Some more comments on the historicity of Genesis

For by him [Jesus Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible . . . he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:16-17).

Introduction

Last week I said something about discussing the history of the Feminist movement, and hope I can do that next week. However, some more comments on an earlier article appeared (The historicity and the necessity of Genesis), and they seemed so substantive and so interesting as to require an extended response. This being too long for the comments, I am devoting this week’s space to some religiously oriented objections to a literal reading of the opening chapter of Genesis.

By “religiously oriented objections” I mean that the author of the comments accepts that God created the heavens and the earth, but feels that this must have happened through ordinary means understood by science, including Darwin’s theory of evolution (making him a theistic evolutionist, which is not an unknown position).

Thus, this requires more careful analysis than would some objections from a simple atheist, which I could easily have responded to with a few comments.

My purpose in this is not to win some argument. Rather it is to assert that a failure to allow for supernatural realities in Genesis 1 is, in the long run, fatal to supernatural realities in the New Testament as well (at least for those who reason consistently).

This is not a matter of fear on my part, it is only simple logic. How can we make secular human wisdom the supreme arbiter of truth in Genesis 1, and then boldly withstand it when it comes to the miracles of Christ? And what about the many other aspects of New Testament teaching that completely annihilate secularist metaphysics (while leaving secularist practices in applied science and technology intact in the physical realms)?

My purpose is not to decisively defeat my interlocutor with crushing and unanswerable argument. In fact, I welcome his recognition of divine creation, and respect the seriousness of the thought he has devoted to this. Nevertheless, I would like to encourage him (and others of course) to consider the reality of a spiritual dimension that goes far beyond the very considerable limits of secular human scientific knowledge.

We also need to have a higher regard for the many spiritual depths, divinely inspired truths, and incomparable insights of the Old Testament, without which the New Testament as we know it would not exist. Christ’s coming was within the divinely appointed framework ordained by God through Moses and the prophets.

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Some interesting features of this conversation are (1) the relationship between Christianity and philosophy; (2) Augustine’s admissions of obscurities in Genesis (which admissions are often misunderstood and are very far from a denial of basic events), as well as; (3) the contradictory use of allegorical and poetic language. For example, we see in Psalm 93:1 that

the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

This verse, and others like it, are commonly used to show that the Old Testament world view is incompatible with modern science. However, we read something very different in Isaiah 24:18-20, which says:

. . . for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.

The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.

The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.

I attempt to explain this inconsistency below.

The main body is divided into two parts, corresponding to two separate but lengthy comments on my essay. I give the opening lines of each comment perhaps out of pedantry, as my responses are self contained.

Part I

“I'll also have to apologize for going on for a long time,” (April 10th)

Once again, I have worked carefully through your comments and tried to answer them in order. I am glad to spend the time on this as they are important and significant questions.

About your impression of the creation account in Genesis as effective allegory, you interpret Genesis in the light of the assumed reality of the Big Bang and of evolution. So, human science and knowledge is the standard of truth and the Bible must be interpreted accordingly. Many people agree with that; many people (including myself) do not. For example, I believe Darwin’s theory of evolution is not objective science but rather a false and dehumanizing version of human origins that has a lot to do with the social breakdown we are seeing around us.

I made some comments about it to which you did not reply:

With regard to your assertion that Darwinism “takes creation on its own terms” (and hence is real science, not allegory), Darwinism does not explain the first origin of life. It does not explain how unicellular organisms split into masculine and feminine genders, nor does it explain how the cosmos and the world came into being in the first place. Neither does it explain the mystery of human consciousness, which makes us absolutely unique among all the other animals. Personally I thought Darwin’s attempts to equate animal emotions with human emotions were unconvincing.

In praising the sophistication of what you consider in essence to be only a creation allegory, you said “the more I looked into it the more it actually seemed extraordinary to me that someone from the Bronze Age could come up with Genesis.” And what do you think of Psalms? Proverbs? Isaiah? Do you believe God was speaking through the prophets? And what about the four gospel accounts of the life of Christ? Do you believe those are accurate and historical, or that the biblical miracles of Christ are a priori impossibilities and have to be interpreted in the light of what is acceptable to science?

You talk about the speed of light, and what physicists think – but then you say that God created light. I am confused by your position. When God said “ ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light,” it sounds as if you believe that, and that you accept the veracity of the biblical account on this point. Do you believe that light exists because God created it, in a manner unknown to science?

You said when you read the Bible “weird stuff” popped up, that people shouldn’t have been able to know. That was intended as a compliment to the depth of the Bible, but did any beautiful spiritual truths pop up? Did you find any surprisingly accurate descriptions of your own character and behavior? Did any descriptions of God arise that made you think “Yes, God is like that”?

So you say that because of the sophistication of the creation allegory you could believe that there was some sort of higher knowledge behind it. But what about many other biblical teachings? Do you believe the soul lives after death? That there will be a day of judgment, and that some will be forgiven and accepted by God and taken into paradise, while others will be sent to eternal punishment? That is what Christ taught. What do you think of Christ? Who was he? Why did he have to die? Did he rise from the dead? Is that allegory too?

If you think the creation account in Genesis is allegory, are you a theistic evolutionist, who believes that evolution is a scientific fact, but that God started it and is guiding it to a purposed end? But if that is the case what good are mythological accounts of God creating the first man and woman full and complete, without a preliminary evolutionary process?

As to your making progress, no one on earth has reached a state of perfection. We all need to make progress – but progress in what direction? To which goal? And how do we reach that goal?

So the point is, when you say, you have to believe it all is literally true in order to be a real Christian, not only are you saying I can't be as good a Christian as you (which I suppose is your right to think, but can't be good for recruitment and retention if you keep saying it), you're actively and deliberately undermining the very thing that made it, and continues to make it, at all possible for me to believe in the first place.

First of all, I did not say one had to believe all of Genesis was literally true to be a Christian. I thought I was clear about that. I said someone could be a Christian without even having read Genesis at all, and having no specific ideas about it. When I was first drawn to Christ I was drawn by his light and his truth and his teachings in the New Testament, and did not even think about Genesis. What I did say was, that if we want to progress and mature in the Christian life, we need to have faith in the word of God, and if we do not accept the creation account in Genesis, we will run into troubles in other areas.

This is why I asked you about the miracles of Christ, including his miraculous birth without a human father. Many will say such miracles are impossibilities. Do you say God’s narrative trumps humanistic objections, or do the humanistic objections trump God’s word? We are not talking only about Genesis now, but about all of the miraculous parts of the Bible that secularists invariably reject. Did Christ actually walk on water, or heal a man blind from birth, or feed a multitude from a few baskets, or is that just allegory too? If you admit the possibility of the miraculous there, why not somewhere else as well? If you do not admit those miraculous things, then what do you believe about Christ?

About the independent scientific verification of the creation account being totally irrelevant, I maintain that your assertion that modern instruments and research methods should confirm literal six-day, young earth creationism is mistaken. It requires no such confirmation, and the reason is NOT because we cannot study something, do research, and draw conclusions. We can and do do that all of the time. That is the scientific method, which is valid and useful in many areas. But the scientific method has limits. This is a vital point. And the scientific method does not apply to and does not extend do something completely outside of ordinary scientific cause and effect. The creation of the world has never been observed in a laboratory, and it never will be. It has never been confirmed by experiment, and never will be. The cause of the creation, the will of God, is outside the proper domain of science and cannot be limited to scientific parameters.

The key point here is that there are dimensions and realms of knowing beyond science. Science is not the only reality and the scientific method is not the only means of knowing.

As to my allegedly disdaining study of the creation, you are mistaken there. Many aspects of God’s creation can be and are studied with great diligence – the motions of the planets in our solar system; gravity; energy; light, biology, chemistry; geography; botany; ornithology; mathematics – these are all aspects of God’s creation. In fact all of the founding giants of modern western science were theists of some sort, and said “This is God’s creation – now let’s see how it works.” There is nothing wrong with some study of things that we can see and subject to analysis. However, the first origin of the world and the cosmos is not among them. It is a unique singularity against which ordinary scientific methods are directed in vain – and trying to work backward into the unknown, using currently known principles, is invalid. No one knows what laws of physics or chemistry might have been operative when the earth materialized out of nothingness, and was deliberately positioned by God at its precise distance from the sun, and clothed with a thin and delicate biosphere.

You ask about studying and learning from the real tablets of Moses, if we had access to them. But we now have the contents of those tablets accurately recorded, and we need to be concerned with how our lives measure up to them, not with their physical dimensions or what kind of stone was used, or what alphabetical forms might have been used them (alphabetic writing did exist by that time). What we could learn from a physical study of the actual objects is of secondary importance - and a merely physical study could not determine if their contents were really from God or not.

Study the planet all you want – but without understanding that it was created by God, by means outside of and transcending science, all lesser knowledge is of no real spiritual benefit.

You say that according to my view "we cannot read creation aright," and are “apparently incompetent at reading creation.” No, we can read it aright to a great extent, as is shown by all the accomplishments of modern science – but science cannot reason backward from the known into the unknown, trying to guess what might have been in the beginning with its unknown processes according to the known processes we see today. There are limits to science, just as there are limits to all forms of human activity. It is possible for someone to run a 4 minute mile, but not a one minute mile. It is possible for someone to lift 500 pounds, but not 5,000 pounds. It is possible to look at existing objects and study them and learn a great deal about them, but not to know about origins which have never been observed and will never be observed. You seem to be saying that I argue science cannot explain what has never been seen, therefore it can not explain anything at all, which is not my position.

You say “The truth is that Creation does give us enough details to begin to understand its formation” – correct, but within limits. Your analogy of being able to understand how steel is made without witnessing it or being told is not a good one. The manufacture of steel is according to known principles. It has been done countless times, the processes of metallurgy are well understood. The process of how the stars and planets or the first came into being is not understood. Arguing that because we can understand a piece of steel, that therefore we can reason back to the origins of the cosmos is like arguing that a man who can run a four minute mile can also run a one minute mile. And when I say “That is impossible. No man can run a 60 second mile,” would you respond “What! Do you mean physical exercise and training is of no value? We have proven that athletes by training can increase their speeds!” But there are limits to what the human body can do, and what the human mind can know.

You say that belief in a literally historical Genesis account is not from the Bible itself, “it's just coming from you.” On the contrary – the Bible says God created the heavens and the earth; that he created the sun, moon and stars; that he created human beings, animals, fished and birds. That does not come from me, that comes from the Bible. I believe that and so do many others. The idea that it is only mythology or metaphor comes from you. You have agreed creation comes from God. Why do you have to assume that the creation has to fit the paradigms of modern secular humanism?

About non-literal readings of Genesis being endorsed (at least as a valid possibility) by early church writers like Augustine and Origen, I have said that some interpretation is possible. Someone could believe that the six days were six eons of indeterminate length – but Augustine is very far from dismissing the whole thing as an allegory. He had problems with such things as whether or not the angels existed before the beginning of Genesis 1:1, meaning there may have been earlier acts and Gen. 1:1 refers to the creation of the physical world only. He was not sure if the creation of “the heavens and the earth” referred to material reality only, or also to spiritual realities of heaven. And the earth was without form, and void – but how could matter exist without form? Was all matter created instantaneously, and then divided into mountains, planets, and so on? Or was matter created in phases? Darkness was upon the face of “the deep”? What is that? And why did God complete the creation in six days? Is “morning” a literal morning, or merely the beginning of the next act of creation – and so on.

Augustine saw a lot of philosophically subtle obscurities, but did not deny the basic facts of God having created our world and the cosmos out of nothing, by his spoken word alone.

It is not correct to say that the concept of a literal creation only came about in the 18^th century. Luther’s Commentary on Genesis was written in the 16^th century, and he not only affirmed God’s direct creation according to Genesis but he elaborated on it in detail. He spoke of obscurities, and said he did not understand them (the waters that were under the firmament and above the firmament, for example) but said that the main point we were to take away was that God created all of these things. Calvin’s commentary also shows his belief in the literal truth of Genesis. He says for example “Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and moon” (this in answer to the question of how their could be light on the first day prior to the creation of the sun and the moon on the fourth day).

You ask “And where do we stop with literalism?” That is not a tough question.

First, we have to approach the Scriptures with humility, rather than with the attitude that the Bible must be conformed to science even to the point of denying God’s power.

Second, there is poetry and allegory and metaphor in the Bible, and much of the time it is very easy to spot. The trees will clap their hands . . . the hills will leap for joy . . . Jesus says he is a vine and the apostles are branches in the vine . . . Old Testament Israel as God’s vineyard – these do not interfere with the understanding of essential biblical teachings. And, we need the Spirit of Christ and the mind of Christ, as we read in I Corinthians:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

And when it says in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” – what else can that mean? Did God NOT create the heavens and the earth? You have agreed that he did - but what scientist can dictate the means or the manner by which he must have done it? Is this not obviously something above and beyond our dwarfish and shallow little human minds? We do not even understand how our own brains and perceptions and personalities work. I do not understand how the sun works, never having studied nuclear physics – for thousands of years before nuclear physics no one knew how the sun worked – yet we lived in its light regardless.

You refer to some Bible verses to show that some things cannot be taken literally: 1 Chr 16:30, Ps 93:1, Ps 96:10, 1 Sam 2:8, Job 9:6.

(A) I Chr. 16:30 (Also a Psalm of David). Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved. [I add 16:33 - Then shall the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the LORD, because he cometh to judge the earth. And 114:4 “The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.”]

(B) Ps 93:1. the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

(C) Ps 96:10.  the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved

(D) I Sam. 2:8. for the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, and he hath set the world upon them.

(E) Job 9:6 Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.

The 1^st 3 examples (A-C) are all Psalms of David, which have many poetic metaphors, most or all of them easily recognizable. Let’s look at a few of them:

• Ps. 121:3 “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” This obviously means unshakeable purpose, not someone staying in the same spot for the rest of his life. Thus the stability of the earth could refer to its maintaining its state of existence, its being, that the existence of the world cannot be displaced or seriously altered. Yet, when we read in Isaiah 24:1 that “Behold, the LORD maketh (makes) the earth empty, and maketh (makes) it waste, and turneth (turns) it upside down, and scattereth (scatters) abroad the inhabitants thereof,” this refers turning the world upside down with regard to societal calamities, as in the song “The World Turned Upside Down” supposedly played at the British surrender at Yorktown. It is not a literal turning upside down but a radical displacement of human society.

• Here is another passage from Isaiah 24:18-20  which shows that, although the earth’s essential nature and being is unchanged, and has continued to this day, yet it can be significantly altered relative to human experience.

. . . for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.

The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.

The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.

So in A-C we have a metaphysical permanence of being rather than physical immobility in the affairs of life.

About D, that the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, we read in Proverbs 3:19 “The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.” So what if the pillars on which the earth is founded are God’s wisdom, power, love, justice and goodness?

About E, Job speaks of the pillars of the earth trembling, but Job and his friends said a number of things that were simply wrong. For example Job said “God laughs at the destruction of the innocent” and other things expressing doubt and despair. Yet he is praised at the end for speaking rightly because he spoke directly and honestly to God of what was in his heart.

You also refer to Job 41 and Psalm 104:26. About the chapter in Job, I do not see anything in that chapter about sea monsters set to guard the edge of the sea, and I do not accept modern translations, they take too many liberties and paraphrase or edit too much. So I accept only the KJV (I understand the ESV is more formal and literal but I have never used it).

I do not find that in Psalm 104 either. The closest I could find is 104:26 which reads only “There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.” Your source seems unreliable there, or maybe it is a defective modern translation (which still retains the essential facts about Christ).

About sea monsters, whales, giant squid, giant octopi, whale sharks, salt water crocodiles might qualify

“God created the heavens and the earth” is not poetry or allegory. How does anything I've said dispute that? We are talking about means and methods, not who was responsible.

I am confused by that. You denied a plain, literal reading of the creation account and said “it's actually not all that far off as allegory for how the Universe and humanity came to be.” Later you referred things in the Psalms that could not be taken literally. So, you are saying that God created the heavens and the earth, but he used means known to modern science to do so. But it says in Hebrews that God created the earth out of nothing, by his spoken word alone. And many scientists would not agree that God had anything at all to do with it.

I mention our inability to read the creation with full accuracy because of the fall, and you respond “The fall made us sinners, I don't know where you get the idea that it messed with our powers of observation and deduction. We ate from the tree of knowledge, not the tree of ignorance.”

Look at the many scientists who say God had nothing to do with it. That shows the blindness of reason corrupted by sin and by the fall. And look at all of the many other people who admit there is a God but see him only as a vague philosophical concept unconcerned with human sin, faith or repentance. Similarly, all those who say they believe in God but have no regard for God’s laws, or set their own limits about what God may or may not do, they also reflect the ignorance of sin.

I chose to agree with something that comes to us straight from the Creator rather than something that, even you admit, is at least partially subject to human limitations.

You agree that the creation came to us straight from God. Is he bound to the laws of human science? Is he allowed to do only what the scientists concede him?

There is much  more to faith than believing God created the universe. What about the resurrection from the dead, sin, forgiveness, a life of obedience to Christ, belief in the deity of Christ and the efficacy of his sacrifice on the cross and final return as God? Very often people who do not accept the full literal truth of Genesis are weak on other aspects also – not that a mere assent to the literal truth of the creation story is proof of holiness or perfection either.

The only thing a priori is the axiom that your senses and logic, taken together, generally don't lie to you.

In things of everyday life our sense are very reliable. God made them that way. But when it comes to the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the life, teachings, miracles and resurrections of Christ, the day of judgment, the life of the soul after death, and other spiritual things, human beings are often wrong. Even in earthly things we are often wrong, especially when it comes to moral and ethical judgments as opposed to material facts. Look at the millions who joyfully followed Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Their logic lied to them. What about the people who hate Trump or love him? Many people on one or the other of those two sides are clearly in error.

Contrary to what you say, logic and reason often lie, as in the case of people who believe mankind evolved from the monkeys by accident, through a random series of events that had no end in mind. Your faith in human reason unaided is a direct denial of many biblical teachings about the fallenness and the sinfulness of man. Human reason can help me buy a car or design a house, or tell me some facts about the material world, but for spiritual truths we must have revelation.

But when it comes to the things of God, Paul writes in I Corinthians that the natural mind cannot receive the things of God (I Corinthians 2:14: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” and 2 Corinthians 4:4 “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them”).

If you do not believe that people are separated from God and alienated by sin, the only thing I would really like to discuss with you now is “What is Christianity?” If we are not sinful why did Christ have to die on the cross? Why does Paul say in Romans that “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and “There is none righteous, no, not one”?

The scientific method has yielded incredible results? Yes it has, including nuclear weapons, machine guns and hand grenades, flamethrowers, satellites for broadcasting world wrestling matches around the globe, and electric can openers to spare people the labor of opening a can. Thank you science. And what about the fact that scientific technology has given us the most destructive wars in all of human history? Science has not brought us more wisdom or more happiness and it has nothing at all to say about the existence or non-existence of God, right or wrong, ethics and morals.

I am aware of the difference between theoretical science and applied science, but one has enabled the other and the two cannot be so lightly separated as to completely exonerate science from the evil affects that have come out of it. Not that science is evil, but people are, and science does not make them wiser, better, kinder, and more loving and forgiving.

When it comes to me telling you what to do to advance in faith, or demanding that you do this or that, I am demanding nothing and ordering you to do nothing. You can do whatever you like – but my advice is that you pay more attention to Christ and less to Genesis chapter 1 for the time being. Who was Christ?  And if you think it is so terrible to believe that God is above and beyond science and can do many things that are contrary to scientific materialism, I wonder just what kind of a God it is that you believe in. Can scientific knowledge get you forgiveness for your sins? And I know you have sins because you are a human being. Science is a limited and inferior form of knowledge that can tell us about material things but not about spiritual realities.

I'm older now, so I'm mature enough to understand that your perspective doesn't need to impact my own journey. However, if someone told me what you're telling me when I was 21, I'd walk out and never come back; fiancé or no.

I don’t typically meet people and say to them “You have to believe in the literal truth of Genesis.” I like to find out first if they have any interest in God or religion at all, and many do not. I would also like to find out what they think about Christ, and what they know about his teachings. As I said before, when I was first attracted to Christianity it was by the teachings and person of Christ, and I had no regard for the historicity of Genesis at all – though when I did get around to reading the first chapter of Genesis on my own it was eminently believable to me that God said “Let there be light, and there was light,” and everything else that followed. Do you believe God created light that way? By his spoken word alone? Or is there some scientific explanation God has to be shoehorned into, since he is not allowed to exist outside of a tiny little humanistic scientific box?

I don’t get what you mean about being tempted to uncompromising wrath. Do you mean wrath to my viewpoint, and is wrath the perspective of “many of my friends who were raised as Christians but now can't bear it”? But that point is not important so skip it if you like.

Your perspective was a major hurdle for me to join a church and if my pastor was like you, quite honestly, I'd still be so lost.

So now you are not lost? Did Christ save you? How and from what? He was born without a human father. Isn’t that contrary to science? He rose from the dead. Isn’t that contrary to science? He worked many miracles. Will not many scientists tell you that is impossible? Does your faith consist of only what science will allow? Does science determine the boundaries of what you will or will not believe?

It's the same sick feeling that I have with you saying I'm not a good Christian if I can't believe in a literal six-day creation.

Did I tell you you were not a good Christian? I never said any such thing, and have said more than once it is possible for someone to be a Christian without ever even having read Genesis at all. But, if we want to grow and mature in the Christian faith, we have to believe and trust God, and if our belief is limited to what the world will accept, then we are headed for trouble. What do you think of what Paul says in I Corinthians about the natural mind being unable to understand the things of God?

About Trans-women-are-women (TWAW) that is blatant sin and evil – but that the world and the universe were created as described in a literal reading of Genesis, in ways completely unknown to modern science, is a legitimate Christian view. The two are not even remotely comparable. Would you apply your scientific method to the virgin birth of Christ? If you say “Christ was not born without a human father, because that is scientifically impossible, and science is the only measure and gauge of reality,” then I would say you are not a Christian at all, and do not know Christ. But if you do say “Christ was born of a virgin and whatever science has to say against it is completely irrelevant,” then why not take the same view of Genesis? And if God presented Christ as having had a normal human birth, when the reality was very different, that does not make God a liar or a deceiver, because he says plainly in his Word who Christ’s father was. If people refuse to believe the word because it contradicts what they see according to ordinary human experience and they do not believe God’s word, their condemnation is just and they are without excuse.

About TWAW, you could say – assuming that the time is right – that “God created them male and female.” But can you do that with your allegorical Genesis? How did male and female arise in a Darwinian scenario? And it is possible to raise the topic without creating a scene. You might mention a video you saw about a young woman who had her breasts cut off and now feels miserable because she destroyed her life. And, while it is true there is a time to be silent, the Bible also says “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.”

Part II

“If you think scientists don't know what happened exactly, what makes you the authority?” (April 11th)

If you think scientists don't know what happened exactly, what makes you the authority? Your reading of the Bible? A document that by your own admission has allegory and poetry and whose meaning is disputed endlessly.

I didn’t realize one needed to be an authority to share one’s views on Substack. I believe what the Bible says, as plainly and as literally as possible. And when scientists say that the cosmos came into being by natural causes only without God, that is sheer speculation. They have no scientific evidence for that statement at all.

God's given us a planet that provides us with food, air, water, sunshine, pleasant animals to look at, flowers to smell and all of that, but we're not allowed to draw any conclusions about its creation by examining it? He meant to nourish our bodies and souls but poison our minds, really?

I have said above we can study the creation, but within the limits of what is observable. Our minds have been poisoned, blinded and corrupted by sin. This is why we cannot understand the deepest aspects of life by reason alone.

Again, the Bible could be part of this false creation and we're all supposed to believe it as part of the malicious plan of the lesser creator of the Gnostics. The point is that if you don't take creation as it comes to you, if you think it's misleading you, you can't shake off all of the implications of what that would say about the Creator of the World.

Sunlight, rain, human voices, I take all of those aspects of everyday experience as they come to me. But what happens after death? Did Jesus rise from the dead? How did the universe come into being? Why did God put us here on earth and what does he require of us? The answers to those things are not found in everyday experience, which is why we need divine revelation.

About Paul and Greek philosophy, that was a very interesting link that you provided [https://biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/paul-and-his-use-of-greek-philosophy/]. I have long been interested in the intersections of biblical Christianity and secular philosophy. However, the links between Christianity and philosophy are often overrated. Nowhere in Greek philosophy do we read that God created the universe out of nothing by his spoken word alone. Nor do we read of the sin problem, or of salvation from sin through the death of Christ, the God man, on the cross. Those are only a few of the essential differences for what Paul asserted was wisdom revealed from heaven, contrary to all of the wisdom of the flesh.

The Greek and the Roman philosophers had some impressive insights, but nothing remotely approaching the manifestation of the mystery of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Also, saying that Jesus appeared as something other than what he was by appearing as mortal? He raised the Dead in front of people! I'd hardly call that subtle. That doesn't prove all of what Jesus was, but it sure gives a big indication that he's something not of this Earth. I find the idea that the Lord throws out red herrings to be quite off-putting.

Christ appeared to people as a normal human being. He said “I am the bread come down from heaven,” and people said “What? How can he say he came down from heaven? We know his family, his brothers and his sisters.” And they also said “The Messiah is supposed to come from Bethlehem but Jesus comes from Galilee.” And they persisted in their error. And nowhere was it evident in his miracles that he was God in human form. Moses also worked great miracles and Elijah raised someone from the dead, but they were only men.

That something is off putting to you is irrelevant. Many find the concept of a day of judgment off-putting, or divine laws that we are supposed to follow. You are not, as a fallible human being, so perfectly attuned to the deepest realities of the cosmos that your likes, dislikes and preferences are sure guides to the way things are or the way they ought to be.

“Also, science takes nothing away from God” – except when it tries to deny his existence altogether.

From my point of view, things that exist must have a cause. To stretch a metaphor a lot, the answer to the question who/what/why laid the dynamite for the Big Bang is every bit as much a miracle it would be to the question of who spoke the Universe into existence in six literal days.

Must God have a cause? The Bible teaches he has always existed. All created things must have a cause. And the implications of a materialistic, naturalistic Big Bang as opposed to a divine creation are immense. They have everything to do with the meaning of life and how we should live.

We, as Christians, put the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament above the Old in esteem. There's a reason for that, the Gospels are much clearer, and the Epistles are written for a more sophisticated audience than anything in the Old Testament. The New Testaments represents people witnessing and analyzing God at work. This is, in my view, why Christ came to us in human form, so we could see it and understand it at our scale and be saved. This is accessible, clear, and understandable.

We have a fuller revelation in Christ, and the New Testament uncovers mysteries only dimly pointed to in the Old, but subjects like the Trinity; God come to earth as a man who died as a sacrifice for the sins of the world; that we can find forgiveness only through Christ; that the soul lives after death and will be subject to a day of judgement – all of those things are not accessible, clear and understandable to the hundreds of millions of people who directly deny them and refuse to believe them. People cannot see or believe them unless they are given the gift of faith, which gift God gives to some, not others.

The Old Testament on the other hand represents Israel trying and often failing to be faithful to God. It is also a book of men trying to understand the Father's words, actions, and visions and often falling short. Again and again, God's chosen fail him; Adam, Samson, David, etc. It's not just a failure of actions, it's a failure of understanding.

You have a very low view of the Old Testament. It is frequently quoted in the New Testament, and the prophets have many powerful statements about and visions of the reality of God. Many of its teachings are beautiful spiritual truths which have inspired Christians down through the centuries. Many examples from its pages are quoted in the New Testament, and in Galatians Christian believers are called children of Abraham by faith.

I wonder, do you believe the New Testament is divinely inspired, containing many truths that are rejected by the natural mind?

Even today, the scientific account of the early universe is beyond our understanding except as a series of mathematical expressions. No one can actually describe to you what the process of space-time being created looks like using any human language other than mathematics, which carry zero experiential meaning. When we try, we have to do what I think Moses had to do; reach for metaphors, allegory, and imperfect models.

I do not believe that. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The sun, moon and stars, the mountains, rivers, seas, birds and fish, animals and man were created by the spoken word of God. And why should God create a world that could only be understood by mathematicians? A ten year old child who believes that “God created the heavens and the earth” is wiser than 10,000 secular mathematicians, lost and groping in their pride of intellect. There are Christian mathematicians. You might like to read John Lennox’ book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

Anyway, I am sorry if any of that offends you because I don't think you that mean the for the most negative consequences of your view to occur, but I figure it's better to be honest. Do you wonder why so many young people are "deconstructing" as they put it? in my view, it's because you're setting up the grandeur of Christianity on foundations of playdough. You think Darwinism has negative implications?

I am not in the least offended, and welcome this opportunity to discuss important subjects . . . I believe many people are deconstructing because the spiritual dimensions of Christianity are missing in our weak, boring and shallow churches . . . I don’t think Darwinism has negative implications, I know it does. People who believe they are animals in an amoral universe with no divine laws and no fear of God are responsible for so many things we see today. I recommend the book Darwin Day in America by John West [https://darwindayinamerica.com/].

What happens when people can't believe in God because the people who instruct them in the faith insist on things that can't be true and tell them they can't progress in their faith unless they believe them?

What happens when people believe that the creation account in Genesis, the virgin birth of Christ, the resurrection from the dead and the day of judgment, the miracles of Christ, and everything else in the Bible never happened because secular humanistic science provides the iron grin through which all experience must be filtered?

Why is there something rather than nothing? That's the question that matters most. If your answer is that God is the uncaused cause, as mine is, then that's all you need, your faith doesn't have to hinge on particular interpretations of texts and arcane questions regarding literary criticism and translations.

God is the uncaused cause, that’s all we need? I think we need much more than that. And what do you say when the same people who tell you that the creation account in Genesis is unscientific also tell you that the miracles of Christ are impossibilities?

We need a God who speaks to us through Christ and through a reliable revelation.

The Christianity you're proposing sounds bold, a ringing declaration but Paul didn't try to tell the learned Athenians to just get with Christ and close their minds to doubt. He actually was bold and went toe to toe with the best minds of his time. A lot of secularists will never admit it; but in addition to being an Apostle, Paul was in the top ranks of the philosophers of antiquity.

Neither have I ever said to anyone “Just get with Christ and close your minds to doubt.” You are conflating me with people who share my views on Genesis but are very different from me in other ways. Express your doubts, articulate them, consider them, that is why I have spent some time talking with you. I did not say to you “Just believe” when it comes to the historicity of Genesis, I said your approach to that book is literally destructive to anything else miraculous and supernatural in the Bible.

And when Paul spoke to the philosophers in Athens he told them there would be a resurrection from the dead – not a standard feature of Stoic or Epicurean philosophy. But we have only a small fragment of what Paul said to the philosophers in Athens reported in the book of Acts. If you look at Paul’s full message as we find it in Romans, I Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, we find many many things unknown to Greek philosophers. And when he spoke to the crowd in Jerusalem he told them he had been surrounded by a blinding light and a voice of Christ speaking to him, that God had told him various things, and the people responded “Away with him! It is not fit that such a man should live.”

As to the Mormons, I care nothing about what problems they may have asserting their writings.

You say that we Christians

have real history with us, we have real philosophy with us, we have a serious intellectual tradition that can go punch for punch with any philosophical tradition on this planet; we don't need to be afraid of knowledge outside of it.

I am not afraid of any knowledge – but for scientists to say that the cosmos can only have come into being by natural means known to us today, that is not knowledge. It is blindness and vanity by people groping in darkness. It is mere assertion without a particle of scientific evidence.

 I have the faith that Christianity can assimilate the truth, as it has many times before, and will be stronger and better for it. Christianity didn't fail because of Galileo or Newton, despite the fears of many, it won't fail because of Darwin. It might fail from the blind fear of its proponents though.

Jesus Christ is the truth, the way, the truth and the life. Lesser earthly truths discoverable to mere human reason, such as the speed of light, or the process of manufacturing steel, or obvious scientific facts demonstrated in the laboratory and confirmed by experiment are on a completely different plane altogether. Do you think the truth of the resurrection from the dead followed by a day of judgment is essentially the same as the truth of Newton’s gravitational laws? Or do you see a difference between physical and spiritual realities?

Christianity didn’t fail because of Galileo or Newton. It cannot fail because of scientific truth. But Darwinism is not scientific truth. It cannot explain human origins or human consciousness, and if you believe Darwin’s Origin of Species more than you believe the writings of Moses I think you are going astray down a wrong path.

About the blind fear of Christianity’s proponents, there is nothing of blind fear in my belief that we need a literal creation account in Genesis. Why should I be afraid of the imaginary conjectures of scientists based on no evidence at all, but only reflecting their mistaken belief that scientific knowledge is the only reality?

Also, just as an aside, are we seriously going to pretend that people haven't used the Bible in ways that are as bad or worse than they've used Darwin? Darwin never got people burned at the stake for witchcraft, for example.

People have used the Bible in bad ways that are in direct violations of the clear teachings of Christ. As to witchcraft burnings, they began more than a thousand years after the beginning of Christianity, and are directly contrary to that saying of Christ when they brought the woman before him who was guilty of adultery. But Darwinism has had a destructive effect on all of the countless people who have been deceived into thinking that they are only animals, that there is no afterlife, and that there are no divine laws to which we are subject. And, Darwin has often been linked to the National Socialist belief that people were only animals, and the extermination of weaker and inferior races would advance the evolution of the human species. See Gasman’s book The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, and Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler, as well as his Hitler’s Ethic.