To be a Christian acid-washed by the bleach and pumice of modernity is to be a Christian conscripted by the regimented cool, and to be issued a washed-out denim uniform—one which might be considered appropriate camo-gear for that upscale coffee shop, the better to allow a demythologized and deracinated faith to blend right in—and so here we all are. Nobody sees us. Nobody notices. As Beatrice would say of us, “I wonder that you will still be talking . . . nobody marks you.”
The basic lie is to assume that the cosmos is basically what the secular scientists say that it is, which is mostly empty space that is punctuated by dead rock—yay asteroids—and flaming gases—yay stars—all of which is the detritus from some monster explosion. There was a pinprick thingy of hyper-matter, and one day there was trouble in the boilers, and blam! We grant all of that narrative, for some mysterious reason, but then hold out for the uniqueness of the human soul. This is our last stand, the one thing we will not surrender.
The reason we don’t want to surrender this one thing, this poor wispy epiphenomenon, is that it is the only thing we have left. We have to have something that could go to Heaven. And when we say “Heaven,” we mean some other dimensional reality, one that involves lots of math and clouds and no real set of coordinates that map on to the cosmos that God actually made.
This approach to cosmology is one in which we want the Christian Faith to be a pale ghost that haunts the dreams of someone like Richard Dawkins. He can have his cosmos just the way he wants it, provided that a troubled vapor made up of our perhapsing-molecules passes through it from time to time.
Christians who revolt against this massive etiolation do well, in that they are wanting to return to a full-orbed biblical cosmology. The star of Bethlehem was a star, and showed the magi the way to a house. The rhetorical question in Job about taming the unicorn—what feckless translators have called a wild ox—is, when taken this latter way, seen to be a stupid question. ““Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will he spend the night at your manger? Can you bind him in the furrow with ropes, or will he harrow the valleys after you?” (Job 39:9–10, ESV). “Well, yes. That’s how I run my farm.” Who among you, oh sons of men, can tame the ox? Ummm . . . is this a trick question? The sons of God (bene elohim) took beautiful women from among men, and had Nephilim by them. The apostle Paul cast the spirit of a python out of the fortune telling girl at Philippi, thereby indicating that the existence of Apollo was not mere superstition. In short, the ancient scriptural cosmology is not what many Christians assume it to be.
Well and good. But because I am writing for people who have signed on to the cosmological revolt, my purpose is to lay down a caution for us, and not for others. In the spirit of that great foundational principle, always resist your own temptations instead of your neighbor’s, let us proceed. With C.S. Lewis we have manned the barricades against the tyrants of materialistic nothing-buttery—the cosmos is “nothing but” the atoms that make it up. Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.
And so like Lewis we must have our embrace of what it means to be “old Western men” be shaped and tempered by classic Christian theology. The particular tenet I have in mind is the doctrine of the Creator/creature divide. If we do not do this, then we will react away from a theology that is sub-Christian and wind up in one that is sub-pagan.
And so to the point. All that exists can be divided into two fundamental categories—God and not God, eternal and temporal, uncreated and created, necessary and contingent.
This division is guarded jealously in the Scripture, always and everywhere. We must have no other gods before Him (Ex. 20:3). He is the eternal I AM THAT I AM (Ex. 3:14). He is the end and the beginning, the Alpha and Omega (Rev. 21:6). His understanding is infinite (Ps. 147:5). Isaiah taunts the other gods for being as blind to the future as a row of celestial television pundits (Is. 41:23). And coming right down to the point, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). All of this was ex nihilo, from nothing. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3).
Every creature, however glorious, however brilliant, however massive or expansive, has the same pedigree. We—all of us—used to be nothing.
Now the division between Creator and creature is not guarded in Scripture the way we tend to guard it, which is by using different words for God and the gods. In the Hebrew and Greek, it is not even guarded with the use of upper and lower case letters, or with scare quotes.
“God [Elohim] standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods [elohim]” (Ps. 82:1).
In the ESV, we pick up an additional tidbit from that same verse. It is a divine council, a council of El.
“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Psalm 82:1, ESV).
Elohim holds court among the elohim. This council among the gods is mirrored by God holding court with Israel serving as His cabinet. Jesus, citing this psalm, argues with the Jews that God called those to whom the law came gods. If He did that, then how much more was it appropriate to call the one He sent into the world the Son of God (John 10:36)?
“Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken . . .” (John 10:34–35).
So then God has a divine council of heavenly beings and an earthly council as well (Ex. 24:10-11). They are all related, and I think more important than we usually tend to assume.
How are we to parse this?
“As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1 Cor. 8:4–6).
We have it all here. There is recognition of the existence of “gods many and lords many.” But in the same breath he says that there is no other God but the one true God. An idol is nothing in the world, he says. For us, there is only one God, the Father. For us, there is one Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the thing that marks them both out is a description of absolute creation. The Father? He is the one of whom are all things, and we in Him. The Lord? He is the one by whom are all things, and we by Him.
The doctrine of absolute creation, creation from nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is truly a foundational issue.
A few verses later, we find Paul teaching us that sacrifices to idols are actually sacrifices to demons (1 Cor. 10:20). The solution is a simple one. What the pagans called gods are to us angels and demons. The Bible places them on the other side of a natural/supernatural divide, but this is only safe for us if we include them on this side of the Creator/creature divide.
What this means is that while there is a hierarchy on this side of the Creator/creature divide, and it is a true hierarchy, when we compare everything here with the infinite gulf that separates all of us from our Maker, we see instantly that while the distance between one of the seraphim and man is great, it is great in the same way that the distance between man and a June bug is great. It is a distance that could, in principle, be overcome. It is a finite distance. The distance between God and any creature is an infinite one.
At one time, the cosmological hierarchy was God > angels > man, and now it is God > man in Christ > angels. The June bugs got promoted. Not only had we been June bugs, but we had been surly and malevolent June bugs, and the particularly solution that God undertook to restore us and promote us is a solution that should be enough to keep us humble forever, world without end, amen.
Perfidious influence indeed!
When Satan came-a-hunting, wasn’t he already jealous?
Seems like man-in-garden already had something humbly ahead of angels?
Please pardon the questions if they make me appear dense. It is early in the morning here and I haven’t had enough sleep this week. Are you denying the stars are what scientists claim? Are you denying, black holes, dark matter, and supernovas claiming they are actually spiritual creatures?
jsm, do you claim to be anything more than carbonishness?
So it’s a yes and instead of either or?
Worried that evolution revealed a humanity with all molecules environmentally determined and no free-floating spirit or will, our philosophical fathers felt forced to defend our uniqueness with the notion that we are (how does Doug like to put it?) we are spirit-minds, software, trapped in physical vats, hardware.
But what if we just can’t see all the pieces of the hardware?
What if there really are other created dimensions of this one? — dimensions that don’t answer to or rely on the physics here, but nonetheless not just intrude here but support what’s happening?
Does anything that isn’t a “spiritual creature” really exist?
What I mean is, does anything that doesn’t possess at least some degree of “selfness” or identity even exist? For instance, even a bacterium possesses some “selfhood”, however minor, some identity making it distinct from all other things; but a star or a planet has none at all.
I believe he was getting at something like this:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/225235-in-our-world-said-eustace-a-star-is-a-huge
In a word I would say, ‘No’. They are there, and to borrow from Philip. K. Dick, we see though a glass darkly… All modern scientists can do is see the world as it is… and mislabel it.
…who borrowed from Paul (see 1Cor 13:12).
Ha
I think Doug’s been rereading Tilt-a-Whirl.
See that
And yet we remain stiff-necked June bugs, convinced that because we can fly toward the porch light, we know why it glows.
Lol! I had nearly that same thought, just little moths flying a bit too close to the sun.
Oh! That’s a good quote! (yours, I hope?)
Thank you, Duells. Yes, but credit to Pastor Wilson and the Holy Spirit for the inspiration.
I can see the Wilsonian influence. :) I’m going to put that in my quote file I keep.
I am honored. Thank you.
I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to get across with the unicorn reference. I thought it was pretty well established that this is a translational artifact. The Hebrew word in those passages is “re’em”. The septuagint translated re’em to monokeros (literally “one-horn”). It’s not known exactly why the LXX translated re’em this way, but it may be because the horns of the auroch (large ox-like animal) were very symmetrical, and would appear as a single horn in profile. In any case, the bible itself says that the re’em has multiple horns in Deuteronomy 33:17.
Unicorns have always been harder to tame.
I beg to differ, Max. The KJV states it like this: “his horns are like the horns of unicorns” Unicorns being plural would necessarily result in horns being plural. Otherwise you would have to have one uni-corn and one just plain corn, in which case unicorns could no longer be plural.
Whether the Bible is describing the creature of mythology or that the KJV translated it properly are different questions entirely.
In the original Hebrew, the word translated to unicorns is actually singular, not plural. So again, bad translation.
If it’s any help, the Vulgate offers “rhinoceros”. That translation seems to split the difference between unicorn and wild ox rather neatly. Some rhinos have a secondary horn, so it tolerates that case as well. Anyway, something to consider.
Apparently the first references to unicorns are found in the Babylonian Gilgamesh and the Hindu Mahabharata. The Greek historian Ctesias wrote in 400 BC: “There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses. Their bodies are white, their heads dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on their forehead that is about a foot and a half long. The animal is exceedingly swift and powerful so that no creature can ever overtake it.” Chinese epic literature also has references to magical one-horned beasts. I read that in the Middle Ages, unicorns were… Read more »
Exactly, around the time of the KJV there were species of rhinoceros referred to as “bicornus” (two horned) and Unicornus (one horn).
The Latin species names are Rhinoceros unicornis and Diceros bicornis. This strongly suggests that the KJV translators may have intended rhinoceros just like the Vulgate.
Noted, thanks.
Just for clarification, bicornis and unicornis are still among the main rhino species living today, not just in the time of the KJV.
I think it is very difficult to know with any certainty what the hebrew words for the creatures found in Job were actually referring to (leviathan, etc.) The “single-horned” horned animal could have been a rhino or a stegosaurus, or an unicorn. Just because we don’t have them today doesn’t mean they didn’t exist in ancient times. I’m still searching for a unicorn fossil. Unicorns may have been hunted into extinction for their magical horns.
Anyway, regardless of the translation issue, I think Doug’s point is that we modern Christians tend to want to “tame” (pardon the pun) the cosmology of the Bible to fit into the modern materialistic cosmology that we were all taught in public school.
“At one time, the cosmological hierarchy was God > angels > man, and now it is God > man in Christ > angels.” I’ve been rereading Perelandra and came across this bit late in chapter 6 where the Green Lady of Perelandra tells Ransom that the eldila (angels, basically) are no longer obeyed, not in this world (Perelandra – Venus, basically), that they are on the far side of the wave that has already rolled passed. She says that Malacandra (Mars, basically) was ruled by the eldila, as was earth once, but not since our Beloved became a Man… There… Read more »
I hear a bit of Chesterton in this piece!!! Awesomeness.
The Creator/creature distinction is so important–far more important than the age of anything. It’s not as simple as it used to be though now that God himself lives in us by his Spirit.
I went back and read your bio Doug. I like Chesterson can’t tolerate calvin. I find Calvin to be the religious version of Newton, talking about a topic they are both clearly clueless to, and that is time,clocks, and their cranium. In contemporary religion we tend to start with our cranium, it becomes the metronome, learn to read the sheet music (the bible) and proclaim understanding in context to our experiences in metronome like fashion. That backwards and very Calvinistic and Newtonian as well. I pick up a guitar and start beating on it and out pops music without sheet… Read more »
Eh?
Calvin is a total crackpot easier?
davidt wrote:
Indeed.
Have you been reading Gene Ray’s Time Cube theories again?
https://web.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/
I absolutely can not read these words without the A-Team music playing in my head.
Augustine lambasted Christians who spoke ignorantly on matters of natural science, because even non-believers are educated on such matters, and when they see a Christian speaking nonsense on something they know well, they are likely to ignore that Christian on things that matter, like the rising from the dead. I have yet to see Pastor Wilson critique science without making silly errors that anyone with knowledge on the subject would never make. Such as in this case, not only appearing to insist on the existence of unicorns (an error Max already pointed out), but also appearing ignorant of the profound… Read more »
Science credentials, please.
JK. JK.
Why aren’t there any unicorns? Many things that noted Scientists insist upon today have no fossile record or basis in actual fact. There is a thriving industry built to rob businesses and citizens based on conjecture and fear and that science is settled.
There are green alligators and long necked geese, so why do you feel that there are no unicorns?
“There are green alligators and long necked geese, so why do you feel that there are no unicorns?”
As the song goes they were too busy playing silly games to get on the ark, and the water came up and floated them away….
Then they learned to swim and became narwhales.
Amen! :)
I think we can get carried away with some interpretations. Like the idea that mermaids were actually manatees.
With their beautiful corpulent bodies.
You may have a valid point there CC!
Jonathan came out with a tirade and is unable to answer though.
Dang, Dave. You gave me 6 hours to answer him. Let a man sleep every once in a while!
I hope my answer was to your liking.
Jonathan, you are skirting the issue. Science if used properly proves the one and true God. If used incorrectly, as is the current method of our scientists and those who wish to just steal from everyone, it shows the depravity of man. The old school museums used to have diagrams of apes progressing to almost man to neanderthal man to modern man. Many of those diagrams were silently moved to the storage rooms because even after 50 years of indoctrination in government schools, the idea still does not take hold. Over and over those who did not sleep through high… Read more »
I don’t just say, “I’m going to dismiss unicorns out of hand”, I try to understand the most likely interpretation of the passage with all the tools available. We’re not calling it a unicorn because we know the Hebrew word means “unicorn”, we don’t even know what the Hebrew word means. We’re basing it off the fact that the Septuagint translates it “one-horn”, but even that can simply mean “rhinoceros”, as someone has already pointed out. Or it could be a real or mythologized offshoot of any one of a number of creatures (the auroch, as has been pointed out,… Read more »
You are trying to say that the science is settled and that the scriptural issues of creation are not true. Your attempt near the top of trying to assert cosmic creation and then evolution is a bit off also. Look at the tucan and the lovely bill he has. God created that bird for his own enjoyment. There is no macro evolution here and there never will be. You also forget that Christians bought into the idea that man couldn’t go more than 25 miles per hour or he would die; that airplanes would never fly; that ships couldn’t navigste… Read more »
I am not saying the “science” is settled at all, I am saying that the science should be debated by people who know it. It makes everyone look bad, even those who are right, when people who do not know the science try to debate it and make one elementary error after another. I am not saying that the scriptural issues of Creation are not true. I believe that everything that Scripture is trying to say about Creation is true. It is overzealous interpreters working from the ultra-literal mindset of the “modern” philosophical age who are interpreting it incorrectly. “Macro… Read more »
Jonathan you are quite mistaken on how many science charlatians have pushed their settled science upon us only to be viewed years later as completely nonsensical or swept under the rug as you are trying to do. Readers should look up the Florida tire reef. A learned professor insisted that old tires could be dumped in the Atlantic and that coral would grow forming an artificial reef. Millions of Americans bought into the idea as did the US government. 30 years later Department of Defense divers removed the tires because nothing grew on them. Now those of us who pulled… Read more »
I think it’s kind of silly to imply that the scientific community, or any meaningful subsection of it, claimed “dumping a whole bunch of tires into the ocean will create an ecological paradise” was “settled science”. It was an idea. Literally every area of human experience has some really bad failed ideas. Absolutely no one was publishing papers about all the wonderful reefs that had been created out of giant piles of old tires and called it “settled science”. You just made that up. If you believe that evolution is false (and I think that aspects that some of its… Read more »
“I think it’s kind of silly to imply that the scientific community, or any meaningful subsection of it, claimed “dumping a whole bunch of tires into the ocean will create an ecological paradise” was “settled science”. It was an idea.” Jonathan, you keep attempting to dismiss bad science and bad ideas with a simple “you made that up.” No I lived through it. Today learned scientists are feeding us a false narrative that the earth is in dire danger from greenhouse gasses and that immediate action must be taken to save mother earth. This is the same tactic used for… Read more »
I challenged a direct claim you made. You responded with “but climate change”. And no, none of the other things you say are “scams” either. Unless you magically think that we can continuously taken non-renewable oil, continuously occupy more and more of a finite Earth’s land mass, or continuous destroy the fertility of more and more soil. Other than climate change, you don’t even have to be a scientist to know that all three of those issues have a deadline, you just have to have common sense. The only question is how soon it will happen and how ugly the… Read more »
Jonathan, the tire reef was a huge issue when it was pushed upon us. It was not just an idea, it was to save mother earth and use tires instead of putting them into landfills. There were articles in scientific magazines and popular magazines telling us that it wasn’t just a good idea but one that we needed to follow through on. It was not made up as you mistakenly claim. Oil has not run out in the 1970s or 80s or 90s as previously forecast and will continue to be a viable resource well beyond your lifetime and the… Read more »
You claimed it was “settled science”, and that was obviously false.
None of the other claims you make were ever “settled science” either, just the fringe of what the most pessimistic predicted.
Your own claims are beyond ridiculous, but I don’t think you’re taking anything I say seriously, so I’m not going to waste any more time on them.
“Obviously False” is Jonathan’s claim as he runs from the ball field. Jonathan, you are incorrect. Those of us who had to pay for failed windmill farms and other such failed programs remember them quite well.
Jonathan uses the same tactic used by those who don’t remember history and who are willing to sacrifice themselves on the alter of mother earth and ignore God and scripture. Throw out lots of words, a few facts and then when caught on the hard issues and historical fact, run away calling loudly that the opposition is ridiculous.
There is no real difference between macro and micro evolution- and scientists don’t make much of the distinction. But let’s pretend they do. Macroevolution is what happens when microevolution occurs in two or more populations within a species. Macroevolution is the total of all the microevolution that occurs within a species. The classic example goes like this: A large group of creatures lives in a mountain area. No big whoop until some divisive event (like an ice age) comes along, and isolates different groups of them on different mountaintops. Those separate populations, no matter how alike, still have slightly different… Read more »
“There is no real difference between macro and micro evolution”
One happens and the other doesn’t.
“Given enough time or difference in conditions these two groups will develop into very different populations. If they ever come back together and cannot interbreed… new species.”
That’s two sub species. You still don’t have the fish to mammal transition you need.
The desire to extend the willful lack of understanding of the mechanics of evolution and common ancestry aside, I was responding to the intellectually mistaken creationist trope of macro v micro evolution and how misguided it is. Of course purposefully so. Btw species are composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species. So… new so species of X. Christopher, I am guessing that given the intellectual curiosity you could extrapolate this process over hundreds of millions of years and figure it out the… Read more »
“Christopher, I am guessing that given the intellectual curiosity you could extrapolate this process over hundreds of millions of years and figure it out the fish part.”
Sure, as the saying goes there are two types of people: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
You forgot the second type. Those who start with a correct statement like: ‘scientists do not know every single thing about evolution’, but then make an incorrect leap of logic: ‘so evolution must be false.’
No, I didn’t forget anything.
Jonathan wrote: Of course, I don’t think that whether one believes in unicorns or a geocentric solar system or a flat earth or anything else is at all is a barrier to having faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ or playing a great part in the Kingdom of God. The way that Jonathan casts Wilson in with the flat earthers and geocentrists, and constantly berates him on scientific matters, this little olive branch from him still has way too many thorns to be credible. Jonathan wrote: We’ve had this kind of discussion before, when Katecho made one logical stretch… Read more »
Job 39:9 Will the unicorn(monogenes) be willing to serve thee or abide by thy crib? In the Septuagint, the Greek word used for unicorn/wild ox is monogenes. Interesting choice as it is also used here: John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten(monogenes) of the Father, full of grace and truth. No matter what the actual meaning of monogenes, of which there is some debate, the fact that it is used to refer to the unique status of Christ and the animal in Job 39:9… Read more »
I think in the lxx it is actually monokeros, not monogenous as in John
Yah, that’s what I came to say. I’ve never heard anyone say monogenes is used to mean unicorn, clearly different word entirely.
Monogenes does appear in the Septuagint a number of times, but to mean “only child”.
Doh! This is an example of not enough study!. Strongs has it listed under the same entry, but the text says monokeros. Any idea why they did that? Thanks!
I think this is a problem that arises if you rule theistic evolution out of court. You tend to dismiss Christians who believe in both creation and the Big Bang. I find the idea of the Big Bang an incredibly poetical and spiritual image of creation. But it rules out Earth having been created before the stars.
I have never found a way to make evolution work without absolutely wiping out a huge chunk of the Bible. It’s not that people who believe in theistic evolution should be dismissed, but they certainly should be invited to answer for it against Scripture.
I agree that science requires you must wipe out (or at least strongly ignore) a huge chunk of the bible. This is one reason why I left the church. The main one. It is understandably threatening to reformed christians.
I think the difference between us is not one of evolution verses creation, but what has authority in our understanding. You have raised your understanding above Scripture, and have decided what is and isn’t true. I believe what Scripture says about creation even though it is at odds with secular science.
Yes, I am personally familiar with the badge of pride one dons when separating oneself from ‘secular’ science. But I think some of Jonathan’s point is you also banish yourself from the adult table of rational discourse in the process. And relinquish your ability to be taken seriously by anyone other than a small literal faith-based in-group. And I wouldn’t say that I have raised my understanding above scripture. I would say that I recognize scripture to be what it is: an historical attempt at understanding and controlling the world around us. One that reflected the situational ethics and needs… Read more »
Yes, I can see that is foolishness to you, Scripture says it would be. Here’s the thing that I still find so amazingly wonderful about Scripture. It tells me how people who have denied God will respond. It’s the same always. Pride, arrogance, lies. You speak as though you have a corner on rational discourse, but in truth, your arguments for reality fall into absurdity when poked or prodded. You have no basis for anything that you think or believe, and so calls of ‘rational discourse’ are your only defense. You accuse of what you yourself are guilty of and… Read more »
JL, I always find it interesting that there is a certain stripe of religious believer that will insist, (even after making it very clear what I believe,) that they know better what is in my mind. In your case you just know that I believe scripture to be true and yet I spit in the face of your god out of pride. What (and not who mind you) is more arrogant? I have my answer as you do yours.
You are right, Randman. There is no meeting ground between your world view and mine. I can speak to the mindset of an unbeliever because I was once at emnity with God as you are now. You however have never had my world view and so it will remain a mystery to you.
I do not speak out of arrogance but only the truth as told me by Scripture.
Where do you find truth?
Two things. First, and I’ll say this again here, it is ridiculous to assert that I am threatened by a supernatural being that I do not believe exists. Imagine how you would feel if I were to accuse you of enmity towards Odin or Santa. You would chuckle. Second, I was a member of the Church Of Christ for decades. It is possible that I may have some inkling as to your world view. To answer your question, I do not seek ‘truth’ as I believe you are proposing the question. I do however work towards comfort with ‘I don’t… Read more »
Thanks, Randman, for your honest reply. First, a clarification. I did not say you were threatened by a supernatural being. I said that you know God exists. Second, I acknowledge that you were in the Christian culture for a long time. There is a difference between belonging to church culture and submitting one’s self to the authority of God which is revealed in Christ and in Scripture. Had you known the Truth revealed through that submission, I do not see how you would have ever given it up. You speak truthfully :) when you indicate you cannot know truth and… Read more »
To believe in theistic evolution in the 21st century you don’t have to believe a single word less of the Word of God than Augustine himself believed in the 4th century. Even in the very earliest days of Christianity, our spiritual fathers were quite aware that a literal reading of the text was often not its point, and therefore to read it that way is to distort the text, not to affirm it. In fact, it is those who force a literal reading are the ones who have to start throwing things out, because a strict, context-less literal reading of… Read more »
Thank you. I really appreciate learning how thoughts of this generation are formed by men centuries and even millennia ago. That’s fascinating to me. I don’t know much about different movements in regard to six day creation. What I know is what I read. The text says He created the heavens and earth in six days. This is affirmed throughout Scripture, and I don’t feel a need to make it fit with what secular scientists think they know, especially when their science is used specifically to remove God from the picture. Having been in research, although only a couple of… Read more »
Perhaps god fades from the picture when things that were attributed to a deity because of intellectual ignorance get explained satisfactorily?
And respectfully, your assertion that thirst for knowledge drives only the rare scientists flies in the face of fact, evidence and true intellectual achievement. Tell that to (for late 20th century starters): Feynman, Berners-Lee, Milstein, Gilbert Hyatt, Bell, Einstein, Gell-Man, Watson and Crick, Shockley, Chadwick etc.
“Perhaps god fades from the picture when things that were attributed to a deity because of intellectual ignorance get explained satisfactorily?”
My dad was a physicist with very little intellectual ignorance who saw evidence of a Deity in everything from math to music.
Perhaps man’s inflated confidence in his own intelligence fades when he humbles himself enough to really take a look at the world around him.
Most deist positions allow for that viewpoint, true or not. As Francis Collins saw Jesus’ face in a waterfall and converted, clearly cognitive dissonance is possible for us all. Any case, I disagree with deism for the same reasons. Lack of any evidence whatsoever. However, at least deists are then free to accept reality for the most part, instead of the incredible hoop-jumping and rejection of fact that is necessary as a theist. I agree with your last sentence! There is not a thing in the bible that is more humbling than looking up at the milky way and realizing… Read more »
Randy is lonely on his autonomous planet. He comes here seeking friendly interaction. Randy, how’s that working out in the very Brave, Tolerant sjw discourse in blog land?
That stench that stains your nostrils is your secular future. Why don’t you go back to that tolerant sand box and play some more?
Not quite sure what you are getting at (except perhaps angry.) Certainly not sure what social justice you are referring to in my case. There seems to be very little of that here. Unless your idea of justice is burning in hell for eternity for an infraction that your tormentor invented to test you? I probably smell the stink of that idea. Best.
clearly cognitive dissonance is possible for us all.
So is conversion.
If scientific inquiry is a path to knowledge, then there must be some reconciliation where the Bible and scientific results disagree. Just declaring science wrong in these cases is one way to do it, but not a very good one.
Remember – the Bible never disagrees with scientific results – only it’s expositors do. Joshua 10 didn’t deny the heliocentric solar system – only its, “this is the plain meeting of Scripture” expositors did.
Matt wrote:
The disappointment is that some, like Matt, still peddle the idea that our problem is with science, simpliciter, rather than with a science, falsely so-called. Notice that Christians have no difficulty with anything that is actually reproducible. What we take issue with are all of the godless interpretations.
I would challenge Matt to be more intellectually honest, and start representing our views accurately from now on.
Another way to do it is to declare anything that disagrees with your interpretation Not Real Science.
Fairy tales of frogs turning into princes over millions of years is Not Real Science. Science addresses general reproducible events under known conditions. That’s why actual science is persuasive, but it’s scope is quite limited. I don’t call the Genesis accounts science either. I call them history.
Except frogs don’t turn into human princes via evolution do they? They each evolve over vast geological time from common ancestors. Does katecho wish to suggest that man evolved from apes next? Or maybe he would like to say, ‘evolution is just a theory’? Any other pearls of wisdom from katecho regarding real science or just the threat of an empty apologist argument regarding the semantics surrounding ‘reproducible’.
“What I know is what I read” only makes sense if all readers and all writers mean the same thing with everything they write. But we know that’s not how stories work. The Pilgrim’s Progress doesn’t have to announce its allegorical nature for us to realize it, nor does Luke 16:19-31 or Psalm 148. Daniel 7:4-14 is obviously allegorical (ans explains itself later), but then so is Revelation 8 or 17, and yet some people ignorant of that allegorical tradition in apocalyptic text fail to get the message and its obvious allusions to Rome. We know that no one really… Read more »
I think there are two challenges here. One is a question of truth. Is the six day creation true? The other has to do with syncretism. In other words, should the church try to include what the culture expounds, even when it is at odds with Scripture? If we give away one sentence, one jot, one tittle of Scripture in favor of what the culture around us says, we have lost the whole. It may not happen at once, but it is inevitable. Faith is not blindly ignoring science, but recognizing that where science blatantly contradicts Scripture, we must research… Read more »
I don’t think most scientists are driven by the need to find results that remove God from the picture. I think it is just that the scientific method as handed down to us in recent times deliberately removes any possibility of a supernatural explanation. It is easy to see why this is necessary. To take a silly example, if you ask me why birds fly, and I answer “God made them that way,” we can go no further in learning about aerodynamics. If you ask me what causes leprosy, and I answer that it is a curse sent by God,… Read more »
jillybean wrote: I think it is just that the scientific method as handed down to us in recent times deliberately removes any possibility of a supernatural explanation. It is easy to see why this is necessary. … “God made them that way,” we can go no further in learning about aerodynamics. So we are told. Yet “God did it” was not a limitation on the pursuit of knowledge by those scientists who understood the difference between supernatural intervention and supernatural providence. Many new branches of science were founded by those who held to the very premise that God did it.… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: Think about that for a bit. Done thinking about that. After this latest rant from Jonathan, my conclusion is that he has no respect for the millions of Christians who don’t accept (or never heard of) the modern evolutionary cosmology, and simply believed a normal reading of Genesis. In other words, Jonathan throws most all of historic Christianity under the bus. I’m sure God will be quite proud of him for his attitude of contempt. I wonder if Jonathan really believes that Scripture is sufficient and adequate for every good work, or if it took Darwin to finally… Read more »
Being a young earther is an immediately dismissible intellectual position. We have mountains of data (literally.) The amount of willful ignorance necessary to hold to it is sad frankly.
For his next trick, RandMan is going to inform us that people don’t rise from the dead.
Katecho, obviously Augustine had little evidence with which to work with to understand an ancient Earth. But I was not referring to that, I was referring to 7-day creationism, which Augustine rejected. And I do not “throw most of historical Christianity under the bus”. As I pointed out, you’re working with a construct that relies on philosophical principles invented in the 17th century and rejected by the 19th. The vast majority of Christian history has been outside of the modernist method of supposedly “literal” Biblical interpretation that you imply. Of course, this does not mean that they had the scientific… Read more »
Jonathan has the difficult project of trying to make his view look like something other than a late accommodation, while simultaneously trying to cast my creationist position as modernist. It’s hilarious and desperate to behold. Jonathan wrote: Katecho, obviously Augustine had little evidence with which to work with to understand an ancient Earth. But I was not referring to that, I was referring to 7-day creationism, which Augustine rejected. As we have seen, Augustine cannot lend Jonathan any pre-Darwinian street cred because Augustine explicitly rejected a world history of many thousands of years. Jonathan must selectively ignore this fact while… Read more »
Notice how Jonathan assumes that “modern science” is definitive, and that future generations will not look back on Jonathan’s primitive hubris with the same contempt that he looks back at Augustine’s day.
I can vouch that (some of) the present generation do look back on Jonathan’s primitive hubris with contempt.
The forecast for disdain for contemptuous hubris in future generations looks quite sunny in my view.
I think your Augustine quote is great and certainly doesn’t say what you seem to be hoping to force it to say, and I don’t think modern science is definitive. Other than that I don’t think anything you said adds anything to the conversation.
Scientist by their nature strive to kick the legs out from under the table. It is of course religion that demands at the end of an eternal gun to be understood as definitive, and by all accounts rule the table off limits.
Pity katecho. I too would be understandably frustrated if I had to toe the childish party-line that the earth is 6000 years old. How maddening it would be to walk impotently past endless rooms of actual evidence and be left self-hypnotizing, staring into the fire of a burning bush..
Doug, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a cessationist and mythologist at the same time. The two are handmaidens.
I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that cessationist means “since the canon was closed we are basically deists now”.
Hmm, I don’t think I am. If I’m understanding the cessationist thinking correctly, it’s not just that the canon is closed, but God’s supernatural gifts, his miracles and magic, are also closed off to his people. If I’m reading them right, the only place to look for the mythical is in his conspicuous providence. While that is a grand stage, as Nate has really helped show me, some of God’s acts still show signs of another world, a world where angels and demons wage war. A world that would seem to militate against the laws of our world.
Bleach isn’t acidic.
True, but he said acid washed, which doesn’t actually use acid because … Americanism. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_washing#Acid-washed_jeans
LOL! You beat me too it. It’s surprising how “Americanism” just explains so much.
And here I am thinking of activated (acid washed) charcoal as a filter. I guess he did use denim later in the sentence.
I think that the cosmos is far more spiritual than the naturalist assume. Nevertheless, I don’t think we have to literalise what appear to be metaphors (by the very nature of the term being an object and the description implying another object). That is: “trees clap their hands” sounds like a metaphor. A donkey speaking does not sound like a metaphor. Thus heavens seems to both mean sky/ space, and the dwelling of God (though the use of third heavens may imply distinctions). The dwelling of God is primary, though the concept being approached through something more accessible to man,… Read more »
I think we need to have a very pleasant harmony between the concepts, so the whole thing becomes more like peeling the layers off an onion to discover what’s underneath. While I am a biblical literalist, literalists can really start to annoy me when they refuse to see the metaphors, the allegories,the music within the bible. One thing I have discovered, some people can read the bible like a farmer reading an almanac,while others are reading an epic love story and yet we will all arrive at the same place,at the same conclusion, barring roaring debates over grape juice versus… Read more »
The Jews were the same. Phylacteries anyone?
I find the literalists better than most: being appropriately literal and metaphorical.
I’m not sure Phylacteries were inappropriate though. Moses gave them the tzitzit as a physical reminder of a spiritual work. Phylacteries could also have been the same. It is man’s misfortune that he cannot see that there is always a tie between spiritual realities and physical representations. The mistake I think we make is thinking the physical symbols are only a substitution. Stars and angels are an example. Scripture has tied them together for a reason. Instead of just substituting one for another, we should be delving into the why’s. Why did God associate angels with stars, pagans with the… Read more »
signs on hands and between eyes are applied to God’s deliverance then to God’s law. Exo 13:3-16; Deu 6; 11. In chapter 11 it comes between heart and mind (metaphoric) and doorposts (possibly literal). They are as or like a sign or memorial, then bound as a sign. I suspect that phylacteries are a literalisation of something that was not intended to be literal (although I could be incorrect). They are not clearly an object as the tassels were intended to be. Whether the phylacteries came to be useful is a different question. As to your second question, metaphors and… Read more »
“barring roaring debates over grape juice versus wine”
That’s not even worth a half-hearted debate, much less a “roaring” one. Leave the grape juice for the kids’ snack time.
Well, some people take their wine versus grape juice debates quite seriously. Apparently Jesus was at a wedding once and when they ran out of things to drink, he turned the water into grape juice….
Oops, I forgot. “Everyone serves the good grape juice first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor grape juice. But you have kept the good grape juice until now.” The Welch Premium impairs the guest’s senses, then the sneaky host can replace it cheap Wal-Mart store brand grape juice.
I have been party to the grape juice vs. wine debate. Churches serving grape juice primarily due so out of consideration for any recovering alcoholics in the congregation. The intent comes from not wanting to cause a brother to stumble, so I understand and respect that. I prefer wine at communion, but as ME stated, its not worthy of sword-play among brothers and sisters in Christ.
Oh come now, what is better than sword play? And sword play while drinking wine, I think we all just call that politics! At least when I look around, that’s what it appears to be to me, some tangled mess caused by a bunch of wine drinkers with swords. :)
We’re a grape juice church too, out of respect for others, but not quite so silly as to try to rewrite scripture to accommodate the concept.
Meh. I’m not so good at gluing people’s ears back on their heads. And that whole “Jesus rebuked him” thing is something I try to avoid.
Unicorns (as in horse and horn) have never existed, poor translation. Though leviathan is both symbolic and real.
And “dragon” should be reintroduced in translation.
Could you cite that with some photos, please? I’ve never seen a leviathan.
A possibility: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=Sarcosuchus&tbm=isch
What about the cockatrice?
I just read online that in days of yore English people were afraid that a chicken egg might hatch to reveal a cockatrice, and that this danger could be averted by tossing the egg all the way over the house without hitting either side. I guess you can’t ban a basilisk without breaking a few eggs!
If only all monsters were so easily avoided.
Jilly, I just gave you an upvote simply for using the phrase, “days of yore.”
I am fairly sure a leviathan can eat a cockatrice.
A dragon with a chicken’s head…interesting. That would explain some of the “chicken” I’ve been served at catered events.
“This is not a chicken; it’s an overcooked cockatrice.”
“Coqatrice au vin with braised shallots–$23.95” <–Evidence you are in the wrong restaurant.
Yeah, that’s way overpriced for a cockatrice.
LOL!
I get “poor translation.” I defer to others on that and have no problem with the idea that it means something else. But how can you assert that any given thing (that is not an absolute impossibility) “has never existed”?
I do not believe unicorns existed based on the lack of extant of extinct specimens. Nor am I aware of ancient literature that seriously proposes them. Nor does the idea of a horse with a single horn as a separate genus make sense. As the same kind of animal as a horse (ie interbreeding) with variant gene expression (horn/ no horn)—perhaps.
Unlike dragons which are documented in widespread literature as if they are real.
Of course I could be wrong and perhaps unicorns are extinct. But I doubt they existed.
On the god question, this is merely an issue with English. We have no problem using the term “lord” for men. Or “master”. We don’t don’t use the term “God” in English for anything other than the creator, or “god” for a supernatural false impersonator of the creator. But exchange the term “god” for “lord” in the passages and we would have no problem comparing men, angels and God; all using the same term. These are not debates of whether there is one God or many, they are debates where the terms are inadequately defined. Judaism and Christianity are always… Read more »
I note the use this can be when talking to pagans. The debate over gods may not need to be decided early, the Christian can say that he worships the Sky God, or the God of Heaven, of God the Creator of heaven and earth. The pagans acknowledge many “deities” and that they differ in power. But we don’t worship and minor deity or a territorial deity, we worship the highest deity.
This is the statement from Augustine that I think best applies to Pastor Wilson’s errors regarding the natural world. Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing… Read more »
Good article. I can’t understand the complainants, there is no pseudo-science here. Most atheists think that we believe in a spiritual dimension hidden somewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum (and some JWs, in their semi-atheist tendencies, indeed teach something like that). However, a better -but limited- illustration would be if you, the reader, were “the god” of a planar universe. You’re at least three-dimensional, but the two-dimensional people you created and put on the plane can’t “see you”, not because you’re hiding in some secret place of that plane. The problem is theirs: they have not “enough dimensions” to see you,… Read more »
Sorry, please cite where most atheists believe that. I am an atheist, I don’t. I also have never heard of anything like that. Ever. Or heard another atheist claim it as it would be unprovable and ridiculous. I am interested in your citation though?
RandMan, 1) Maybe we’re not understanding each other by my language limitations. I’m not saying that atheists believe that “God is hiding”. 2) I haven’t read atheist literature, but I talk often with atheists here (my country is one of the most atheists in LA). Indeed, they often ridicule us saying “You believe your God is hiding somewhere, and we can’t see him because we haven’t invented a device to do so “. I accept that this misrepresentation of theists probably is not used in the US, nor is used by more learned atheists. But it’s used quite often here,… Read more »
Yes, thank you for explaining. That is not a critique of god that I have ever heard or used as an atheist. Or would for that matter. To be clear, most atheists would say there is simply no evidence for god, any more than there is for any other number of imaginary beings one might claim. like leprauchans etc. You might try reading some atheist lit. At the very least it might challenge your ideas some- or maybe even strengthen them? I always say to folks here that they should be testing their ideas in the thick of dissent on… Read more »
Ok. Which atheist books or sources can you recommend as good portrayals of your beliefs? I’ll try to read them.
I’m glad that you enjoy reasoning with us christians of reformed stock. While we are the cerebral wing of christianity, probably you know that we -like all healthy evangelicals- believe that salvation is a gift from God. The best reformed apologist couldn’t reason his -or your-salvation out. It’s a supernatural event (a full 3D thing, he). Praying for you, sorry for my broken English.
PD: Did you read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, don’t you?
Regards,
Mariano
“I can’t understand the complainants…”
Most wise, I assure you. Some things actually just defy understanding.
Pseudoscience would be not recognizing the difference between a wild ox and a domesticated ox, or actually thinking re’em should be translated “unicorn”. I agree that it is quite beside the main point, which is why it’s a useless distraction.
Ok, agree.
Jonathan wrote:
What about not recognizing the difference between a wild ox and a rhinoceros? The Latin Vulgate translates the word re’em as rhinoceros, the Latin species name being Rhinoceros unicornis (as noted in the link provided by Mariano Ifran above).
Perhaps Jonathan can cool his jets about wild oxen and pseudoscience.
The idea that the Hebrew “re’em” refers to the auroch, a huge, powerful species of wild ox that lived in Israel during Old Testament times but is now extinct, is rooted in Johann Ulrich Duerst’s linguistic work of the late 1800s, who found that the word was based on the Akkadian cognate “rimu”, which was show to refer to the auroch via actual depictions found in Assyrian artifacts, which clearly show an ox, not a unicorn or a rhinoceros. Now, is such linguistic work infallible? Of course not. While the idea that “rimu” is the root of “re’em” is highly… Read more »
Not knowing when to give up, Jonathan wrote: However, in the English language, “unicorn” does NOT refer to either of those, it clearly refers to a mythical horned horse, and the comments show that many people agree with me in getting the impression that that’s exactly what Pastor Wilson intended it to refer to. Is Jonathan claiming to be an expert on period KJV english, and whether “unicorn” was simply the translators’ intent to reference rhinoceros unicornis following the example of the Vulgate? Notice that Wilson’s argument was not that “unicorn” was specifically a horned horse, but that it was… Read more »
Katecho, you’ve been reasonably nice for several months now, but this is getting right back into your old self where you arrogantly make bold proclamations that appear to purposely distort the argument from what was actually being talked about into something that you hope you can “win”. First off, no, I am not an expert in period KJV, but that’s irrelevant because Pastor Wilson never mentioned the KJV. We’re talking about modern English, right now where I have never in my entire life heard an English speaker in a serious conversation call a rhinoceros a unicorn. And it is obvious… Read more »
“At one time, the cosmological hierarchy was God > angels > man, and now it is God > man in Christ > angels. The June bugs got promoted. Not only had we been June bugs, but we had been surly and malevolent June bugs, and the particularly solution that God undertook to restore us and promote us is a solution that should be enough to keep us humble forever, world without end, amen.” Truly amazing, mind blown.
Wow