“This is 2,300 year old wisdom from the Book of Ecclesiastes that seems to very concisely understand the water cycle. That water evaporates from the ocean, gets stored in the atmosphere via clouds, comes down as snow or rain, and when it comes down on the mountain it’s often stored there, as snow is gathered via groundwater, streams, and rivers, and then through the river, returns to the ocean, again. What a beautiful, complex, interdependent, wonderfully mysterious way of providing water, life to the land … But what does this beautiful system teach us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about who we are? What is your word, God, about this river, that runs through the center of where we live?”

In this sermon, Pastor Jon Van Sloten of New Hope Church in Calgary, Alberta, describes how he set out to learn where the water from the Bow River, near their home in the Rocky Mountains, actually comes from. He interviewed scientists who study hydrology and have learned a curious truth about how this particular river keeps a steady flow the full year round. This modulating geophysical “safeguard,” which allows the Rocky Mountains to hold water and let it out at a slow trickle rather than a deluge during the annual snowmelt, speaks to Van Sloten of God’s grace at work in the world—grace we can’t see with the naked eye, but is there all the same.

Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Caroll

Theology once held a seat of high regard among the sciences. During the Middle Ages theology was the Queen of the Sciences, and it sat enthroned at the core of academic studies throughout Europe. Many of the great European universities developed from the cathedral schools where theology was the nucleus around which all other study revolved and found its meaning.

The reason for this position of favor was that theology was discussion about – or the study of – God himself. In God, believers found their purpose and very existence. Therefore, God was not a position to be reasoned to; rather, reason flowed from one’s understanding of who God is and his relationship to humanity.

As Queen, theology’s function was not to discover all the answers herself but rather to encourage the other subjects – her subjects – to pursue truth. Math should discover that 2+2=4; biology should discover the mechanism of creation; psychology should discover the role of parent bonding in childhood development; but it was the role of the Queen to give meaning to the truths of her subjects.

In other words, 2+2=4 neither proves nor disproves the Creator, but theology – a profound belief in the Creator – sees the beauty in the ordered world around us. Theology and math are not the same. They answer different questions. But they are not completely separate answers; together they form a more complete answer to each of their individual questions. To quote Stephen Jay Gould, they are “nonoverlapping magesteria” to be certain, but they are also “interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border. Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts of a full answer” (Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997).

It is unfortunate that Gould’s later explanation of these nonoverlapping magesteria left so little room for theology; in a sense, banishing the Queen almost completely to the hinterlands of the academic kingdom. The image of these nonoverlapping magesteria “interdigitating in wondrously complex ways,” however, is still worth considering. This image serves as a reminder that one should not reason from God or theological perspectives to mathematical principles or scientific theories anymore than one should reason from mathematical principles or scientific theories to the existence of God or the non-existence of God. In their “interdigitating,” however, in the beautiful harmonies between theology and the other sciences a fuller answer is given – an answer that provides not only facts but also meaning.

Unfortunately, the history of theology’s reign through the ages is questionable at best. The Queen far too often hampered instead of encouraged the pursuit of truth by her subjects. Today, many put the Queen at direct odds with her subjects, and this has led to a comical and tragic caricature of theology in our current society – a Queen who settles all difficulties, great or small, with the same solution, without bothering to look around, and by yelling, “Off with their heads.”

As Christians, who care deeply for the pursuit of truth, we cannot – and must not – attempt to restore theology to a place of prestige by destroying the work of her subjects or by belittling the work of those who practice them. We must not attempt to settle every difficulty between theology and the other sciences by calling for the heads of others to roll while we bury our own heads in the sand.

Rather, as theologians, whether professional or lay, we must assist theology to ascend to her throne as Queen of the Sciences by encouraging the pursuit of truth in all fields wherever they lead, by humbly entering into discussion with her subjects concerning the truth they discover, and by proclaiming the Truth that gives meaning to all truth – Jesus Christ, our Lord.

George Murphy notes that while the science and theology dialogue has grown considerably in the past 30 years, much of it remains at an academic level. While it provides an important foundation, that alone is not going to do the job that the church needs it to do—to come out in Christian education in parishes, in preaching, in pastoral care, in the social action of the church.

During his seminary education, Dr. Murphy also gained a deeper understanding of Luther’s theology of the cross, and he realized that it’s really the best way to approach the science and theology dialogue. The theology of the cross helps us deal not only with an issue like evolution, and but more generally with the whole question of how God acts in the world and how we know God.

Most science and theology dialogue is restricted to discussion of creation and origins. But at the core of the Gospel of is not simply the doctrine of creation—it’s salvation, it’s the work of Christ in saving humanity and in saving the whole creation.

First posted April 29, 2012

Is it possible to fully understand and practice Scripture without connecting with science? If science reveals God’s attributes, how can we fully relate to Him without some ongoing reference to the information revealed in scientific inquiry? Even more specifically, as preaching pastors, how many are we excluding if we ignore important facets of our congregations’ worldviews?

Now in a collaborative environment like this, it is easy to stay on an intellectual level. But we are pastors who are practitioners, so let me speak personally to get the discussion into the realm of the church world and what may or may not work for you. Some 27 years ago, while exploring whether or not to go to pastor Northland Church, I sensed I’d found kindred spirits when reading in its philosophy of ministry:

People are not just to be understood as sinners but as beings greatly affected by the bodies and physical world they inhabit.

How then would I best address that physical world in the context of understanding its value to our spiritual formation?

Different Approaches to Scripture and Science

Since the sermon is the main component used to build the congregation’s collective approach to understanding how the church relates to the world, I want to take a few moments to lay out what has worked in my preaching and what has not when it comes to science and more specifically the subject of evolution:

1. I decided on a hermeneutical approach. How would God’s patterns in creation published in scientific findings inform my understanding of Scripture?

• I would not use the “Science and Faith are in conflict” (J.W. Draper/A.D. White¹) approach, since I am neither a fundamentalist nor someone whom would wish to violate the spirit of those who penned Scripture who understood God to be over all the world, both hill and Temple (Psalm 24:1-10).
• I would not use S.J. Gould’s² “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” approach, which “ghettoizes” both science and faith. To say one only answers “how” and the other only answers “why” is to miss the richness of both.
• I would not use Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s³ or Ian Barbour’s³ “Integration / Unity” approach, since such an approach requires extensive knowledge of both science and theology and almost inevitably leads to process theology.
• I would use the “Dialogue” (W.G. Pollard⁵) approach, since it emphasizes insight and investigation rather than answers, thereby leading to a sense of wonder and worship. Such an approach minimizes the hubris of knowledge (that will almost certainly pass away) and the hostility toward different perspectives.

2. I decided on a related-referential model rather than an issue-oriented one.

• Any model chosen must fit the personal style of the preacher or it will become uncomfortable and soon unused. I am more the Columbo/sloppy trench coat, “Oh that reminds me…one more thing…” investigator rather than a “light bulb hanging over the head breaking down your resistance” kind of confronter. So I use science as “now what do you make of that?” kind of illustration rather than an argument for my perspective.
• The model must also fit the personality of the church. In our church issue-oriented subjects must be taught in classes or small groups where people have the chance to question/comment in ways not usually done in response to sermons.

3. Our church has decided that being a witness of the incarnate Christ means engaging, and learning from, the world as it is presently.

• Following God’s example in Christ is entering into the world and serving in all its realms: spiritual, emotional, physical, and social.
• Christ used the common knowledge people already had (much of it from nature) to reveal God.

Recognizing Cultural Perspectives

Having laid out what seems like a tidy approach, I will now recognize the difficulties I have experienced, as a pastor, pertaining to evolution, for understandable but remediable reasons. The church has a particular culture that prevents fully engaging science.

1. Most in a congregation do not decouple or differentiate the belief in a philosophy of random and purposeless evolution from the instances of incremental improvements that may point ultimately to an Organizing Principal.
2. Most have not been taught the literary genre distinctions between the writings of Genesis 1 and a science textbook.
3. Most have not considered the possibility that Adam and Eve may not have been uniquely and separately physically created for their sole role in the beginning of human kind. They need alternatives involving figures that do not contradict the point of the narrative.
4. Most have not considered the complementary nature of the Biblical narrative of redemption out of death and the evolutionary one.

To be sure, when a pastor addresses the alternatives, or even makes an explanatory reference using evolution, that pastor can expect a variation of this conversation I had with a parishioner (who walked out during a sermon) a little over a year ago:

____________, I know I upset you with the reference I made to evolution. You have been listening to my teaching for many years. I hope you know by now how the high view of Scripture as the final source of truth and authority I hold and this church holds. 'Well, I thought I did but now I am not so sure,' answered this lady who has been trying to get Ken Hamm to our church for some years. You know I would never do anything to lessen the importance of Scripture. 'Pastor, when you confess evolution, you not only make a liar out of Scripture, you become the reason young people are not following God and are living lives without regard to the Bible, and are in some cases committing suicide.'

This woman is not an unintelligent person. She is a professional nurse and is leading in a mission organization. She was just scared. Happily, she is still in the church and has decided after some more reflection that maybe I do not want to lead young people into orgies and death after all.

Summary Thoughts

In 1632 Galileo warned his fellow believers of a trap they were walking into by resisting the conclusions of a scientific investigation:

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position--eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.⁶

We would do well to be the church learning God’s truth as discovered by scientists, not resisting its discomfort or its perceived threat to our traditional interpretations of Scripture.

We worship a God of history, and references to our physical world fit well, given some time, into our metaphysical journey. One only has to look at the Old and New Testaments to see how central the elements of creation are to understanding the activity, and thus the “nature” of God. The references are not simply meant to be objective facts; they are to open the door to vistas beyond. If postmodernism has made us aware of the illusion of pure objectivity, then it has also taught us something of the value of pre-modernism, where the lines between the physical and spiritual are connecting points.

Of course nature is not prescriptive, nor does it present comprehensive pictures of God’s personality. One of the most intellectually capable scientists I know does not believe in God because of his observations of ants organizing slave colonies. It offends his sense of egalitarianism. Talk about making a mountain out of an anthill! Theologizing from particular scientific observations is hyper-interpretive.

Yet, as all creation was made by and for Him (Colossians 1:16-17), when it comes to the insights that may be offered by scientific information (especially evolution) it is difficult for those who have been given a modicum of faith not to see the possibility of:

• An Organizing Principle
• An Orchestrated Similarity among the physical, personal, social, and spiritual realms
• An increased ability and likelihood to respond to the outside world in ways that benefit all
• Redeeming relationships involving sacrifice, not all of which are initially positive or intentional (Romans 8:28)
• Problematic instances that would seem to negate the idea of a loving kind Creator may be a part of a more positive trend.
• Greater confidence, as a result of faith, in uncontrollable circumstances being used for good eventually

My goal as a pastor is to equip the saints in my sphere of influence to see Christ and to worship Him. If those in my influence only can see God in Scripture, then they are half blind. But if we together can help each other see the unfolding redemptive purposes of every realm - of scientific inquiry, of business practice, of artistic expression, of church/family support for every individual in every field of endeavor – then we will be not only 20-20 but 3-D in every direction!

Of course, such a result will require a more comprehensive approach in preaching. And such comprehension will require a continuing dialogue with those who can help us see the truth from different perspectives.

Notes

1. John William Draper, A History of Conflict Between Religion and Science, 1874; Andrew Dickson White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1894.
2. Stephen Jay Gould, Rock of Ages, 1999.
3. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1959.
4. Ian Barbour, Religion and Science, 1997.
5. William G. Pollard, Physicist and Christian: a dialogue between the communities, 1961.
6. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632.

What's the Problem?

Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all. New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and creationist writers such as Ken Ham seem to have arrived at consensus on this, and so more and more in the general population are treating it as given. If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God.

This creates a problem for both doubters and believers. Many believers in western culture see the medical and technological advances achieved through science and are grateful for them. They have a very positive view of science. How then, can they reconcile what science seems to tell them about evolution with their traditional theological beliefs? Seekers and inquirers about Christianity can be even more perplexed. They may be drawn to many things about the Christian faith, but, they say, “I don’t see how I can believe the Bible if that means I have to reject science.”

However, there are many who question the premise that science and faith are irreconcilable. Many believe that a high view of the Bible does not demand belief in just one account of origins. They argue that we do not have to choose between an anti-science religion or an anti-religious science.¹ They think that there are a variety of ways in which God could have brought about the creation of life forms and human life using evolutionary processes, and that the picture of incompatibility between orthodox faith and evolutionary biology is greatly overdrawn.²

For example, there have been a number of efforts to argue that there may be evolutionary reasons for religious belief. That is, it may be that capacity for religious belief is ‘adaptive’ or is connected to other adaptive traits, passed down from our ancestors because they supported survival and reproduction. There is no consensus about this among evolutionary biologists. Nevertheless, its very proposal seems to be completely antithetical to any belief that God is objectively real. However, Christian philosopher Peter van Inwagen asks:

Suppose that God exists and wants supernaturalistic belief to be a human universal, and sees (he would see this if it were true) that certain features would be useful for human beings to have— useful from an evolutionary point of view: conducive to survival and reproduction—would naturally have the consequence that supernaturalistic belief would be in due course a human universal. Why shouldn’t he allow those features to be the cause of the thing he wants?—rather as the human designer of a vehicle might use the waste heat from its engine to keep its passengers warm.³

Van Inwagen’s argument is sound. Even if science could prove that religious belief has a genetic component that we inherit from our ancestors, that finding is not incompatible with belief in the reality of God or even the truth of the Christian faith. There is no logical reason to preclude that God could have used evolution to predispose people to believe in God in general so that people would be able to consider true belief when they hear the gospel preached. This is just one of many places where the supposed incompatibility of orthodox faith with evolution begins to fade away under more sustained reflection.

However, many Christian laypeople remain confused because the voices arguing that Biblical orthodoxy and evolution are mutually exclusive are louder and more prominent than any others. What will it take to help Christian laypeople see greater coherence between what science tells us about creation and what the Bible teaches us about it?

Pastors and People

In my estimation what current science tells us about evolution presents four main difficulties for orthodox Protestants. The first is in the area of Biblical authority. To account for evolution we must see at least Genesis 1 as non-literal. The questions come along these lines: what does that mean for the idea that the Bible has final authority? If we refuse to take one part of the Bible literally, why take any parts of it literally? Aren’t we really allowing science to sit in judgment on our understanding of the Bible rather than vica versa?

The second difficulty is the confusion of biology and philosophy. Many of the strongest proponents for evolution as a biological process (such as Dawkins) also see it as a ‘Grand Theory of Everything.’ They look to natural selection to explain not only all human behavior but even to give the only answers to the great philosophical questions, such as why we exist, what life is about, and why human nature is what it is. Doesn’t belief in the one idea—that life is the product of evolution—entail the adoption of this whole ‘world -view’?

The third difficulty is the historicity of Adam and Eve. One way to reconcile what current science says about evolution is to propose that the account of Adam and Eve is symbolic, not literal, but what does this do to the New Testament teaching of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that our sinfulness comes from our relationship with Adam? If we don’t believe in an historical fall, how did we become what the Bible says we are—sinful and condemned?

The fourth difficulty is the problem of violence and evil. One of the greatest barriers to belief in God is the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Why, people ask, did God create a world in which violence, pain, and death are endemic? The answer of traditional theology is—he didn’t. He created a good world but also gave human beings free will, and through their disobedience and ‘Fall’, death and suffering came into the world. The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution.

I have been a pastor for almost 35 years, and during that time I’ve spoken to many laypeople who struggle with the relationship of modern science to orthodox belief. In the minds of most laypeople, it is the first three difficulties that loom largest. The fourth difficulty—the problem of suffering and death—has not been posed to me as often by parishioners. Yet in some ways the problem of suffering goes along with the third question regarding the historicity of the Fall. Without the traditional view of the historicity of the Fall, the question of evil would seem to become more acute.

Therefore, below I will lay out three basic problems that Christian laypeople have with the scientific account of biological evolution. Nothing here should be seen as meeting the need for rigorous, scholarly arguments in answer to these questions. These are popular-level pastoral answers and guidance. As a pastor I have had to draw heavily on the work of experts. The first question, about Biblical authority, requires that I draw on the best work of exegetes and Biblical scholars. To answer the second question, about evolution as a ‘Grand Theory of Everything,’ I need to draw on the work of philosophers. When we come to the third question regarding Adam and Eve, I must look to theologians.

In short, if I as a pastor want to help both believers and inquirers to relate science and faith coherently, I must read the works of scientists, exegetes, philosophers, and theologians and then interpret them for my people. Someone might counter that this is too great a burden to put on pastors, that instead they should simply refer their laypeople to the works of scholars. But if pastors are not ‘up to the job’ of distilling and understanding the writings of scholars in various disciplines, how will our laypeople do it? This is one of the things that parishioners want from their pastors. We are to be a bridge between the world of scholarship and the world of the street and the pew. I’m aware of what a burden this is. I don’t know that there has ever been a culture in which the job of the pastor has been more challenging. Nevertheless, I believe this is our calling.

Next week, Keller begins to unpack the individual questions, beginning with how we can understand evolution in relation to a literal reading of the Bible.

Notes

1. A good popular level book by a scientist is Denis Alexander, aptly titled: Creation or Evolution-do we have to choose? (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2008.)
2. See Christian Smith, ed. The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (University of California Press, 2003.) and Rodney Stark For the Glory of God : how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts, and the end of slavery (Princeton: 2003.)
3. Peter van Inwagen, “Explaining Belief in the Supernatural”, in J.Schloss and M.Murray, ed. The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion. (Oxford, 2009) p.136.

Today's video features Michael Ramsden of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

In today’s video, Michael Ramsden discusses the importance and meaning of mystery in the Bible. It does not come from ignorance, as the word is often used in modern times, but rather it is mystery born out of insight and wonder, one that is informed by understanding the world around us. As Ramsden notes, Jesus’ use of children to describe the nature of faith isn’t meant to emphasize their ignorance, but rather their sense of trust for those who love them. Likewise, we should not be afraid to search out answers, as if knowledge will lessen our faith in God. Rather we should trust that our explorations will only strengthen our understanding in Him.

Today's video features pastor Brian McLaren and is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

In today's video, Brian McLaren discusses the value of considering Scripture in light of the cultures that surrounded them. The Biblical writers were aware of the myths of the power nations that surrounded them, but flipped their stories on their heads to reveal truth about God. The myths of cultures like Babylon declared that the world was built on a foundation of violence and humans meant to be slaves to the gods and their leaders, but the Bible tells that the world comes from goodness and that humans are made for more than servitude but to truly know God.

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon can be downloaded here.

In tracing the story of the Bible, Dr. Keller’s previous sermons examined the early chapters of Genesis, which relate the events that lead to humanity’s fall from right relationship with God. Currently, he is exploring God’s redemption of the human brokenness in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. This particular message focuses on chapter two where the Apostle Paul exposes the hypocrisy of Law-observing Jews: while they judged Gentiles by the standard of the Law, they themselves failed to fulfill its requirements. He also asserts that outward performance of the Law by no means exempts them from God’s judgment or from the disease of Sin, which entered the human heart at the Fall. Keller affirms, therefore, that all are in need of a “regenerate new heart” through Jesus Christ, who perfectly fulfilled the requirements of the Law and who alone is able to accomplish this transformation through the power of his cross.

Paul’s message first illuminates what Keller identifies as the failure of religion. The church in Rome no doubt consisted of both Gentiles and Jews. With this in mind, Paul speaks to both groups. Up to this point, Paul has been highlighting the idolatry of the Gentiles. He then reorients his focus in Romans 2 to address the Jews, who were likely to stand in judgment of their gentile brothers and sisters because of the Jewish Law. He declares in verse one, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Keller explains that this statement exposes the hypocrisy of the religious who look to observance of an outward behavioral code for justification rather than to grace through Jesus, which leads to an inward observance of the Law. For example, although Law observers did not bow before physical graven images as the Gentiles did before faith in Christ, idols occupied their hearts. These inner idols, for both the religious Jews and present Christians, could take the form of power, career, achievement, etc. All in all, Paul demonstrates that religion fails since neither the moral nor the immoral person is perfect by God’s standards. Dr. Keller sums up this point nicely with this statement: “I’m not okay, you’re not ok.” There is not one person who measures up to the standard of the Law of God, and not one person, therefore, has a right to pass judgment according to it.

Dr. Keller then discusses why no one can measure up to the terrible beauty of God’s Law “no matter how good” one’s actions may be. Primarily, it is because the standard is not focused on performing the right deeds. Rather, the major sins described by Paul in Romans 1 include greed, insolence, heartlessness, etc. Although actions accompany such characteristics, they begin as inner attitudes of the heart. Often people read God’s ordinances at the behavioral level, as the religious Jewish people did, in an attempt to justify themselves as a moral person, but God’s requirements are much more demanding. This is revealed in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, for example, when he examines the Ten Commandments. He says in Matthew 5: 21-22 (NIV), “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that…anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court.” In using the Hebrew word ‘raca’ meaning ‘nobody,’ Jesus is revealing that the sin of murder is birthed from a heart that devalues another person who is infinitely valuable in God’s eyes. Simply put, the Law of God is after a certain type of person whose right actions flow from a right heart. For example, the Law points to a person so filled with God’s love that they not only refrain from murder, but rather treat others as royalty. Keller continues as he explains the impossibility of such a standard for a human being, yet the Law demands it. What is more, people will demand a similar standard of others. Keller also emphasizes the Day of Judgment. Because God is just, he will hold a person accountable to either the standard of grace or to the standard that one person required of another. No person is perfect, and therefore, none will be able to stand in either God’s judgment or the judgment of their own heart. This creates the need for a transformed heart as Dr. Keller expounds in the final point of this passage.

In the last verses of Romans 2, the Apostle Paul relates the “failure of religion because of the terrible beauty of the Law” to the need for a regenerate heart. This is only possible through the circumcision of the heart in Christ by the Holy Spirit. Keller first explains the significance of circumcision. Circumcision was a physical distinction between the pagan cultures and the Jewish people who were in covenant with the God of Israel. On a deeper level, this act symbolized the consequence of disobedience to the covenant first established between Abraham and God: one would be cut off from the covenantal relationship with God. As Dr. Keller explains, all people have fallen short of the Law. For this reason, God sent Jesus, his son, to fulfill the requirements of the Law. He then died on the cross to receive upon himself the consequence of death that all deserved. Therefore, Paul argues that it is no longer one who receives physical circumcision who is saved, but one who receives the circumcision of the Spirit in Christ. Romans 2:28 (NIV) establishes this point saying, “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.” Finally, Dr. Keller explains the significance of the Old Testament Law: the perfect standard describes not a moral code, but our Savior Jesus Christ. Ultimately, one seeks to obey the beautiful Law which Jesus embodied, yet one receives grace in the times of failure, confident that Christ has indeed paid it all.

The early chapters of Genesis appear to pose scientific problems that challenge our literal, post-Enlightenment lens through which we often read the Word of God. (See this post for a commentary on how this situation came about.) This leads many people to believe that the descriptions in these texts are meant to reveal more than raw scientific fact. Pete Shaw of Crosswalk Community Church highlights the story of Noah and the Ark to explore the possible reasons for adopting a non-literal understanding of this ancient narrative. Shaw first summarizes the story of Upnashatim in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a famous Sumerian flood story that the young and old in Abraham’s day would have known well. Upon comparison, these two accounts—the Genesis flood and the Gilgamesh flood—are incredibly similar. Furthermore, Shaw exposes the various practical problems that arise if one takes every word of the Noah story to be a precise truth. For example, he wonders how Noah could have fed and maintained every living land creature in a small boat for ten months. He also explains how a primitive understanding of the universe is heavily reflected in this text. In light of these points, he concludes that whether or not this story is portraying actual historical events, it is presenting rich truths about God, and that should be the focus of the believer.

Transcript

“The first eleven chapters of Genesis are what scholars call pre-history. In other words, they can’t really date what was going on very well in those first elven chapters. After that, twelfth chapter on, it is a lot easier to date, and the stories have a different feel, a different structure… but those first eleven have caused a lot of debate over the years. In fact, the next slide is going to kind of give you the line of where I am going to take you today. You might not be aware of this, but there is a Noah controversy. You and I, when we hear the story of a great flood, the first thing that comes to our mind—when we think of the whopper of all whoppers—we think of Noah and the Ark, but if we lived in Abraham’s time or especially before, the name Noah probably would not have come up. In fact, if we grew up with Abraham, the story we would have most likely known about was the story—I am going to butcher this name—of Utnapishtim.

You are familiar with Utnapishtim aren’t you? And you are familiar with the god Enlil. I am sure you are familiar with Enlil. And you would have been very aware of a storybook that was read by children and adults alike called the Epic of Gilgamesh. And in the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, we have the story of Utnapishtim and the god Enlil. And just so that you would know about that story a little bit, knowing that that would have been the predominant story that you would have understood anytime you thought about a flood, this is how the story went down. So, this god Enlil was the god of thunder and rain and all that and he was not a happy camper (kind of temperamental) as thunder gods can be. And for no clear reason, except to mess around with some of the other gods in his discontent, he made the decision that he was going to wipe out the earth with a great flood. And one of the other gods, a goddess in fact, did not like that this was going to happen and thought that it was unfair, unjust, and so she sent a message to Utnapishtim that this flood was going to come at the hand and the wrath of Enlil. And so Utnapishtim got to work, and he built a vessel (a strange vessel), a cube, but he used some of the similar materials that we saw in the Ark, and he made this massive structure (if in fact you do the math, it is probably at least twice, if not much larger, than the actual Ark) this massive cube that he made hoping that it would float, and he got it done on time.

The rain didn’t come down for forty days, it came down just for seven, but it flooded everything out, and the only survivor was Utnapishtim. And when Enlil came around and saw that some human beings had survived, he was very upset because he intended to wipe out everybody to show his wrath and his anger to the world and to show that he was upset to all the gods in heaven. Well, Utnapishtim obviously saved his own life, the life of his family, the life of his personal animals because those are the animals that he saved—not the rest of the animals of the world. And he took some carpenters along because he didn’t know how to build stuff and once you are starting over you have got to build stuff, and so he brought some carpenters along. In honor of his faithfulness (in light of this word from the goddess) he was given divinity. And so, he became a god, he became one of the gods, he got to reside in heaven, if you will, because of his faithfulness…interesting story.

If you grew up in Sumer, which is present day Iraq, and you grew up with Abraham in what is present day Baghdad that would have been the story that you would have known very, very well. It is because that story exists and other cultures have their own flood stories as well that some scholars look at the story of Noah and the Ark, and they think, ‘well, gee, how should we really interpret this thing? You know, our Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment perspective says it is in black and white, and if it says that is what happened, then that is exactly what happened. There is no way around it.’ Well, what if the first people who shared this story with each other and what if the early writers of this word, what if when they approached the Bible, they didn’t approach it the way we do? What if they didn’t approach the Bible, the Word of God, as a literal, this is exactly how it happened book that our post- Enlightenment eyes are framed to do? How would that change us? And also, some of the things that some of the challengers of this story are bringing out are some of the issues with the story like ok is this really a big enough boat to handle all of the creatures of creation…can they really, really fit?

Some have really tried to make a case that there weren’t as many animals back then as there are now because they got together and hooked up, and now, we have all kinds of varieties and that kind of thing. And so that is kind of there, but you are talking ten months of time! How do you feed all the animals of the world? How do you store all the food? Did they eat fish, because the fish didn’t die? The fish lived on just fine. How do you do that? And what about—it is kind of unpleasant—but all the excrement? What are you going to do with all that ‘bleep?’ Are you going to throw it out the eighteen inch window at the top? Did they have a conveyor belt system? How did it work? And so they look at that and think, ‘I am just not sure about that.’ Would you really take that literally? Is that how we should take it? Is that how they took it around their campfires and around their dinner tables? Did they think about it that way?

And there are other issues too that academics look at, and they challenge somewhat. Like they know that forty days and forty nights is a proverbial statement in Jewish culture. It was like saying (and you see it in many accounts in the Bible), forty days and forty nights was saying a long time, but it probably was not meant to be taken literally. It is just a long time. It is how they thought about things. Then, there is the issue of the rain itself, and how it all came down. Now, the New Living Translation and most modern translations, just simply talk about it as--there is the sky and the rain came down from the sky and you are good to go. But there is another word that is used. If you go to the New King James Bible, for instance, and they talk about the firmament—that the rain came down from the firmament. And so, when we think about firmament, we think, ‘well they are talking about sky or they are talking about the starry host and all that stuff,’ but if we go back to the original word, which the New American Standard version got right (it is one of the most academic and precise versions that is out there), both in the creation story and in the Noah account, they use a different word for sky: they use the word dome.

Now, I am going to butcher this a little bit, but broad stroke version is that the way the ancient people saw the world was that we kind of lived in this bubble, you know sort of like a snow globe, and there was water--not all inside, but outside, surrounding us. There was water below and there was water above, and above us was this massive dome called the firmament or called the sky. And then when it rained it was because God was opening up the floodgates of heaven. That is how they thought back then. They didn’t know any better. And so, kind of what these questions are asking us now is how we make sense of this and do we have to believe like they did in order to believe the story. How many of you believe that the sun revolves around the earth? None! Nobody does. Do you get mad at, do any of you hold a grudge against the earliest people in the Bible, actually, all the people in the Bible, do you hold them accountable and are you angry at them that they believed with everything in them that the sun revolved around the earth and not the other way around?... no, of course not. Do you get angry at them because they believed we lived in a dome and that God opened up the gates of heaven and there you go? No, you don’t hold it against them because you understand that it is the best that they could do given their time.

But we live in the age of Doppler radar, right? We know within minutes, you know, when rain is going to hit Napa and when it is going to move on to Valeo, and so on and so forth. I mean it is that precise, and we know when it is coming hundreds of miles off shore and we can look thousands of miles because of satellite stuff and our ability to understand temperatures and all that. We know how the whole thing is brewing. We know that hurricanes are lining up one after the other in hurricane season because we have cameras up there that are seeing them start to form, and we can gauge temperature in the water and so forth—we do not live back then. So, it would be inappropriate for us to become primitive in the sense of looking at the world the same way they did in that kind of a literalness because we know different, you know what I mean? We know different. And so really the bottom line is that the literalness of the story really isn’t the most important thing to begin with anyway.”

A few editorial reflective thoughts by Darrel Falk: The sermon continues, of course, and you can download it at the above link. What is "the most important thing" to which Pastor Shaw refers as the audio clip draws to a close? Regardless of whether you think it is historical or not, what is the message that God wants to communicate to us through this story? Consider reading Genesis 9 right now. What are the parallels in this "recreation"account to the original creation account? What does God want us to see in making those parallels? What about the rainbow? What does it symbolize for you? Can you sense God's love for all of creation (not just humankind) as this story draws to a close? Why does the story of Noah himself, however, not have a happier ending? Have we seen the theme of nakedness and the need to cover up nakedness in an earlier scriptural passage? Why do you think the story of Noah draws us back to this point (nakedness and shame), just like the story Adam and Eve does? What brought on shame for them? What brings on shame for us? Do you see that God is wanting us to think deeply about this story and its meaning? What is another example of the need to cover up? (Hint: think Moses.) What difference does the coming of Jesus make to all of this? (Hint: see II Corinthians 3:12-18.) Do you see the rainbow?]]> Sat, 12 Nov 11 04:00:15 -0800 Pete Shaw http://biologos.org/blog/confidence-and-slippery-slopes?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/confidence-and-slippery-slopes?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In today’s video, Pastor Brian McClaren notes that the metaphor "slippery slopes" is problematic, because we often assume that we are on the top of the slope to begin with, when in fact changing our views may help us ascend the slope, or to reach a new peak of understanding on the other side. Today's video is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

In today’s video, Pastor Brian McClaren discusses the idea of the “slippery slope”. As he notes, the metaphor itself is problematic, because we often assume that we are on the top of the slope to begin with, when in fact changing our views may help us ascend the slope, or to reach a new peak of understanding on the other side.

He also notes two dangers that face the science and faith dialogue. On one side is excessive confidence, when we are so sure of being right that we refuse to consider other ideas. But being too afraid of excessive confidence can lead to an insufficient confidence, where we feel incapable of knowing anything for sure. McClaren proposes that what Christians need, rather, is proper confidence, the confidence that we are moving ahead yet still willing to learn. This, he says, is what it means to be a disciple: to be interested in the truth and always learning, but always willing to be pensive again rather than set in our current knowledge.

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon, which we highly recommend can be purchased from Redeemer’s sermon store. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

In the Garden of Eden, Eve is tempted to put her own desires ahead of God’s call for her life. The serpent tells her that if she eats of the fruit she can become like God: she, in essence, can become the master of her own fate. Similarly, as the New Testament begins, Satan comes to Jesus and tempts him in three different ways to become centered in self, rather than centered in the Father. Finally, Paul begins his great treatise, his letter to the Christians in Rome, with the same thought. We all, like Eve, but not like Jesus, have tasted of the fruit, and Dr. Keller in his penetrating style expounds.

This week’s sermon continues to evaluate the heart of humanity, which first is revealed in Genesis, and later is expounded upon in Romans 1: 18-32. The Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome presents a clear picture of both God’s revelation in the world, and humankind’s suppression of the truth. Exploring the message of Paul, Dr. Keller reveals that within each heart is the knowledge of our God, the factory of our idols, the hardening of our humanity, and the capacity for endless praise.

Foremost, the knowledge of God resides deep in the soul, but humans continually suppress this truth. It is the knowledge that God is Creator to whom all are completely accountable and on whom all are forever reliant. However, as Paul reflects on humanity in Romans 1: 21 (NASB), he claims that “though they [people] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks…” Dr. Keller explains that an unthankful heart is not merely bad etiquette; it generates the false reality of self-sufficiency and fails to recognize utter dependence on God for all things. Our sinful nature desires to maintain control, but true acknowledgment of God demands that we submit to his will rather than our own. Keller further makes the point that many people can believe in an impersonal God who gives all a free pass into heaven, but very few people wish to believe in the relational God of the Bible who demands all of their soul. For this reason, people suppress the truth about God and withhold his praise.

Inevitably, this act of turning away from the truth of God leads to the manufacturing of idols within the heart as one begins to worship a created thing rather than the Creator. Dr. Keller explains that people are “telic,” which means that they “need to live for something.” There is something in every person’s life that holds their worth, hope, and allegiance. If this something or someone is not the living person of Jesus Christ, one will be enslaved to idols. From wealth to marriage to morality, the Apostle Paul makes it clear throughout all his letters that these idols may take numerous forms. For example, he says in Romans 1:23 (NASB) that they “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures..” The stark reality is this: God deserves all of our love and all else is futile worship of idols.

Next, the sermon explores how the worship of idols causes the heart to harden. Dr. Keller explains how idolization will ultimately strip a person of his or her humanity. In speaking about this very thing, the writer proclaims the truth in Psalm 135 (NASB) that idols are “the work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear…Those who make them will be like them, Yes, everyone who trusts in them.” It is apparent from this verse that an idol will consume the heart’s desire. In this place, the person’s will becomes utterly subject to the object and conformed to its dead image, rather than conformed to the image of the living God.

Lastly, Dr. Keller illuminates the remedy for all the perpetual idols in our hearts. He affirms that in order to stop worshipping these idols, one must do as the angels do in heaven: endlessly praise and worship God. He then references 1 Peter 1: 10- 12, which describes how angels long to look into the things concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, Dr. Keller explains, the angels deeply desire to gaze upon the beauty of what Christ has done for all humanity by his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. When we too see Jesus and glorify him as the One who gave it all for us, we will finally be saved from the destructive power of idols.

The ordained and blessed tradition of marriage is established in Genesis 2: 18-25. This passage communicates important ideas, Dr. Keller affirms, about both marriage seeking and marriage executing. When considered, these concepts will allow one to be successful in both areas.

Foremost, Adam’s response to his wife highlights marriage’s potential to be idolatrous. When God presents all other creatures before Adam in the garden, not one is considered to be a suitable helper. Therefore, the Lord creates Eve from the rib of Adam and brings her to him. Upon seeing the woman, Adam exclaims in verse 23, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Adam is expressing, in effect, that he has found at last the helpmate he longed for—by discovering Eve, he is finding himself. Marriage, then, is so fulfilling that there is a danger of idolization of one’s partner. Often, the temptation is to receive love, affirmation, respect, and even a foundation in life from their spouse, rather than from God—the very source of all these things. However, no human relationship “can bear the weight of those expectations,” and the marriage will be crushed. In addition, there is a tendency for unmarried persons to commit idolatry when they either yearn for marriage to complete them or search for that “perfect” marriage partner. God alone can meet these desires for perfection and wholeness. The problem, then, is not in loving one’s spouse too much or in wanting a blissful marriage, but in the smallness of one’s love for God in proportion to the other.

Next, God’s identification of Eve as Adam’s helper reveals the long-enduring patience that marriage requires. This word helper is often used to refer to military reinforcements throughout the Bible. The man and the woman as a couple bring to each other a strength that is not had by either of them as individuals. However, they are not just helpers, but suitable helpers. The word suitable in the Hebrew, Dr. Keller explains, is closely translated to mean ‘like opposite.’ In other words, the woman is like him, yet not him. Like two puzzle pieces, Dr. Keller says, God designed male and female as perfect complements to one another. Thus, marriage involves two people coming together with equal, but distinct strengths, and they enter into a tight relationship. So close is this communion that it is described as becoming “one flesh” in Scripture. In this closeness, necessary “head-butting” occurs as the spouses are challenged by one another to become the persons God made them to be. For this reason, it is essential to have the patience to bear with one another throughout this long journey of growth in life.

Then, there is a supernatural humility in the idea of marriage as conveyed by Genesis 2: 18(NASB) when God says, “‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’” Although Adam is in Paradise with God himself, God seems to indicate that Adam is lonely. According to Dr. Keller, the only explanation is that God specifically made Adam to need someone else in addition to himself. This is the most humble, unselfish act one could imagine—that the God of the universe would make people to need others as well.

As Dr. Keller concludes his sermon, he discusses how marriage portrays the relationship God seeks with his people—God as the bridegroom and his people as the bride. It is essential to understand that God desires to be the intimate helpmate to every person, even their spouse who is faithfully committed to their growth. Without God, one will never become who he or she was created to be. In claiming to be his people’s husband, as in Isaiah and Jeremiah, God is saying, “I have given you my heart.” For this reason, God sent his only son, Jesus Christ: to win back the heart of his wayward bride. Therefore, those who accept his love and put on the wedding ring of faith inherit all that is found in Christ. Ultimately, the Bible begins with a wedding, and it ends with a wedding—the marriage supper of the Lamb that will fill the world with the children of God.

Last week we debuted the first clip from the documentary “From the Dust”, directed by filmmaker Ryan Pettey. It is our sincere hope that, above all else, the film can become a focal point for some of the big questions that inevitably arise at the intersection of science and faith.

To help foster such dialogue, we are including several discussion questions with each clip from the film. In the transcript below, you’ll find several prompts that are meant to help viewers dig deeper into the material being presented. Mouse over each highlighted region and a question will appear on the side. We encourage you to watch this video with your friends, your church, your small groups and Sunday School classes, your pastors -- or anyone else for that matter – and take some time to discuss what is being said (and maybe even what isn’t). You may not all agree, but you will find yourselves engaged in fruitful and spirited conversation. And it is this kind of conversation that will help move the science and faith discussion forward. We have more discussion questions that go with this transcript and we'd be happy to send them to you to foster further conversation within your church or small group setting.

Editor's Note: The full documentary is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. You can order the film here, and learn more about the project here.

"The Book of Genesis" Transcript

Dr. Alister McGrath: “The Christian church has always wrestled with the interpretation of Scripture, realizing both how important it is and also sometimes how difficult it is to get it right. Certainly, the opening chapters of Genesis have been a topic of much debate throughout Christian history.”

Dr. John Polkinghorne: “The Bible is very important to me, but it is very important to recognize that the Bible is not a book. The Bible is a library. It has all sorts of different kinds of writing in it—It has histories, it has stories, it has poetry, it has prose. When we read Genesis one, we have to figure out, what am I reading? Am I reading a divinely dictated textbook to save me the trouble of doing science, or am I reading something, in fact, more interesting and profound than that?”

Dr. John Walton: “We have to approach Genesis 1 for what it is. It is an ancient document. It is not a document that was written to us—we believe the Bible was written for us like it is for everyone of all times and places because it is God’s Word—but it was not written to us. It was not written in our language. It was not written with our culture in mind or our culture in view.”

Dr. Alister McGrath: “It is not about the authority of Scripture, it is about the interpretation of Scripture. What method of interpretation do I use in the case of each individual passage?”

Dr. Karen Strand Winslow: “Biblical scholars urge people to take a literal, plain reading of the text…but I think in the controversy between theology and science, literal is often used to mean scientific, as if it is scientific, and that is a whole different story.”

Dr. John Walton: “We are inclined by our culture to think of the creation narrative as an account of material origins because we think about the world in material terms. For us, that is kind of what is important about origins. People come to Scripture thinking that they need to integrate it with science and so, they want to either read science out of the Bible or they want to read science into the Bible. That is not the way to do it because inevitably you end up making the text say things that it never meant to the ancient audience.”

Dr. Chris Tilling: “We are importing meaning into the text; we are bringing our own presuppositions and assumptions into a text and reading it in light of that as if it were in the text. Now, there is a sense in which we all inevitably do that, but there is also a sense in which we need to be aware when the times that we do that are damaging to the reading of the text.”

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “When I was a kid and the film industry was still relatively new, it was possible to depict people from two centuries ago as modern Americans dressed up in togas. As the film industry has gotten more sophisticated, they have gotten better and better at creating human figures that actually look and behave and think as they probably would have in the past. So, we Bible readers ought to be equally sophisticated and recognize that someone who was writing three thousand years ago, which is very hard to imagine, that these people must have been very different from us, with very different concerns. They certainly had very different understandings about how material things worked.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “One of the benefits of understanding the historical circumstances of the Bible is that we are reminded of how incredibly old this literature is. Let’s understand it in view of what we could even remotely expect of the Biblical writers to say.”

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “We can understand what our own creation stories are saying better, if we know what the creation myths were that were known at the times that those stories were written—for instance, to realize that a lot of the Genesis stories were written as a counter measure against the other cultures’ creation stories. That throws an immense amount of light on what parts of the story we are supposed to be paying attention to.”

Dr. Chris Tilling: “The Gilgamesh epic, for example, has a flood narrative and so forth, and so it wants to reflect creatively and theologically in light of those creation myths; it is going to be something recognizable.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “Genesis one shares theological vocabulary with the other stories—it just sort of takes things and turns it on its head.”

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “If one creation myth talks about the earth being created as a result of the battle between gods, we know to look in our creation stories to say, ‘wait a minute! Is violence intrinsic to the very creation of the universe?’ We find very clearly written that no, it is not.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “It’s Israel’s declaration that Yahweh is worthy of worship. It is a potent and counter-intuitive theological statement in the ancient world where people say, ‘That is totally different from anything we have ever seen.’”

Dr. John Polkinghorne: “The stories of the ancient world were not so concerned with minute, literal accuracy as we are today. People wrote not to give you sort of a factual, journalistic account of what is going on, but to tell you the significance of what was happening.”

Dr. Ard Louis: “And so what we see is that there are these really interesting structures in the Genesis text, which suggest that it is not describing the creation process as this is the order in which it happened. Rather, it is taking that story and emphasizing theological points. It talks about days; there was morning, there was evening—but the sun and the moon are not created until the fourth day. So why, for example, did the writer of Genesis put the sun and the moon on the fourth day? It is a very strange thing to do, and it is not as if it is only moderns who realize ‘Oh dear! Something is wrong.’ People at any time of history would have realized that that was an unusual way of writing down a journalistic account. And, of course, the reason most likely is that people of that day worshipped the sun and the moon, and the Israelites were always being drawn away that way, and the people around them were doing that. And so, what the writer was saying is, ‘no, I am going to demote these things to the fourth day. They are not the first thing to be created; they are something to be created somewhat later.’”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “This is simply the sort of language that people use to refer to concrete events, but to invest those events with their theological significance.”

Dr. John Walton: “We are well aware that people have to translate the language for us. We forget that people have to translate the culture for us, and therefore, if we want to get the best benefit from the communication, we need to try to enter their world, hear it as the audience would have heard it, as the author would have meant it, and to read it in those terms.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “There is a distinction which is there in Scripture between heaven and earth. But the thing about heaven and earth is that they are supposed to overlap, and have an interesting, interlocking, interplay with one another. They are never supposed to be far apart.”

Dr. John Walton: “In the ancient world, they didn’t have a line between supernatural and natural. God was in everything. You couldn’t talk about God intervening because you can’t intervene in something you are doing—and to them, God was doing it all. That kind of functional aspect was very important to them.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “In Genesis, God makes heavens and earth, and it appears that humans are in the world, but God is around as well because the heavens and earth have not split apart.”

Dr. John Walton: “The temple and the cosmos were all blended into one. If we used a modern metaphor it would almost be like the temple was the oval office. It is kind of where all the business is done, where all the work is run. It is the hub of activity and control, and when Deity took up his rest in the temple, it wasn’t for leisure or relaxation…it was to settle down to the work now that everything is set up and ready to go.”

Bishop N. T. Wright: “Telling a story about somebody who constructs something in six days, it is a temple story. It is about God making a place for himself to dwell…and this is heaven and earth. What you do with that is, the last thing is you put an image of this God into the temple. Suddenly, instead of Genesis one being about ‘were there six days or were there five or were there seven or were there twenty-four hours…,’ it is actually about when the good Creator God made the world, he made heaven and earth as the space in which he himself was going to dwell and put in humans into that construct as a way of both reflecting his own love into the world and drawing out the praise and glory from the world, back to himself. That is the literal meaning of Genesis. To flatten that out into, ‘this is simply telling us that the world was made in six days’ is almost perversely to avoid the real thrust of the narrative.”

Michael Ramsden: “If this is an inspired book, if this really is, you know, something where God is revealed and can speak through it, it shouldn’t surprise us that we find multiple layers of depth.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “Genesis is one of those books like a Shakespeare play or like a Beethoven symphony or something where you can describe what it sort of literally says. Here is a Beethoven symphony; here are the notes, ‘Duh, duh, duh, duh.’ Then, you think, ‘well, that doesn’t actually catch what is going on in this’, and you want to use bigger language about the opening of Beethoven’s first symphony. This is an amazing statement about the power of empire and the fate of man…and goodness knows what! You still have got to play the notes. This world was made to be God’s abode, God’s home, God’s dwelling place. He shared it with us, and now he wants to rescue it and redeem it. We have to read Genesis for all it is worth. To say, either history or myth is a way of saying, ‘I am not going to study this text for what it is worth. I am just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask…and I think that is a form of actually being unfaithful to the text itself.”

Dr. John Walton: “The account in Genesis one is not intended to be an account of material origins. If that is so, then the Bible has no narrative of material origins, and if that is so, we don’t have to defend the Bible’s narrative of material origins against a scientific narrative because the Bible does not offer one. We can let the text be what it is and take it for what it is. That is the most literal reading that you could have.”

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon, which we highly recommend can be purchased from Redeemer’s sermon store. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

Genesis 2:2-17 places an interesting emphasis on work—not only does God work to bring about all creation, but also, man is called to the task of caring for God’s world. Dr. Keller believes this passage provides an important assumption, a purposeful direction, a resulting burden, and a necessary provision concerning the work.

First, because God is described as working, one can conclude that work reflects a significant aspect of God’s character. Therefore, when humans perform various tasks, they are reflecting the image of God. If working does indeed reflect his image, Dr. Keller states, then there is an intrinsic dignity to manual labor no matter what the occupation. This concept reveals the goodness of ordinary life. Whether simply gardening to produce food or cleaning a space to produce order, people are meant to rejoice in the responsibilities that daily life brings.

Then, Dr. Keller explains that the duty of humankind to care for God’s garden reveals the aim of all work. In order to garden properly, one must meddle with the natural state of things to bring about fruitfulness and prosperity. This may include clearing the ground to expose it to sunlight or trimming back plants to stimulate growth. The gardener cannot simply standby like a “park ranger” and let things freely develop—he or she must creatively order the garden in such a way that all plants thrive. In the same way, all work involves, as Dr. Keller puts it, “rearranging the raw material of a particular domain [in order] to draw out its potential for the flourishing of everyone.” He strengthens his point by applying this definition to the work of writing music. Music, he says, is created when the raw material of sound is structured in such a way that it brings meaning to human life. Overall, God has given all people the ability to express creative energy in the service of others, and that is the intended goal of work.

Next, the Genesis text reveals the burden of work. When the curse of the Fall came upon Adam and Eve, death entered the world. According to Dr. Keller, this is more than just a physical death that came to humanity. He compares the human condition to the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the universe is becoming more disordered) in order to demonstrate that people are falling apart physically, culturally, spiritually, vocationally, etc. People are constantly caught in the tension between their efforts to accomplish tasks and the unstoppable force of death that causes all things to degrade. Furthermore, he says that one can neither have a cynical view nor a romantic view of work. A person must recognize the goodness of work, yet keep in mind that it is still difficult and laborious. Although each person has a specific vocation through which to serve the world, he or she cannot always fulfill this calling because he or she must work to survive as well. This is the very heart of the frustration and burden of humanity’s calling to work in this fallen world.

Finally, in the midst of this struggle and tension, God has given humans this provision: rest. Genesis 2:3(NASB) puts forth the statement that, “…God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” The Bible shows that this rest has been given as a free gift to all people, and it is not a provision that needs to be earned. According to Dr. Keller, this gift is the rest of peace and the rest of hope. It is the rest of peace because Christ has offered his love that assures believers in their significance. People no longer have to bear the burden that somehow their performance in their job or career determines their value as a human being. Likewise, it is the rest of hope because believers will one day have the ability to realize their dreams—an invention, a painting, a novel—when God makes the new heavens and the new earth. Therefore, a Christian need not be dismayed by the broken dreams in their heart during this lifetime, for one day, those things too will be accomplished. Now, through Jesus Christ, all can enter into the deep peace that their soul so desires and find true rest in work.

ADDENDUM: Please note, although we do invite your comments as we explore the theological richness of God's word in the sermon series, the comments will be restricted to Christians who are genuinely seeking to enter into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God. Those who are not Christians but are seriously seeking to explore the Christian faith as a possibility for their own lives are also very welcome to raise questions and make comments. However, this will not be a place to belittle Christianity. We ask that our atheist friends respect our purpose here. We realize that you think Christianity is irrational and we are willing to engage the profound rationality of our faith, but this is not the place to discuss that with you.

Throughout history, all civilizations and peoples have operated under the assumption of a cosmography or picture of the universe. Cosmography is a technical term that means a theory that describes and maps the main features of the heavens and the earth. A Cosmography or “cosmic geography” can be a complex picture of the universe that includes elements like astronomy, geology, and geography; and those elements can include theological implications as well. We are most familiar with the historical change that science went through from a Ptolemaic cosmography of the earth at the center of the universe (geocentrism) to a Copernican cosmography of the sun at the center of a galaxy (heliocentrism).

Some mythologies maintained that the earth was a flat disc on the back of a giant turtle; animistic cultures believe that spirits inhabit natural objects and cause them to behave in certain ways; modern westerners believe in a space-time continuum where everything is relative to its frame of reference in relation to the speed of light. Ancients tended to believe that the gods caused the weather; moderns tend to believe that impersonal physical processes cause weather. All these different beliefs are elements of a cosmography or picture of what the universe is really like and how it operates. Even though “pre-scientific” cultures like the Hebrews did not have the same notions of science that we moderns have, they still observed the world around them and made interpretations as to the structure and operations of the universe. The Bible also contains a cosmography or picture of the universe that its stories inhabit.

I have said this before, and I will say it again: I am not a scientist, I am a professional storyteller, and so my interest in Biblical cosmography comes from my study of imagery, metaphor, and story. But a picture of the cosmos certainly has a bearing on scientific notions of the way the universe is and operates. Imagination and science are not completely unconnected. I am also a Christian who believes that the Bible is the Word of God. But does this mean that the Bible will have a cosmography that agrees with modern western science? I used to believe it did. I used to believe that if the Bible was scientifically errant in anyway, then it could not be the Word of God, since God would never communicate false information to us. That would make God a liar, or so I thought.

This led to the corollary that whatever modern science has proven would have to be in accord with the Bible’s own revelation. This is called “scientific concordism.” So, if we now know that the earth is a sphere and that the universe is expanding, then Scripture would not contradict that truth. What’s more, I might even be able to find a verse that would have that truth hidden it: Behold, I thought I found it: “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…who stretches out the heavens like a curtain” (Isa. 40:22). In this scientific concordist paradigm, the Bible contains veiled scientific truths before their time in a gnostic hiddenness that is uncovered by initiates into such mysteries.

Unfortunately, this paradigm would lead to much cognitive dissonance for me as I tortured the text to fit whatever scientific theory I was trying to support at the time. First, I accepted Genesis as literally explaining material creation chronology and relegated evolutionary scientists to dishonest manipulators of facts.¹ Then I tried to find dinosaurs in the Bible by interpreting the Leviathan or Behemoth as references to ichthyosaurs and sauropods.² Then I tried to make six literal days and young chronology of Creation in Genesis square symbolically with the seriously old age of the earth.³ Then I tried to creatively reconcile the billions of years of the Big Bang with 24-hour earth-bound solar days though gravity-warped space-time.⁴

I also thought that the best interpretation of the Bible was the “plain reading” of the text. That is, any interpretation that would turn the meaning into unwarranted figurative, symbolic, allegorical or metaphorical language would be disingenuous hermeneutics. I didn’t mean obvious figurative and allegorical language like parables of talking brambles and trees (Jud. 9:7-15) or clearly poetic expressions of singing mountains and clapping trees (Isa. 55:12). I meant that when the Bible talked about the physical order and events in heaven and earth it would mean just what it said since the Creator of the cosmos would know best what was actually happening.

But something started to seriously challenge these assumptions. First, as I studied the ancient Hebrew culture and its surrounding Near Eastern background, I began to see how very different a “plain reading” of a text was to them than a “plain reading” was to me.⁵ The ancient Hebrew mind was steeped in different symbols, ideas, and language than I was. If I read a phrase like “sun, moon and stars,” my western cultural understanding, which is deeply affected by a post-Galileo, post-Enlightened, materialist science would tend to read such references in terms of the physical bodies of matter, gas, and gravity spread out over vast light years of space-time. When ancient Israelites used that phrase, they would have pictures in their minds of markers and signs (Gen. 1:14), and more personal objects like pagan gods (Deut. 4:19), heavenly beings (1 Kg. 22:19), symbolic influential leaders (Gen. 37:9), or the fall of governing powers (Isa. 13:10).⁶

An ancient Jew hearing the words leviathan and sea conjured up notions of a disordered world without Yahweh’s rule, and Yahweh’s covenant creation out of chaos.⁷ Whereas for me, hearing those words makes me think of a monster fish swimming in the ocean – or maybe Moby Dick, a symbol of man’s hubris – but primarily the physical material being of those objects. It is easier to see now that my plain reading of the text through my modern western worldview could completely miss the plain meaning that the Scripture would have to an ancient Israelite. My so-called act of “plain reading” was ironically an imposition of my own cultural bias onto the text removed by thousands of years, thousands of miles, and thousands of cultural motifs.⁸ We must seek the “plain reading” of the ancient authors and their audience, and in this way we can be “diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Something else had always haunted me like a nagging pebble in the shoe of my mind, and that was the Galileo affair. We’ll look more at this in my next post.

Notes

1. I never believed they were all lying, but many were certainly blinded by their worldview bias. I still believe that some scientists do in fact lie, cheat, and manipulate facts and studies just as in every other discipline because they are human like everyone else and can be just as driven by political and personal agenda as everyone else. A good book that documents this is Betrayers Of The Truth: Fraud And Deceit In The Halls Of Science By Nicholas Wade William Broad (Ebury Press, 1983); Michael Fumento is a science journalist who reports on current scientific fraud and its widespread economic and political effects at www.fumento.com.
2. Scientific Creationism by Henry M. Morris (Master Books, 1974, 1985) is an example of this viewpoint.
3. Creation and Time: A Biblical and Scientific Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy by Hugh Ross (NavPress, 1994) is an example of this viewpoint.
4. Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery Of Harmony Between Modern Science And The Bible by Gerald Schroeder (Bantam, 1990) is an example of this viewpoint.
5. The seminal book that opened the door for me to a better understanding of this ANE cultural context of the Bible was John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006).
6. “The worship of the host of heaven [was] often set in parallelism to the worship of foreign gods (Deut 17:3; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3; 23:4–5; Jer 19:13; Zeph 1:4–5).” K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible DDD, 2nd extensively rev. ed., 429 (Leiden; Boston; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 429.
7. Brian Godawa, “Biblical Creation and Storytelling: Cosmogony, Combat and Covenant,” The BioLogos Foundation.
8. Othmar Keel’s The Symbolism of the Biblical World (Eisenbrauns) is an encyclopedia of imagery and motifs that Israel shared with her ANE neighbors that are quite alien to our thinking.

First, I wholeheartedly believe that God planned and created the world. I am persuaded that the Creator has left clear “fingerprints” of His creativity for all to see as shown especially in Meyer’s Signature in the Cell and Behe’s The Edge of Evolution.…To me Meyer’s points seem pretty convincing therefore I am having a hard time with this.

Second, as I see it, many people believe in evolution because they are led to believe that “science assures them it is so,” but they tend to rest in that belief, even when counter-evidence is presented, because they feel they’ve been liberated from moral accountability to God, and don’t want to give up that liberty.

The two points seem wise in their simplicity. The first, in essence, is that the science of evolutionary biology is flawed. When done correctly, as it is by leaders of the Intelligent Design Movement, he believes science unambiguously demonstrates the existence of an external intelligence. The second, in essence, is that apostates seek an excuse to do as they please with no accountability. Belief in evolution provides that justification and so it is protected by those who want to live life on their terms and not God’s.

On the surface this makes perfect sense. Clearly the letter writer is a wise person who is very good at getting to the heart of an argument. But is he right, and if he is not, are there consequences?

It is true that Stephen Meyer’s points in Signature in the Cell are written in a manner that make them “seem pretty convincing.” However, we have devoted much space here to demonstrate that his science is fundamentally flawed. We, like Steve and Michael Behe, are followers of Jesus, so we must not take criticizing our brothers lightly, especially when it is carried out in the public sphere. However, the scientists who are doing the work they describe consider their depiction of the research scientifically naïve and we, with full respect for each of them as persons, are convinced of this too. Christians are mistaken if they build their faith around the science of a tiny group of scientific rebels who specialize in telling them what they long to hear. Christians need not try to overturn the scientific applecart. Many believers find much fulfillment in examining its contents and rejoicing in the beauty it reveals. A Christian world-view is what makes the apples sparkle, and it certainly does not require that we turn the cart upside down.

With regard to the second point our letter-writer makes, as I see it he is correct in one respect, but wrong in another. It is true that “belief in evolution” is used by some to prop up their desire to live life their way and not God’s. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, they are looking for an excuse to become—as the serpent put it to Eve—“like God,” and to be masters of their own fate. The perception that evolution is incompatible with Christianity does provide many with what seems to be the perfect excuse. They do indeed use that excuse to prop up their non-Christian lifestyle. However, the crutch they use to support their rejection of the Christian life is not belief in evolution itself, but rather that Christianity and evolution are incompatible. That is the crutch. Our letter-writer chooses to focus on disproving evolutionary theory and he thinks by doing so he is removing the crutch. We in the BioLogos community choose to remove the crutch itself. Evangelical Christianity and evolution are compatible and by demonstrating this, the crutch is removed.

Still the letter-writer and I agree on one important matter. The perception that evolution is inconsistent with Christian theology is a crutch used by many to justify their rebellion against God. Where does this crutch come from, however? Who manufactures this crutch? If the crutch is simply the proposition that evolution and real Christianity are incompatible, where did that idea come from? Did it not come from us? Many Christians have been telling non-believers that belief in evolution is inconsistent with real Christianity. So if non-believers are looking for an excuse to justify their apostate lifestyle—and they are—Christians have played right into their hand, by passing them the crutch they are seeking. If evolution is true, they hear many Christians say, theology falls apart. If evolution is true, they hear many Christians say, the Bible is untrustworthy. Many evangelical Christians have poured their financial resources into the construction of organizations dedicated to building crutches for non-believers. I think that selling the principle that if evolution is true Christianity fails, is profoundly harmful. Heaven forbid that we Christians should be creating the very crutch that non-believers long to have, but I think that is precisely what we are doing. All of science makes it abundantly clear that evolution has taken place. People everywhere are looking for crutches that will allow them to follow in Eve’s footsteps. And what do we Christians do? We pass them a crutch. Unwittingly, it is almost as though we give them license to conclude: “If evolution is true, God’s Word is a lie, and I am free to do anything I want.” God help us!

So providing the crutch for non-believers to lean on is a well-intentioned strategic error that has no benefit and likely does much harm. However, I am even more concerned about something else related to our construction of these crutches. We teach our Christian young people about the importance of the crutch. We spend years giving them all the details of why a meaningful Christian life stands or falls on this crutch. Real Christianity, we tell our young people, hinges on the perception that evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Young people learn every intimate detail of why this crutch is so essential to their walk with God. The next thing we know is that Christian young people are leaning on the crutch too—just like the apostates. Meaningful Christianity stands or falls—we tell them—on the falseness of evolution.

Then we send them off to university.

There they watch as their professors show them that all that they have been told about evolution is a caricature of what is really known. Step by step, they are shown why almost all biology scholars have concluded that evolution has occurred. With that, the very crutch that had been used to prop up their Christian faith as teenagers (the perception that real Christianity and evolution are incompatible), becomes the exact tool that Satan needs as he comes along with his words first posed in the story of the Garden: “You don’t need God.” “You can live life your way. “ “Do whatever feels good.” “Did God really say…?” “ Is there really a God who holds you accountable anyway?”

With that, the crutch they learned to lean on as young people now becomes a prop for a different life. It holds up their new unbelief as they embark upon the life of the prodigal son or prodigal daughter. All we can do is hope and pray that they come back into the loving arms of the waiting Father having thrown away the prop that we, heaven forbid, constructed according to our own well-reasoned, good-intentioned, but-oh-so-unfortunate and oh-so-misguided ways.

I pray for the day when all Christians will throw away this crutch. I don’t mean that I’m praying they will come to accept that God created through evolution. Most people are not scientists and they are too busy doing other important things to explore the science. What I do pray for, though, is that we will stop portraying that belief in evolution is not consistent with biblical Christianity. This proposition is exactly what gives atheists the excuse they are looking for, and this far-too-human proposition ought not be propping up young people’s walk with God.

We don’t need props based on one view of how to interpret Genesis 1-3. What we need is Jesus. In Christ alone, our hope is found. He is our light, our strength, our song. He alone is our Cornerstone and the Solid Rock on which we stand. He holds us firm through fiercest doubt sand ferocious storms. Let’s throw away the crutches and let’s stop making new ones.

My Christian brother ended his letter with these words, “I think it will be hard to sustain that evolution and creation are compatible.” This is a personal statement and I appreciate the careful attention he has given to this matter. Still, I hope and pray that his view on this subject will be less prevalent, so that non-believers will no longer use it as their excuse for living life their way and not God’s. And I hope and pray that children and young people won’t be made to feel that the choice is between his view and a life of apostasy.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In Christ alone, we put our hope. The question of whether creation and evolution are compatible is another matter altogether. Regardless of how we each personally feel about that matter, let’s pray that it not be used as a crutch to support apostasy, or that which is deemed necessary to the vitality of a young person’s walk with Jesus.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user dmitri66