RANTS ON GENESIS
Genesis is a strange book, as I’m sure some of you have figured out. That it’s a book of origins is agreed on. The contention however is on whose or what origins it is describing. Yes this is one debate that is so old and storied it has been caricatured to the point that many now ignore it, lock up and resign the question to eternity, but I suggest we still try to resolve this, it is leading many young people from the faith, thinking they can’t resolve their faith in the face of modern science and it’s naturalistic tendencies.
My part in all of this is to lay down where I’m at in my thoughts about this debate. As with my thoughts on revelation, my viewpoints on this are evolving, but on this particular debate, my viewpoints fluctuate even more, as this debate involves the very laws of physics, calling them into question if you go deep enough. As of the time I’m typing this, I recently finished James Jordan’s first book of his Through New Eyes series. I highly recommend it if you want a head start in understanding many of the biblical symbols that confuse and mislead people. It also touches on the question of creation and the laws of physics. James Jordan holds to young earth creationism, and even though I don’t hold the same view, he does make great points concerning the “laws” governing the universe and God’s relation to them.
However, my viewpoint as of now is on the side of the theistic evolutionists. Creationists, both of young earth and old earth views correctly state one of the problems with evolution as they and many people understand it: Order cannot evolve or form out of chaos. That is very true, order can’t arise out of chaos, but here’s my problem with their use of that argument: Evolution correctly understood does not mean order out of chaos. A great book to read concerning this is Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. There is no step in natural processes that is ever true chaos, even in the first or elementary principles, there’s always a system, even if we can’t fully comprehend it. Saying evolution is order out of chaos is misunderstanding evolution. My view is that God is the source of the elementary principles of this world, let me show a long excerpt from Through New Eyes explaining this:
At this point, most modern people are deists. They believe that God created the universe (billions of years ago), winding it up like a clock, and then leaving it to run itself. Occasionally God interferes in these natural processes, and they call this a “supernatural” event, or a “miracle .“ This is not the Biblical view. Christianity teaches that God is intimately active in running His universe all the time. He is not an “absentee landlord .“ There are no impersonal natural forces at “work” in the cosmos. Bavinck writes that:
"...after the creation of the world God did not leave the world to itself, looking down upon it from afar. The living God is not to be pushed to one side or into the background after the creation issues from His hand."
From the Biblical perspective, a miracle occurs when God does something differently from the way He usually does it. As Auguste Lecerf has written:
"The constant relations which we call natural laws are simply “divine habits”: or, better, the habitual order which God imposes on nature. It is these habits, or this habitual process, which constitute the object of the natural and physical sciences. The miracle, in its form, is nothing but a deviation from the habitual course of natural phenomena, provoked by the intervention of a new factor: an extraordinary volition of God. 3"
Poythress goes straight to the heart of the matter:
"The Bible shows us a personalistic world, not impersonal law. What we call scientific law is an approximate human description of just how faithfully and consistently God acts in ruling the world by speaking. There is no mathematical, physical, or theoretical “cosmic machinery” behind what we see and know, holding everything in place. Rather, God rules, and rules consistently. A miracle, then, is not a violation of a “law of nature,” and not even something alongside laws of nature, but is the operation of the only law that there is – the Word of God. What God says is the law (see Psalm 33:6)."
The Bible tells us that God actively “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). In a particular way concerning the Church it can be said that “there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all” (1 Corinthians 12: 6). It is true of all men, however, that “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). The theological doctrine that God works along with all things is known as the doctrine of Divine Concurrence. It means, according to Louis Berkhof:
"That the powers of nature do not work by themselves, that is, simply by their own inherent power, but that God is immediately operative in every act of the creature. This must be maintained in opposition to the deistic position. That second causes are real, and not to be regarded simply as the operative power of God. It is only on condition that second causes are real, that we can properly speak of a concurrence or cooperation of the First Cause with secondary causes. This should be stressed over against the pantheistic idea that God is the only agent working in the world."
Thus, it is God who makes it rain and snow (Psalm 104:13; 147:8, 16); God who causes grass to grow (Psalm 104:14; 147:8). God usually does things the same way, and this enables us to go about our business in the world with confidence that the gravitational constant, for instance, will not change. The gravitational constant and coriolis force and other “forces” that are described by natural science are actually regularities that God has imposed upon Himself and His angelic agents. The covenant regularities of our present world were set up after the Flood, according to God’s promise in Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease .“6 This poetic statement sums up the natural world, and says that as regards nature God will not change the fundamental way He does things until the end of the world. From a Christian standpoint, the study of the “laws of nature” is a study of the terms of the Noahic covenant. (Through New Eyes: Pg 108-109)
I agree with the basic premise, it’s consistent with who we know God to be. I don’t believe however that the Physical laws changed ever so slightly because of the flood. It’s way too complicated to imagine the divine balancing act, not that it’s not possible, I just don’t see the point of such juggling. I also don’t believe the creation of the physical universe is what the Genesis authors where aiming for, this is my point of divergence with the author. I’m aware that this view can support both young earth creationism and theistic evolution, I just prefer the latter.
I think the belief that God is the source of order in the universe should put to bed any belief that the theistic evolutionist view is inconsistent with the faith. If you do not take the Genesis account as a wooden literal report of origins, it’s perfectly plausible. The God behind the order of the universe uses his laws, which are perfectly tailored to life, to create his creatures, with the aim of creating an image of himself cumulating in humanity. Yes I don’t believe evolution is blind, I think those who suggest a process structuralism theory of evolution are unto something in their basic premise. God knows what he is doing.
I believe Genesis is related to Revelation in respect to meaning, Revelation is the Judgment and Glorification of the Genesis world. That alone should tell you about the character of the book of Genesis and its allegorical tendencies. My view may change later on, but I doubt it will be substantial, if it does change substantially, it will be for young earth creationism, as implausible as it is for me to fathom. Old earth creationism doesn’t cut it for me, it seems like their interpretation stretches meaning of the words given.