural things.” On that view there is no room for miracle, the self-activity of secondary causes, personality, freedom, prayer, sin, and religion as a whole. While pantheism may present itself in ever so beautiful and seductive a form, it actually takes its adherents back into the embrace of a pagan fate. On its premises there is no other existence than the existence of nature; no higher power than that which operates in the world in accordance with iron-clad law; no other and better life than that for which the materialism are present in the visible creation. For a time people may flatter themselves with the idealistic hope that the world will perfect itself by an immanent series of developments, but soon this optimism turns into pessimism, this idealism into materialism.
Over against this pantheism it was the task of Christian theology to maintain the distinction between creation and preservation, the self-activity of secondary causes, the freedom of personality, the character of sin, the truth of religion. It did this by rejecting fate and by clearly elucidating the confession of God’s providence in distinction from it. The distinguishing feature of the theory of fate is not that all that exists and occurs in time is grounded and determined in God’s eternal counsel, but the idea that all existence and occurrence is determined by a power which coincides with the world and which, apart from any consciousness and will, determines all things thought blind necessity. According to Cicero, the fate of the Stoa was “an order and series of causes with one cause producing another from within itself.” A further distinction made was that between a mathematical or astral fate when events on earth were thought to be determined by the stars and a natural fate when they were deemed to be determined by the nexus of nature. It is in this latter form that the theory of fate presently appears in pantheism and materialism…Belief in fate, after all, proceeded from the idea that all things happen as a result of an irresistible blind force having neither consciousness nor will and those events were called fatalia which happen apart form the will of God and men by the necessity of a certain order.
239
The Problem of Deism
On the other side of this spectrum stands Deism, which separates God and the world. This position is one which, in total or in part, separates the creatures, once they have then created, from God and then, again in larger or smaller part, it allows them to exist and function on their own power, a power received at the time of creation. Deism thus basically revives the pagan theory of chance. ..
The period beginning in the middle of the seventeenth century was marked by a powerful effort to emancipate nature, world, humanity, science, and so forth from God and to make them self-reliant in relation to him, to Christianity, church, and theology. In this respect latitudinarianism, Deism, rationalism, and the Enlightenment were all in agreement. This is the best of all possible worlds; humanity endowed with intellect and will, is self-sufficient; natural law, the forces of nature, natural religion, and natural morality together comprise a reserve of energies with which God endowed the world at the creation and which are now entirely adequate for its existence and development. Revelation, prophecy, miracles, and grace are totally redundant. Deism did not deny the existence of God, nor creation or providence. On the contrary, it loved to refer to the “Supreme Being” and discoursed at length on providence. But there was no longer any vitality in this belief. Deism in principle denied that God worked in creation in any way other than in accordance with and through the laws and forces of nature. Thus it was, from the outset, antisupranaturalistic. Preservation was enough; a kind of cooperation or divine influx operative along with every act of a creature was unnecessary.
In its eighteenth-century form, this deism indeed belongs to the paste. But in substance in both theory and practice it still holds sway in wide circles. Since, especially in the present century [19th], our knowledge of nature has greatly expanded and the stability of its laws has been recognized, many people are inclined to separate nature in its pitiless and unchanging character from God’s government to let it rest independently in itself…
242
Deism is essentially irreligious. For the Deist the salvation of humanity consists not in communion with God but in separation from him. The Deist’s mind is at ease only in detachment from God, that is, if he can be a practical atheist…In principle Deism is always the same: it deactivates God…Especially today, now that everyone is so deeply convinced of the stability of the natural order, there is no room in it for chance, and Deism again falls back into the embrace of ancient fate while chance is mainly reserved for the domain of religious and ethical concerns. But the doctrine of chance is no better than that of fate…chance and fortune are un-Christian through and through.
It’s fascinating to read theology that interacts with the concerns of the time, as Bavinck does, so some interesting reflections on science as it was then, and its controversies.
Bavinck was not strict on Genesian ‘days’ being ordinary days. I don’t think that he considered a day to be several millennia, but days 1, 2 and 3 of creation were treated differently by him. He also made the comment that day 6 seemed to have a lot happening…but that’s an arbitrary objection, I think, and really a pretty silly basis for evaluating what Scripture clearly lays before us.
On the other hand, he offers lots of thoughts about creation and its theological significance. I’ve provided some quotes below, with page numbers noted. He treats Darwinism extensively, but I’ve not included extracts of that here. I suggest there is rich food for thought in the connections that run between pantheism, deism, materialism and theistic evolution that Bavinck suggests.
His observations on ‘time’ are fascinating and he gives interesting contemporary information on how the idea of an old earth originated in modern times with the need to accommodate evolutionary fairy tales. The long ages required for evolution were not at the time supported by geologists and others, who saw things very differently: a great example of cultural pressure driving ‘scientific’ consensus as the age of the earth extended to keep up with evolutionary requirements (I’d note that even the current ‘age’ is insufficient given Haldane’s Dilemma.
My comments are in [brackets].
33
Materialism, however, cannot accept a prime mover existing independently of matter. So the materialist has no choice but to also declare absolute and eternal (like the atom) motion, change or with Czolbe, even this existing world.
56
A Creation-Based Worldview
Pantheism attempts to explain the world dynamically; materialism attempts to do so mechanically…In both systems an unconscious blind fate is elevated to the throne of the universe. Both fail to appreciate the riches and diversity of the world, erase the boundaries between heaven and earth, matter and spirit, soul and body, man and animal, intellect and will, time and eternity, Creator and creature, being and nonbeing, and dissolve all distinctions in a bath of deadly uniformity. Both deny the existence of a conscious purpose and cannot point to a cause or a destiny for the existence of the world and its history.
Scripture’s worldview is radically different. From the beginning heaven and earth have been distinct. Everything was created with a nature of its own and rests in ordinances established by God. Sun, moon, and stars have their own unique task; plants, animals, and humans are distinct in nature. There is the most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation of both diversity and unity is in God…Here is a unity that does not destroy [in contrast to all monism] but maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity but rather unfolds it in its riches.
[Thus, in biblical creation we have a worldview that defeats reductionist numbing of diversity into a lesser monistic ‘truth’ of all having ‘emerged’ from the one. Such notions make diversity somehow fraudulent, not real, because what is real is the ‘one’. Whereas God has given us genuine diversity as his creation has come from his hand in splendid multiplicity, where there is relationship, but true difference. The many has come from the ‘one’ not by mechanical or mystical emergency, but by thought and will shaped by love.
By extension, biotic diversity is similarly a genuine diversity: it all shares a maker, and a life ’language’ and systems. Evolutionary thinking eliminates true diversity and for Christians, theistic evolution directly denies Genesis 1: 9 and 20-24, where we are told explicitly and repeatedly (with inescapable emphasis) that plants and animals are made to reproduce after their kind: separation is built in, unlike evolution, where separation has putatively, emerged, as something mechanically inherent and not devised in love. Evolution, of course, has no place for love…it is just a machine]
58
Augustine states that all things are distinct in mode, species [this does not mean modern biological species], number, degree, and order. And precisely by these qualities they bring about that world, that universe, in which God, in his good pleasure, distributes good things, and which on that account is a manifestation of his perfections. For all that diversity can only be attributed to God, not to the merits of his creatures. “There is no nature even among the least and lowest of beats that he did not fashion…the properties without which nothing can either be or be conceived.”
59
As a result of this worldview Christianity has overcome both the contempt of nature [better: creation] and its deification. In paganism a human being does not stand in the right relationship to God and therefore not to the world either. Similarly in pantheism and materialism the relation of human beings to nature is fundamentally corrupted. One moment man considers himself infinitely superior to nature and believes that it no longer has any secrets for him. The next moment he experiences nature as a dark and mysterious power that he does not understand, whose riddles he cannot solve, and form whose power he cannot free himself. Intellectualism and mysticism alternate. Unbelief makes way for superstition and materialism turns into occultism….Here, accordingly there is room for love and admiration of nature, but all deification is excluded. Here a human being is placed in the right relation to the world because he has been put in the right relation to God. For that reason also creation is the fundamental dogma: throughout Scripture it is in the foreground and is the foundation stone on which the Old and New Covenants rest.
Finally, this doctrine rules out an egoistic theology and a false optimism. Certainly there is an element of truth in the view that all things exist for the sake of man, or rather for the sake of humanity, the church of Christ…But that humanity has its ultimate purpose, along with all other creatures, in the glorification of God. To that all things are subordinate.
102
For, according to Genesis, all the creatures which were brought forth in those six days…did not emerge by immanent forces in accordance with fixed laws from the available matter in the manner of evolution. That matter was in itself powerless to produce all this solely in the way of natural progression by immanent development. In itself it did not have the capacity for it; it only possessed a capacity for obedience. From the primary matter of Genesis 1:1, God, by speaking and creating, brought forth the entire cosmos. While in every new act of formation he linked up with what already existed, the higher phase did not solely proceed by an immanent force from the lower. At every stage a creating word of God’s omnipotence was needed.
[He then goes on to criticise Herder’s separation of the work of creation into “two ternaries”…foreshadowing as it did the ‘framework hypothesis’…but sees the six days as representing days of ‘separation’ followed by days of ‘adornment’ with a general progression from “a lower level to a higher level, from the general conditions for organics life to this organic life itself in its various forms.”]
Influence of ANE myths (97f)
The derivation of the creation story from the land of the Tigris and Euphrates therefore is only a small part of this pan-Babylonianism. What we are dealing with here is not an isolated instance, but a general intellectual trend which, after the literary-critical school had displayed its impotence, attempted to explain the problem of the Bible along religious-historical lines. [Then discussion of historical and linguistic questions]…But upon a careful reading none of these passages yields virtually any ground for the assertion that belief in creation in Israel still in many respects bears a mythological character. For, in the first place, it cannot be denied that these representations serve to describe very different things…Second, when these words are used as descriptions of natural powers, they never in Scripture refer to the natural power that the Babylonian creation story introduces as Tiammat…But we are nowhere told that at the creation there was a natural power opposed to God which he had to overcome.
120
But when Scripture, from its own perspective precisely as the book of religion, comes in contact with other sciences and also sheds its light on them, it does not all at once cease to be the Word of God but remains the Word. Even when it speaks about the genesis of heaven and earth, it does not present saga or myth or poetic fantasy but offers, in accordance with its own clear intent, history, the history that deserves credence and trust. And for that reason Christian theology, with only a few exceptions, continued to hold onto the literal historical view of the creation story. [Remember, he writes in late 1800s]
147
There is no advantage for people to say that it is better to be a highly developed animal than a fallen human. The theory of the animal ancestry of humans violates the image of God in man and degrades the human into an image of the orang-utan and chimpanzee. From the standpoint of evolution humanity as the image of God cannot be maintained. The theory of evolution forces us to return to creation as Scripture presents it to us.
The Age of Humanity
In connection with the theory of the origin of man the doctrine of evolution also tends to conflict with Scripture in regard to the age, the unity and the original abode of the human race. Great age was attributed to the human race by many peoples, including the Japanese, the East Indians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, who spoke of several world ages and of myriads and hundreds of thousands of years. Modern anthropology has from time to time returned to these fabulous figures but is no more consistent than pagan mythology; it ranges between 10,000 and 500,000 years and more.
In recent years there is a general tendency to observe greater moderation in calculating the age of the earth and humanity. Darwin, of course, demanded an incalculable number of years to allow for the origination of species by minute changes, for if evolution never proceeded faster than it does now, the origin of life and of every type of organism required an extraordinarily long time. When scientists began to compute, consistently with this theory of evolution, how long it would take for the human eye to develop from a tiny spot of pigment and for the brains of animals to develop from an original ganglion, they automatically arrived at immensely long times, which had to be multiplied a number of times for the duration of all of life on earth. Some of them along with Darwin himself in the first edition of his Origin of Species therefore came to a figure of 300 million years for the age of life on earth and the majority used even higher figures.
But gradually physicists and geologists began to register objections to these figures. They themselves began to calculate, attempting in various ways and by various methods to estimate the age of the earth, the ocean, the moon, and the sun. And although they differed among themselves over millions of years, still the time they assumed for that age was generally much shorter than that demanded by biologists. They spoke at most of 80 or 100 million, and sometimes went down as low as 10 re 20 million years—and as is clear from this difference, the calculation is again highly uncertain and subject to modification at a moment’s notice—it is self evident that the origin of life and humanity is much less remote…Of more value for that determination of the age of the human race are the chronological data that are furnished us by the history and monuments of different peoples…[a number of authors are then cited with ages within the biblical range and he discusses a number of factors that point to a recent age for the human race…]
165
This view then unwittingly prompts them to accept the theory of evolution, according to which the essence of man is situated not in what he was or is but in what he, in an endless process of development and by his own exertions, may become. Paradise lies ahead, not behind us. An evolved ape deserves preference over a fallen human. Original bearing the image of an orang-utan and chimpanzee, man gradually pulled himself up from a state of raw brutishness to that of a noble humanity.
It hardly needs saying that Holy Scripture is diametrically opposed to this theory of evolution. Christian churches, almost unanimously rejected the naturalistic Pelagian view of the image of God and man’s original state. Aside from the arguments for the Darwinian hypothesis…there are actually no direct historical proofs for the animal state…as far as we go back in history we find a condition of relatively high levels of civilization…
237
The Problem of Pantheism
Pantheism knows of no distinction between and the being of the world and—idealistically—lets the world be swallowed up in God or—materialistically—lets God be swallowed up in the world. On that position there is no room for the [act of] creation and therefore no room, in the real sense, for preservation and government. Providence then coincides with the course of nature. The laws of nature are identical with the decrees of God, and the rule of God is nothing other than “the fixed and immutable order of nature” or “the concatenation of natural things.” On that view there is no room for miracle, the self-activity of secondary causes, personality, freedom, prayer, sin, and religion as a whole. While pantheism may present itself in ever so beautiful and seductive a form, it actually takes its adherents back into the embrace of a pagan fate. On its premises there is no other existence than the existence of nature; no higher power than that which operates in the world in accordance with iron-clad law; no other and better life than that for which the materialism are present in the visible creation. For a time people may flatter themselves with the idealistic hope that the world will perfect itself by an immanent series of developments, but soon this optimism turns into pessimism, this idealism into materialism.
Over against this pantheism it was the task of Christian theology to maintain the distinction between creation and preservation, the self-activity of secondary causes, the freedom of personality, the character of sin, the truth of religion. It did this by rejecting fate and by clearly elucidating the confession of God’s providence in distinction from it. The distinguishing feature of the theory of fate is not that all that exists and occurs in time is grounded and determined in God’s eternal counsel, but the idea that all existence and occurrence is determined by a power which coincides with the world and which, apart from any consciousness and will, determines all things thought blind necessity. According to Cicero, the fate of the Stoa was “an order and series of causes with one cause producing another from within itself.” A further distinction made was that between a mathematical or astral fate when events on earth were thought to be determined by the stars and a natural fate when they were deemed to be determined by the nexus of nature. It is in this latter form that the theory of fate presently appears in pantheism and materialism…Belief in fate, after all, proceeded from the idea that all things happen as a result of an irresistible blind force having neither consciousness nor will and those events were called fatalia which happen apart form the will of God and men by the necessity of a certain order.
239
The Problem of Deism
On the other side of this spectrum stands Deism, which separates God and the world. This position is one which, in total or in part, separates the creatures, once they have then created, from God and then, again in larger or smaller part, it allows them to exist and function on their own power, a power received at the time of creation. Deism thus basically revives the pagan theory of chance. ..
The period beginning in the middle of the seventeenth century was marked by a powerful effort to emancipate nature, world, humanity, science, and so forth from God and to make them self-reliant in relation to him, to Christianity, church, and theology. In this respect latitudinarianism, Deism, rationalism, and the Enlightenment were all in agreement. This is the best of all possible worlds; humanity endowed with intellect and will, is self-sufficient; natural law, the forces of nature, natural religion, and natural morality together comprise a reserve of energies with which God endowed the world at the creation and which are now entirely adequate for its existence and development. Revelation, prophecy, miracles, and grace are totally redundant. Deism did not deny the existence of God, nor creation or providence. On the contrary, it loved to refer to the “Supreme Being” and discoursed at length on providence. But there was no longer any vitality in this belief. Deism in principle denied that God worked in creation in any way other than in accordance with and through the laws and forces of nature. Thus it was, from the outset, antisupranaturalistic. Preservation was enough; a kind of cooperation or divine influx operative along with every act of a creature was unnecessary.
In its eighteenth-century form, this deism indeed belongs to the paste. But in substance in both theory and practice it still holds sway in wide circles. Since, especially in the present century [19th], our knowledge of nature has greatly expanded and the stability of its laws has been recognized, many people are inclined to separate nature in its pitiless and unchanging character from God’s government to let it rest independently in itself…
242
Deism is essentially irreligious. For the Deist the salvation of humanity consists not in communion with God but in separation from him. The Deist’s mind is at ease only in detachment from God, that is, if he can be a practical atheist…In principle Deism is always the same: it deactivates God…Especially today, now that everyone is so deeply convinced of the stability of the natural order, there is no room in it for chance, and Deism again falls back into the embrace of ancient fate while chance is mainly reserved for the domain of religious and ethical concerns. But the doctrine of chance is no better than that of fate…chance and fortune are un-Christian through and through.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Episcopalian Bishop of South Sydney, Rob Forsyth, Found Loitering in the Shadow of Jean Rousseau
In his October 2006 presentation to devotees of ISCAST, reported in blogs and comments on this blogspot, Episcopalian Bishop of South Sydney - Rob Forsyth, disclosed his reservation about miracles including the creation event and Israel's crossing of the Red Sea.
Bishop Forsyth brings to mind Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) who was born in a Protestant home, converted to Roman Catholicism, then finally renounced Christianity completely. Rousseau became a "free-thinker" amongst the intellectual set in Paris. During his period of attachment to the Church, Rousseau was a Deist - he categorically denied all biblical miracles and saw God as an absentee landlord. In this he identified with Aristotle and Rene Descartes.
Rousseau's Social Contract, published in 1762, put forward a radical and secular theory of government based on general will of the people rather than on laws appointed by God. This work paved the way for the French Revolution and set the stage for secular humanism which requires the theory of evolution to maintain the belief that there never has been and never will be any divine intervention in the world.
Atheism is not a condition like the common cold which develops overnight. With Atheism there is an accumulation of thoughts and departures from conventional thought. With hindsight, Atheists can describe a clear path pursued to reach the end point.
Bishop Rob Forsyth has divulged, by certain admissions, that he is placed somewhere on a similar path to Jean Rousseau. This is a very dangerous path to be on. Bishop Forsyth should know that, with the thinking he cultivates, Atheism will never be far from his door.
Sam
Bishop Forsyth brings to mind Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) who was born in a Protestant home, converted to Roman Catholicism, then finally renounced Christianity completely. Rousseau became a "free-thinker" amongst the intellectual set in Paris. During his period of attachment to the Church, Rousseau was a Deist - he categorically denied all biblical miracles and saw God as an absentee landlord. In this he identified with Aristotle and Rene Descartes.
Rousseau's Social Contract, published in 1762, put forward a radical and secular theory of government based on general will of the people rather than on laws appointed by God. This work paved the way for the French Revolution and set the stage for secular humanism which requires the theory of evolution to maintain the belief that there never has been and never will be any divine intervention in the world.
Atheism is not a condition like the common cold which develops overnight. With Atheism there is an accumulation of thoughts and departures from conventional thought. With hindsight, Atheists can describe a clear path pursued to reach the end point.
Bishop Rob Forsyth has divulged, by certain admissions, that he is placed somewhere on a similar path to Jean Rousseau. This is a very dangerous path to be on. Bishop Forsyth should know that, with the thinking he cultivates, Atheism will never be far from his door.
Sam
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Hans-Georg throws light
A quote today from Hans-Georg Gadamer:
"(H)istory does not belong to us; but we belong to it." (Truth and Method p 276)
One implication is that we have no chance of understanding what others mean in their writing and speaking without first coming to appreciate our own historical way we arrived here today.
(A comment on Reforming Project Management)
Just think of this in terms of the gospel, where an historical context is provided in the chain of ontological dependencies reaching back to creation where both God and we are grounded and given our setting, and why we are in the mess requiring salvation. We belong, through Christ, to the history that links us in real time and space to the events of creation and fall. Deny this, as does the SAD, and we end up endorsing the behaviour of the settlers Stan Grant mentions, who see in evolution the encouragement of genocide: the fruit of 'evolution' is death (and its requirement), not life as it is of the gospel and the God who created the very good.
"(H)istory does not belong to us; but we belong to it." (Truth and Method p 276)
One implication is that we have no chance of understanding what others mean in their writing and speaking without first coming to appreciate our own historical way we arrived here today.
(A comment on Reforming Project Management)
Just think of this in terms of the gospel, where an historical context is provided in the chain of ontological dependencies reaching back to creation where both God and we are grounded and given our setting, and why we are in the mess requiring salvation. We belong, through Christ, to the history that links us in real time and space to the events of creation and fall. Deny this, as does the SAD, and we end up endorsing the behaviour of the settlers Stan Grant mentions, who see in evolution the encouragement of genocide: the fruit of 'evolution' is death (and its requirement), not life as it is of the gospel and the God who created the very good.
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