Faith & Evolution

Faith & Evolution Depth Class Quest Church, Oct 30, 2008

What’s at stake? What’s the conclusion? “Do you actually believe all this stuff?”   I suppose I might have expected a wink and a nod.  We had both been paid for our debate appearances, and perhaps I expected him to acknowledge that he made a pretty good living from the creation business.  He did nothing of the sort.  Henry Morris made it clear to me that he believed everything he had said the night before.  “But Dr. Morris, so much of what you argued is wrong, starting with the age of the earth!”  Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth’s age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibility with the audience.  Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes.  “Ken, you’re intelligent, you’re well-meaning, and you’re energetic.  But you are also young, and you don’t realize what’s at stake.  In a question of such importance, scientific data isn’t the ultimate authority.  Even you know that science is wrong sometimes.”  Indeed, I did.  Morris continued so that I could get a feeling of what that ultimate authority was.  “Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is.  And if science, momentarily, doesn’t agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer.  But I have no doubts as to what that

Definition of ANE Mythology ANE mythology – an ancient, premodern, prescientificway of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are we? Where do we come from?

Myths Possess Authority

Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society

Descriptions of each day      

“And God said” “Let there be” (what God did) (naming or blessing) Pronouncement of “good” “There was evening and morning ___ day”

Multiples of Seven in Gen 1     

There are seven words in v 1 and fourteen words in v 2 (in the Hebrew) “God” appears 35x “Heaven” and “earth” each occur 21x “water” occurs 7x “living” occurs 7x

Genesis 1 as Literary Framework

Origen on Creation "For who that has understanding will suppose that the first and second and third day existed without a sun and moon and stars and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" - The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16

Ephrem the Syrian on Creation “So let no one think that there is anything allegorical in the works of the six days. No one can rightly say that the things pertaining to these days were symbolic, nor can one say that they were meaningless names or that other things were symbolized for us by their names.” (Commentary on Gen 1.1)

Augustine on Creation “The world was in fact made with time, if at the time of its creation change and motion came into existence. This is clearly the situation in the order of the first six or seven days, in which morning and evening are named, until God's creation was finished on the sixth day, and on the seventh day God's rest is emphasized as something conveying a mystic meaning. What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to imagine, to say nothing of describing them.” - City of God, Book XI, ch 6

Calvin on Creation “Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men. We slightingly pass over the infinite glory of God, which here shines forth; whence arises this but from our excessive dullness in considering his greatness? In the meantime, the vanity of our minds carries us away elsewhere. For the correction of this fault, God applied the most suitable remedy when he distributed the creation of the world into successive portions, that he might fix our attention, and compel us, as if he had laid his hand upon us, to pause and to reflect. ” - John Calvin, Comm. Genesis

The Function of Creation Stories It will be seen what human violence is thus justified by the primordial violence. Creation is a victory over an Enemy older than the creator; that Enemy, immanent in the divine, will be represented in history by all the enemies whom the king in his turn, as servant of the god, will have as his mission to destroy. Thus violence is inscribed in the origin of things, in the principle that establishes while it destroys. - Paul Ricoeur commenting on the Enuma Elish in the Symbolism of Evil

Fictional Cosmology as a Narrative Backdrop

Seven Planets of the Medieval Cosmology

Children’s Tale as Apologetic 

“The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe may be taken then, in a sense, as one large metaphor, a metaphor for the human situation vis-à-vis reason and the Divine Reasoner. It is an example of a ‘true, imaginative metaphor’ which, according to Barfield, ‘expresses and may communicate participant knowledge.’ Readers participate in a story which is the romance equivalent of the philosophical and theological argument advanced in Miracles; they Enjoy in his fiction that vision of the world which Lewis had tried to make Contemplatablein his apologetics.”

The Garden of Eden as a Sanctuary 1. The LORD God walks in Eden as he does later in the tabernacle (3:8; cf. Lev 26:12; Deut 23:15; 2 Sam 7:6-7) 2. Eden and the later sanctuaries are entered from the east and guarded by cherubim (3:24; Exo 25:18-22; 26:31; 1 Kgs 6:23-29) 3. The tabernacle lampstand possibly symbolizes the tree of life (2:9; 3:22; cf. Exo 25:31-35) 4. The Hebrew pair of verbs ‘to work it and take care of it’ appear as a pair in the Pentateuch appear again only to describe Levitical duties

The Garden of Eden as a Sanctuary cont. 5. The river flowing from Eden (2:10) is reminiscent of Eze 47:1-12 which envisages a river flowing from a Jerusalem temple 6. Gold and onyx, mentioned in 2:11-12, are used extensively to decorate the sanctuary and priestly garments (Exo 25:7, 11, 17, 31)