Blog Archives
Creation / Evolution 6: Putting it together…
This is the final post in my mini-series on “Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism.” In my last post I looked at what the ground rules would be for interpretation. So in this, the last post on the subject, I will give you the answer you’ve all been waiting for: all your questions about Genesis, Paul, Creation and Evolution will fall away and you will never have to wonder about it again! … I wish. Part of the frustration with a topic like this is that I don’t think there is a clear answer, a clear synergy.
That’s the main reason why I’ve been somewhat putting off writing this post – because I can’t really give “an answer”. However, I think there are some interesting things I’ve learnt along the way, which I will share with you.
At some stage in the future I will consolidate all these posts into one, hopefully iron out some of the unevenness which naturally arises from blog posts (well, my blog posts anyway). But for now, here we go…
Who was Adam?
There are a variety of explanations, some of which I think are more valid than others.
One explanation which in some ways is very attractive is that of ‘federal headship’. This is the view Denis Alexander explains in his book. He posits the view that God chose a pair of neolithic farmers (a man and a woman) to be ‘federal heads’ for all of humanity. They then sinned, and that then became the sin which Paul refers to in e.g. Romans 5. This view is attractive because it would fit in well with evolutionary history as far as we know, it would seem to explain about Adam and Eve being farmers at the approximate time period that the Bible seems to indicate they were around, and would seem to fit with God ‘choosing’ people (e.g. God chooses Abraham, God chooses Israel etc.) Under this view, Paul’s reference would not be to Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all mankind in a biological sense, but in a representative sense.
Such a view might also shed some light on Genesis 6:1-4: It’s an interesting exercise to read that passage in the light of this theory, the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” … but then, it’s a very difficult passage to interpret any way you look at it. It would also seem to solve the perennial problem “where did Cain get his wife?”, although there are – again – all sorts of options on that subject for every view of origins.
I’ve heard that Alister McGrath is a proponent of a view like this, although I haven’t been able to find any hard evidence so I’m willing to stand up to correction on that one.
Of course, there are problems with this view, for example: it seems to do damage to a doctrine of original sin, and leaves unsatisfied the question of what happened to all the other neolithic people.
Another view is to place the creation of Adam way back approx. 150,000 – 200,000 years ago, to the first hominid pair. Although this would be much earlier than the traditional dating of Adam and Eve, if the Biblical chronology would allow a much longer period of time during Genesis 1-11 it would seem to gel more neatly. Apparently Hebrew genealogies don’t function in the same way that we might write a genealogy, they picked out key people and allowed for the possibility of gaps – of course, 150,000 years is a lot of gaps but then Genesis 1-11 is unique.
One suggestion which Henri Blocher made is that the reason for the slow development over the course of time after the initial Adam was to do with the fall – i.e. the fall impacted negatively the development of mankind.
Conclusion
I think it’s difficult to be proscriptive about the question of origins when there is so much that is still unknown. One thing I’ve been encouraged by is that a lot of the people I’ve read who are conservative theologically also take the question and science of evolution seriously: as such, people like C. John Collins, Henri Blocher and Tim Keller all seem to believe in evolution even if it’s not 100% clear how we fit it all together theologically. (I’ll link to some of the relevant books below).
What I’d like to conclude with is a quote from Henri Blocher’s essay in ‘Darwin, Creation and the Fall’:
We should not be embarrassed to conclude with uncertainty: it is a mark of a mature faith, properly based on adequate evidence and serenely bearing the tensions of a pilgrim’s progress by faith, not sight. Free from a neurotic need for certainty on every matter, we trust the trustworthy Creator and Redeemer.
Helpful Books
Here are a few of the books which I’ve found helpful:
- In the Beginning by Henri Blocher – scientifically a bit out of date, but theologically right on the money.
- Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? by C. John Collins – I found this book really helpful, surveying the relevant literature and Bible passages, as well as surveying some of the models of understanding Adam and Eve in the light of science. Doesn’t draw any firm conclusions but helpful to think some things through.
- Darwin, Creation and the Fall - a collection of various essays by several different authors, specifically about the problem of the Fall with respect to evolution. I found Blocher’s essay, once again, very helpful – although there were also a number of other helpful essays.
- Creation or Evolution: Do we Have to Choose? by Denis Alexander – I’m not sure about this theologically, but it’s well worth reading and contains lots of good info about the science.
- Should Christians Embrace Evolution? by Norman C. Nevin (ed) – the answer of this book is basically “no”; it was written as a response to Denis Alexander’s book. I found this book a bit uneven – I agreed with some of what was said, but I often think the authors went a bit too far in their critique of theistic evolution. That said, it’s still worth a read.
- Reclaiming Genesis by Melvin Tinker – in the introduction of the book, Melvin explains why Christians shouldn’t see the Bible as being in conflict with evolution. He then goes through and delivers expositions of Genesis 1-12 which are brilliant. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really talk about Adam and Eve and how we should understand them in the light of Paul – but if you want a good exposition of Genesis 1-12 this is good to go for.
Inerrancy, Augustine and UCCF
One of the problems with blogging is that of history. What do you do if you blog about something, then a while later change your mind on that subject? I’m contemplating such a problem right now. You see, in the past I’ve blogged about the UCCF Doctrinal Basis. Specifically, I didn’t like one of the points relating to Biblical infallibility. Well, I think the majority of the problems I had at the time have been resolved, and I’d like to share why I now think differently. [I did toy with just deleting the blog post, but I think that would be a bit dishonest.]
So, first of all, a couple of terms: Inerrancy - this is the belief that something is functionally without error. So, for example, I could say the statement “2 + 2 = 4″ is inerrant. Infallibility, however, is different. It means that something is without the possibility of error. So it’s actually stronger than saying something is inerrant. The ‘infallible’ claim is one which UCCF applied to the Bible in their Doctrinal Basis.
Before going any further, just a quick point on the ‘as originally given’ clause: obviously we don’t have the original copy of the Bible. That said, what with the number of manuscripts and so on we can be pretty sure what we’re reading is close to the original. This is in line with The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, an interdenominational evangelical document produced in the 70s.
So, that said, there was something I found particularly helpful in my understanding of inerrancy. I think the main problem I’d had before was that I didn’t understand the concept properly: I thought of inerrancy in a pretty wooden kind of way, e.g. if you believed in inerrancy you had to believe that every single word of the gospels was literally true, and verbatim. In other words, if Jesus is reported to have said two different things in two different gospels, this would mean one gospel was in error – and thus inerrancy fails.
Now what I’ve found particularly helpful on this is studying Augustine. In our church history module at college we’ve been looking at a variety of early church writings, and last week we were looking at some of their writings on Scripture (i.e. what their view of Scripture was). I found Augustine very helpful when thinking about this topic of inerrancy. Here’s a quote from Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels, II. xii. 29 (he’s talking about the difference between what John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:11 and John 1:27)
But further, if, when he spoke of the shoes of the Lord, John meant nothing more than to convey the idea of His supremacy and his own lowliness, then, whichever of the two sayings may have actually been uttered by him, whether that regarding the unloosing of the latchet of the shoes, or that respecting the bearing of the shoes, the self-same sense is still correctly preserved by any writer who, while making mention of the shoes in words of his own, has expressed at the same time the same idea of lowliness, and thus has not made any departure from the real mind [of the person of whom he writes]. It is therefore a useful principle, and one particularly worthy of being borne in mind, when we are speaking of the concord of the evangelists, that there is no divergence [to be supposed] from truth, even when they introduce some saying different from what was actually uttered by the person concerning whom the narrative is given, provided that, notwithstanding this, they set forth as his mind precisely what is also so conveyed by that one among them who reproduces the words as they were literally spoken. For thus we learn the salutary lesson, that our aim should be nothing else than to ascertain what is the mind and intention of the person who speaks.
I’m sorry if that’s a bit hard to digest! – basically Augustine is saying what is important is the last bit – the mind and intention of the person who speaks. Essentially this is the way we are to understand inerrancy: not in the sense of ‘every word ascribed to Jesus must have been verbatim spoken by him’ but we can affirm what is said is nonetheless truth.
Our lecturer made the point that human communication doesn’t work in that over-literal way, and that inerrancy works within that framework of human communication.
I found this a very helpful way of looking at inerrancy, particularly when it comes to the gospels. I admit that the real issue here was what I was understanding inerrancy to be, so perhaps this will help someone else!
Creation / Evolution 5 – Ground Rules for interpretation
This is part five in my (not-so-mini) series on “Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism”. I’ve talked in previous posts (see that post for all the links) about why I think that so-called “Creationism”, more properly known as Young Earth Creationism or YEC for short, is not a sufficient explanation to account for both the Biblical and scientific data. Well, I’ve now done my assignment and the relevant reading for it and I think I’m in a position to at least move on slightly!
In my previous post I looked at Genesis 1 and how we might understand that from an old-earth and, I believe, a Biblical perspective. We now come to looking at the rest of the Bible, specifically, what do we do with the question of Adam and Eve? What do we do with the fall? Now I should say at the outset that anything I say here is not going to be anything other than tentative. The long and the short of it is, at the end of the day we just don’t know exactly what happened.
That said, I think there are a few points which we need to agree on before moving towards any kind of resolution.
Sermon: Matthew 3:13-4:11 – “A New Israel and a New Adam”
Tonight I preached a sermon at my placement church on Matthew 3:13-4:11. I don’t know whether it was recorded, I don’t know whether they have the facility to record there, so I’ve decided to upload the sermon as a PDF: you can download it here (PDF, 408K). That’s an approximation of what I said, by the way – I decided to preach from notes rather than a full script this time. (It seems to be working as well, my memory seems to be improving in that respect. It seems that you actually have to practice to improve your communication skills, who’d have thought it…)
I had some positive comments on it after the service, so that was positive. I felt a bit more nervous about preaching there than I have done previously, probably because I didn’t really know people so well. When I was preaching at Fordham I did at least know most of the people in the congregation. Still, preaching to a group of people who I don’t know is something I will need to get used to, so it’s not bad to have some experience in that respect.
Next week I’m preaching in chapel – it’s only a “Monday Meditation” (where basically the goal is to do as little talking as possible and get everyone to meditate while saying ‘Ommmm…’) but it’s still a pretty daunting prospect preaching to a bunch of people who are all studying theology and training to work in Christian ministry. People who have, for the most part, probably got more experience and learning under their belt than I have. Still, hey ho, experience is experience.
Hope you enjoy the sermon, if you read it. Let me know what you think.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and ‘Sola Scriptura’
Sola Scriptura was a term that the reformers – such as Martin Luther – used to determine what they believed about scripture: it means ‘by Scripture alone’ – the doctrine that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation, in contrast with the Roman Catholic understanding of tradition. Essentially, as I understand it, Roman Catholics understand Scripture and Tradition as two independent strands which contain the same truth. Anyway, how does this all relate to the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Well, recently Mrs Phil and myself have had a few conversations with them. One of the things which they have said in response to our appealing to church history is, “Why do you appeal to church history when you have the Bible?” In other words, they believe that their understanding of the Bible is correct, and there’s no need to look back as to how it’s been understood historically by the church. (In fact, they believe that the church fell into apostasy after the time of the apostles, so they can’t trust what the early church said.)
The reason I’m mentioning all this is because it’s a topic we looked at in our Doctrine lecture yesterday. Why is it that we can’t just say that we have the Bible and forget about traditional understandings of scripture?
The reason is partly because by putting faith in the Bible, you are putting faith in the people who compiled it. Now, I’m not saying here that the Bible was compiled in the sense that a bunch of people sat down in a room one time over a cup of tea and decided which books to put in the Bible out of hundreds of options. I don’t want to go into that discussion now! But the early church did seek to authenticate the books which we now have as part of the New Testament.
Anyone who sees the Bible as authoritative – as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are claiming to do – are implicitly putting faith in the early church for the purposes of the New Testament canon. It becomes a very difficult thing, therefore, for them to claim that the early church were apostate – BUT they were right on with the Biblical canon.
I’d never thought of this before, but it struck me yesterday. I put it up here as an awkward question to ask if you are ever involved in dialogue with the Jehovah’s Witnesses 
Creation / Evolution 2: The problems with Creationism
This is the second part of my series “Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism“. To be honest, it’s not the most snappy title I’ve ever come up with, but it will do for now.
In this post I will be exploring the reasons I believe that Creationism is wrong. Creationism is the belief that Genesis 1-2 describe literal events, i.e. that the world was created in six literal 24-hour periods. You can find out more information about it than you’d probably ever want to know on the Answers in Genesis website. Now, I should point out before we start that the Answers in Genesis beliefs were my own up until relatively recently (well, 2003, which I will admit is not all that recent.) In my teenage years I used to get magazines which set out the standard Creationist arguments about flood geology and the like. I probably still have some of the magazines at my parents’ house, I should look them out at Christmas!
Anyway, my contention is that there are problems with Creationism which aren’t just to do with believing in evolution per se. Let me try and explain a few objections which I have. Note that I’m not arguing here for evolution, I’m just arguing against a literal 6-day Creationism.
What is a ‘Plain Understanding’ of the text?
If you read through the Answers in Genesis section on the Bible, you will often find that they appeal to a straight or plain reading of the text. In general, if you believe that the ‘day’ of Genesis 1 is not a 24-hour, literal day then you are being influenced by external factors and not accepting the text as it is speaking to you.
Now I think this is a wrong way of looking at it for several reasons:
QI and Quirinius’ Census
I was watching QI XL last night, and the topic of the Bible came up (you can still see it on the iPlayer at the time of writing – at 20 minutes in). Now, it should be pointed out before we start that Stephen Fry has been known to be wrong before – he is not infallible! And on this particular occasion, I think he was wrong.
Stephen Fry and the panel made a few points about the census described in Luke 2:1-3.
The points were, broadly speaking:
- There was never a census of the entire Roman world;
- People didn’t have to return to their home towns in a census.
So the Lukan account of the census was put it only to account for the Bethlehem prophecy (i.e. Luke made up the gospel in order to account for all the prophecies). He (Stephen Fry) then went on to say “We’ve been cheated of books which should have been in the Bible”, and read an account from an infancy narrative of Jesus which happened to include dragons.
I have to say, I find this disappointing: QI prides itself on getting its facts right. It’s a shame that such a programme would broadcast what is essentially misinformation. On the two points above, there are plenty of sources (that last one looking particularly at the Greek text and the dating of the census, and – if you read on – coming up with what I believe to be an interesting resolution). In short, what QI said is simply not true.
This untruthfulness comes across again when they say it was basically a free-for-all when it came to which books were included in the Bible and which ones weren’t. Now this is such an incredible argument to make because it is totally false: It was used in the Da Vinci Code, for goodness’ sake, and we know how accurate that was! There is an article in my ESV Study Bible on the Canon of Scripture (it’s available online but you have to have an account) which gives an interesting overview of the history of the canon of what we call the Bible. Essentially, the early church didn’t decide what went in and what didn’t in terms of their own agenda, and it wasn’t decided many years after the fact.
The books of the NT were “self-selecting”, as it were; the books that were ‘chosen’ was simply a ratification of the books that already were in use by the majority of churches as authoritative.
Anyway, it’s disappointing to see ‘research’ like this make its way onto our screens, especially on a programme which is watched by millions of people. It’s just sloppy. QI, you have gone down a little in my estimation.
