1
BIBLICAL CREATION
vs. PAGAN ORIGIN-MYTHS
When someone talks about the origins question, he
exposes his ultimate beliefs, the ultimate presuppositions that take precedence
over all else. Therefore, in spite of the apparently bewildering variety of
origin accounts in the world, this variety is quickly reduced to two basic
types of views. One type are the truly creation stories of the Bible and of
some tribal traditions honoring the Creator-creature distinction. The other
type are those that deny the Creator-creature distinction, making
all reality basically of one kind.
I will show you some examples in this chapter.
However, before I do, I want to emphasize how important the origins topic is to
one’s worldview. You must understand that talking with someone about origins
can raise surprisingly strong emotions. You can unwittingly have a conversation
blow up in your face and
suddenly find yourself in a shouting match. Origins,
in a very real sense, is a deeply religious and sensitive subject with most
people.
Finally, in this chapter I briefly describe for you
the different strategies Christians have used to try to reconcile the biblical
creation story with the modern evolutionary view of origins.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ORIGINS
Whether you look to ancient man or modern man, you see
him unavoidably thinking and talking about origins. When the ancient man was praying
about crops or telling an adventure story, he did so with images of origins.
Modern man, when he is trying to justify space exploration budgets or
explaining why his body has certain anatomical features, refers to evolutionary
origins almost automatically.
Why is origins always “lurking in the background” of
serious conversation? Why is it a “hot button”? Why, for example, do folks who
hear about creation-evolution debates so quickly utter personally-judgmental
remarks about one side or the other?
Importance of Origins for Meaning. Here I must anticipate a little of Chapters 2 and 3
where the relationships of God, man, and nature are discussed. It turns out
that man has to get involved with origins whenever he gets seriously involved
with the meaning of things in his life. Let’s see how this works..2 The meaning of a word always involves categories and
contextual associations. Let’s take the term, dog. Man learns about dogs from
seeing or hearing about different kinds. There
are terriers, German shepherds, and a myriad of
others. Very quickly he somehow is able to define a category of objects called
dogs. He learns that Siamese cats or Jersey cows, for example, aren’t part of
the class called dogs. The concept “dog” has its own classification niche in
his thinking. Involved in this learning process about dogs are many
associations. Maybe he was bitten once, or he saw a faithful seeing-eye dog
shepherd its owner through a crowded room. Perhaps he had a beloved pet dog
that he spent many enjoyable hours with. All these associations of the term
“dog” are arranged in his thoughts with their context or place in his
life, place in the life of mankind, and place in
history.
Some of this structuring process is subliminal. Man
may take for granted that terms like “dog” mirror categories that are stable
yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If they weren’t stable, man couldn’t think and
language wouldn’t be worth learning. Yet whether he thinks about it or not,
meaning presupposes that there is a source of stability for each classification
known.
Not only must a source of classification stability be
presupposed, but this source must extend beyond the very limits of our
comprehension in space and time. Since meaning of terms like “dog” involve
contextual associations, man must be able to know the immediate context of a
term in his experience, to know the more remote contexts in mankind’s
experiences, and so on in ever-widening circles of context out to the limits of
his comprehension.
More details follow in Chapters 2 and 3, but it is
enough at this point to say that to have meaning for any part of life there
must be meaning to the whole of life. To secure the meanings man needs for the
everyday events--rains for crops, why his body is the way it is, etc.--he must
reach out to the ultimate context of
all, the origin of the world. There is this
unavoidable need in his heart to presuppose meaning and stability in the world.
Of course, as Bible-believing Christians we know that this need has been
designed into the human heart by God. Awareness of the need for preservation of
stable structures like dogs is really awareness of His sustaining power (Rom.
1:20). Awareness of the ultimate context of the world through its origin is
really awareness of His creative power (Eccl. 3:11; Acts 17:27-28). This state
of affairs is especially true in modern science.
Importance of Origins for Meaning in Modern Science. At the risk of over-simplification, you can view the
work of much of.3
science today like that of an author.
Just as the author struggles to model in language the concepts he has in his
mind about the world, so the scientist often struggles to model in mathematics
the ideas he has of physical reality. Instead of the dictionaries and
linguistic structures of the author, the scientist uses special math functions
and numerical analysis. As in language, so in math. To have meaning there must
be stability of categories and contextual associations. If I write the simple
first-degree equation,
y = ax + b
there must be constant values for “a” and “b”. Without
such constants, math as a modeling tool is hopeless. Not only that, rules of
operation like addition (“ + “) must continue as reliable descriptions of
physical relationships. The pre-conditions for science, like all thought and
language, is for a fundamental stability of categories in this world.
Besides this stability of categories, a scientist
needs ever-expanding circles of relationships. To explain how a small
sub-system works (e.g., a rotating object at 45o North Latitude), he needs to
know about interactions between this sub-system and its surrounding environment
(e.g., the rotation of the earth, planetary effects, and ultimately
intergalactic interactions).
Since a scientific explanation of physical
relationships is usually evaluated by its ability to predict system behavior
backwards and forwards in time, it follows that success requires mastery of the
basic principles that control all relationships. Such principles presumably
stem from origins when everything was together--the elementary particles of
matter, the first assembling of life, etc. Thus many scientists who want to
reduce everything down to physical particles, passionately hope
for discovery of the ultimate unifying principle of
the universe. This “final theory of everything”, it is hoped, will explain the
relationship of what they believe to be the four fundamental forces in the
world--electromagnetism, gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces. To
understand their interrelationship, attention is turning back to the Big Bang
view of origins when everything is thought to have been altogether. Some
scientists are now saying that origins or cosmogony may even “legislate”
physics.
To sum up I could put it this way: you can’t say
anything about anything without saying (by implication) something about
everything. The term “everything” points unmistakably to origins. If this is
true, then is it possible for anyone to be neutral on the origins issue?.4
No Neutral Ground. To avoid controversy over origins some people, especially public
school policy-makers, adopt different strategies of attempted neutrality. You
can’t blame them as they are caught between two sides. On one side are
prestigious authorities, the National Education Association hierarchy, ACLU
attorneys, and even liberal theologians. On the other
side are activist fundamentalist parents and students.
The strategies usually are built upon reasoning like
this. The biblical creation story deals with the “who” and “why” questions
which are not subject to scientific verification. Thus creationism is
“religious”. By contrast, the evolutionary origin story deals with the “how”
questions which are subject to scientific verification. Thus evolution is
“science”. Public schools can teach science, but they cannot teach religion
because they must be religiously neutral. Therefore, public schools can
teach only evolution, not creationism.
Unfortunately for the sake of public education, this
strategy rests on a number of invalid premises. Here, however, let’s deal just
with the idea that you can be religiously neutral. Religious neutrality is not
the same as religious tolerance. Tolerance means I tolerate someone who holds
an erroneous belief, not that I think his belief and my belief are equally
correct. Neutrality, unlike tolerance, insists that all such beliefs are
“correct” because in the area of religion there is no true absolute knowledge.
Neutrality asserts its own theory of truth: all religious opinion is relative
(“that’s what works for you”). Confusing neutrality for tolerance is quite
common
today.
The religious neutrality theory says that whether or
not the God of the Bible exists and has created the universe is not important
to whatever the subject at hand. This statement, it turns out, makes the not-so-hidden,
not-so-neutral claim that God could not be the Creator. First, it denies that
He could have any fundamental role in structuring the universe (if He did, then
He would obviously be important to the subject at hand). Second, it insists
that each object in the universe does not bear testimony to Him (otherwise, He
would be present in every subject). Third, it elevates above God an ethical
standard that justifies ignoring His Presence (we “ought” to think this way and
not another way). In short, the neutral theory is not itself neutral and
therefore is self-contradictory[1]. I have discussed this before in Part I.
I conclude the matter by enlarging the previous
statement. You can’t say anything about anything without saying (by
implication) something about everything, including non-neutral statements about
God and origins..5
Not Neutrality but Tolerance. Origins is a perspective that gives ultimate meaning
to everything we can think and talk about. It expresses the ultimate
presuppositions of a man’s heart. That is why origins “lurks in the background”
of everyday speech. That is why it is such a sensitive subject with most
people.
With such volatility, origins is a subject that
demands extraordinary toleration to discuss. As Bible-believing Christians we
must balance truth and grace. We must respect the Lordship of Christ
intellectually by insisting upon His truth. We must state our severe critique
of origin-myths that deny Him. Nevertheless, in grace we must tolerate our
neighbors who think otherwise--tolerate them as people for whom Christ died
even though we sharply disagree with them over the matter of origins.
Exercises 1.1.
1. Explain the logic of Jesus’ reasoning from origins
in dealing with the divorce problem in Matt. 19:1-12. His opponents set the
problem in the context of the Mosaic Law. How did Jesus enlarge the context to
get the meaning of marriage?
2. In Acts 14:8-18 Paul faced a pagan mob that had
totally misinterpreted his missionary work. How and why did he go back to
origins to deal with this situation?
3. In Acts 17:16-31 Paul needed a strategy to
communicate the meaning of the gospel in one of the great intellectual centers
of the ancient world. How did he reason from origins?
4. Missionaries working with New Tribes Mission in
Southeast Asia reported greater success in gospel communication when they began
the gospel story with the
creation narrative. Why do you think this approach
worked better than starting the gospel story with Jesus narrative in the Gospel
of Mark?
5. For a few weeks keep a list of places you read or
hear references to origins. What subjects are being discussed when references
are made to origins?
-----------------------------------------------------------
COMPARING BIBLICAL CREATION AND PAGAN ORIGIN-MYTHS
When I once discussed these ideas at a meeting for
school board candidates, a well-educated parent said to me that it was.6 hopeless to talk about origins “because there are
hundreds of different origins stories from around the world.” You will no doubt
hear this remark, too. It’s a popular maneuver to pigeon-hole
Genesis as
just-another-among-hundreds-of-other-stories so it can be dropped from any
serious discussion. Let’s examine the matter using our presuppositional
strategy.
Comparison of Early Genesis with a Pagan Text. I’ve
chosen the most famous origin-myth known outside of Israel during early Old
Testament times, the Babylonian text called Enuma elish. Pieces of this text
were discovered between 1848 and 1876 from King Ashurbanipal’s Nineveh library
(this king lived during the
time of II Kings). Later findings suggest the story
was composed at least by the time of the Exodus. Dr. Alexander Heidel describes
the story:
Enuma elish is the principle source of our knowledge
of Mesopotamian cosmology. . . . Yet, Enuma elish is not primarily a creation
story at all. . . . Its prime object is to offer cosmological reasons for
Marduk’s advancement from the position as chief god of Babylon to that of head
of the entire Babylonian pantheon. This was achieved by attributing to him the
defeat of Tiamat and the creation and maintenance of the universe. . . .
Next. . .Babylon’s claim to supremacy. . . .was
further supported by tracing Babylon’s origin back to the very beginnings of
time and by attributing her foundation to the great Anunnaki themselves, who
built Babylon as a dwelling place for Marduk. . . .Our epic is thus not only a
religious treatise but also a political one.[2]
Note how Dr. Heidel’s discussion illustrates the
previous section on the role of origins. Like all men, the Babylonians reverted
to origin-myths to set the context for important topics. In their case, origins
gave meaning to the role of Babylon in history.
Before hastily reading this text, however, you should
start with a biblical framework as we learned in Part I. What do you know
already about such a text from the biblical perspective? You should remember
that the inhabitants of Babylon had to have come from Noah’s sons (to be
further discussed in Chapter 6 of this study and also Part III). From this fact
you can expect that Enuma elish writers may have had access to creation
traditions directly from Noah. They did not have to have any contact with
Israel.
Biblically, you also know that, apart from the Holy
Spirit, any such truths would tend to be distorted and suppressed by the carnal
mind that is at enmity with God. Paul says in Romans 1:21.7 that the pagan mind became “vaporous” in its
“dialogues” (reasonings). You would expect to see in ancient pagan origin-myths
like Enuma elish pieces of the truth retained that were “acceptable” to the
carnal mind. The rest of the ideas that unavoidably manifested the glory of
God, I would expect to see radically modified or replaced. Let’s see how this
works out.
Here are excerpts from Enuma elish from Dr. Heidel’s
translation. I have separated each excerpt with a dashed line:
“When above [Enuma elish] the heaven had not (yet)
been named,
(And) below the earth had not (yet) been called by a
name,
(When) Apsu primeval, their begetter,
Mummu, (and) Tiamat, she who gave birth to them all,
(Still) mingled their waters together,
And no pasture land had been formed (and) not (even) a
reed marsh was to be seen;
When none of the (other) gods had been brought into
being,
(When) they had not (yet) been called by (their)
name(s, and their) destinies had not yet been fixed,
(At that time) were the gods created within them. . .
.
--------------------
They lived many days, adding years (to days). . . .
--------------------
The divine brothers gathered together.
They disturbed Tiamat and assaulted(?) their keeper,
Yea, they disturbed the inner parts of Tiamat,
Moving (and) running about in the divine abode(?). . .
.
--------------------
[Marduk] took from [Kingu] the tablet of destinies,
which was not his rightful possession. . . .
--------------------
After he had vanquished (and) subdued his enemies. . .
.
--------------------
Strengthened his hold upon the captive gods;
And then he returned to Tiamat, whom he had subdued.
The lord trod upon the hinder part of Tiamat,
And with his unsparing club he split her skull.
He cut the arteries of her blood,
And caused the north wind to carry (it) to
out-of-the-way places.
--------------------
[Marduk] split [Tiamat] open like a mussel into two
(parts);
Half of her he set in place and formed the sky
(therewith) as a roof.
He fixed the crossbar (and) posted guards,
He commanded them not to let her waters escape.
--------------------
And a great structure, its counterpart, he established,
(namely) Esharra [earth], . . ..8
--------------------
He created stations for the great gods;
The stars their likeness(es), the signs of the zodiac,
he set up.
He determined the year, defined the divisions. . . .
--------------------
Punishment they inflicted upon [Kingu] by cutting (the
arteries of) his blood.
With his blood they created mankind;
[Ea] imposed the services of the gods (upon them) and
set the gods free.[3]
--------------------
Exercise 1.2
1. Read this text side-by-side with Genesis 1:1-2:4
and look for similar elements. What is created? How is it created? What is the
initial condition? In what sequence are the elements created? Match your
observations to specific references in Genesis.
2. Again read this text and look for contrasting
elements. Who does the creating? What is the initial condition? What is used to
create with? What motives exist behind the creative acts?
3. What would be your suggested explanation for the
similarities you observed in question 1?
4. What would be your suggested explanation for the
differences you observed in question 2?
5. Enuma elish features multiple gods struggling with
one another for control of creation and history. How would you describe the
difference between this struggling process and Bible passages like Job 1:6-12
and I Kings 22:19-23?
------------------------------------------------------------
Similarities between Genesis and Ancient Paganism.
When modern scholars first began to analyze ancient pagan texts like Enuma elish,
many of them interpreted them from an evolutionary perspective. Because of the
similarities they thought they could see a gradual evolution from these
earlier, more speculative, polytheistic stories to the later, loftier,
monotheistic Genesis. It seemed to be another illustration of evolution’s ever
upward development. It also “explained” the Bible by showing that it came not
from God but from prior pagan stories.
Time proved them wrong. Two major conflicts arose with
this evolution-of-religion idea. First, as more evidence of early religious
beliefs was found, it showed that the earlier stories were more monotheistic;
they “remembered” the existence of a.9 Supreme
Being who created all things and were not truly pagan at all. Later stories
“forgot” the Supreme Being and replaced him with “the richest and most
extravagant rituals, gods and goddesses of the most varied kinds”[4]. Paganism,
in other words, developed later out of earlier Bible-like beliefs. This is
opposite to what the evolutionary theory would predict.
A second conflict became apparent when it was
discovered that some isolated tribes in remote parts of the modern world had
origin stories that were genuinely monotheistic and truly “creationist”. These
tribes had somehow preserved ancient, pre-pagan beliefs. Since there was no
evidence of contact with Christian missionaries, where did such “primitive”
tribes get the “advanced” truths seen in Genesis 1? Their pre-pagan concepts
are surprising.
Study of African tribal origin stories shows several
examples of belief in creation ex nihilo.[5] In North America, “the Wijot in
northern California. . .say: ‘The Old Man Above did not use earth and sticks to
make men. He simply thought, and there they were.’“[6] In India the Santal
people have an oral tradition about “Thakur Jiu” (translated = “Genuine God”).
Thakur Jiu created the world and the first human pair Haram and Ayo who fell
into sin.[7]
In Southeast Asia the Karen people have hymns in their
oral traditions about the eternal Creator,
Y’wa, that predate all contact with missionaries:
Who created the world in the beginning?
Y’wa created the world in the beginning!
Y’wa appointed everything.
Y’wa is unsearchable! . . .
The omnipotent is Y’wa; him have we not believed.
Y’wa created man anciently;
He has a perfect knowledge of all things!
Y’wa created men at the beginning. . . .
He appointed the “fruit of trial”
He gave detailed orders.
Mu-kaw-lee deceived two persons. . . .[8]
If these minority examples show nearly a complete
survival of an ancient monotheism, then in the majority of outright pagan
origin-myths partial survival would be probable. In other words, underlying
paganism are buried truths of origins that testify to original revelation
passed down through Noah (Isa. 40:21).
Contrasts between Genesis and Ancient Paganism. While there are similar
elements found in both the Bible and ancient paganism, the contrasts outweigh
the similarities. I want you to notice two major areas of contrast. Refer to
your observations from Exercise 1.2 to follow my discussion..10
1. Creator-creature vs. Continuity of Being. You
observed in Enuma elish that there is no clear distinction between the gods and
goddesses on one hand and the material universe on the other. Apsu, Tiamat, and
Mummu are all “water deities”. Note the line at the beginning where they
“mingled their waters” and the later line where Marduk split open Tiamat and
made the sky from her. In the pagan mind, the material world and spirit beings
are very closely identified with one another.
Note, too, that from the matter-spirit beings Apsu,
Tiamat, and Mummu come forth all the other gods and goddesses. These new-born
deities are said to have “disturbed the inner parts of Tiamat. . .the divine
abode” as though Tiamat was their home. Paganism thus thinks of everything
originating from a chaos,
including the gods.
In the Genesis text, however, God is wholly separate
from the universe. He is prior to all things. All else originates from Him.
They come into existence, not by transformation from His Being, but by His
spoken Word they come into existence from nothing (creatio ex-nihilo). There is
thus an absolute, transcendental distinction between the Creator and all else.
Over against the Bible’s Creator-creature distinction,
paganism insists upon the unity of creator(s) and creations. Gods, men,
animals, and rocks are all part of the same existence or being. This is the
doctrine of the Chain of Being or Continuity of Being, a doctrine you will find
lurking in all forms of paganism from ancient times through New Testament times
(where it was related to the Gnostic heresy) to modern cosmic evolution. You
will hear about this false doctrine again and again in the following chapters.
It is spiritual poison.
Implied by the Continuity of Being idea and overtly
present in some pagan origin-myths, is the concept of spontaneous generation.
Since the universe basically is of one kind, everything within it differs only
in degree. Thus the universe has power to bring forth life from non-life all by
itself. Man is just a part of Nature. Contrast this situation with the Bible’s
teaching about non-transgressable boundaries between man, each kind of animal,
and each kind of plant (Gen. 1:11-12, 21,
24-25, 27).
An apparent corollary to the Continuity of Being is
that the spontaneous transformations take vast amounts of time. Note the line
in Enuma elish, “They lived many days, adding years (to days).” Contrast this
slowness with the suddenness of God’s creative work (Ps. 33:9) done in six days
(Exod. 20:11).
The first fundamental contrast between Genesis and
ancient paganism, then, is between the Creator-creature distinction and the
gradually self-transforming Continuity of Being. That is not.11 all; there is a second, equally fundamental contrast
that you must also learn to recognize.
2. Personal Sovereignty vs. Impersonal Chance. In
Exercise 1.2, did you observe who, if anyone, was in control? If I had given
you the entire Enuma elish text, you would have seen vividly that the creation
of the universe was done by a squabbling committee without a chairman! First,
Apsu, Tiamat, and Mummu “begat” all other gods. Then Marduk somehow arises and
vanquishes the three original water deities.
Dr. Heidel’s quote above tells us that the story was,
among other things, a political justification for the power of Babylon. Bluntly
stated, the story justifies Babylon by showing that Babylon’s god, Marduk,
could beat up all the other cities’ gods! Put in more contemporary language,
the story teaches that historical processes going back to origins ordain
Babylon’s dominance.
Observe carefully what is going on here. If today
Marduk beats up all the other gods, what about tomorrow? Will another god,
younger and stronger than Marduk, rise up and triumph over him? On the
polytheistic basis of Enuma elish what assurance would a Babylonian have about
the future? Who is in charge in the final analysis?
The pagan mind, when faced with this dilemma, usually
tries to appeal to something “behind” the gods. Note in Enuma elish the
reference “[Marduk] took from [Kingu] the tablet of destinies.” Later pagans in
Greece and Rome spoke of this mysterious, unknowable something in back of the
gods as Fate. Resorting to an unknowable fate, however, doesn’t do much. It
still leaves one in darkness. Who will dominate the counsel of the gods
tomorrow? No one, including the gods, knows! It comes down to what we moderns
call Chance. Chance alone is the final backdrop of existence in the pagan view.
Of course, this Chance is also impersonal. It is thought of as an impersonal
tablet, not a god.
Opposed to this Chance-run, squabbling committee idea
of origins, is the Bible’s orderly dominance by the one, personal Creator-God
over all else. God merely speaks His Word, and it comes to pass (Ps 33:9). God
promises Adam that the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent
(Gen. 3:15). History
will certainly turn out the way God and God alone says
it will. In Exercise 1.2, Question 5, you observed that other beings may be
involved in running the show, but the “committee” has an absolute Lord!
To summarize: two fundamental distinctions between
Genesis and ancient paganism are, first, the contrast between the.12 Creator-creature discontinuity and the Continuity of
Being and, second, the contrast between Personal Sovereignty and Impersonal
Chance.
RECONCILING GENESIS AND THE EVOLUTION ORIGIN-MYTH
Like ancient Babylon, the modern world also has an
officially-sponsored origin-myth: cosmic evolution of all things. Although it
is expressed in scientific language instead of poetry, evolution shares with
ancient paganism the same fundamental concepts of the Continuity of Being and
Chance. In fact, you can trace the pathway of these beliefs from ancient time
up to pre-Darwinian Europe. The Continuity or “Chain of Being. . .is a notion
traceable back to Plato. [It] formed part of the general mental furniture of
most educated men from the Renaissance until the end of the 18th century.”[9]
As Loren Eiseley remarks:
All that the Chain of Being actually needed to become
a full-fledged evolutionary theory was the introduction into it of the
conception of time in vast quantities added to mutability of form. . . .The
seed of evolution lay buried in this traditional metaphysic which indeed
prepared the Western mind for its acceptance.[10]
Henry Fairfield Osborne, director of the American
Museum of Natural History, in the early twentieth century says of this link
with ancient paganism:
When I began the search for anticipation of the
evolutionary theory. . . .I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced
and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated as far back as the
seventh century, B.C. [11]
Outside of “Christian” Europe, the link is even more
clear. “Far Eastern philosophers thought of creation in evolutionary terms. . .
.a belief in an inherent continuity of all creation and, second, a reference to
the merging of one species into another.”[12] Confucianism, Buddhism,
Shintoism, and Hinduism all express the ancient pagan beliefs in the Continuity
of Being and Chance.
You probably have never seen this link before because
modern evolutionists like to deceive you into thinking that evolution is a new
discovery of modern science. I want you to note a very important fact: only in
the West where the Bible significantly influenced man’s thought was there any
substantial deviation from the same basic pagan origin-myth. Thus, in terms of
basic beliefs, there are not “hundreds” of different origin stories; there are
only two kinds--biblical and pagan.
What, then, have Christians done over the centuries
when faced with the conflict between Genesis and paganism? I have.13 only enough space to note what has happened over the
last two hundred years. There are lessons here to learn from the various
strategies that Christians have used in their attempts at reconciliation.
The Capitulation Strategy. Even before Darwin
popularized evolution in the mid-1800s, sizeable segments of the Church had
absorbed anti-supernaturalism and had become liberal. They “reinvented”
Christianity to fit the new naturalism of their day (old paganism in a new
version). They freely speculated, for example, that Moses really didn’t write
Genesis 1 and 2 as Jesus had insisted (Matt. 19:8; John 5:46-47; 7:19). Rather,
Genesis 1 and 2 were two contradictory accounts of creation, one written by an
author who called God by the name of Elohim (translated God) and the other
written by another author who called God by the name of Yahweh (translated
LORD).
These sort of eighteenth and nineteenth century
speculations were later challenged by archeological discoveries of ancient Near
Eastern literary works. Discoveries showed that “doublets” like Genesis 1 and 2
were common stylistic features of the ancient world. Just as spiritual readers
of Genesis had realized for centuries, the doublet style reflects shifting
perspectives, not contradictory accounts (much like modern journalistic style).
As the Oriental Lecturer at Liverpool University, Dr. Kenneth Kitchen once
wrote, such speculative interpretations of doublets is an “uncritical
perpetuation of a nineteenth-century systematization of speculations by
eighteenth-century dilettantes lacking. . .all knowledge of the forms and
usages of Ancient Oriental literature.”[13] Yet today’s college and high-school
teachers still teach this old liberalism in “Bible-as-literature” courses.
Liberalism thus prepared vast segments of the church
to accept evolutionary cosmology in the last half of the nineteenth century
when Darwin published his works. Since they no longer accepted the supernatural
biblical framework, the fallen nature of man, the deity of Christ, and literal
resurrection, liberals willingly capitulated to evolutionary cosmology. Why
defend the book of Genesis when spiritually they had already abandoned the God
of Genesis?
The Accommodation Strategy. More conservative
Christians couldn’t accept the strategy of capitulation because of their
loyalty to the God of the Bible. Since they believed God revealed Himself in
both nature and in the Bible, they felt that Scripture and science were
ultimately harmonious. Unfortunately, the major evangelical leaders in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century uncritically accepted the “assured
results” of modern scientific cosmology as the final word from nature. They
were convinced no radically different interpretations
of scientific data were possible..14
This step forced them to accommodate evolutionary
cosmology by altering traditional interpretation of Genesis. In the very heart
of nineteenth century conservative scholarship, Princeton Seminary, the Old
Testament professor W. H. Green (1825-1896) wrote a paper called Primeval
Chronology in which he sought to defend the Bible’s embarrassing “recent”
creation of man by opening up gaps in the genealogies of Adam. Dr. Green
thought this method would allow enough time to accommodate the increasingly
older dates for the origin of man. This accommodation was welcomed by no less
than Princeton’s eminent conservative theologian, Charles Hodge. Said his son,
years later: “I can well remember my father walking up and down in his study
when he heard (about it) and saying, ‘What a relief it is
to me that he should have said that’“[14]
Other re-interpretative devices have been used in the
accommodation strategy. Genesis 1:1-3 has been re-interpreted at least two
different ways in order to get vast amounts of time for the age of the
universe. The Gap Theory interprets verse 1 as original creation separated in
time from a subsequent judgment against Satan in verse 2. This approach is
discussed in Appendix C where I note in fairness to its proponents that it
began long before the conflict with modern evolution. Being already available,
it was seized upon as a panacea for the problems between Genesis and science.
Another interpretation of Genesis 1:1-3 increasingly
being used in evangelical Bible translations, follows earlier liberal views
based upon parallels with ancient pagan origin-myths like Enuma elish. In this
approach Genesis describes only a relative beginning: “In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth when the earth was formless and void. . . .”
The traditional doctrine of ex-nihilo creation, in this view, falls away from
Genesis 1.
Besides reinterpreting the first three verses of
Genesis 1, conservatives have tried to reinterpret the “days”, making them
either literal 24-hour days of revelation when God revealed the creation story
to Moses or symbolic days standing for long ages of time. The great problem
with this approach is that the sequence of creative acts in the “day-ages”
doesn’t correspond with what is needed to successfully accommodate evolutionary
cosmology. This tactic usually breaks down after its proponents are forced to
further modify the interpretation for each day to get things to fit.
Regardless of the specific tactics used in the
accommodation strategy, many Bible-believing Christians, including myself,
think it is hopelessly flawed. It continues nineteenth century naiveté about
scientific infallibility. It destroys the fall of man as the source of death in
the world (making God the direct.15 cause of
natural evil). And it undercuts the principle of the “perspicuity of
Scripture”, the great Protestant principle that the common believer can meet
the Lord in the Bible without an
intervening priesthood to tell him what the Bible
“really” says. The accommodationists imply that until the nineteenth century
“priesthood” of scientists came into being, no believer correctly understood
the entire foundational portion of the Bible![15] The Counterattack Strategy.
By the mid-twentieth century a significant number of Bible-believing Christians
had became disillusioned with the strategy of accommodation. In the late 1950s
and early 1960s great controversy occurred within evangelical ranks about what
to do with Genesis. Over a century had gone by, and the conservatives had done
nothing except retreat again and again. Many felt if we couldn’t interpret the
straightforward Genesis narrative any better than that, what were we doing
trying to interpret the rest of the Bible? Outsiders like historian of science,
Dr. John C. Greene, noted clearly the problem:
Maintenance of what these writers call ‘verbal
inspiration’ is likely to prove possible only by continual reinterpretation of
the Bible. In the long run, perpetual reinterpretation may prove more
subversive of the authority of Scripture than would a frank recognition of the
limitations of traditional doctrines.[16]
Led chiefly by Dr. Henry Morris, then head of Civil
Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a group of evangelical
scientists chose to begin a new strategy. If the Bible could not be “adjusted”
to fit evolution, and if it was the Word of God, then the problem, somehow,
must be with the scientific interpretation of data. Somewhere in its
development largely from within the Protestant Reformation, science had taken a
wrong turn. What had begun as fruit of a Christian view of
nature, had strangely boomeranged back against the
Bible.
The new strategy was a stunning turn-around.
Four-hundred years before, the Reformation had firmly established the Bible as
the authority in “heavenly” things (e.g., theological doctrines of Christology
and Soteriology). Now the Bible was becoming the authority in “earthly” things,
too. To prevent the data of the book of nature from being misinterpreted, the
new strategy established controls from a comprehensive universal history built
from the Bible.
Put another way, this group of Bible-believing
Christians embraced a strategy of counterattack against not a detail here or
there, but against the entire framework of scientific interpretation! Within
recent years, the second and third generations of these “strict creationists”
and “young earthers”.16 have begun to produce more and
more comprehensive counter-proposals from nuclear physics to geology to
mathematics. In principle, they operate at a presuppositional level, arguing
that
alien pagan beliefs have contaminated much of modern
scientific thought. These insidious pagan beliefs as direct descendents of
ancient paganism serve the same old purpose: suppress the truth of God that is
everywhere present.
The task, humanly, is impossible to complete. There
are no major institutions to help, no source of needed funds, few willing and
able laborers, and a vast backlog of already-established scientific paradigms.
But is Jesus, Lord? Have we not seen that the Bible stands against all
paganism, ancient and modern? Can we look him in the face as we capitulate and
accommodate to modern versions of Baalism?
Exercise 1.3.
1. Your son returns home from a professedly Christian
college campus. He shares with you how his professor assured him he “doesn’t
have to worry about old
controversies between Genesis and science. We moderns
have to accept that God must have used the process of evolution to create the
world and man. We can believe in Jesus and in evolution.” Reasoning from what
Jesus and Paul believed about Genesis, show your son that “we can believe in
Jesus or evolution”. Note: Matt. 19:4-6; 23:35; 24:37-39; Rom. 5:12-14;
8:20-22; 16:20; I Cor.6:16; 11:8-9; 15:21-22, 39- 40, 45-47; II Cor.4:6; 11:3;
I Tim.2:13-14.
2. From what you have learned in this chapter,
summarize the basic nature of paganism. Discuss its beliefs and its
motivations. Be careful not to be self-righteous; every believer in his flesh
is a pagan, too.
3. Your neighbor asks you how you, as an educated
person, can believe in an ancient book like the Bible that is filled with
mythology. Outline your response (hint: be careful to question your neighbor on
the meaning of his terms).
------------------------------------------------------------
END NOTES FOR CHAPTER 1
1. A complete logical proof is given in Vern S. Poythress,
“A Biblical View of Mathematics,” Foundations of Christian Scholarship
(Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1976), pp. 165- 168.
2. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago:
Phoenix Books, 1963 edition of original University of Chicago Press, 1942), pp.
10-11..17
3. Ibid., pp. 18-47.
4. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, trans. Willard
Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 93-94.
5. Jerry Bergmen, “Creation and Creation Myths,”
Creation Research Society Quarterly (hereinafter CRSQ), XXX, (Mar, 1994), p.
205.
6. Ibid, p. 209.
7. Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts, (Ventura,
CA: Regal Books, 1981), pp. 41-43.
8. Ibid., pp. 77-78.
9. D. R. Olroyd, Darwinian Impact, (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Highlands Press, 1983), p. 45.
10. Loren Eisely, Darwin’s Century, (Garden City, NY:
Anchor Press, 1961), p. 10.
11. H. F. Osborne, From the Greeks to Darwin, (New
York: Chas. Scribner’s Press, 1929), p. xi.
12. Sol Tax, “Introduction”, Issues in Evolution, ed.
Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 2, 7.
13. K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament,
(Chicago: Inter-Varsity Press, 1966), p. 117.
14. Cited in Arthur C. Custance, Two Men Called Adam,
(Brockville, Ontario: Doorway Publications, 1983), p. 5.
15. In light of this past history of the failed
nineteenth century accommodation strategy, it is sad to see evangelism go back
today to this same essential strategy through efforts like that of Dr. Hugh
Ross. Ross is popular with well-known Christian organizations and radio programs.
One major work by him is Creation and Time: A Biblical and Scientific
Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress,
1994). An answer to him which I helped advise is Mark Van Bibber and Paul S.
Taylor, Creation and Time: A Report on the Progressive Creationist Book by Hugh
Ross (Mesa, AZ: Eden Publications, 1994).
16. John C. Greene, Darwin and the Modern World View,
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), p. 32.