Christianity and Science

The Life Dialogue: Geocreationism Guest Post 2

This is part 2 of a thought-provoking series of guest posts by Mike Trutt on Geocreationism. Check out other posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity here. View Part 1 here.

Mike Trutt is an evangelical Christian with a Jewish background. He believes the Bible is inspired by God, recorded by man, and given its life by the Holy Spirit. You can read about and discuss his Old Earth views on scripture, science, history, and other topics at his blog,http://geocreationism.com.

Geocreationism – Evolution and God

As the reader proceeds, I request an open mind. With many of my theories on Creation, I often get the question of “why”? I cannot always answer. But consider how often God does not explain Himself to you. Quite often, He tells us what He did and what He will do, and we have only to believe Him. Abram was promised a son in His old age. He believed God and it was accounted to Him as righteousness; Zechariah on the other hand laughed, and God shut him up mute until his son John the Baptist was born. And so I take a risk with Creation, attempting to be righteous and not mute, and trusting God’s hand will be gentle if I am wrong. If in the end you still need an answer as to “why” then I offer you this: whatever God did, it was for His glory.

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Evolution is not an easy topic for Christians. Whatever the version, Evolution does not appear to require God any more than God requires Evolution. It is enough to keep atheists and Christians apart, but do not be fooled into picking sides. Such thinking is a trap of the enemy, as either choice is the result of a common theological fallacy… that God would not create using natural or “random” means. But, what if scripture showed otherwise?

Consider this passage in 1 Chronicles 14:15-16…

¹⁵ And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then go out to battle, for God has gone out before you to strike down the army of the Philistines.” ¹⁶ And David did as God commanded him, and they struck down the Philistine army from Gibeon to Gezer.

God went before David to strike down the philistines; David’s armies went and struck down the philistines.  God and David took separate actions, yet accomplished the same defeat.  To say then that Evolution is false because God created everything is like saying that David did not achieve victory over the Philistines, because God obviously did. This not only limits God, it contradicts the plain meaning of scripture. If Evolution is true, then Biblically speaking, it is as much God’s instrument as David’s armies above. But, just as a secular historian may study the defeat above and see only David’s army, a scientist studying the species will only see mutation, adaptation, and Natural Selection… but the blindness of man does not negate what he sees any more than it equates to an absence of God.

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On Day 1, God hovered over the deep.  As recorded in the size and age of the moon’s craters, meteor strikes devastated the earth’s early oceans, causing clouds and torrential rains throughout the world. From where God hovered in Genesis 1:2, the sun’s still-dim light could not be seen through the rain and clouds, and while the meteors continued it would be so.  With His pronouncement to “Let there be light,” the meteors ceased and the light of the sun pierced the darkness. This was 3.9 billion years ago. The rains would not yet stop, but an atmosphere would begin to form. There would now be sunlight, though the sun itself remained unseen.

On Day 2, the torrential rains continued to fall so hard, there was no perceivable separation between the clouds above and the seas below. With God’s declaration to “Let the waters separate from the waters,” the rains started to let up. Was Moses aware of these conditions when he wrote of them? Given their parallels with Egypt’s creation myths, I would say not. However, their alignment with modern secular scientific theories should be enough to give one pause.

On Day 3, the skies were still hazy and the world was still covered in water. God said to “let the water gather together in one place, and let dry ground appear.” Plate tectonics began around 2.4 billion years ago, as the earth hardened beneath the water and earthquakes thrusted the earth’s crust above the seas. God then said to “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”

According to their various kinds? Most people take it to mean that the vegetation will be capable of reproduction. But examine the King James translation: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.” God specifically listed seeded plants. What of the non-seeded, specifically succulents and spores?

The Bible says the land produced seeded plants at God’s command. It reminds me of David’s victory above. God went before the land to produce seeded plants, and then the land went forth and produced seeded plants. And if the land’s production was as physical as David’s victory, then why be surprised that it left behind some trace? Why be surprised that production of seeded plants required spores and succulents to develop first, each giving way to the next? Why be surprised that God didn’t even wait for the seeded plants to appear before He moved into the sunset and starting His work on Day 4? That’s right. Seeded plants did not appear until 300 million years ago, long after Day 4, which we discuss below. But once again, God’s work for Day 3 was done. It was time for the land to do its work.

On Day 4, as algae and fungi made significant inroads on the land, God said “Let there be lights in the heavens to separate the day from the night.” Scientists believe the Oxygen of these primitive plants cleared up the sky around 1.9 billion years ago. The sun, moon, and stars could be seen clearly in the skies, when they had been completely obscured before.

Day 5’s pronouncement reads, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the skies.” Day 6 reads, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds,” and it goes on to list their groups. If interpreted as the initial appearance of sea life, birds, and land mammals, then Days 5 and 6 must overlap, because whales appeared after land mammals in the fossil record. Such overlap of Days is not Biblical, but through scientific discovery we can find a meaning that explains it.

65 million years ago, a giant meteor struck the earth. It is referred to as the KT impact, and it nearly decimated all life on the planet.  It killed nearly every dinosaur, bird, sea creature, and mammal around the world. According to the fossil record, the first to recover was sea life. Placing Day 5 after the KT impact, a time when mere life was scant but there, God’s pronouncement becomes apropos, “Let the water teem with living creatures.” Next would be the birds. Why? It was the first time in their existence when they had no natural predators. And, just as Day 3 began a process leading to seeded plants, so Day 5 began a process eventually leading to whales. But wait. This required a recovery of mammals on the land, because they are what eventually led to mammals in the seas. What of the mammals of Day 6? The most comon theories have these days overlap.

According to the fossil record, the mammals that evolved on Day 5 were almost wiped out around 33.5 million years ago, after the whales appeared. The event is called the Grand Coupure.  Then, almost as suddenly, the mammals that survived gave way to new varieties, the ones we see today, the ones listed in scripture: “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” Once again, the specificity of scripture, when compared with the discoveries of science, provides an answer.

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It was hard to fit my treatise on Evolution into the word limitation of a blog, but I hope the point comes through, that secular science is useful and God is sovereign. The next installment will discuss the doctrine of Original Sin, and why death before Adam is compatible.

The Life Dialogue: Geocreationism Guest Post 1

This is part 1 of a series of guest posts by Mike Trutt on Geocreationism. Check out other posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity here.

Mike Trutt is an evangelical Christian with a Jewish background. He believes the Bible is inspired by God, recorded by man, and given its life by the Holy Spirit. You can read about and discuss his Old Earth views on scripture, science, history, and other topics at his blog,http://geocreationism.com.

Geocreationism- Introduction

I believe the Earth is old, and God’s Word is true.  This is not an easy position to hold.  There are Christians today feeling challenged to abandon the church, because long-standing theology requires a young earth that science tells them does not exist.  Faith tells them that science and scripture should not be at odds, but if the earth is so old, then what does scripture mean?  Why does Genesis say what it says, and science sees what it sees? Christians can agree that science and scripture must somehow align, but disagree as to how. A science that conforms to a young earth requires one to dismiss the scientific basis of established dating techniques, while an interpretation of scripture that conforms to an old earth requires an explanation of why pre-historic death does not unravel the doctrine of Original Sin, and in turn our need for a savior. As an Old Earth proponent and a Christian redeemed from sin, I have found no mainstream theory – on either side – that satisfactorily answers these questions.

Though I consider them my brethren in Christ, the Young Earth scientists whose writings I have read do not appear to understand the science they theoretically embrace. While using science reliably for everyday tasks like keeping airplanes in the sky and maintaining reliable cell-phone signals, the moment you provide evidence of something incredibly old that The Great Flood cannot explain, they say carbon dating is unreliable beyond 5,000 years (which is roughly true), hence rendering any dating technique equally suspect.  Why? Because the Bible clearly says to them that the Earth is young. To them, evidence to the contrary indicates a misunderstanding of the evidence. While such strong faith is potentially advantageous to their relationship with God, it dismisses the possibility that Genesis is what we misunderstand. But, if that is the case, and the earth is old, then where is the theory of Old Earth Creation that keeps Christian Theology intact? In all my years of looking for it, it isn’t there. Enter Geocreationism.

Most Old Earth approaches relegate Genesis 1-11 to some form of symbolism, even though every chapter is clearly written in a literal manner.  For example, concordist theories (e.g., Day-Age, Progressive Creationism) map the days of creation to overlapping geological eras, even though Genesis 1 clearly discerns a break between creation days. Gap theories fail to account for the fossil record, by acknowledging the age of the earth, but not the development of the species. Theistic Evolution relegates God to the beginning of creation, when Genesis 1 clearly shows God’s involvement at every step. And so it goes, as every mainstream Old Earth theory dismisses the plain meaning of scripture, an unsatisfying response to Young Earth theories, which dismiss the plain meaning of the science. It creates a false dichotomy that puts many in the unenviable position of dismissing their heart or dismissing their mind, when God would have us dismiss neither.

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The first mistake of Old and Young Earth Creationists alike is one of perspective.  They read Genesis 1 from the perspective of the earth’s experience being created by God, when it is really telling us of God’s experience creating the earth.  If there is any doubt then consider who it is that hovered over the deep in Genesis 1:2. God was there, physically hovering. He had a perspective, and from His perspective the earth had no form and He could see no light. “And God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening and there was morning – the first day.” (Genesis 1:3-5) From God’s perspective, hovering over the deep, there was now light separated from darkness. In Job 38:5, God describes it as stretching the line upon the face of the earth. Proverbs 8:27 calls that line the circle on the deep, which we see from space, even today.

The Hebrew word used for day is “yom”, and it refers specifically to the period from sundown to sundown, or from darkness to darkness. In other words, God experienced the end of the day, but it was not specifically 24 hours. This has profound implications for understanding Genesis 1, and it is a perspective I have read nowhere else.

For God to, by choice, physically experience 6 days creating, calling each phase of creation “good”, it suggests an ability to watch the earth rotate beneath Him until the entire earth passed Him by.  As Genesis 1:2 says so clearly, God hovered over it, an intentional physical perspective for Him to watch His work. But what would happen after 24 hours, after the entire earth has passed through His view? From the perspective of a point on the earth, one “yom” would certainly pass.  However, God was not limited to a point upon the earth.  He was hovering above it as the earth rotated beneath Him, hovering in the light, which imposes no arbitrary time limit on when He moves into the dark. Combined with the literal meaning of “yom”, scripture is not requiring a creation day to be a 24-hour period. Sundown for God becomes the time God chose, not a time imposed. It means the earth may be old, and God created it in 6 literal days.

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Another common oversight in Genesis 1:2 is the nature of the deep over which God hovered. What is it? When was it? What if science could find a period in history when the earth was covered in water and darkness, a period that ended with the appearance of light, but no land, no life, and no visible sun? Would that confirm at least the possibility that Genesis 1:2 is recording something that literally happened? I thought it would, and I found it.

About 4.5 billion years ago, the earth is thought to have formed. According to the aging of zircon crystals from as long as 4.4 billion years ago, it strongly suggests the formation of an ocean around the world as it cooled. It would also seem from the moon’s craters that large meteors were hitting earth until around 3.9 billion years ago.  The sizes of the meteors were large enough to vaporize any ocean that was forming, and blow away any infant atmosphere as well. But interestingly, that stopped quite suddenly 3.9 billion years ago.  This gives us a point in time when the earth, covered in water, vapor, and gas was finally allowed to start settling down, and allow the sky to clear. The sun was dimmer at the time, and what light did reach the earth would have been too obscured to be seen.  It is the precise condition described in Genesis 1:2, and would seem to record the result of God’s statement, to “Let there be light.”

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While we’re on the topic of the deep and its formation, I want to jump to Genesis 2:4-7…

⁴ This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵ Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, ⁶ but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. ⁷ Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

What fascinates me about this passage is verse 5. It describes the state of the earth when God first made it. Does this passage give us a clue as to when that was? Well, look at the description of the earth in verses 5 and 6…

• No shrubs
• No plants
• No rain yet, ever
• No people to work the ground
• Streams gassed up from the earth to water the ground

This is in fact a precise description of the earth 4.5 to 4.4 billion years ago.  Scientists call this process outgassing. They believe it is how the deep formed, over which I believe God hovered in Genesis 1:2, and it is described quite accurately in Genesis 2:5-6. Though no mainstream theory will call Genesis scientific, the appropriateness of these verses should no longer be overlooked. Finally, we come to verse 7, which says, “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

To paraphrase, God started with dust 4.4 billion years ago. He then proceeded through 6 literal days of creation until around 6,000-7,000 years ago, when Adam was born. God introduced Himself and breathed new life into him.

The Life Dialogue: Young Earth Creationism 4

This is part of a series of posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. Check out other posts in the series here.

In my last post on Young Earth Creationism (hereafter YEC), I examined the case for the literal 24 hour periods in the Genesis account from the YEC perspective. Now I want to turn to YEC’s case against God using evolution. It should be clear to those following this debate that this post is therefore oriented towards the theological aspect of the dialogue rather than the scientific aspect.

Often, YECs argue against other beliefs in the dialogue by pressing that God would not have used evolution to bring about mankind. (This objection cannot apply to some forms of Old Earth Creationism, in which God does specially create man.) Essentially, the argument goes, “God’s character comes into question” if He used death to bring about these species (Ham, 35). They ask, “How could a God of love allow such horrible processes as disease, suffering, and death for millions of years as part of His ‘very good’ creation?” (Ham, 36).

Such questions make up some of the strong theological arguments for the YEC position.  There are only a few ways I know to answer this line of reasoning. 1) One can affirm that the death which entered at original sin has the consequence of spiritual death as opposed to physical death [thus, when sin entered the world, all were condemned to hell through it, but they already died]; 2) God specially created mankind, and humans would not have died if they had not sinned; 3) Deny that such questions actually call God’s character into question.

1) seems a bit implausible from Scripture, though I suppose it is possible to hold this position (many do)

2) allows one to be more in-line with Scripture in my opinion, though one has to sacrifice some of the main reasons to hold a view other than YEC to affirm this (one can’t argue that all life evolved whether guided or not if one affirms special creation of man)

3) This may actually be the most fruitful path, though it must be combined with one of the above reasons. Just as God’s character is not called into question by the fact of death and suffering post-fall, so too is God’s character not called into question on such things pre-fall. One could argue this in a number of ways. Perhaps the possible worlds were limited to those in which God could only bring about mankind through a long process.

Does this YEC position work as intended? I think it does to some extent. It undermines some of the theological foundation of the other positions, while showing that YEC has an answer for the same problem. If there are no good answers to these challenges posed by advocates of YEC, YEC itself gains some strong theological credibility. The options above are capable of handling the challenge, but at what cost? I’ll have to see if there are better answers to be found before I give my final verdict.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author.

The Life Dialogue: Theistic Evolution 4

This is part of a series of posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. Check out other posts in the series here.

I recently read a very interesting article on theistic evolution by Loren Haarsma and Terry M. Gray entitled “Complexity, Self Organization, and Design.” Interestingly, I found what I think are some of the most interesting arguments for the theistic evolutionist position, but I also found some of the hardest objections to the position (scientifically) that I have stumbled across.

I’ll start with the interesting evidence for their position. First, they note that the word “design” doesn’t belong exclusively to the Intelligent Design theorists, because theistic evolutionists argue that God designed the initial laws which gave rise to evolution and eventually humanity. In other words, God foreknew and intended for mankind to evolve, and set up the laws such that we would (or at least that some sentient beings with which God intended to interact would arise, 289).

They further argue that “With the right set of rules, a random, iterative process can start with a simple environment and self-assemble a complex environment” (293, emphasis theirs). The arguments for this position are interesting to me, and I am no scientist, but it seems to me that the three ways from which they argue for this possibility make more sense to me if there is some kind of intelligence behind the process.

The three strategies for self-organized complexity they argue are:

1) Preprogrammed self assembly– “…pieces are designed so that random interactions between them eventually lead to assembly of the desired complex object(s)”

2) Information transfer from the environment– objects incorporate information from the environment through “a process of random exploration and feedback”

3) Interaction among agents– “random interactions and feedback” lead to “increased productivity or survivability” (290)

It seems to me that 1) could be simply incorporated into laws at the beginning of the universe  (but these laws would have to be designed, as the authors point out). 2) seems to me as though it simply couldn’t be totally random. For evolution to work, on the understanding I’ve gleaned from my readings, the complexity would have to aid the survivability of the entity. I think a problem here is that there is no way to determine when/why/how the random interactions suddenly latch onto those things which are helpful. If it truly is a random process, then it would randomly continue to select for characteristics, casting off old ones and making room for new ones.

Incorporating natural selection doesn’t seem like it would help much here either, because then those random selections which are negative would terminate the species. So my problems with 2) are twofold (even granting that God Designed the laws such that these interactions would occur): 1. there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for the process stopping the random selections (and therefore keeping the trait); 2. we aren’t talking about computer algorithms here, we’re talking living entities–if they select the wrong traits, they die.

Ultimately I found these arguments interesting reading, but I just don’t see how they support Theistic Evolutionism more than, say Intelligent Design. The authors do make the interesting point that it could have been the case that God set up/designed the laws such that life would arise, but the ways that complexity is integrated into the process seems to me, at least, to demand further explanation.

Source:

Haarsma, Loren and Terry M. Gray, Complexity, Self-Organization, and Design, in Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, edited Keith B. Miller, p. 288-309.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author.

The Life Dialogue: Intelligent Design 3

This is part of a series of posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. Check out other posts in the series here.

Intelligent Design (hereafter ID) is a theory that suffers a lot of critique from all sides of the life dialogue within Christianity, as well as the secular world. Just a google search can bring up thousands of images ridiculing the theory, both from an evolutionist standpoint (often calling it creationism in disguise) and from a creationist standpoint (calling it evolutionism in disguise). I find that, too often, those criticizing the ID movement present a caricature of its arguments, without ever addressing the relevant issues it raises.

Creationists often attack ID for trying to sneak some kind of atheism into theology. I simply don’t find this to be true. The ID movement would have many theological implications, but atheism is definitely not one of these. Theistic Evolutionists criticize ID for being just creationism in disguise. I simply can’t see this as anything but a non sequitur of the greatest proportions.

Recently, an article in Philosophia Christi (cited below) by Warren Shrader discussed ID’s mechanisms of detecting intelligence. Shrader writes that the Explanatory Filter utilized by Dembski (discussed briefly here) can be strengthened by considering the epistemological tools of cognitive abilities in determining whether there is a specification condition (which would therefore justify a “design inference”).

The way we can utilize epistemology within the ID hypothesis is “…given an event E and a pattern D, we say that D is a specification of E if and only if the following conditions are satisfied.” These conditions are: 1) Tractability (essentially meaning it is possible for a cognitive agent to produce the pattern D), 2) The probability of E given H (“the hypothesis that the event in question was a product of chance” 383) and J (information) = the probability of E given H “for any information J generated by I“, and 3) D delimits E  (392-393).

Armed with this capacity for determining design, ID avoids the objection that patterns can be replicated by computers. This is done by criterion 1), which restricts patterns to our finite cognitive abilities. This of course means that it is very possible that many “positive” results will be thrown out, but this only strengthens those positives that do result, because they are irrefutable evidence for ID. In other words, when we tighten the design criteria such that we guarantee the patterns were produced by a cognitive agent, we have guaranteed that intelligence has been detected.

Combine these tools with those mentioned in my previous posts on ID, and there is a functional system for detecting intelligence in biology, cosmology, etc. Reading about ID has me excited to read more. I cannot emphasize enough how much readers who have not explored the issue themselves should try to do so.

Source:

Shrader, Warren, “Dembski’s Specification Condition and the Role of Cognitive Abilities,” Philosophia Christi, volume 11, number 2, 2009, 377-396.

The Life Dialogue: Matt Moss Guest Post 5

This is part 5 of a series of guest posts by Matt Moss on the Genesis Creation account. Check out the first post here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

Thesis 6: The Fall of Man into Sin destroys the order of God’s Cosmic Temple.

This destruction and disarray can be seen firstly in this: Man has tried to make himself God. This is what the deceiver promised in 3:5- “eat of the tree of which you were commanded not to eat and you will be like God.” Man has separated himself from communion with God in this Cosmic Temple. The price for his rebellion is expulsion from the Cosmic Temple, man and woman are cast out, East of Eden (this will be important in a moment).

A brief note on “sin:” I must say that one of the worst parts of Walton’s book is when he tries to address the place of death in creation before the 7 days of functional ordering and how it fits in after the Fall. I think this happens because Walton suffers from the same fate as most reformed evangelicals who deny any hereditary original sin that is a condition plaguing all mankind and even causing detriment to the world around us. Surely he would hold that all are sinful, but his language in the book leaves the door open for someone to think that he defends natural disasters and animal attacks on humans as if that’s always the way it was meant to be. He gives no indication that sin is a condition of chaotic disorder in this world. For him, sin is simply a wrong action we commit (or good we omit).

In retrospect I think Walton would find that a Lutheran understanding of Sin would actually HELP the case he tries to make in the book and even make sense of some of the loose ends that he leaves untied. Allow me to explain how a Lutheran understanding of Sin fits into this Genesis 1 Cosmic Temple. The word for sin in Hebrew is hta. Many have said that this is the word for when an arrow misses its mark. That is true, but it is not speaking of the ACTION of missing the mark (sin as an action would be what Walton and the reformed hold as do Lutherans although we do not limit it to that).Hta is the condition that things are not as they are intended to be! Sin is not, “oops I missed the target” (an act of committing wrong). Hta is “I shot the arrow straight down and now gravity is going UP!” or better yet, “I shot at the target and now the arrow is facing the opposite way, impaling my heart!” The correct condition is that the arrow is where it belongs: in the target. The hta is the condition where the arrow is completely confounded and misplaced.

When it comes to the Cosmic Temple then, the entrance of SIN (hta), as this condition of chaos, reverts the perfect, ordered, functional Cosmic Temple to the chaos of 1:2a. God spent seven days ordering this Cosmos into a Temple of communion between God and man and now man has rejected this Temple and sent all of creation back into tohu andbohu, purposelessness and functionlessness, worse than that! The world is now a place of rebellion and death. The ground of the earth is cursed (3:17-18) and as man and woman are expelled from the Cosmic Holy of Holies they are sent into the wilderness where animals, weather, and nature itself are now hostile to them! Throughout the OT and even into the NT the wilderness is viewed as the land of desolation, tohu and bohu, and separation from God. And yet, God is not about to let their chaotic overturn of His creation be the final word on the matter!

Thesis 7: God’s establishment of the Israelite Tabernacle/Temple serves to return mankind to the divine order of the Cosmic Temple: communion with God.

Finally we get to the point of all these temple comparisons. What was the point of all those tabernacle/temple regulations in Exodus and Kings? Why was God so specific? Because God wanted to show them in explicit visual detail that He was opening a new Eden by which the Israelite sinners could return to communion with their God! However, one thing had changed. Man was no longer pure and clean. Man was sinful and defiled and would need atonement to come before God. This is why the ONLY thing that differs between the Cosmic Temple and the Israelite Temple is the sacrificial system.

Allow me to quickly go through some of the aspects of the Temple that reminded Israelites that they were returning to God’s Holy Eden- the pleasure of His presence. First, recall that the man and woman were banished EAST of Eden. The Tabernacle and Temple of Israel each had the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies positioned in the West and the worshipers would enter through the East gate. By going from East to West they are coming home from the way God banished them.

Second, we recall the rivers of Eden: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In addition to the water basins looked at above, it is also of remarkable note that there stands a spring just south of Solomon’s temple, in the Kidron Valley which was named, “The Gihon Spring.” Hmm. Very Interesting!

Once inside the main gate the Israelite worshiper walks among the courts, surrounded by wooden walls and looking at the pillars of the Holy Place with their decorated tops made to look like trees. Even to this day Cathedrals all throughout the world use pillars with decorated tops to act as trees leading to the centre of the Garden: the Holy of Holies in the Temple and the Chancel of the Cathedral!

Inside the Holy Place you have your lampstands to mark the minor lights just like the large menorah in the outer court acts as a greater light! Finally, you find behind the curtain of the Holy Place the Holy of Holies where God Himself sits on the Mercy seat. For Israel worship at the Temple is a return to the divine order of Creation as God intended, the sinful corruption of the world is made right. And yet, all of this was incomplete. The sacrifices all looked forward to a final sacrifice. Through the Israelite Temple worship God was reconciling His people, but through the final redemption, all the Earth would be restored to the Cosmic Temple God created.

Thesis 8: Jesus Christ finalizes the restoration of the Cosmic Temple.

Hebrews 10:1-18 is worth your read right now! Once you’re done, come back and read on.

Christ is the finale of the sacrificial system as surely as he is the only true sacrifice. More than this, the tearing of the Temple curtain at his crucifixion speaks of this restoration. Through Christ Jesus man is reunited to God and the Cosmic Temple is restored. Likewise, going back to our seven days of creation, there is now an eighth day of creation. Just as God rested on the seventh day, so Christ rested in the tomb on the seventh day. Then on the eighth day Christ was raised from death to life and established a NEW Creation through Resurrection!

“It doesn’t look so new,” you might say. “There is still death and disaster, pain and suffering.” Yes indeed. We live in a period of “now and not yet.” We are saved yet we are not in heaven yet. Sin has been defeated, yet we live in a fallen world. As Paul writes in Romans 8:18-30 (do look it up and read it, I won’t post it all here, the post is long enough) we and the whole of creation await the future glory. I find it marvellous that in the last two chapters of Revelation we find an undoing of the seven days of creation. In Revelation 21 – 22 we read of the New Heaven and the New Earth and we see an unravelling of what was created in Genesis 1. The sea is no more but all will drink from the spring of the water of life (cf. John 4; 7:37-39- the latter occurring in the Temple during the Feast of Booths where water is poured out as libation). The sun and the moon are no more because Christ the Lamb is their light (cf. John 8 “I am the Light of the world”- said while he was in the Temple for the Feast of booths, standing by the menorah)! In every way the New Heaven and New Earth are much greater than the pre-Fall Cosmic Temple.

To summarize what the last posts have addressed: Genesis 1 – 3 is an ancient Temple Cosmology that does not specifically address the questions of how or when God did His material creating work. Beyond that Genesis 1 – 3 serves as a Liturgical text, a Temple text, a Christological text, a Trinitarian text, a Redemption text, a Sacramental text, a Teleological text, and an Eschatological text, but NOT a 21st century scientific treatise. As I have told many people before, there is such a wealth and richness to these initial chapters that we simply miss the point of the text when we try to force it into modern scientific debates and attempt to answer questions that God did not deem important enough to address in His revelation to ancient Israel. What God does answer in these chapters is why He has made creation work the way it does, how man has thrown it into chaos, and how He will restore it to an even greater glory.

The Life Dialogue: Young Earth Creationism 3

This is part of a series of posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. Check out other posts in the series here.

I wrote in my last post on Young Earth Creationism (hereafter YEC) that I had missed one of its primary tenets, which is that the theological, not the scientific, should be the focus of the “origins” debate. This key point means that the challenge to YEC that it doesn’t have a fully developed scientific model doesn’t seem to be as much of a challenge as one may think, for YEC is grounded in theology, not science.

The problem with this is that this makes YEC hard to evaluate in light of the other views (Old Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Theistic Evolutionism) because its advocates rarely try to put forward a competing scientific model. Instead, YEC tends to be a view which focuses on pointing out flaws the arguments of its opponents rather than constructing its own models. While YEC does have some views which are offered for explanations of the world we observe (a catastrophic global flood is one possibility, though one visitor to this site commented on the scientific impracticalities of testing this), its case is largely built on attacking the other views as invalid.

It is to this that we shall now turn. For now, let us focus on YEC’s case against the other Christian views of the age of the earth. First, YEC, because of its theological nature, is absolutely tied to the belief that the Genesis creation account of six days explicitly means six literal 24 hour periods. Ken Ham gives several reasons for taking this belief seriously in The New Answers Book 1. These reasons include the context of Genesis 1, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, Exodus 20:9-11 pointing to six literal days, and that “Jesus was a young-earth creationist”. I’ll outline and critique these arguments below.

The argument about the context of Genesis 1 focuses on the light/dark cycle for the meaning of days (26). This argument has some merit, though I think one of the key problems is that there was no sun for a few of the light/periods, meaning that at least something else must have been going on here. I do think that this argument has some merit, however.

The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 would seem to point to the dates that Ken Ham and YECss tend to affirm (though Ham says it is about 6000 years, contrary to other YECs I have read who tend towars 10-15,o00). The problem with this is that it is that semitic genealogies tended to list only key people. Also, the individuals listed could refer to entire families or separate genealogies. I don’t think that the genealogies make a strong case for the YEC view.

Exodus 20:9-11 states (ESV), “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

This is a fairly strong argument for the YEC, in my opinion. The parallel meaning of six literal days because of creation order tends to point to a more literal reading of Genesis 1. The only problem I see with this argument is that the 7th day clearly is longer than one 24-hour day according to all the Christian theology I know. What response could non-YECs give? I think one could argue that Exodus 20 is pointing metaphorically or figuratively back to Creation, and that the literal reading is at least slightly weakened by the 7th day.

Finally, was Jesus a YEC? I must say I find it incredibly anachronistic to apply a position in a modern debate over the creation accounts to Jesus. Ham presents the evidence as, among other verses, Jesus saying in Mark 10:6, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.'” This has some initial plausibility for pointing to a Young Earth, but one immediate problem I see with taking this as literally as Ham wants to is that Jesus says “beginning of creation”, which, if one were to take it very literally, means that Jesus is asserting that man and woman were created first, contrary to the creation account in the Bible. I still do find this verse an extremely strong argument for YEC, however.

So, where does this leave us? I still think the YEC position has the strongest theological stance due to the ability to more easily read the accounts as six literal days. It seems to me, however, that other views have plausibility due to a day being as a “thousand years” for the Lord (2 Peter 3:8). YEC counters to this have not persuaded me that this could not mean that the Genesis account is longer than a literal week. The question I put forth is whether or not the Genesis account was intended as incredibly literal as the YEC position insists.

Source:

Ham, Ken. The New Answers Book 1. Master Books. 2006.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author.

The Life Dialogue: Matt Moss Guest Post Part 4

This is part 4 of a series of guest posts by Matt Moss on the Genesis Creation account. Check out the first post here, the second here, and the third here.

It would now be my contention that day two and its parallel day four are the building and filling of the Cosmic Temple. In the religious Tabernacle/Temple of Israel this comes off a bit differently because of the Fallen status of the world. Day 2’s establishment of the expanse parallels the setting up of the tent of the Tabernacle and the walls of the Temple. Notice then that day 5 is the creation/assignment of the birds of the sky (above the tent’s curtain) and the sea creatures (below the tent’s foundation). What fills the temporal Temple will come on days 3 and 6.

For now I would like to add one more decorative indicator of Temple cosmology. If you remember your temple diagrams that you’ve seen and the Levitical procedures you may have read about in various OT courses/studies, you will surely remember the pools and the washings! Priests had to regularly wash themselves and their robes before proper use in the Temple. For the Tabernacle, see Exodus 30:17-21. And for the Temple see 1 kings 7:23-26; 2 Chron 4:2-5. As with the lampstand above, these serve a symbolic purpose as well as a practical one! They are part of the Temple precisely because they are part of the Cosmic Temple in Genesis 1!

Genesis 1:11-13 and 24-25, “And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day… [day 6] And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”

As foreshadowed above, on day 3 we have a further establishment of the Cosmic Temple and on day 6 we have the first part of the filling of the Cosmic Temple. First I will deal with day 3. While travelling through the wilderness, the Israelite Tabernacle did not uproot and replant trees in the Tabernacle every where they went. However! You will read and see Acacia wood being used in everything from the Ark of the Covenant to the pillars that hold up the curtain and the walls of the Holy Place (see The Lutheran Study Bible page 141 for a great breakdown of materials used). The tent posts all the way around the outer court too serve as a garden image with all their rich colours. Later in the Solomonic Temple, there is a similar tree-like architectural feature. First we note that cedar and cypress timber from Lebanon was used (1 Kings 5:8-9; 6:14-18). Just as the trees and vegetation of day 3 served to decorate the Cosmic Temple, so also the acacia, cedar and cypress wood are used to decorate Israel’s Tabernacle & Temple.

As for day six, I have isolated the first part from the second part (mankind) simply because man deserves a bit of time on his own. Much like the birds and fish are to fill the Cosmic Temple but are kept out of the temporal Tabernacle/Temple, so too these animals are included in the Cosmic Temple BUT are only brought into the Israelite Tabernacle/Temple to be sacrificed (more on this later!).

Genesis 1:26-31- “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 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.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

I’ll cut right to the chase. Man is the priest of the Cosmic Temple. This becomes even more explicitly clear in 2:15, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” These two tasks, “to work it and keep it” (avad and shamar) are only used together in reference to the Levitical priesthood. Upon God’s resting of day seven, the Cosmic Temple is fully ordered and filled, that is, it is fully functional! God is present and he places His man in the Garden of Eden, the Holy of Holies of this Cosmic Temple, to be the High Priest who serves God by working and keeping this Temple. And at the centre of this Cosmic Temple stands the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. Man is given one command by which he might serve and love the gracious Creator, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die (Gen 2:16-17).”

Despite avoiding material creation questions throughout his book, Walton appears to lean toward the special creation of mankind. He therefore rejects the evolution of man even though he allows room for evolution of animals. For him, Genesis 2 allows us to have a material understanding of man’s formation/creation (out of the dust). I don’t think it’s the strongest part of his book, but for now I am too fixated on the notion of the man as priest of the Cosmic Temple.

God then makes a suitable helper for the man (gender roles, order of creation, marriage, and the like are topics for further discussion in other forums). We all know what happens next. The perfect, complete, finished, and functional Cosmic Temple, perfectly and wonderfully ordered by God that He might live in communion with His creation, is disturbed. No, that’s too weak a description. The fully ordered creation is hurled into disorder, chaos, and disarray. SIN enters in 3:7.

The next post will discuss Thesis 6.

The Life Dialogue: Matt Moss Guest Post Part 3

This is part 3 of a series of guest posts by Matt Moss on the Genesis Creation account. Check out the first post here, and the second here.

Thesis 5– Genesis 1 – 2 describes the whole of creation as God’s (pre-fall) Temple.

When examining the seven days of creation we see several factors that indicate something cultic (meaning religious) taking shape. The first three days show a forming of the earth which (in v. 2) was “without form.” In the second set of three days you see a filling of the earth which (in v. 2) was “void.” Walton, in keeping with his functional model suggests a better translation of these words tohu and bohu (without form and void). Similar to bara’ he provides a survey of tohu’s use in the Bible (bohu occurs three times, always with tohu) and shows that the word “describes that which is non-functional, having no purpose and generally unproductive in human terms (48-9).” In light of this, the state of tohu and bohu means that the earth has a functional non-existence. Thus, when God begins His bara’ work, the functional bringing into existence of all that He does, Genesis 1 wants us to see what purpose everything serves.

Examining the functions in Genesis 1 we will find many parallels to the religious life of ancient Israel as studied in Exodus, Leviticus, and the rest of the OT. I’d like to turn now to days 4 – 7 of the Genesis 1 account (1:14 – 2:3) to examine the indicators that the Genesis 1 cosmology is a temple cosmology.

Genesis 1:14-19 (ESV) – “And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”

So let’s look at what functions these lights in the sky are given:

1) to separate the day from the night

2) to be for signs and for seasons (moed) and years

3) to give light upon the earth

4) to rule the day & night

5) to separate the light from the darkness

Now you may be asking yourself, “I don’t see anything here that is particularly temple focused. First I would like to point out that in a society where watches & clocks are not present, the Sun, Moon, and stars are what tell you when it is time to worship (they did so much more often than once a week). Second, we can see throughout the OT that specific days of specific months are given festivals and holidays. These were mapped out by using these very lights, after all that is their given purpose in point two, “to be for signs and for moediym and years.”

The word moed occurs 223 times in the OT, so we have a large cross section of uses to help us nail down the possible meanings and the intended meaning within this context. The basic lexical entry is “appointed time.” However it is important to note that in Exodus 23:15, God says, “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the moed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.” At the very beginning of the cultic/religious life of Israel upon exiting Egypt this word is tied to their religious festivals! Throughout Exodus, Leviticus, & Numbers moed is unanimously used in the phrase “tent of meeting (moed)” for the tent in the centre of the Tabernacle (the travelling version of the Temple before Solomon builds the first Temple). Now, beyond this there are countless uses of moed as “appointed time” in the worship life of Israel. I would thus maintain that Genesis 1 claims the functional purpose of the Sun, Moon, and stars is to indicate the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly worship schedules of God’s people. In other words, when the ancient Israelite children asked their parents, “why is that moon shining in the sky?” the parents would answer in accord with Psalm 104:19 and say, “God made the moon to remind us when to observe the Feast of Passover and the other feasts/festivals.”

There is one more minor indicator that I would like to bring up when discussing the functional creation of Light. When we examine Genesis 1 as a Temple cosmology we realize just why something seemingly inconsequential like the Golden Lampstand (Ex. 25:31ff) is present in the Temple. Not only does it serve to light the room, but it is absolutely necessary to have this light in the Temple because this Temple reflects the Cosmic Temple corrupted in the Fall. If the Cosmic Temple has Light (Gen 1:3-5, 14-19) so must the Tabernacle/Temple have that Light (Ex. 25:31-40; 2 Chron 4:7).

Genesis 1:20-23- “And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.”

Granted, there is not much here that we would directly relate to the Temple if we did not first see that days 4-6 are paralleling days 1-3. Now, when we look back to verses 6-8 and read it in the light of other ancient Near Eastern cosmologies we see that on days two and four more than any other we find the physical shape of a temple. The Lutheran Study Bible footnote on these verses is very helpful in pointing out the structural/functional aspect of how the “expanse” works and the image it evokes. “The point of the image is the function rather than the substance: the sky serves as a divider. The Israelites often used figurative terms to describe the cosmos as it appeared to them (cf. Is 40:22, where the sky is described as a “curtain” and a “tent”).”

[Further expansion of thesis 5 coming later this week]

The Life Dialogue: Matt Moss Guest Post Part 2

This post is the second guest post in my series on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. See Part 1 here. See other posts in the series here.

PART 2

Thesis 4– Genesis 1 does not address the specific method that God used in material creation, therefore (given T1-3) no specific answer to the questions of how or when is necessary to salvation.

Walton makes an important distinction between material creation and functional creation. Material creation is what modern debates obsess over. How did the material (the animals and people) get here: did they evolve or were they created or both? When did they come about? A quick reading of Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 shows that good, solid answers to these questions are not given. “In the beginning” is hardly a round number. Even those who attempt to date the earth using the various genealogies of the Bible prove their ignorance of ancient Near Eastern family lists which often “telescope” or skip generations of individuals and focus on the most notable. In other words, no one should think that the genealogy from Adam to Abraham is intended to tell us exactly how old the earth is. That was not the purpose of the genealogy and that is not what the genre allows a modern reader to do either.

Now, as for the “how material was created.” Walton argues very convincingly that Genesis 1 remains silent on this. With our modern biases we immediately object, “how can that be!? It says plainly, ‘and God said let there be light.’” Walton backs up to Gen 1:1 and addresses the Hebrew word bara’ (to create). In our understanding we always attach an ex nihilo understanding onto this word. That alone shows how materially minded we are, we have a very material focused cosmology. Walton first demonstrates that all ancient Near Eastern cosmologies were ‘function’ oriented, not material oriented. This means that the neighbouring creation accounts are concerned with the gods assigning functions to what comes about. How and when was not the question they were asking.

Walton then shows a similar mindset in ancient Israel. Even the word bara’ is a functional word. Walton provides a survey (p. 42) that outlines every use of the verb in the Hebrew Bible. The first thing of note is that God is always the subject. The second thing of note is that it nearly always is used in a functional sense, where God is giving something a specific purpose or function. Let’s look back to that light example. Genesis 1 does not stop with, “And God said let there be light.” No, Genesis 1:3-5 says “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5Godcalled the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (italics mine)”

More than making light is taking place. God is assigning functions to the light and the darkness, he is naming them for their functions! This is seen even more specifically when God creates the Sun and Moon. “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons (A more accurate translation is “festivals”- a temple word), and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. (underlining mine)” How and when is not important. Why are they present? That is the question God chose to answer for the people.

Walton does go through these days in detail and then gives brief critiques of the various models out there. The first thing worthy of note is that yom (Day) does mean day… not age. Walton would argue that this hardly seals the deal for Young Earthers since they are completely fixated on material models of creation. Walton seems to take the side that the seven days of Genesis 1 are the seven days in which God assigned all creation its specific function, indeed without function one might hardly say that they exist at all (he uses the analogy of a company- before it is certified it cannot be said to exist even if it has a building and equipment and workers). Thus, Walton, like Genesis 1, remains mute on the hows and whens of material origins before the days when God assigns the functions and Walton sticks with what Genesis 1 does give us, which is the next thesis [coming next week in part 3].