Jewelry and History

There is a prevalent view amongst scholars that history is crucial in understanding the truths of the bible - or even what the bible is.

In the Reformed camp - this view is couched under the predestinarian cry that "God is the God of history". What is meant to follow from that is that God has used all of history to produce, shape and determine what His truth revealed (a.k.a the Bible) is!

So naturally the study of backgrounds that surround any given text are valuable, some may even argue crucial.

I reject this line of thinking. Not because it is illogical, or irreverent (at least on the surface), but because I believe it fails to see the purpose of history. This line of thinking makes all history contributive of the whole instead of complementing the main. In other words, if we were to think of human history as a diamond - the scholars view would make every contribution merely another cut on the rock to shape its beauty. In my opinion the place of human history is not the diamond itself - but rather the black cloth on which the diamond of God's revelation is set.

In my model - intertestmental unbelief is just so much more black cloth. Modern unbelief maybe crafted from different material and take different shapes, but is still, in the end black cloth. Redemptive History, both inscripturated and lived is the diamond - perfect on its own, but indeed more luster shines through it against the ever so pitch - unbelief.

If this is the case, then the study of backgrounds will tell us nothing about the revelation of God, except how much the brighter it shines in our unbelief. An example can be shown with the creation accounts. Babylonian unbelief crafts a creation myth - does this story help us understand where the bible got its figures? Certainly not! Scholars will object, citing the numerous similarities amongst accounts. If those similarities are not enough, they say, what about the Egyptian myths? How do I account for the similarities?

Simple, all human life is a reflection of the divine will and intricately tied to the spiritual realities that it is either rebelling from or conforming to. Why do the Egyptians have a creation ex nehilo? Because they hate, and are rebelling from the Triune God of Scripture that spoke all things into being. Why don't the Babylonians? Because they rebel in different ways - but in the end all attempt to overshadow the truth by spreading the black blanket of their unbelief over God's revelation.(or "suppressing the truth in unrighteousness") Unfortunately for them God's diamond like revelation cut through the cloth and shines ever so much brighter!!

Notice in this illustration that the black cloth is powerless to shape the diamond - but can be and is employed to showcase the diamond.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.

"...the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 2Co 4:4-6

Hind sight is not always 20/20

It seems to me that we are having to face a new reality in the reformed world. That reality is that simple acceptance of the Bible (what it is and what it teaches) is no longer a predominate mindset, not even in the reformed world. The basic starting point has shifted. Where once the divine authorship was not only presupposed but it was also the starting point from which all phenomena was judged, now the starting point has become the "evidence" and the divine authorship plays a responsive or contingent role rather than the first cause "shaper". This change has taken place gradually as more and more attention has been placed on literature and archeology from the A.N.E (ancient near east) and man is more and more seduced by the idea that the Bible is not a timeless instruction book dropped out of heaven.

Though the conviction about the "timefulness" of the bible is a good one. We should not overload that conviction, nor should we eliminate (or even unnecessarily downplay) timelessness. It is surely true that the Bible is the revelation of God for His people, and that God stoops ever so low to covenantally communicate that revelation. But it must not be overlooked that God knew the end from the beginning when he spoke that revelation. He knew all His people, His whole bride, when He spoke that love letter to her. As much as a mistake it is to assume that the Bible contained information that was useless to the church for several thousands of years (until the invention of the helicopter for example). To that same degree, it is a mistake to confine the condescension of our LORD's communication to an ancient and foreign mind to the greater portion of the church. In other words "all scripture is God breathed, and profitable... so that the man of God [at any time in redemptive historical drama] may be competent..."

The effect of divine authorship must override the analysis of contemporary literature and artifact. Or else we cannot say that Scripture is our norming norm. To illustrate the approaches and the current problem I have this analogy.

Fig.1

I am using a fictional story about a battle of grays hill fought during the civil war. One of the Soldiers in the battle has two children - one who rebels and hates his Father passionately - the other remains faithful and loves his Father. Over the years the story conveyed to the children may pick up nuances , depicted by the additional dots, but the offspring of the rebellious child maintain a enmity toward the original teller of the story. In the written versions of the story - the grandchild of the faithful son is able to speak directly to his grandfather again before writing - Thus the product of his writing is not directly polemical or responsive, but didactic or informative - not brute fact, but faithful nonetheless.


Fig. 2
In this second figure the story is the same, but the influence of the grandchildren is different and the direct communication is gone. These two models roughly analogize the traditional way to consider the Bible and the new pseudo-sophisticated way. The first diagram is almost totally unconcerned for the product of the rebellious son, and the final product of the faithful son is also somewhat unconcerned about the stories own progression its the line of the faithful, because of the ability to get direct communication with the grandfather. But in Fig.2 the cross breading of sources and the distance from the grandfather make dependence upon one another - necessary?

Using this analogy, modern biblical criticism falls in the second option and pretty much denies divine authorship, even when they claim to believe in the inspiration of the text - they still mean something different than a direct, exclusive, telling of the story from the source, but more a superintendence of the compilation at best. This always seems to result in a late dating of events and strong appreciation for redaction. Which leads to a suspicion of prophecy and the assumption that whenever two events share similar redemptive ear marks (Abraham & Exodus etc.) the earlier story chronologically is being retold during or after the time of the latter story - usually with the desire to vindicate or accentuate the latter story. All of which goes to show you that hind sight is not always 20/20. Just because you have the advantage of looking at events and stories after they are completed - does not mean that you will interpret them correctly, or that we are some how able to impose our fallen understanding of history on the development of the biblical narrative.

When dealing with the Scripture, 20/20 vision is only through the Spirit. Again it is His Word and our authority.

Greek love and English vindication

More likely than not, if you have been in the evangelical world for the past decade at least, you've heard some kind of comparison of the three different types of love that are found in the Bible - that you only have access to through the Greek language. Those loves are "eros" - "phileo" and "agapao". Depending on the level of adherence to the trend, you heard something to the effect that each has a different meaning and they constitute different stages or levels of love. You may have even had the joy of getting these explanations in a marriage seminar, where the teacher so craftily argued that a good marriage has an erotic love (eros) a friendly love (supposedly phileo) and a sacrificial / divine "like" love (supposedly agapao). While all this sound very good, and may in fact be quite helpful for marriage counseling - the problem is that it is wrong! flat out wrong!

In scripture the terms phileo and agapao are used interchangeably and the Scripture often defines the Love the Father has for the son - by the word (phileo). Use of the Septuagint brings even more questions as it says that "Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her." 2Sa 13:1 - and the word is none other than agapao!! - Certainly we cannot think that divine or sacrificial/unconditional love would motivate one to rape!?! No, what we see by the use of these words and the relation to our own languages is that every language is complex and full of nuance - it is impossible to get at the full meaning of discourses simply through the meaning of words. It is the contextual meaning that rules the day.

This means that the commonly held idea that the Greek mind had a better way of conceiving of "love", because of its tight and ridged differentiation of terms, and that their is more meaning and color buried in the language - to which the English suffers through its ambiguity to convey - is simply false. The Greek language is loaded with idiom and ambiguity too, and the more we study the language the more we see the lack of precision that grammar and word meaning actually have. It is context, built by grammar, syntax and discourse all together that bring more precision to the meaning - and also allow for more accuracy in translation. It is my belief that the more the Greek or Hebrew turns out to be ambiguous in word meaning, the more English translations are vindicated. Sure there is trouble in translating, and the concepts of one culture are not always compatible to another, but the symbols and morphology of language do not constitute her communication - and in that regard we should be comforted to know that there is nothing new under the sun. Man's language has not evolved - nor do I think it has devolved. The expression and the communication has remained within the scope of finite humanity grasping at the Divine condescensions. Though we may add to our vocabularies and to our refining of concepts within our context, we cannot utterly lose the ability to communicate - precisely because God condescends and communicates where ever the Word of God is preached.

Beware of anything that hints of secret or hidden meaning, now that God has made Himself known fully in Christ.

No Brute History

The idea of the modern man that history is a collection of facts in some chronological order, is becoming less and less appealing to scholars and critics. For the most part we as conservative reformed Christians can be glad for this shift, but I fear that it not all roses. Anytime a non believer starts agreeing with you its always time to check yourself - and this is no exception.

The apologetic world was I think significantly changed for the better when Van Til refined the idea of world view and transcendental/presuppositional argumentation. No brute fact - taght us that there is not one think in our thinking that is not interpreted through the grid of our world view and that is pretty potent stuff when your opponents world views are so blatantly inconsistent and borrowing from the Christian WV. What happens though when someone gets a hold of this concept and applies it to History? Can we say that there is no uninterpreted history?

There are advantages to such a position, and if we are consistent with our apologetic we must affirm this position at least on some levels. But I think a caution should be used. We can come dangerously close to relativism, and I believe flirt quite aggressively with the neo-orthodox position if we grab to tightly to this position. We must affirm that having an interpreted history in the Bible is not the same thing as having a false or mythical history. Sure the events are interpreted - but they are always interpreted around events that God preforms and, fortunately for us they are all interpreted by the Holy Spirit. So when the NT writers quote the OT and they don't "get it right" so to speak, we need not flee to fanciful "thats common place for the 2nd temple folk" talk - but rather boldly proclaim "the Lord rebuke you, for it is he who speaks, he who interprets"!

Surronding the Text

Even with the great dichotomizing confession that the Word of God is really the word of God and therefore inerrant - still some wrong thinking and wrong approaches sneak into the orthodox camp, still the luster and allure of respectability infect the ground.

Just what is the implication of "a believing" approach? And how far does it extend?

Current scholarship (even with in the Reformed world) has undertaken the task of learning the culture and the literature that surrounds the text of the Bible in an effort to try to refine its understanding of the biblical text. The argument is rather straight forward - if the biblical author was influenced by something else that we can get a hold of (like other literature or schools of thought, well, or even not so well, documented) then it will only aid in our further understanding of the text to study these.

Concerning the schools of thought - it would seem quite obvious that God speaks to our condition, condescends to our estate, even our trends in epistemological frameworks. This seems quite clear from the ease at which the Bible was able to speak to both the Hebrew culture and the Greek culture - but equally obvious is that the revelation of God while coming to and through these cultures always transcended those cultures. The idea "product of your environment" is not a biblical one! And needs to be rejected no mater how heartily one believes it to be true. If we deny the ability of God to transcend the boundaries of human culture and thinking then we make those out to be gods and ascribe to them the worth that is due the creator. This is also true when we force or pigeon hole any person into that same cage of human culture and context. Those things being ever so potent - remain finite, limited and week in the presence of God. No man is necessarily one way or another because of his environment - whether he is a Biblical author or not. God is sovereign over the likes of all this - and try as we may - we cannot make anything else the sovereign over God - even the use of means that he chooses! So in the study of what has influenced the text, we need to be always careful to ascribe full rights unto God to do as he pleases.

What about studying the other non biblical literature - what value do these works bring to our understand of God's Word?

Scholars, much like great artist, are appreciated for their fine observation skills. It is these skills that can add the greatest amount of color and interest to what they produce. The ability to spot similitude is one of the most important tools of the trade, and with both art and science, is able to help gain better mastery of things - by placing a similar -yet simpler object in view. This has been the approach to understanding inspiration in many scholarly circles. Find something that acts/looks like the Bible and build up from that an understanding of what the Bible is doing. The problem is - the Bible is unique. No matter how much God condescends in it - it still remains His Word, and all other writings always remain - not His Word. Thus to use the comparison of other text to gain understanding is only legitimate with in the Bible itself, apples to apples(as the Reformed have always held).

Scholars, put down your Babylonian scripts, there is no life in them! The Dead Sea Scrolls are not worth their weight in paper!
Students, use the phrase "inter-testamental" as opposed to "2nd Temple" for we are all about presupposing the inspiration of the one and not the other.
Christians, stop being embarrassed by the Word of God! They mocked Christ, they will mock His Word

Ignoble yet Inerrent?

The transmission of the Bible has been a sticky issue for believers for a very long time. Modern scholars, however, would like to say that the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls has changed everything and really given text-critics the foundation for all their speculation and very criterial attacks upon the Word of God.

But I like what John Frame has said concerning Antithesis and Doctrine of Scripture . Basically showing that there is an unbelieving or a believing way that we look at Scripture, always an antithesis! This is especially true or important when thinking about the transmission of scripture. Is it God's Word or not? Is it God's superintendence of fallible man's errors and mistakes roughly keeping the heart of God's redemptive purpose but flexibly bending to culture and time as His need sees fit? Or is the Bible that the church has always received - the very Words of God in spite of the transmission phenomena?

Frankly, our doctrine of Scripture as the principia, rather than our evaluation of the phenomena must determine here, and far to many "conservative" scholars are jumping on the "neutrality" band wagon and insisting that the phenomena can be evaluated properly without the norming influence of the scripture itself. "Oh foolish ones and slow of heart to believe"!!

However, I would like to endorse a hearty doctrine of the ignoblity of Scripture. What ?!? Well, simply put - I mean - the Scripture most assuredly does not act the way we would like. It does not conform to our ideas of what is perfect or pristine. We want the book to fall from heaven complete. To be written in one language, and never to have been translated . But alas God does seem to love to frustrate the wise of this world and to exult the lowly - and the history of transmission is no exception.

So what does all this mean for inerrency? It means that God is the author and finisher and His Word will not return to him void! It means that we serve a "God that does as He pleases" and that will not share his glory with anyone. That the exhaustive knowledge of "How" always belongs to Him and the responsibility to believe always belongs to us. And yes, it still means that the Bible contains no mistakes! That it never lies! And that try as hard as he may, neither man nor Satan can contaminate even the smallest part of it - Even if the Dead Sea Scrolls had 15 conflicting copies of Jeremiah!

Let the phenomena come. Let it rise up like the false prophets of old - that even sometimes prophesied truly - and let us stand in belief! with full confidence declare..."Yes, God did really say!!"

Why We Can Know (beyond WASP)

There is a certain movement always underfoot in the presence of the children of God, a movement designed to unsettle the most precious of gift's from God (beside redemption itself) - His Word. This bite in the heal is always subtle, always a sneak attack, and generally comes down to the great prevaricators first strategy - the old 'did God really say' bit.

Since I have Old Testament Introduction this semester - I am going to be taking a little break from the 'book binders' and turn my attention to the post-modern assault on not just the text of scripture - but on the foundations for knowing and understanding such text. I could call this group "the book bumblers" or something similar, but I think for now I'll just leave them at "other's".

At the outset - I want to state clearly that I am a W.A.S.P. steeped in Reformed Presbyterianism, and I believe that in no way impedes my understanding nor forces my logic into some cultural bound system, which I can't break free of, when considering the enormously important topics as canon, inspiration, incarnation, and epistemology. I believe that the scripture, and how we can know and understand it - are at the principial level of knowledge - and should be unaffected by the lasted fads of unbelief. Even if that unbelief is coming from with in the church herself. I believe that we can know - and at least in part, have known, real truths of God's covenantal dealings with and for man, precisely because they are communicated from God (and God knows!)

There is confidence to be found - in spite of the shaky foundations of modernism! There is truth and objectivity - in spite of the speculations of post modernism! This may seem like a rough start, but believe me its necessary. So hold on to your pants - and your Bible - and lets dig in.

Word and Deed Together Always?

Over and over we are learning that God always reveals in both "Word" and "Deed" and that any view of revelation that omits one of these aspects is seriously wrong. The connection of these two aspects is becoming more and more a central issue to every theological realm. I would like to take the time to develop this more, but at least I thought I'd get my cards out on the table concerning these as revelational norms and the discussion of the creation views.

It is my contention that if our creation view is to accommodate a history in which God's "Word" is not temporally tied to his act, so that many years can pass between the two, we may gain the applause of modern science and make room for all kinds of anthropocentric speculation, but we will not be consistent with our theology elsewhere. Our theology that is founded upon the bond between the two great aspects of revelation... Word and Deed!

This kind of split is not forced by the bookbinders but allowed. So the question then becomes why allow such an understanding without qualifing the necessity of the bond between word and deed? I suppose the obvious answer is that will take us very nearly, if not totally, back to a literal understanding of the time frames where word and deed are bound together - and amazingly are bound together in language that we (God's covenant people) understand... evening, morning and day.

The Analogy of Scripture and the Opening pages of the Bible...

The analogy of Scripture is a exegetical tool where scripture interprets scripture. This tool may (and should) help us when discovering the meaning of parts of scripture which are less plain to us, and since the attack on a plain meaning in Genesis chapter 1 is now becoming common we should spend a little time here.

Those that use scripture against the literal view are keen to address this subject. For some when the Bible declares that a day is unto the Lord as a thousand years and the "hour has not yet come"- they see justification to the idea that the Bible frequently uses a time frame to refer to a concept rather than to the historic limitations of the time frame. There is also an idea circulated that the Hebrew words used to depict that the "earth was formless and void" would be better translated "formless and empty" by the analogy of Scripture.

To address the first objection (i.e. the Bible frequently uses non literal time frames) I would like to underline that the Bible does not frequently but rather infrequently use time frames in non literal senses. It should be noted that the bulk of the OT has a contextualized literal time frames, and most importantly that the concept of a seven day week is prominent. It should in connection with this be stressed that this literal concept of the week is often surrounding major redemptive events. First, in the consecrating of the firstborn and food and the people - a major redemptive event - Exo 22:29-31a "You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me. "You shall be consecrated to me." - obviously a literal week. Also the very first "Atonement offering" done by Aron was done on the "eighth day" Lev 9. And of course there is the circumcision that was to be done on the "eighth day". Connected with the levitical law there is a repeated use of the seven day ceremonial washing or cleansing on the seventh day that is followed by the sacrifice an redemption back into fellowship on the eighth day (cf. Lev 14:10,23 15:14,29 22:27 23:36). Then of course their are the "feast" - particularly interesting is Lev 23:39 "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. But who can forget the feast of Solomon after dedicating the "Temple" and praying for the people? (1 Kings 8:65,66 - 2 Ch 7:9). These are just a few of the numerous significant places that the concept of a literal week are used in the OT and tied to redemptive activity or at least significant activity in redemptive-history. It goes without saying that if the concept of the week is literal, then the days with in - or the first day after (8th day) is literal as well. The overwhelming evidence is that the normal mode of communication concerning time frames is itself normal or historical. In fact it is most significant that the Scripture itself utilizes this literal time frame again and again when revealing redemptive events acts. Scripture has no problem then communicating a redemptive message through a historical time frame, which we have already said numerous times - but it bares re-emphasis here, especially considering that the Bible no where else uses the week in non literal terms! 10 days...yes; 1000 yrs...yes; an hour...yes again, but a week...no (unless of course you're a dispensational, then Daniel is loaded with figurative weeks)

Now the second objection is to the effect that the Genesis narrative is purposing some kind of problem to which the creation account is the solution - namely the form-less and empty-ness of the earth. The idea is that the creation days are divided up to address these problems. Day 1-3 address the problem of form and 4-6 take on the "filling" character to address the problem of empty-ness.

We don't need to spend a lot of time here since it will already be assumed that if this is true or not- it should bare no weight to the idea or need for ditching a literal/historical sequence. Still, I would like to say that in terms of content, what ever the earth was in Genesis 1:1 it was contextually different than any other time. Thus of how it was void or empty we have no other model. But if filling this emptiness is the intention behind days 4-6 then so be it, it hurts me not.

The Eternal Sabbath and the Arch-type/type problem...

Funny how pivotal a role the Sabbath can play isn't it?
There is an objection to the view that the creation days where normal days - in that the seventh day is said to be the Arch-typical Sabbath, God's Sabbath, which as you might well guess is eternal. Those that espouse this view see Hebrews chpt 4 as defending there idea that after God created he entered into His rest - and remains in that rest.
There may be some benefit to such a view, but the question of the nature of the first Sabbath - the seventh day of creation - is what is crucial for us to consider. If we take such a view, we have to be careful not to confuse God's covenantal relations with his aseity. By this I mean that we have to ask ourselves, Did God intend to communicate to Moses something of His covenant relationship to His creation by resting on the seventh day from His work of creation - or should we maintain that God in himself rested? Or perhaps more importantly - is the Sabbath a reality because of the covenantal relationship between God and man (i.e. is God saying something to man in it)? Lastly, the question could be phrased - "was man created for the Sabbath or was the Sabbath created for man"? Do we conclude from Christs phrasing that the Sabbath was "created"- as Christ referring to the creation events recorded in Genesis chapter 1 - or is he referring to the institutionalizing of it as a religious observance in the giving of the Law in Exodus? This seems rather plain, since the idea of man's being made clearly refers to his original creation and not the giving of the Law. But the objection is that God enters rest on the seventh day of creation, so why does Christ say that the Sabbath was made for man? Well, it shouldn't be to hard for us to see that the whole creative enterprise is first and foremost for God's own glory, so in that sense everything was created for Him (and unto Him), but at the same time we see rather quickly that all things are a revelation of God in His covenant relation to His creation, and this revelation is for the good of man not because God needed it. In this sense we do not so much see the first Sabbath as an Arch-type detached from man - but rather we see God as the Arch-typical covenant head entering into the rest that He intended for us to enter, which fits very nicely with the reasoning behind the institution i.e. rest on the seventh day because I rested on the seventh day! - but still points eschatologically toward a better rest. Also we must confess that the only way in which God is said to enter into rest must be covenantal, for we can not conceive of it otherwise. Therefore the duration of the rest that God enters into and the benefits of that rest - are they not all to confirm and illustrate and teach what man covenantally has been given in the Sabbath? Hebrews 4 indeed alludes to an eternal rest, but not so much from the creations seventh day as from Christs completed work (which unfortunately is why many would deny any Sabbath observance in the NT). However, we should begin to see that the first Sabbath was proto-typical for man in his religious and covenantal obligations - and Christs Sabbath is the new Arch-typical Sabbath; changed in reference to the object being rested in - from creator to redeemer. But even Christ entering into His rest is covenantal, a participation in His person, and though it is "Arch-type" it still has an eschatological force to it. It is the Eternal Sabbath for man in the not yet, but proto-logical for man, again in his religious and covenantal obligations, in the now.

By these things I cannot see any weight to a statement that the seventh day of creation was not a normal day in duration, and that is the basic thrust of there position. Again unless we are willing to obscure God's covenant dealing with man - the plain meaning of the Sabbath both OT and NT belongs as beneficial to man - not as an intangible mega-mystery.

The Introduction of Myth...

Today during a lecture in intro to systematics our esteemed professor rejected the idea that Genesis chapter 2: 8-25 has the earmarks of myth. "We outright deny that this is a mythological account of expression...to introduce myth here is to introduce something totally foreign" Now the point for us in class was directed at the veracity of the idea that God speaks to Adam and that He is able to do so with verbal, audible language. One might see it as historical and literal verses mythological and literary. Here we were concerned that any introduction to the idea of myth would destroy the very foundation of revelation and the religious or more emphatically, covenantal aspect of the relation between God and man. It was a wonderful discussion that underlined the import of God being friends with, having fellowship with His creation as a real and ultimate reality. Which lead to the thought that: "if some heretics will say that intercourse between God and man is too sublime for words, then the heretic who would say this is trying to be wiser than God."

As I reflected on these important things I wondered why this same force of denial of the mythological is not applied to the preceding chapter of Genesis? After all the effect of such mythology seems to do damage to the type of relationship - or rather to the mode of covenant communication that we are so keen to protect here in chapter 2. What I mean is if the "book binders" are correct in the mere literary import of chapter 1 are we not forced to conclude that God's communication bares little or no resemblance to actual history? That God teaches through a myth of creation construction the history of which is somewhere in the background, but certainly not revealed?

Granted the creation account is told to Moses not Adam (at least as far as we know) for the starting of the redemptive/covenantal-history whereas chapter 2 although recorded by Moses was also certainly spoke to Adam. But that does not diminish the idea that God's communication is in both places - normal, as a friend would speak to a friend and understandable.

From this I must infer that the normal reading of Genesis 1 - where a day means a day - an evening means the close of a day and the morning the beginning - is quite simply not mythological and natural to the type of real and understandable communication that we are so intent to keep with Adam. The idea is that God's revelation is plenary. However, the idea that Genesis 1 is not concerned to relate the plain understanding of day, evening, morning etc, is truly mythological and vague. It uses language to describe a meaning other than what is obvious, which as far as I can tell is not the way that friends speak to friends.

So much work has been done to refute the error of Barthian thinking who championed the neo-orthodox view of the "theology of the cross" - which he describes as a theology that is necessarily hidden and vague - why? Because man can not handle direct plenary revelation. To which we say a whopping NO! So why would we be tempted to start of on this same foot - on the same path of vague revelation couched in literary device unseen to the untrained eye, i.e. not clear?

Why ditch the sequence even if there is literary artistry?

OK, we have to ask: "What forces us to ditch the idea of sequence?" It might well be conceded that when ever God writes a word there is more than historic action involved. There is deed and word, and both deed and word together are revelatory of a greater subject matter than they can fully contain by themselves. Thus even a 24hr literalist view must not be contained in the mere communication of a time sequence. It might be noted again here that there is no prohibition to seeing the Kingdom/King relationship in the creative events and retain an historical sequencing of 24 hr periods.

To illustrate it may be helpful to notice that the text speaks of evening and then morning - which are themselves a sequence. The text could just as easily said morning and then evening reversing the order, but we find it significant that God speaks in such a sequence, namely that light breaks through or into darkness - the light overtakes the darkness and the sequence becomes important to carry this idea. Literary artistry? - of course... Historical reality? of course, morning always does follow evening and resurrection is always preceded by death. So here we have a word revelation, with a historical correlative, that underlines theological truths and yet creates no tension between the word and the deed in there revelatory validity nor their historical veracity. In other words, we don't have to imagine an evening that is not meant to be a true evening or a morning that is not meant to be a true morning in order to understand the literary beauty and the redemptive-historical implication.

So again, why do we have to ditch the idea of historical meaning - a correlative historical event that happens along side of and is interpreted by the word (literary construct)?

Addressing the elasticity of historicity...

It should not be a surprise that the "book binders" do not want to make a stand against historicity. In fact it should be noted that some "book binders" are some of the foremost proponents and defenders of the historicity of revelation in other quarters. So how do they escape the quite obvious problem when denying sequence that they retain historicity?

The first thing is to limit historicity. Here the idea is to discover what is essential to understand as necessarily real history and affirm that - then digress from there to what is not necessarily historical. "Book binders" will confess that Adam must be and was an historical man, that he really was created perfect, that he really did fall and plummet mankind into an estate of sin and misery. They will, and often are foremost in supporting, that God did really enter into a covenant of works with Adam for perfect obedience upon pain of death. This much they will establish and defend as ardently as any 24hr fellow. There is probably more that they will affirm - but what is important is that they affirm these things as the core historical truth. Other descriptions of the creation events may not be as "real" and may only frame a story rather than a history. Upon the latter it should be noted that it differs little from historic liberalism and the issue becomes how elastic or how static does the concept of historicity need to be to maintain orthodoxy.

Now, it does us no good to simply claim that all Scripture is equally historical - or that everything that falls with in a development of time is communicating sequence as one of its necessary elements. The Gospels clearly destroy that approach. However, we must I think, be able to apply exegetical disciplines properly. We should be able to say that "historicity" means this here, and that "historicity" means the same thing over here. In that way we should be very careful when making the historicity of Genesis 1 limited to a core and the "historicity" of Mark 15 unlimited.

Limiting terms to a core is one way of affirming "historicity" while denying sequence, but you can also stretch the term. For example one person may deny that Satan actual came in the form of a serpent, but affirm that there really is an historical creature called "Satan" and that he really did historically tempt Eve, and thus claim that he believes in the historicity of the temptation of Eve. In like manner, the "book binders" may affirm that God really did historically create all the things He said He did in Genesis 1 and that God really interacted by Word historically, but deny that the time sequence of one day passed between some of the creative fiats. The text may say evening and morning day..., but what is meant is not historical here, however, since I affirm the historicity of creation and of God and man, I am still understanding things historically.

Again, this kind of stretching is a danger - for it equivocates on the meaning of at least the terms evening, morning and day. It is my belief that whether we limit the historicity to a core, or we stretch the meaning of the term to fit broader semantic terms, which really means non-historic terminology, the effect is virtually synonymous, and that is we force the text into literal ambiguity and we limit the scope of revelation to the written story and detach it from the real history. It is interesting to note here what Murray said concerning revelation and "History" - he said that special revelation and historical revelation always follow the same pattern. This would mean that the special revelation of Genesis 1 - must have a correlative pattern in history - Which in fact it does - if you see the week (7 - 24 hr periods) historically. =-)

6 seconds 6 days 6 thousand years...

Just a quick thought here. God being God, what kind of time restriction can we put on Him in order to create?

The answer is obviously that we can not put any restrictions on God. We serve a God Who can do as he pleases, and for God the time frame that he chooses is not arbitrary but revelatory and because he also tells us about it in the Scripture it is both General and special in its revelation content. Although, not much is made about these time frames in most systematic theologies, the truth of its revelatory content is still maintained.

The 6 seconds view (which no - one I know really holds) indeed would favor the power of God and also perhaps the idea of speed to the cross theology. It is true that 6 seconds can be held as a possibility - baring of course the plain fact that God told us that the time frames included evening and morning and those are on anyones count longer than a few seconds.

The 6 thousand year view (remember a day is to the Lord as a thousand years... yada yada yada) perhaps shows a long suffering God - but maybe more like a slow god. This view stinks with anything biblical - but goes quite nicely with secular science that wants to nod to some kind of creative start - but is really seduced by evolution in the end.

The 6 day view makes sense with the historical phenomenon of the 7 day week. It also has nicely on it's side the fact that Genesis actually says DAY 1 etc. The theology of redemption is also built in nicely to this view with the repetition of redemptive acts that happen on the 8th day, or to put it another way - the first new day.

I suppose that the "book binders" really don't care what view one takes concerning the time frame - since time is not the working framework for them. I wonder then if that means anything goes? Could day 1 have been 4hrs long and really connected with day 4? Could day 6 have been 12 weeks long to account for the vast amount of activity on that day? Are we to think that the historical possibilities are endless and non effected by the redemptive work of creation? Seems questionable to me to hold that Gods word in creation is literary artistry meant to show God's kingship figuratively and can not be understood to relate to what we know as time frames, and therefore has little historical traction. For this is exactly what liberals have been saying for years concerning the resurrection account.

Lastly, the 666 was intentional =-)

Proportion and the Sabbath...

We have already alluded somewhat to the Sabbath issue; we need now to direct that discussion to the realm of time and proportion. This will be helpful to us since the "book binders" take the stance that time or time periods are not what are being communicated in Genesis chapter 1 creation account - but mere literary devise.

I have often used the logic of proportion in defending the use of, and command for the tithe. The logic is simple - God requires that we are 100% His. Money is a central issue in our life and depicts better than almost anything where our allegiance belongs or to what or whom we truly pay homage (worship). God being merciful uses the picture of the tithe to accomplish the declaration of totality while at the same time displaying His kindness, mercy and sensibleness. So we give 1/10th to show 100%. This proportion works well because the nature of the numeric percents. 10 completes a set, and 100 also completes a set. Thus God allows us to give a complete (yet smaller) set, to represent the ownership of God over the larger complete set.

Now, if you follow me this far, it should not be hard to guess the direction I'm going. I said that: "money depicts better than almost anything" - why almost? Because it is possible for some (not many) to spend their money in ways that are not consistent with their devotion. Even though this is difficult and rarely seen it is still possible. However, I would maintain that if taken together with the element of time, the two become decisive. Where a man spends his time and his money is where his heart is. It is for this reason (and others) that I believe that God continues both the tithe and the Sabbath in both covenants (though that is a debate for another time). So time as well as money is to be 100% God's. Has God left us with such a beneficent religious obligation as the tithe is with money, concerning our time? Yes, the Sabbath is that, and in like manner - it too can be seen proportionately. 1/7th for 7/7th - perhaps not as nice as 10 to 100 at first glance, but notice that 7 is or historically has been considered the divine number of completeness - once again through 7 is thought to be a complete set, and it goes with out saying that 1 is a complete set of itself.

Proportion, at least as far as I understand, doesn't work very well in communicating if the comparisons being made are not equal. For example if you had 10 items and each separate item was worth differing amounts, then in the tithe example could you really just give one of those items to the LORD and have it fulfill the same picture = 1 complete set for another? I don't think so. This is what troubles me with the "book binders" anti-chornos. While they may believe that the 7th day of creation was actually 24hrs in duration - they seem scared to admit most of the others had such a duration - which leaves us with a faulty proportion.

Admittedly, to die on this hill would be silly for me, but it is worth considering and noting the liturgical and representational structure that is so interwoven into human history (i.e. time and money belong to God). Of course it should be again pointed out, that someone may believe that there are literary constructs (frameworks) involved in Genesis 1 creation account without denying that the time structures (frameworks) are simple, historical, 24hr periods. Once we begin stretching and pulling the activity of God to fit a structure not found in the Bible, whether to make room for scientific or academic accolade, then at that point we truly deny the framework of the Bible which is ever God's wisdom not man's. And that is a devastating prospect beyond proportion!

Day 1 and 4...

The "problem" according to the "framework" supporters is to the apparent confusion of the creation of light on day 1 and the creation again of light in the light agents on day 4. What is purposed as problematic (as far as I can tell at this point) is that the Hebrew expresses the verb "to give light" - you see the verb is in the causative stem in the infinitive construct form, which is claimed to prove that the "luminaries" are created for the purpose of producing light.

It is hard for me to see a problem here. Why should it be a problem to create light and separate it from the darkness without governing bodies and then later create governing bodies that actually are causal agents of light on the earth? The science of how God accomplishes the separations are not explicit on either day 1 or 4 - they are simply stated as fact. Nor can it be said that day4 addresses the full comprehension of created luminaries. Day 4 is therefore not an explanation - and if it were an elaboration of the greater detail of day 1 creation then we have a strange sequence marker, namely "evening and morning the first day" not to mention the Hebrew here is expressed with the verb "becoming" - so that you have literally 'he became evening and he became morning day one' and this can easily be seen as a time marker of God concerning a whole day that emphasizes redemption 'death and resurrection' creation and new creation' . But even if we find no symbolic significance in the light out of darkness, evening and morning we still must recognize a definite marker that refers to time and the progress of it - which could be called real history.

Now, the framework guys (which I would like to call the book binders, in that they bind God's creative fiats to the literary page and restrict it from real history) suggest that the reason for the construct of day 1 creation of light and day 4 creation of light governing bodies - is that God is communicating a kingdom to king relationship. They say that the day 1 event is descriptive of the kingdom while the day 4 event is descriptive of the king(s) of that kingdom. To which we might say Amen. It is not awkward to believe that God would declare such kingdom terms in both the description of creation and in the actual history. Again the book binders assert a problem, but as stated before I see none.

Next, I would like to consider a few things about the Sabbath day command. The book binders have already anticipated the difficulties that arise hear, but I think we should look a bit closer at the significance of the "timing" of the Sabbath. By that I mean that the Sabbath command is comencerate with a particular period of time - namely sunset to sunset (Jewish reckoning) why? Because God had rested from all his work evening and morning the next day. Now if the Sabbath is for sure a real 24 hr period - a whole day - and that is what is to be kept holy because of the creation event, and we understand a time correspondence here - How can we muddy our thinking concerning the other "days" as if they can not relate to the same period of time?

A Framework for History...

Coming to this seminary I knew that I would have to confront the so-called "framework hypothesis" - so I'm getting a head start. I will have to meet this head to head in The Doctrine of Man class, but I thought I might as well start my defense early.

A while ago I was honored to teach a class on the Sabbath and the transfer from the seventh day to the first. I took a different approach than typical and placed emphasis on the significance of the "week" and the bibles use of time frames to set forth truths about redemption. As I studied I gained more and more appreciation for the actual structure of a week, that it is composed of 7 days. For a "restoring" that happened on an 8th or 16th day and the Holy Spirit thought we should know this - for circumcision being done on the 8th day and not the 9th and so on. Now some might be thinking that I am heading into the murky waters of numerology, and maybe there is a little bit of truth in that fear, but I must say that there is an obvious fact of a seven day week throughout creation that has never been undone. The French and the Russians both tried to change this (During the French Rev they tried for a 10 day week, the Russian went for a 6 day week) but neither were successful.

I could delve deeper into such structures, but my purpose here is to say - why would God reveal the greatness of redemption using the structures of time sets like the day (24 hrs) and the week (7, 24 hr periods) later in redemptive history and not have set up the time set itself?

Let me be more clear: The "framework hypothesis" constricts God's redemptive revelation to the literary devise, and perhaps inadvertently, perhaps volitionally, denies it from the actual history/chronology itself. The 24 hr view retains both!

In future post I plan to get more into a defense of my view and a critique of the "framework" view. I will try to unpack the supposed problem of day 1 and day 4 light creation, and address the diversionary language of "literary artistry" and "thematic arrangement" ( I say diversionary because the presupposition is that a 24 hr literal view must deny such - which is not true). For now let it suffice that the history of the world and the sacred history in the Scriptures have all been with in the "framework" of God's time sets - Which leads me to affirm a "framework hypothesis" - but not one that is bound only to literature or meta-physical thought, but rather one that uses history as well as literature, physical as well as meta-physical. Much like the rest of redemptive history actually, and that is the point isn't it?

Grammatic-Historical vs Redemptive Historical

More and more factors are beginning to introduce themselves as my study for pastoral preparation continues. I have already voiced the concern that an approach to the text of scripture that assumes some kind of neutrality or even some kind of merely contextualized truth is a wrong approach that leads invariably to a critical mind concerning the Scriptures and will, at least at some level, evaluate the text with an external criterion for knowledge.

This will at first seem problematic to the process of hermeneutics. We are used to the popular approach to hermeneutics called "grammatic-historical". This process stresses the first way to read the text is as one in the original audience would. Then explore the grammar for its most basic and common meaning with in that context. However, this would seem to be importing the socio-or cultural context as the governing principle over the text, therefore the process should be abandoned for a better model. A model that allows for significant contribution to be made by such contexts - but not as an ultimate or primary principle.

Now, adherents to the grammatical-historic hermeneutic will not easily give in to such a paradigm shift. Especially, those who have used this process well for some years. Again, I must stress that we are not seeking to abandon historical context - but merely to put historical context in its proper place before we let it have sway over our understanding of revelation. In a sense you could say that historic context is contextualized by a greater principle itself - and that principle the Bible teaches is redemption. You might be thinking that this sounds just like "redemptive-historical" hermeneutics, and you'd be correct. But the problem as far as I can see, is that there is not a good codification of "Redemptive-Historical" process. Most often we learn about Biblical Theology, that it is an over arching organizing and evaluating principle applied to exegesis - or as BB Warfield would say 'Biblical theology is the final and complete result of exegesis', which would clearly put the science of RH hermeneutics after an exegetical attempt to understand the text. Exegeses itself seems to pose problems - at least if we use the definition: "The word exegesis can mean explanation, but as a technical term it means "to draw the meaning out of" a given text..." and "Traditional exegesis requires the following: analysis of significant words in the text in regard to translation; examination of the general historical and cultural context, confirmation of the limits of the passage, and lastly, examination of the context within the text" which puts the explanation grounded upon the grammatic-historic information. So, either "exegesis" should be redefined with a primary goal of finding the redemptive meaning both in broad and narrow contexts and then the grammatic-historic events that give playground to such revelation should be explored - almost a reverse definition, or the order of exegesis - biblical theology should itself be reversed. But how is this possible?

An Issue of Translation...

Today in Hebrew class the topic was brought up: "was the language of Abraham the Hebrew which we have?" To which the professor and the class seemed to agree that it was not. The implications of this rather sticky issue can lead to a lot of speculations, but one thing stood out to me that may be a helpful thought when considering the confidence we can have in our Bibles being the "very" word of God.

I have always been a little bothered by the easy way out of textual difficulties which says "Its a problem of translation!". Even the BCO has a troublesome oath for members in that it states this question " Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice? " it is the "as originally given" part that causes trouble, because, frankly we don't have the originals - in fact the very languages that we study in seminary as "the originals" are really translations of the original, at least in the case of Hebrew. Far from being a problem for canonicity it actually seems a vindication on the highest level of the doctrine of Scripture in the modern age. Why? Because, we see a process of God's superintendence as always normal to the preservation of the Word of God and we see no problem with the translations. This is not to say that all translations are equally valid, nor am I trying to deny the difficulty of translation, but it is at least worthy to note that Christ would have had a Hebrew text that was not exactly the "original" and he did not mind one bit - nor did he ever say "well if you knew the original you'd understand". Some times it seems we are more in love with the idea of education than we are in revelation. I mean that we can be swept away by the thought that the Hebrew or the Greek hold some sort of secret meanings that the english simply cannot convey and that why God delivered it in those languages, all the while ignoring the very vivid display of the Gospel in our own tongue! Now, don't get me wrong, I like Greek and Hebrew a lot more than English and the Hebrew text is quite beautiful, but trust me, or rather trust God, the Gospel is just as much in the BHS as it is in the ESV!

I believe that this is an important step in having the confidence in the Word of God that we hold in our hands that we need. It also lends credence to the historical process and the vast difficulties of translation being subservient to the Lord just as everything else is.

Brief and Untechnical

A digest of B.B. Warfields essay "A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith"

In this short essay Warfield simply recaps the essence of the "reformed faith" by stating a series of beliefs which generally follow the systems of the Westminster confession of faith or the Westminster catechisms. Which may be summed up like: "God's creation reveals - but not enough, we need Scripture, where in we find how to live and serve the one true God. This scripture was brought about supernaturally and completed. The God that created and revealed himself is triune and truly God, having all the attributes of "divine" - and he is such a God that is both transcendent and imminent - which is clear in that He predestined all that comes to pass, yet He also sustains all that is. He created man to worship Him, but man disobeyed and thrust the whole of creation into rebellion. Thus all mind kind are children of wrath in their natural condition, but God in His mercy chose a (great) people for Himself. God redeemed these elect through Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God - who was both man and God by the incarnation. This redemption was by virtue of Christ being a substitution for the sins of His people. Now this substitution frees us to walk according to the Spirit and fashions us according to Christ - who was righteous not sinful. Thus creating an assembly of redeemed "the church" which is "one an the same in all ages" display the riches of the grace of God to the world. This church may be broken into smaller parts (denominations) but it is not destroyed. This Church is not for the government of this world but for the purpose of redemption of His people, and thus should not be mixed or confused with the state. And that Christ will come again and receive all His church for an eternity".

So I suppose this serves as my summary of Warfields summary of Westminsters summary of what the "Faith" is. Enjoy.