07/27/18

All About the Flood

Creative Commons license (CC by SA 3.0) for Noah’s Ark: The Flood begins by Phillip Medhurst

In July of 2016, Answers in Genesis opened the Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky. Ted Davis noted in his article, “Flooding the World with Creationism,” how a so-called “literal” interpretation of the Biblical Flood story was crucial for the view of Scripture held by Answers in Genesis and other young-earth creationists. Woven into their position is the idea of flood geology, namely that fossils are relics of the biblical Flood. This idea was first named and popularized by George McCready Price, a self-taught geologist and author, who claimed that the fossil-bearing rocks seen in the various geologic layers had been produced all at once in a single worldwide flood. But what if flood geology is wrong and there is a more “literal” way to read the Genesis account of the Flood?

Flood geology is one of the foundational beliefs of young earth creationism. Ted Davis noted that “commitment to the YEC duo of a young earth and flood geology remained on the far periphery of conservative Protestantism from the Civil War down to 1961.” In that year Henry Morris and John Whitcomb published The Genesis Flood, which supported Price’s flood geology and eventually birthed the modern young earth creationist (YEC) movement. “Ultimately, then, young-earth creationism is all about the Flood. That’s why AiG built the Ark Encounter.”

The significance of flood geology for young-earth creationism must not be missed: if most fossils were formed in the Flood, then they were not formed through eons of earth history and we cannot draw evolutionary inferences from the fossil record. Thus, the Ark Encounter represents two mightily important things in the minds of creationists. First, the biblical story is literally true—a man named Noah actually constructed a huge wooden boat to save all animal “kinds” from dying in a worldwide flood. Second, the Flood produced the fossils, so we have no scientific evidence that evolution actually happened.

Davis pointed to three threads woven into the YEC understanding of the Genesis Flood story. The first is the biblical understanding of the text. Did a man named Noah actually construct a huge wooden boat in order to save all animal “kinds” from the judgment of a catastrophic worldwide flood? The second thread is scientific. Is there credible scientific evidence to support the claims of flood geology? Are fossils and the geological record explained by a worldwide, catastrophic flood? The third thread pulls at the origins of flood geology and its relationship to a belief in a young earth. Where did they come from and are they peripheral or fundamental to Christian belief and the gospel?

An accumulation of scientific and historical evidence questions whether the biblical Flood account can be taken at face value. Genesis 6-9 clearly describes a global flood that destroyed all humans and land animals except those who were protected in a huge wooden boat built by a man named Noah. However, as BioLogos noted in “How should we interpret the Genesis flood account?” the scientific and historic evidence concludes “there has never been a global flood that covered the entire earth, nor do all modern animals and humans descend from the passengers of a single vessel.” When early geologists (many of whom were Christians) questioned whether the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, flood geology claimed the earth’s complex geologic record was the result of a violent, global Flood.

So belief in a young earth and flood geology are joined together in the so-called “plain reading of Scripture” promoted by AiG and other young earth creationists. “All other approaches are claimed to require hermeneutical manipulations that ultimately undermine the simple and clear message of the Bible.” Gregg Davidson and Ken Wolgemuth, who are Christian geologists, said the following in “Christian Geologists on Noah’s Flood”:

Flood Geology proponents would have us believe that there is extensive evidence for a violent, earth-wide flood that is apparent if one is willing to consider the possibility. As Christian geologists, we have no philosophical objection to a cataclysmic event of divine origin, and have long been willing to consider evidence of such an event. What we have observed, however, is that evidence for Flood Geology is largely, if not entirely, non-existent. Given the placement and character of sedimentary deposits currently on earth, deposition by a single flood is not only implausible, but utterly impossible unless God temporarily suspended His natural laws in order to establish layers and fossil beds that would subsequently communicate a story vastly different than what actually happened.

Davidson and Wolgemuth presented evidence from salt deposits, tree rings, the fossil record and the sequence of layers in the Grand Canyon that challenges flood geology. YEC counters that these conclusions are the result of human miscalculation and error. Since science is a human endeavor, it is subject to all the errors of humanity, while the Bible is God’s Word. Yet as Longman and Walton commented: “To pit the Bible against science in this fashion is problematic.” They agree with BioLogos: “Because we take God to be the author of the “book of nature” as well as the divine inspirer of the book of Scripture, we believe the proper interpretation of the Flood story will not be in conflict with what we have discovered in the natural world.”

Orthodox Christianity has traditionally affirmed a “two book” view of God’s truth, believing “God reveals himself in both the Bible and in nature.” The study of nature through scientific means it “will never contradict the Bible when both are rightly understood.” While the Bible is true in all it intends to teach us, our interpretations of what it teaches may not be correct. “We need to be open to the possibility that we have wrongly understood a particular passage.” With regard to the Genesis Flood account, is there an interpretative method that does not present us with a forced choice between what the text says and what science tells us?

In their book, The Lost World of the Flood, Tremper Longman and John Walton commented how discussions of the early chapters of Genesis often center on whether the accounts in chapters one through eleven are mythology or history. Framing the question in this way as a dichotomous choice between what is real (history) and what is not real (mythology) not only fails to do justice to the biblical text, it imposes a modern understanding of both mythology and history upon the text.

Today, we often consider the label mythology to imply that what is reported is “not real.” But in the ancient world, they did not consider what we call their mythology to be not real. To the contrary, they believed their mythology to represent the most important reality—deep reality, which transcends what could be reported in terms of events that have transpired in the strictly human realm. Indeed, they further considered that even the events in the human realm, which we might label history, found their greatest significance in aspects of the event that human eyewitnesses could not see—the involvement of the divine hand.

So we should be hesitant to think in such dichotomous terms as history and mythology when reading and interpreting ancient texts. The deepest reality should not be constrained by the limits of human observations of what “actually happened.” The significance of events in Genesis 1-11 is not found in their historicity but in their theology; “not in what happened … but in why it happened.” Israelites in the ancient world did not think about events in the same way we do today. “In the ancient world they viewed reality with an eye to the metaphysical (spiritual) world, and not just through the lens of empiricism.”

The accounts in Genesis 1-11 can be affirmed as having real events as their referents, but the events (yes, they happened) find their significance in the interpretation that they are given in the biblical text. That significance is not found in their historicity but in their theology; not in what happened (or even that something did happen) but in why it happened. What was God doing? That is where the significance is to be found. Our defenses of historicity can become reductionistic if we become too focused on proving the reality of events rather than on embracing the interpretation of the theological significance being traced by the author. The text has no interest in trying to prove the events took place. They assume they did, as do we. Instead they are offering an interpretation that constitutes the divine-human message that carries the authority of the text. Events are not authoritative; the interpretation of the narrator is.

Events, in other words, were more than just history. Seeing events in this way, through a lens that included both the spiritual and the human world, means that categories we moderns might label as mythical overlapped with what we would call the real world. Ancient peoples had a different way of knowing than we moderns do. However, this does not mean their view of events was any less real. In order to understand the Genesis Flood account, we need to understand what it meant to the original audience.

To the extent that the Israelites thought in similar ways, they would not distinguish between these ways of knowing. If such is the case, stating that they consider the flood to be a real event is not as clarifying as we might hope. We cannot draw distinctions about narratives that we are interested in if they do not draw their lines in the same places we do.

We should not impose an interpretation upon the Genesis narrative of the Flood that disregards how the ancient Israelites understood what was being said. The YEC emphasis on the historicity of a global flood fails to recognize that Genesis 1-11 was not written with our scientific world in mind. Its significance lies not in what happened, but why it happened. Longman and Walton put it this way:

Even though the Bible is written for us, it is not written to us. The revelation it provides can equip us to know God, his plan, and his purposes, and therefore to participate with him in the world we face today. But it was not written with our world in mind. In its context, it is not communicated in our language; it is not addressed to our culture; it does not anticipate the questions about the world and its operations that stem from our modern situations and issues.

01/9/18

Their Way or the Highway

Writing for Christianity Today, Tim Stafford related what he thought was the most sobering moment of the BioLogos “Theology of Celebration” conference held in March of 2012. That was when David Kinnaman of Barna Research presented findings that more than half of U.S. pastors profess a 6-day, 24-hour creation view of Genesis 1. Fewer than one in five followed the BioLogos view, affirming an evolutionary process as God’s method of creation. The cited statistics illustrate the ongoing dispute within conservative Christian circles on how to interpret Genesis 1 and the role (if any) of evolutionary processes in creation.

BioLogos also posted an essay by Tim Keller, who was one of the participants at the 2012 conference, “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople.” Keller wanted to provide guidance to pastors ministering in the cultural context where “Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all.” He noted there were many Christians who questioned the underlying premise to this truism, namely that science and faith were irreconcilable. He added how this left “many Christian laypeople … confused because the voices arguing that Biblical orthodoxy and evolution are mutually exclusive are louder and more prominent than any others.”

Keller sought to describe in his essay how Christians could approach three of the main difficulties presented by the current scientific account of biological evolution for orthodox Christians. Those three difficulties were: Biblical authority, the confusion of biology and philosophy, and the historicity of Adam and Eve. In his concluding thoughts Keller cited Psalm 19 and Romans 1, which teach: “that God’s glory is revealed as we study his creation.” Nevertheless, he said, we must interpret the book of nature by the book of God. His conclusion was that Christians who seek to correlate Scripture and science “must be a ‘bigger tent’ than either the anti-scientific religionists or the anti-religious scientists.”

He’s faced strong criticism of his paper from several creationist sources. For example, Lita Cosner of Creation Ministries International said he was struck by the weakness of Keller’s assertions. He questioned Keller’s understanding of Genesis and implied he had subordinated Scripture to science. E.S. Williams on The New Calvinists said Keller was a firm believer in theistic evolution who promoted “this false view of creation in the Christian Church.”

Ken Ham was more oblique, saying Keller had misrepresented or taken a shot at him. He also implied Keller had a low view of Scripture for Genesis 1-11 because he didn’t agree with Ham’s (Answers in Genesis’s) interpretation of those chapters. “For Genesis 1–11, they allow man’s fallible beliefs about evolution or millions of years to override the clear words in Scripture so man’s ideas can be accommodated into Scripture.” The message is clear. Any disagreement a young earth creationist (YEC) understanding of Genesis 1-11 means you have a low view of biblical authority; or you’ve misinterpreted Scripture. It’s their way or the highway.

Ted Davis noted how theistic evolution or evolutionary creation has been controversial among Christians for over one hundred years. “It was contested hotly in the 1920s, when William Jennings Bryan sought to outlaw the teaching of evolution in public schools and universities.” Bryan saw theistic evolution as “an anesthetic which deadens the pain while the patient’s religion is being gradually removed.” Yet Answers in Genesis (AiG) said Bryan himself allowed “compromise on the days of creation.” In an excerpt of the trial transcript from the Scopes Trial, as Clarence Darrow cross examined him, Bryan said he did not did not think the days in Genesis 1 were necessarily twenty-four hour days; and that the creation could have been going on for a very long time. “It might have continued for millions of years.”

Along with Bryan, AiG’s list of past and present “compromised” evangelical leaders include: Charles Spurgeon, Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, James Montgomery Boice, Gleason Archer, Bill Bright, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Billy Graham, Bruce Waltke, and Tim Keller. “Those leaders all made the enormous mistake of interpreting Genesis differently than AiG.” As a result, they failed to contend for “the literal historical truth of Genesis 1–11, which is absolutely fundamental to all other doctrines in the Bible,” according to AiG.

It is astonishing that any given alternative to the YEC interpretation is painted as an unacceptable “compromise” arising from a cowardly desire to mute one’s faith in conformity to the world. This tendency to demonize legitimate differences of opinion or interpretation is surely one of the main reasons why so many young Christians are leaving their faith behind.

Ken Ham and AiG, of course, have a different opinion on why so many young people are leaving the church. In a 2016 article he co-authored for AiG, Ham said young people are not getting solid answers to their questions about the Bible. “Research” (AiG research?) shows how many of these questions “are related to Genesis and scientific issues such as evolution, long ages (millions of years), dinosaurs, and Noah’s Ark.”

These young people are not getting solid answers from church leaders and parents but, sadly, are often told they can believe in the big bang, millions of years, and evolution; they’re then admonished to reinterpret or ignore Genesis while being told to “trust in Jesus!” These young people recognize the inconsistency of reinterpreting the first book of the Bible and yet being expected to trust the other books that talk about Christ. If we can doubt and reinterpret Genesis, where do we stop doubting and reinterpreting?

AiG (Ham and his co-author) pointed out a Pew Research Center study that looked at “Why America’s ‘nones’ left religion behind.” A ‘none’ is a person who does not identify with a religious group. According to Pew, 78% of religious nones report they were raised in a particular faith before shedding it in adulthood. Forty-nine percent of these said they left their childhood faith over a lack of belief. But here we run into some apparent difficulties when interpreting the Pew data.

Pew Research said the 49% of religious nones whose lack of belief led them away from religion “include many respondents who mention ‘science’ as the reason they do not believe in religious teachings.” AiG reported this as Pew Research finding the same thing they did: “A large percent of young people are leaving the church because of questions about science that lead to doubts about God’s Word.” The Pew quote was from their above article, but the article itself didn’t give anything more specific than what was quoted. I did some searching on the Pew website and couldn’t find any further data on nones saying science was the reason they don’t now believe religious teachings, so we’ll assume what the article said is all that is available.

I don’t read the above two quotes as saying the same thing, as AiG does. There may be a significant number of young people who say they left the church or don’t believe in religious teachings because of science, but you can’t draw that conclusion from the Pew report. Pew didn’t give any data on that issue; they merely said many respondents gave ‘science’ as a reason they no longer believed in religious teachings. Another factor to consider is the Pew data is a reflection of all faiths, and not just Christianity. So it seems AiG is illegitimately co-opting the Pew findings to support their own views when they say Pew Research found the same thing they did. Then they proclaim: “If we can’t trust the historical portions of the Bible that deal with our origins, why should we trust the message of Jesus Christ? We’ve been saying this for years now—it’s nothing new!”

Research done by the Barna Group on “Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church” indicated there was no single reason that dominated “the break-up between church and young adults.” However, there were six significant themes for why 59% disconnect after the age of fifteen. One of those six themes was how the church comes across as antagonistic to science. The research showed that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science. The Barna Group findings seem to be in line with Ted Davis’s above opinion on why many young Christians are leaving their faith—because of their church is demonizing legitimate differences of opinion or interpretation. The most common reasons given by young adults who felt disconnected from church or faith because of perceived antagonism to science were as follows:

“Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.”

There were five other reasons in addition to how churches come across as antagonistic to science in the Barna Group findings. So perceived antagonism with science is only one of six significant themes why young Christians disconnect from church life. It is a factor, but can’t be said to be the primary reason. Now let’s look at the results of another Pew Research study: The Religious Landscape Study, which “surveys more than 35,000 Americans from all 50 states about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices and social and political views.” One of the social questions was on the participant’s views on evolution.

Among Christians, 42% said humans always existed in their present form, 5% said they didn’t know, but 54% said humans evolved in one way or another. Twenty-one percent said humans evolved through natural processes, 29% said they evolved due to God’s design, and 4% said they evolved but didn’t know ho it happened.

Most evangelical Protestants (57%) said humans always existed in their present form, 5% said they didn’t know, but 38% said humans evolved in one way or another. Eleven percent said humans evolved through natural processes, 25% said they evolved due to God’s design, and 2% said they evolved but didn’t know how it happened.

Another question asked in the Religious Landscape Study was on interpreting Scripture. Among Christians, 39% said the Bible was the Word of God and should be taken literally; 33% said the Bible was the Word of God, but not everything had to be taken literally; 18% said is was not the word of God; the rest weren’t sure in one way or another.

Most evangelical Protestants (55%) said the Bible was the Word of God and should be taken literally; 29% said the Bible was the Word of God, but not everything had to be taken literally; 8% said is was not the word of God; the rest weren’t sure in one way or another.

A literal interpretation of the Bible and believing humans always existed in their present form are beliefs consistent with a YEC position on creation. And the percentages of evangelical Protestants holding those beliefs corresponds to the Barna Group research reported above, that half of U.S. pastors profess a 6-day, 24-hour creation view of Genesis 1. Yet there are significant percentages of evangelical Protestants (38%) who hold to some form of human evolutionary development and believe that while the Bible is the Word of God, not everything had to be taken literally (29%).

Despite the detractors, it seems that Tim Keller’s advice in “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople” is particularly relevant to the church today. When Christians draw the line of orthodoxy at a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 to 11 and deny the possibility of a creation older than a few thousand years, they make their tent too small and in the process send those who can’t agree on their way. Hopefully they will encounter a pastor and a church who are trying to minister in the manner suggested by Keller.

07/4/17

Balancing Act with Human Origins

A recent Gallup poll found the percentage of U.S. adults who believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, what Gallup called the strict creationist view, has reached a new low. They are now tied with those who believe God guided humans development over millions of years at 38%. “This is the first time since 1982 — when Gallup began asking this question using this wording — that belief in God’s direct creation of man has not been the outright most-common response.” The “secular” view—that humans evolved from lower life forms without any divine intervention—has doubled since 1982, from 9% to 19%.

Reflecting on the Gallup poll results, Deborah Haarsma said that while polls are not infallible, BioLogos was encouraged to see these trends took place during the years in which BioLogos has been at work. “Anecdotally, we are seeing more openness to discussing the scientific evidence for human origins in the context of biblical faith . . . While loud voices continue to push extreme positions on origins, either anti-science or anti-God, this study shows that many everyday Americans are open to a conversation that brings science and God together.” These results are illustrated in the following graph found in the Gallup poll, which was conducted at the beginning of May in 2017. The results suggested to her that those who changed their views from a strict creationist position adopted the “God guided” position on evolution.

Gallup concluded that higher education levels effected creation/evolution belief in a strict (young earth) creationist position. Among those with postgraduate education, 21% said they believed in a strict creationist view versus 48% among individuals with no more than a high school education. “Agreement with evolution without God’s involvement is 31% among postgrads versus 12% among Americans with a high school education or less.” See the Gallup poll link for a table containing these results.

Nevertheless, among individuals with a college degree or above, more believed God had a role in evolution than who said evolution occurred without God. Haarsma pointed out that sociologist Jonathan Hill concluded from his research (the National Study of Religion & Human Origins, NSRHO) that education level was not the primary influence on views of human origins. Rather than education, differences in positions on human origins are better attributed to the religious beliefs of groups the individual belongs to.

When we track the beliefs of close friends and family, creationists are substantially more likely to belong to networks who agree with them about human origins. They are also more likely to expect increased disagreements with family and friends if they were to change their beliefs. Likewise, creationists are more likely to belong to congregations who have settled positions that reject human evolution and to perceive disagreements with religious leaders and other congregants if they were to change their beliefs. Moreover, creationists are more likely to spend their schooling in science classrooms that did not endorse evolution. Even if this is restricted to public high schools and universities, their science classroom experience is different from others. Put simply, creationists are embedded in networks and institutions that are more effective than the other groups in reinforcing the content and importance of their beliefs.

The bottom line for the Gallup poll was that most Americans believe God had a role in creating human beings. “But fewer Americans today hold strict creationist views of the origins of humans than at any point in Gallup’s trend on the question, and it is no longer the single most popular of the three explanations.” However, strict (young earth) creationism is still tied for the leading view at 38% of the population.

But Jonathan Hill found when you tease out individual beliefs for strict creationists, only 8% affirm all six beliefs, namely: (a) humans did not evolve from other species, (b) that God was involved in the creation of humans, (c) that God created directly and miraculously, (d) that Adam and Eve were historical figures, (e) that the days of creation were literal twenty-four hour days, and (f) that humans came into existence within the last 10,000 years.

Additionally, when deconstructing respondents who hold to a theistic evolution perspective in the Gallup poll (38% said humans developed over millions of years with God guiding the process), Hill found that only 16% of respondents (a) believed in human evolution and (b) God or an intelligent force were somehow involved. Only half of this group was very or absolutely confident of both of these beliefs. When applying a stricter definition to this group, only 5% of the population (a) believed God was involved in human evolution, (b) the days of creation were not literal, and (c) humans emerged more than 10,000 years ago. Requiring certainty dropped the percentage to 2%. “It is clear that the theistic evolution position does not come with a high degree of confidence for much of the population.”

When asking how social factors influence beliefs in young earth or evolutionary creation beliefs, certain factors become important in predicting firm, certain belief. The factors having the largest influence on predicting who is a certain (young earth) creationist included: (a) belonging to an evangelical denomination, (b) reporting faith is important in day-to-day life, (c) frequent prayer, (d) believing the Bible is literal (with no symbolism) or the inspired Word of God (symbolism but no errors), (e) family members with the same belief about origins, (f) friends have the same beliefs about origins, (g) changing beliefs would cause disagreement with other congregants and religious leaders, (h) their congregation has a settled position that rejects evolution.

Important factors predicting confident, certain evolutionary creation beliefs included: (a) belonging to a mainline (versus an evangelical) Protestant church, (b) being Catholic versus evangelical Protestant), and (c) not believing the Bible is the literal or inspired Word of God without errors.

Hill concluded that the social context of these beliefs is just as important as individual factors such as religious identity, practice and belief. “Social networks of family and friends, congregations, and schools all play a role.” Most important for strict creationists is the combination of certain religious beliefs, particularly beliefs about the Bible, and social contexts such as those related to a religious congregation. For individuals who believe human evolution is compatible with orthodox Christian faith, persuasion has to move beyond a purely intellectual level. Ideas consistent with evolutionary creation are only persuasive “when individuals are in a social position that allows them to seriously consider what is before them.”

There has been a tendency in evangelical Christian circles to see only two views with regards to human origins—creation or evolution. Data from the latest Gallup poll and the earlier NSRHO survey by Jonathan Hill suggests this rigid, and false dichotomy of views is changing. Consistent with these views on origins has been a parallel conflict thesis between science and religion, which also seems to be weakening.

In another article on a Pew study into religion and science, Hill pointed out the difficulty of holding onto a belief in the ultimate compatibility between science and faith, when you are not exactly sure how that compatibility should be realized. For now, it’s like balancing on a tightrope. But the decline in evangelicals who see an inherent conflict between their faith and science is an encouraging trend. But there is still a ways to go. See the NSRHO or “Did God Make You?” for more information and discussion on this topic. Also see the links for “Genesis & Creation” and “Religion & Science” on this website.

06/2/17

Myth of the Medieval Science Gap

Carl Sagan and others described the Middle Ages as a time when scientific progress was thwarted by religion, specifically Christianity. In his book Cosmos, Sagan has a timeline of science and technology with a gap from around 500 AD to 1500 AD. At the bottom of the timeline he commented: “The millennium gap in the middle of the diagram represents a poignant lost opportunity for the human species.” But this portrayal of the Middle Ages is as false as saying Columbus discovered American and proved the earth wasn’t flat.

In a BioLogos article, “Carl Sagan and the Myth of the Medieval Gap,” Stephen Snobelen said it was axiomatic for those who perceive a conflict between religion and science to hold to this belief. Namely, that while “science” existed in ancient Greece, during medieval times it faded away until Christianity’s influence started to subside. Snobelen said only with some significant qualifications can we say: “science existed in Ancient Greece.” And this Greek period of “science” was already in decline before Christianity came to power.

“It is true that the first half of the Middle Ages did not enjoy the intellectual vibrancy of the second half.” But this can be explained by historical contingencies such as “the impact of Barbarian invasions and political dislocations.” By the end of the medieval period, “science and technology had reached a state of sophistication and refinement that far surpassed that of the Greeks.” And yet, the term “medieval” has become a sneering way of referring to something that someone thinks is backward.

Among the technological advances of the Middle Ages are the horse collar, the rudder, eye glasses, buttons, the fork, trousers, windmills, the mechanical escapement clock, and the printing press. The invention of the Cyrillic script, which is the basis of several alphabets, also occurred during the Middle Ages. The myth also ignores the innovations to the practice and theory of science that occurred during that time. Roger Bacon (1220-1292), a Franciscan, is known as the first modern scientist. William of Ockham (1285-1347) conceived of the parsimony principle—Ockham’s Razor.

But, if we play the correlation-equals-causation game (which is a fallacy to begin with), then this argument proves more than advocates of the Medieval Gap want. For instance, there is a common assumption that Europe in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period was a cultural monolith dominated by the Church. This can hardly be said of the first half of the Middle Ages. Yet, it was only when the Catholic Church had consolidated its power in the second half of the period that there was a relative flourishing of science and technology. More spectacularly, it was precisely the period when Europe was at its most Christian—the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—that science as we now know it emerged. (I am not saying that Christianity was in any simple way responsible for the emergence of modern science, only that the correlation argument can come back to bite its proponents)

In his essay on the myth “That the Medieval Christian Church Suppressed the Growth of Science,” in Galileo Goes to Jail, Michael Shank said the idea that the Middle Ages was a “millennium of stagnation” brought on by Christianity has largely disappeared among Medieval scholars. “But it remains vigorous among popularizers of the history of science” who uncritically repeat these false assertions made of those who went before them. For example, John William Draper, asserted in 1874 (History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science) that the Church of the Middle Ages “became a stumbling block in the intellectual advancement of Europe for more than a thousand years.” Carl Sagan, in his 1980 book Cosmos said: “For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.”

Another factor in the growth of science during the Middle Ages was the spontaneous development of universities around famous teachers in towns like Paris, Oxford, and Bologna. “By 1500, about sixty universities were scattered throughout Europe.” About 30 percent of their curriculum covered subjects and texts about the natural world. Hundreds of thousands of students were exposed to science “in the Greco-Arabic tradition.”

If the medieval church had intended to discourage or suppress science, it certainly made a colossal mistake in tolerating—to say nothing of supporting—the university. . . . Dozens of universities introduced large numbers of students to Euclidean geometry, optics, the problems of generation and reproduction, the rudiments of astronomy, and arguments for the sphericity of the earth. Even students who did not complete their degrees gained an elementary familiarity with natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences and imbibed the naturalism of these disciplines.

The majority of students at these universities did not study theology. Most were not priests or monks. “They remained in the faculties of arts, where they studied only nonreligious subjects, including logic, natural philosophy, and the mathematical sciences.” The most popular advanced study was law, which promised lucrative careers in the bureaucracies of both church and state.

In another BioLogos article, “The Medieval Gap and New Atheists Today,” Stephen Snoblen said Carl Sagan isn’t the only modern author perpetuating the Myth of the Medieval Gap. He quoted the biologist Jerry Coyne who said Christianity was around for about 1,000 years without much science being done. “I maintain, though I can’t prove this, that had there been no Christianity, if after the fall of Rome atheism had pervaded the Western world, science would have developed earlier and be far more advanced than it is now.” In a debate, physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger asserted civilization went through a period of “Dark Ages” during which science was lost. Christianity was the alleged cause. “And when Christianity finally began to be chipped away … we got it back.”

David Mills, the author of Atheist Universe, thought that if it weren’t for the religious persecution and oppression of science, humankind could have landed on the moon by 650 AD. Cancer could have been eradicated by 800 AD, and heart disease might be unknown today. He claimed the Christian Church operated torture chambers throughout Europe for 1500 years and yearly tortured “tens of thousands of people. Including children as young as two years old” to death. Snoblen noted estimates for the number of witches put to death range from 7,000 to 100,000. If the rhetoric of Mills was accepted here, then 20,000 yearly deaths (tens of thousands) over 1500 years would add up to 30,000,000 killed by torture. Richard Dawkins referred to the Atheist Universe as “an admirable work” and Carl Sagan’s son wrote the foreword.

Snoblen said that as a historian of science, he despaired when reading such nonsense. It depressed him to see the promotion of such ignorance. But he frequently encountered it among some undergraduates. He worried about the effect such vitriol had on secular attitudes towards Christians and Christianity. “This sort of rhetoric and misuse of history promotes intolerance and is simply inexcusable. It is the duty of historians to expose this for the mythology it is.”

05/2/17

Beyond the Risen Son

BioLogos published a series of articles that critiqued New Atheism and the movement’s use of flawed reasoning in its portrayal of religion and science. The series reviewed an essay by Stephen Snoblen, a historian of science, about New Atheist views of science and religion. One article in the series, “Science, Religion and New Atheism: Introduction,” made a distinction between the militant atheism of New Atheists and more moderate atheists. Snoblen said that many of the moderate atheists seek to distance themselves from the perceived excesses of the New Atheists. So what he asserted in his essay applied primarily to New Atheists. Snoblen thought some of the best, and most sympathetic, studies of the relationship between science and religion were written by individuals who would be moderate atheists, skeptics or agnostics.

The November 2006 issues for Wired magazine ran an article entitled, “The Church of the Non-Believers” which Snoblen said was important in canonizing the name and mission of what is called “New Atheism.” Not so coincidentally, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins had just been published the month before. By early December, it had reached number four on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list; it went on to sell millions of copies. There have been many others besides Dawkins articulating the central tenant of New Atheism, which Snoblen succinctly stated as: science is good and religion is evil. There is no afterlife; no heaven; no hell. “Religion must be abolished. The only thing that matters is science.”

While this is based upon views of “religion” and “science” that fit nicely with its atheistic worldview, it is not universally accepted as true. The New Atheist sense of religion is one that sees any acceptance of the supernatural as “religious.” And “science” is necessarily positivistic and materialistic. Within the above-linked article, “The Church of the Non-Believers,” Dawkins was quoted as saying the “big war” between science and religion is not between evolution and creationism. Rather, it is between naturalism and supernaturalism. “Sensible” religious people believe in supernaturalism; however “That puts me on the other side.”

This sense of religion is based upon the views of the founder of British anthropology, Edward Tylor, who theorized that all religions were based on animism. He defined religion as “the belief in spiritual beings.” According to Tylor, animism had two components: a belief that the human soul survived bodily death, and a belief in other spirits, including deities. The belief in spirits and deities was an outgrowth of believing in souls. There was a progressive development from the veneration of objects within nature (animals, trees, etc.), to venerating specific spirits that were less attached to objects (gods, devils, fairies, angels). As these gods were associated with good and evil, or as “first causes” of creation, they were seen as highly powerful beings—and even as a Supreme Being. Tylor said: “Animism has its distinct and consistent outcome, and Polytheism its distinct and consistent completion, in the doctrine of a Supreme Deity.”

Another problem lies with a New Atheist sense of faith that further distorts religion. Famously articulated by Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, he said faith “means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.” This is a definition that few religious believers would accept. It is unquestioning belief; faith as belief with a complete absence of evidence. Snoblen said the New Atheist definition of faith was a straw man, applied to Christianity “with hostile intent.” The geneticist and former Head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, said this sense of faith was not the real thing.

[Dawkins’s definition] certainly does not describe the faith of most serious believers throughout history, not of most of those in my personal acquaintance. While rational argument can never conclusively prove the existence of God, serious thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to C.S. Lewis have demonstrated that a belief in God is intensely plausible. It is no less plausible today. The caricature of faith that Dawkins presents is easy for him to attack, but it not the real thing. (Francis Collins, The Language of God, p. 164)

A better definition of faith suggested by Snobler would be “Faith is belief in the absence of complete evidence.” Conceive of faith as existing on a continuum. On the one side is blind faith; faith with no evidence. Snobler said he was not aware of any believer whose faith could be defined that way, but it was a logical possibility. At the other extreme would be positivism, which argues there can be no belief without evidence. “Somewhere on the continuum between these two extremes we could place ‘informed faith,’ belief with partial evidence.”

As Ian Barbour discussed in his book, Religion and Science, science is not as objective as positivists believe; and religion is not as subjective. He said positivists portray science as objective, meaning its theories are “validated by clear-cut criteria” and tested by their agreement with “indisputable theory-free data.” Both the criteria and the data are held to be “independent of the individual subject” and not affected by cultural influences. Religion, on the other hand is seen as subjective. But since the 1950s, these contrasts have been increasingly challenged. Science was not as objective as had been claimed by positivism.

Scientific data are theory-laden, not theory-free. Theoretical assumptions enter the selection, reporting, and interpretation of what are taken to be data. Moreover, theories do not rise from logical analysis of data but from acts of creative imagination in which analogies and models often play a role. Conceptual models help us to imagine what is not directly observable. (Religion and Science, p. 93)

Barbour said many of the same characteristics are present in religion. While religious beliefs are “not amenable to strict empirical testing,” they can be approached in a similar way. “The scientific criteria of coherence, comprehensiveness, and fruitfulness have their parallels in religious thought.” Following the thought of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Barbour said religious traditions could be seen as “communities that share a common paradigm.” Kuhn’s book asserted that both theories and data in science were dependent upon the ruling paradigms of the scientific community.

In the choice between paradigms, there are no rules for applying scientific criteria. Their evaluation is an act of judgment by the scientific community. As established paradigm is resistant to falsification, since discrepancies between theory and data can be set aside as anomalies or reconciled by introducing ad hoc hypotheses.

In The Big Question, Alister McGrath said New Atheism was really an antiquated rationalism “which has failed to catch up with the philosophical revolution of the twentieth century” in the pivotal works of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hans-Georg Gadamer. McGrath said this was good news for both science and religion, which were both now free of the rationalist dogma “that human reason can lay down what the universe is like. It does not, and cannot.”

Reality is too complex to be comprehended by any form of intellectual tunnel vision. We need multiple windows on our complex world if we are to appreciate it to the full and act rightly and meaningfully within it. Now there is nothing wrong with seeing only part of the truth, so long as we realize that this is an incomplete vision. The problems begin if we think that reality is limited to what one tradition of investigation can disclose, and refuse to listen to any other voices than our own. (The Big Question, p. 205)

McGrath gave an interesting lecture at Lanier Theological Library on Richard Dawkins, C.S. Lewis and the meaning of life. Addressing the question of whether faith was reasonable, McGrath noted Dawkins thought we could only believe what can be proven by reason or science. His above quote on faith illustrated this. But Lewis believed most of the important things in life were beyond rational or scientific proof. He famously said: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”

08/26/16

Crumbling Pillars?

35367610 - ruin of temple e (temple of castor and pollux) in the archeological park of selinunte in southern sicily — © Andreas Metz | 123rf.com

On July 7, 2016, the Ark Encounter, a “life-sized Noah’s Ark experience” was opened to the public. The centerpiece of the Answers in Genesis “theme park” is a 510-foot long replica of Noah’s Ark, standing over 50 feet tall. The park has a petting zoo, daily animal shows, zip lines, live entertainment and a 1,500-seat restaurant. One of its exhibits shows children living alongside dinosaurs. Future phases seek to build the Tower of Babel and a building that will house “a walk through Biblical history.” Admission is $40 for adults and $28 for children. Parking costs an additional $10. Oh, and the total cost of the project was $100 million.

There is a ready-made market for the Ark Encounter. An ABC News poll in 2004 found that 60% of Americans believed that the biblical story of Noah was literally true. When sorted by faith groups, 44% of Catholics thought the biblical story of Noah was literally true; and 87% of evangelical Protestants thought it was literally true. Only 29% with no religious affiliation thought it was literally true. The problem is: “The scientific and historical evidence is now clear: there has never been a global flood that covered the entire earth, nor do all modern animals and humans descend from the passengers of a single vessel.”

The two main pillars of a young earth creationist understanding of the Bible are the creation of the earth 6,000 years ago and a global flood. They hang together to uphold young earth creationism (YEC). The “apparent” geological evidence for an age of the earth far beyond 6,000 years is explained by the cataclysmic destruction from a global flood. The layers of sedimentary rock from around the world; the extinction of multiple kinds of animals—including the dinosaurs and others—is explained by the Biblical account of Noah’s Flood.

In another article, I looked at how the argument for a young earth rests on the false assumption that a chronology for the age of the earth can be derived from the Biblical genealogies. See “The Fall of the Chronology of Ussher” for more on this issue. Here we discover there are cracks in the other pillar—the assertion of a global flood.

Two Christian geologists, Gregg Davidson and Ken Wolgemuth questioned whether Noah’s Flood could account for the earth’s complex geology in their essay: “Biblical and Scientific Shortcomings of Flood Geology.”

To explain the vast thicknesses and incredible complexity of the earth’s sedimentary deposits within a short history, it is argued that the Flood must have been both global and violent. Flood Geology is thus synonymous with belief in a young earth. It is our conviction that this position is unreasonable from both a biblical and scientific perspective.

One of the challenges raised by Davidson and Woglemuth has to do with salt deposits like those found in the Gulf of Mexico. Salt deposits form when water is evaporated. “During evaporation, the concentration of dissolved ions increases until the water cannot hold the salt in solution anymore and mineral salt begins to form.” The problem is these salt deposits are between layers of sediment that the global flood was supposed to have deposited. “ A single, flood cannot be called upon to explain both the salt and the overlying sediment.”

Another challenge is the Grand Canyon, with its alternating layers of limestone, sandstone and shale. The sequence defies any reasonable attempt to explain it by a single flood. However, if the deposits were formed at different times under varying stages of sea levels, it is very easy to explain them. “If explained with a single catastrophic flood that abided by God’s natural laws of physics and chemistry, logic must be stretched beyond the breaking point.” And the multiple layers of limestone found in the Grand Canyon are never found in flood deposits.

Then there is the fossil record. If a massive flood were responsible for the fossil record, we should expect to see life forms from every living “kind” mixed together. Mammoths should be mixed in with triceratops; pterodactyls with sparrows. Ferns and meadow flowers should be found along with trilobites and whales. But what we see is quite different.

There is an orderly sequence where trilobites only occur in very old rocks, dinosaurs in later beds, and mammoths in still later layers. Organisms like flowers and ferns are present together in more recent deposits, but only ferns with no flowers are found in older deposits.

There is a new book, The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth, which looks specifically at the geology of canyon rocks and landforms in the light of the claims of flood geologists. Two of the eleven contributors are Davidson and Woglemuth. In “Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon” four contributors from the book use explanations and illustrations from their book to challenge five kinds of evidence in the Grand Canyon that flood geologists say support a global flood.

They used a graphic from Answers in Genesis (here) that summarizes these five different “evidences,” and then gave a synopsis of where they specifically refuted these flood geology claims in The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth. In the conclusion to their article, the authors said the geology of the Grand Canyon is known fairly well after nearly 150 years of study. The geological evidence “is overwhelmingly inconsistent with flood geology.” The rocks reveal multiple episodes of deposition and intervening periods of erosion. The fossil evidence does not reflect the rapid burial of sea animals and small land animals out of the deep, turbulent water hypothesized as occurring with a global flood. “Flood geologists have failed to conceive a physical model for catastrophic formation that is consistent with the real geology of the Grand Canyon.”

Another book by two Christian geologists, The Bible, Rocks and Time, was written with the intent to convince readers on biblical and geological grounds “of the vast antiquity of this amazing planet that is our God-given home.” Along the way they point out the flaws of young earth creationism.

Although the issue of Earth’s antiquity may seem to be little more than an interesting intellectual exercise that has little immediate bearing on one’s life, we point out that this issue can have profound spiritual consequences for the church of Jesus Christ, the individual Christian and the nonbeliever as well.

An article by Ted Davis on BioLogos, “The Bible, Rocks and Time: Christians and an Old Earth,” quoted two excerpts from the book. One “snip” noted where a growing number of orthodox evangelical Christian writers have accepted and accommodated their thinking “to the mounting evidence for terrestrial antiquity.” Linked there was an article originally written by Davis Young, one of the authors of The Bible, Rocks and Time. The article, “Scripture in the Hands of Geologists (Part Two),” was originally published in the Westminster Theological Journal. Part Two of Young’s article surveyed the concordist tradition when interpreting the early chapters of Genesis by Christian geologists. Young and Stearley were quoted as saying in The Bible, Rocks and Time:

A growing number of orthodox evangelical Christian writers, including geologists, preachers, biblical scholars and theologians, accepted and accommodated their thinking to the mounting evidence for terrestrial antiquity. In response, they began to develop a variety of strategies purporting to show how the biblical data were consistent with the findings of geology. . . . Having been encouraged to look afresh at the biblical creation accounts, experts in the original languages became persuaded that there is no conflict between the data of nature and the teaching of Scripture. These individuals continued to insist on the inspiration of the Bible and refused to call Genesis a myth in order to explain difficulties. It was, however, accepted that the traditional exegesis of Genesis 1 was not the only one that adequately satisfied the biblical data.

The two pillars of a YEC view of Genesis pit the two books of God’s revelation, Scripture and Nature, God’s Word and God’s Works against one another. As a consequence, they have weakened and not strengthened His revelation in both books. This “two books theology” was an essential foundation for the rise of modern science. As Mark Mann said, “Christians need to ‘read’ Scripture and Creation together in order to understand the fullness of God’s Word and truth for us today.” In Redeeming Science, Vern Poythress pointed out that scientific laws are what can be known about God in the things that have been made. “Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, such as his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived (Romans 1:20).”

In reality, what people call “scientific law” is divine. We are speaking of God himself and his revelation of himself through his governance of the world. Scientists must believe in scientific law in order to carry out their work. When we analyze what this scientific law really is, we find that scientists are constantly confronted with God himself, the Trinitarian God, and are constantly depending on who he is and what he does in conformity with his divine nature. In thinking about law, scientists are thinking God’s thoughts after him. (Redeeming Science, pp. 26-27)

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

06/14/16

Descent into Hell

I confess, I am not much of a listener of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). So I had never heard of the CCM artist Kari Jobe or her music until someone asked me about a theological controversy that is making the rounds online about one of her songs, titled Forever. Apparently, the dispute is over a reference in her song to Jesus as the Son of God descending into hell where He defeated the enemy. The person was asking me to see whether I thought that lyric was heretical, and whether Jobe was spreading heresy. My initial reaction was to recall that some versions of the Apostles’ Creed made a similar claim and say that those who are critical of Jobe and her song seemed to be majoring on minor points.

Here is a description of one view of the controversy written by Jeff Maples on his blog, Pulpit & Pen: “Popular Charismatic Worship Artist, Kari Jobe, Teaching Dangerous Heresy.” Maples began by criticizing the Outcry 2016 music festival that will be held in several U.S. cities this year. Kari Jobe is part of the tour. He said: “Now, I’m not exactly sure who these people are worshiping, but it isn’t Jesus. Yet, thousands of Christians are blindly sending their children to partake in this evil.” This is provocative stuff to be saying about the participants of the Outcry 2016 and those who attend it.

His beef seemed to be focused primarily on something called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which he said is a movement that elevates experience above doctrinal truth. Whether NAR is or is not heretical is not the focus here. Someone who wants more information on the movement or its beliefs can easily find discussions online. To get you started, try a Fresh Air podcast in 2011, “The Evangelicals Engaged in Spiritual Warfare”; or a Charisma News response to the NPR interview and article: “The New Apostolic Reformation Is not a Cult” by C. Peter Wagner. Also try “New Apostolic Reformation” on Wikipedia.

In his article, Maples quoted the lyric from Jobe’s song that he saw as offensive:

One final breath He gave
As heaven looked away
The Son of God was laid in darkness
A battle in the grave
The war on death was waged
The power of hell forever broken

Also there is a YouTube clip embedded on the page where Jobe said her favorite part of the song was the part that talks about the time in between the cross and the resurrection when “Jesus was in hell … defeating the enemy … taking those keys to death and hell and the grave to be victorious over that when he rose from the dead.” Maples then equated this with an old heresy he said is found in the Word of Faith circles, that Jesus died spiritually and was “born again” after defeating Satan in hell. Personally, I’m not a fan of the teachings of Joyce Meyer or Kenneth Copeland, who Meyers quotes as promoting this heresy. But it seems to me the “culprit” behind Jobe’s lyric is the Apostle’s Creed rather than the Word of Faith movement.

The Apostles’ Creed has been a confessional element of orthodox Christian belief since the times of the early church. Ambrose and Augustine suggested repeating it in daily devotions. Luther saw it as one of three binding summaries of belief. Calvin divided his Institutes into four parts that corresponded to the Apostles’ Creed. See “Christian, What Do You Believe?” for more background on the Apostles’ Creed.

J. N. D. Kelly, in Early Christian Creeds, pointed out that the first appearance of saying that Jesus “descended to hell” appeared in the Aquleian version of the creed referred to by Rufinus, a fourth century monk and theologian, in his Commentary of the Apostles’ Creed. There he noted the phrase “He descended into hell” was not part of the Roman Creed (See “The Old Roman Creed”) or those of the Eastern (Oriental) churches. Nevertheless, it seemed to be implied in saying that Jesus was buried. Kelly said the clause was also present in some Spanish creeds of the sixth century and Gallican creeds of the seventh and eighth centuries.

Rufinus remarked in his commentary that Jesus descending into hell was foretold in the Psalm 22, classically seen as intimately associated with the passion of Christ. The first words of the Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are cried out by Jesus as he was dying (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Psalm 22:7-8 is alluded to in Matthew 27:39, 43, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him!” The final words of the Psalm, “he has done it” were said in Hard Sayings of the Bible to have been alluded to by Jesus in John 19:30 as he bowed his head and died: “It is finished.” Rufinus saw similar references to a descent into hell in Psalm 22:15, “you lay me in the dust of death”; Psalm 30:3, “O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit”; and Psalm 30:9, “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit?”

Tom Macy also expressed concern with Jobe’s reference to Jesus descending into hell in his article, “Did Jesus Go to Hell?” Macy said it was bad theology that taught an error striking at the heart of understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus. He said it taught the battle was not won on the cross. Rather, the real battle took place in hell between the death and resurrection of Jesus. “That is what seriously distorts the truth and why this song must not be used.”

A further example of the confusion arising from this reference to a descent into hell in the Apostles’ Creed is in this short video by Garrett Kell from Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I don’t concur with his explanation, but it does show how wild speculation creeps in to explain difficult passages of the Bible. Macy attributed the root of this confusion to Roman Catholic teaching. He then referenced Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology to explain passages that have been used to support Jesus’ decent into hell.

Fanciful interpretations of difficult passages must not override the declarations from the cross definitively showing that Jesus did NOT spend Saturday in hell, was NOT fighting Satan to finish the work of salvation, was NOT preaching a second chance salvation or simply condemning to those in hell. Jesus was with the repentant thief in Paradise in the presence of the Father.

And yet, the descent into the underworld was specifically mentioned by: Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian and others, according to Kelly. “The belief that Christ spent the interval between His expiry on the cross and His resurrection in the underworld was a commonplace of Christian teaching from the earliest times.” One strand of patristic teaching thought Jesus himself hinted at it when he said in Matthew 12:40 that the scribes and Pharisees seeking a sign would get only the sign of the prophet Jonah: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Attempts to explain where Jesus was when his body was in the tomb ask space and time-oriented questions about something that occurred beyond the space and time of the created universe. The answer can’t fit within the cosmos in which we live and move and have our being. And yet, we still wonder where Jesus was when he wasn’t with his body in the tomb. The question says more about us, and our view of the cosmos, than it does about what actually happened to Jesus between about 3 pm Friday afternoon and early Sunday morning. In a similar way, the addition to the Apostles’ Creed of Jesus descending into hell, and the Old and New Testament passages supposedly referencing the same, tell us more about how the people of Biblical times viewed the cosmos than where Jesus was between his death and resurrection.

In his book, Scripture and Cosmology, Kyle Greenwood described how ancient Hebrew cosmology of a three-tiered universe of the heavens, earth and sea had a place for the underworld or the abode of the dead—Sheol. “When people died, they were buried in the ground, and their bodies remained in Sheol, the abode of the dead.” This three-tiered cosmology was shared by other Near Eastern cultures. “It was the abode of the dead, the final resting place beneath the earth for all who once lived.”

On the BioLogos website is a series of blog articles on a scholarly paper by Brian Godawa, “Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography in the Bible.” Here is a link to Part 4 of that series where there is a discussion of Sheol; here is a link to Godawa’s entire paper. The following quotation can be found under either link.

Sheol was the Hebrew word for the underworld. Though the Bible does not contain any narratives of experiences in Sheol, it was nevertheless described as the abode of the dead that was below the earth. Though Sheol was sometimes used interchangeably with “Abaddon” as the place of destruction of the body (Prov. 15:11; 27:20), and “the grave” (qibrah) as a reference to the state of being dead and buried in the earth (Psa. 88:11; Isa. 14:9-11) it was also considered to be physically located beneath the earth in the same way as other ANE worldviews.

The New Testament was written during a time of transition to an Aristotelean cosmology of spheres within rotating spheres. “In time Aristotelean cosmology and biblical faith became inseparable, not because Aristotle was a Christian, but because his system was easily reconciled with biblical anthropology and monotheism.” While the idea of Sheol or the grave underwent some major changes in the Christian era, Aristotelean cosmology didn’t require an abandonment of the idea that beneath the surface of the earth was a region where the dead went. Greenwood added this shows up conspicuously within the Apostles’ Creed.

The added phrase of “descended to hell” to the Apostles’ Creed is then simply making clear that Jesus truly died. Like all people, the humanity of the Son of God died. Not only was he crucified and buried, as it was said within the Roman Creed; Jesus was crucified [dead] and buried [He descended into Hell]. So on the third day, He would arise from the dead; the grave; Sheol. In other words, he would live again. This is the promise of faith in Christ. He reversed the irreversible, according to the ancient thinking about death. I think Kari Jobe can sing about it Forever, if she likes.

05/3/16

“The Deep” in Scripture

In the Mach 2014 issue of the science journal Nature Pearson et al. presented evidence from which they concluded that the origin of the Earth’s water was deep in the mantle of the Earth. The excitement was over the accidental discovery by Pearson and his co-authors of the presence of a mineral called ringwoodite within a diamond that been expelled from deep within the Earth’s mantle by a violent volcanic eruption. The researchers were looking for a way to date the diamond when they discovered a small piece of ringwoodite enclosed in the diamond. In a Live Science article, Pearson said: “It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth.” He indicated the volume of water deep within the Earth’s mantle approaches that of the mass of water currently present in all the oceans on the surface of the Earth.

Read the Live Science article if you are interested in more information on how the researchers got from the presence of ringwoodite in a diamond to the conclusion of all that water deep beneath the Earth’s surface. It was the first time that the mineral has been discovered on the Earth’s surface in “anything other than meteorites,” because it only forms under extreme pressure, like what exists at about 320 miles deep below the Earth’s surface. Then Christian media outlets like Christianity Today reported that the discovery confirmed the Bible’s explanation of where water on the Earth came from. “The Holy Bible is clear about water on Earth coming from below the ground.” But where did the waters below the ground come from?

The answer offered by Andre Mitchell for Christianity Today went on the say the book of Genesis tells us how God created the earth as a water-covered sphere and then separated the waters to create the Sky. He then gathered together the waters under the Sky to let dry land appear, which he called Earth (Genesis 1:2, 6-11). Further biblical support for this was noted by Mitchell to be found in the Flood account, where “the fountains of the great deep” broke open and covered the entire Earth with water (Genesis 7:11).

Writing for BioLogos, Brad Kramer commented that explanations like that given in Mitchell’s Christianity Today article stem from well-meaning but misguided efforts to show that the Bible is divine revelation, since it contains scientific information that the authors could not possibly have known without divine revelation—such as the presence of water with the equivalent mass of all the oceans 320 miles below the surface of the Earth. The issue Kramer points to is one where Christians, raised within a culture rich in the knowledge and evidence of modern science, will sometimes unconsciously impose their scientific worldview onto the Bible and its interpretation.

For Christians, the purpose of the entire Bible is first and foremost to reveal Christ. Therefore, it ultimately draws its authority from the fact that it truly speaks of God and his Son. Suggesting that the Bible’s authority rests on its scientific accuracy adds an artificial middleman to this chain of authority, wherein the Bible first speaks truly of science, and therefore is trusted to speak truly of Christ.

We can wander far into the weeds of disagreement over how to interpret Genesis one, but here I want to limit our discussion to idea of the deep. Kramer observed that young earth creationists and old earth creationists seem to share a similar approach to biblical authority and interpretation. While they disagree on exactly what the Bible reveals scientifically, “they agree that the Bible is full of science prophecies that can be used to convince skeptics of the Bible’s authority.” So by this interpretive and apologetic method, a person with a modern scientific worldview can be shown where the Bible contains references to scientific knowledge that could only be from a divine source.

Referencing a quote by Richard Bube, a theistic evolutionist, Kramer referred to the idea of “arbitrary inerrancy,” within this shared method of interpretation. In his essay, “A Perspective on Scriptural Inerrancy,” Bube said the term “arbitrary” meant that inerrancy had to be maintained and defended against arbitrary criteria. In other words, biblical inerrancy itself had an all-or-nothing sense:

Oftentimes conservative theologians have spoken out in defense of Scriptural inerrancy as if there were only one kind of inerrancy imaginable-a kind of all or nothing inerrancy. They argue that the Scriptures are either completely inerrant in every way and with respect to every criterion for inerrancy which may be applied, or they are not inerrant at all.

This then leads to the Christianity Today discussion that Pearson et al. confirmed the Biblical explanation of where water on the Earth came from—the Deep. But a truly modern individual with a scientific worldview would ask, “So then where did the waters below the ground come from?” And he or she would likely dismiss the answer of Genesis one described above by Andre Mitchell, that God created the earth as a water-covered sphere. This would be an example of what Bube meant by arbitrary inerrancy. Pearson et al. confirms the Biblical declaration that surface water on the earth came from beneath the earth. But the answer to the next logical question, where did that water come from, switches to the unscientifically unsatisfactory response that “God did it.”

The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery indicated that the imagery surrounding the word deep in the Bible had five distinct categories, one of which meant “the literal, physical quality of being far below the surface of the ground.” So this sense would fit within the understanding of Genesis 1:2 given by Andre Mitchell. Scriptures where the Hebrew word for deep, tĕhôm, have that meaning are: Psalm 69:2 or Proverbs 20:5. But that is not how the word is used in Genesis 1:2. Here is the ESV translation of Genesis 1:2: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

The more common sense for tĕhôm (around 30 or 40 references) is how it is used in Genesis 1:2, indicating the ocean or the sea. For the Hebrew people, the sea was a fearsome and alien place of monsters and storms. See Isaiah 51:10 and Psalm 104, especially verses 5-6, and 25-26. Some references to the sea as “the deep” appear to imply an ancient cosmology or ancient explanation for the origin and development of the universe. Some notable examples of where this ancient cosmology seems to be the subtext of a Biblical passage are Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 7:11 and 8:2, in the Genesis account of Noah and the Flood.

The authors of the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery acknowledge the difficulty in untangling the cosmological from the merely metaphoric statements on Scripture. Nevertheless, it does seem that ancient Hebrews saw the ocean as being fed by fountains or springs (Genesis 7:11, 8:2; Job 38:16; Proverbs 8:28). They also seemed to accept a three-tiered cosmology of the universe, with the earth situated in the middle between the heaven above and the deep beneath (Genesis 49:25; Deuteronomy 33:13; Psalm 135:6). And the “deeps” were believed to be the abode of sea monsters and forces of chaos (Psalm 74:13-14).

These and other oblique references suggest that there was one or more ancient worldviews or cosmologies behind these and other Biblical passages. This would reject a hermeneutical assumption that when discussing creation and the cosmology of the “heavens and earth,” the biblical writers were alluding to scientific information that the authors could not possibly have known without divine revelation. If you read Genesis 1 through an “ancient scientific mindset” for “an ancient audience” you avoid what Brad Kramer referred to as a false dichotomy between Biblical truth and its humanity. “If God chose to communicate through and to ordinary people in real human cultures, then we should expect the Bible be written in such a way that reflects the cultural mindset of its original context.”

So a Christian who is trying to be faithful to the authority of Scripture is not required to celebrate the news from Pearson et al.’s research as a confirmation that in the Bible, water on the surface of the Earth came from below ground. Brad Kramer said that biblical references to an underground ocean reflect “an ancient cosmology that is completely, categorically, and irreconcilably different than our own.”

Equating the “great deep” in Scripture with any scientifically detectable underground body of water is to fundamentally misunderstand the ancient world in which it was written.

There is a sense in Scripture when “the deep” references a literal, physical presence of water or some other quality existing far below the surface of the ground. But there is so much more to be found in its Biblical use. It can represent chaos, danger, and evil. Within apocalyptic visions, we see the deep as a combination of sea and earth. The beasts and the antichrist emerge from the deep in the end time (Daniel 7:3; Revelation 11:7). After the ultimate defeat of Satan and the beast, there is no longer any sea (Revelation 21:1).

From the beginning of Scripture to the end, references to “the deep” and “the depths” are images of terror with associations of danger, chaos, malevolent evil and death. “The deep” is a major negative archetype in the biblical imagination-a place or state of mind or soul that one would wish to avoid but that no one can completely avoid.

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

02/20/15

Did God Make You?

At the beginning of December in 2014, a BioLogos-funded study of the beliefs in human origins was publically released. Jonathan Hill, a sociology professor at Calvin College, conducted the study: The National Study of Religion and Human Origins (NSRHO). The survey had two primary purposes. The first was to “disaggregate” (separate into component parts) the typical survey questions used in the past to assess beliefs on human origins. The second purpose was to look at the influence of social context on these beliefs. The result may surprise you.

Gallup polls on evolution have been asking Americans which of three statements come closest to their beliefs on the origin and development of human beings for a number of years. Those positions and the percentages of Americans identified within the 2014 Gallup poll are as follows. First, human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process (31%). Second, human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process (19%). And third, God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so (42%).

As Jonathan Hill pointed out, if we categorize these results into “pro” and “anti” evolution camps, “it appears that nearly half the nation affirms evolution and nearly half denies it.” These statistics have then been used by a variety of sources for commentaries on evolution and creationism. But if such a large percentage of Americans continue to deny evolution, “then why do Americans score near the top on international comparisons of science literacy?”

He suggested that a better picture of beliefs about evolution was needed. So the NSRHO included separate questions on human evolution, God’s involvement, the way God created, the existence of a historical Adam and Eve, belief in literal 24-hour days of creation, and the geological timeframe for the emergence or creation of humans. Respondents could also say they were not sure about any particular question. And after each question they were asked to rate their level of certainty.

When a position affirming the main points of young earth creationism is assessed, namely that: a) that humans did not evolve from other species, b) that God was involved in the creation of humans, c) that God created directly and miraculously, d) that Adam and Eve were historical figures, e) that the days of creation were literal twenty-four hour day, and f) that humans came into existence within the last 10,000 years, only 8% of respondents agreed with all the main points of young earth creationism. Note how this contrasts with the Gallup “young earth” creationist category claiming 42% of Americans held that belief.

Taking a broad sense of theistic evolution, namely that respondents believed in human evolution and that God (or an intelligent force) was somehow involved in the creation of humans, only 16% of the population could be placed in that category. Additionally, only half of that group (8%) was very or absolutely certain of both of these beliefs. When a stricter definition is used, only 5% of the population claimed that a) humans evolved, b) God was involved, c) the days of creation were not literal, and d) humans emerged more than 10,000 years ago. If certainty on all these points was required, the percentage dropped to only 2% of the population. The Gallup poll category suggested 31% of Americans were “theistic evolutionists.”

Atheistic evolutionists, respondents who believed that humans evolved and God was not involved in the process, were around 9% of the population. Like theistic evolutionists, this group was about half the size of the comparable category from the Gallup poll. If a measure of certainty is included, only 6% of the population said they were very or absolutely certain that humans evolved and God was not involved in the process. The way that the NSRHO defined “atheistic evolutionist,” meant that someone could believe in God or an Intelligent force in the universe, but still hold to the two core beliefs of atheistic evolution.

By separating the beliefs in this way, much smaller proportions of the population were found to hold to the dominant positions on human origins. Many others were uncertain about what they believed or held uncommon beliefs (i.e., humans did not evolve from earlier species, and God had nothing to do with the emergence of humans).

Using the most generous definitions, the NSRHO finds that 37 percent of the population can be considered creationists, 16 percent can be considered theistic evolutionists, and nine percent can be considered atheistic evolutionists. This leaves 39 percent of the population as unsure or holding uncommon views . . . . If we adopt more restrictive definitions, these numbers begin to shrink further.

These results gave a more nuanced sense to the typical polls on American beliefs in evolution. In “The Recipe for Creationism,” a BioLogos article introducing the NSRHO study, Jonathan Hill described some of the factors that seemed be important for influencing a convinced creationist. These factors were: a) belonging to an evangelical Protestant denomination, b) believing that the Bible contained no errors, c) praying frequently and d) saying that faith was very or extremely important in day-to-day life. Some factors of social context were also important for convinced creationists. They were: a) belonging to a congregation that rejected human evolution and b) anticipating that changing beliefs about human origins could cause tension with religious leaders and other church members.

You can review the NSRHO for more information on the influence of social context on the various positions. But the most important takeaway, according to Hill, is that individual beliefs practices and identities are important, “but they only become a reliable pathway to creationism or atheistic evolutionism when paired with certain contexts or certain other social identities.” They are not mashed together from the free-floating ideas put together after considering all the alternatives. Rather, “they are found in certain social locations, and they become most plausible when shared with others (especially for creationists).”

I had an opportunity about twenty years ago to see a play put on by a local theater company in Dayton Tennessee, where the Scopes Monkey Trail was held. They performed it in the very same courtroom where the original trial was held. They also used several artifacts from the original trial as props for the play. The dialogue in the script for the play was overwhelmingly taken from the transcript from the trial. It was a special experience, feeling a bit like being able to be present at an important time in history.

It saddens me to see the perpetuation of fanaticism on both extremes of the evolution-creation debate. Particularly when Christians who are trying to honor their faith get caught up in spewing vitriol about positions that disagree with theirs. So I’d like to end this look at the BioLogos survey with a quotation of Clarence Darrow. Darrow was the defense attorney for Scopes at the trial.

Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. (Clarence Darrow, July 13, 1925)

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: BioLogos