“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.

Genesis 8:1: But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; 2 the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, 3 and the waters gradually receded from the earth.

The Flood narrative of Genesis 7-9 has played a prominent role in science and religion debates for over three hundred years and gave rise in earlier centuries to geological theories such as old earth catastrophism. While literary studies have uncovered the chiastic structure of the Flood story (see Gordon Wenham, “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative” Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978):336-48) and with it the theological pivot point of the entire narrative (Gen. 8:1 – “And God remembered Noah…), much of the popular attention remains on the questions regarding details (Is there THAT much water in the world to cover ALL the mountains to a depth of 15 cubits? Could you really fit two or seven of every animal species in an ark that size?)

Looking at a smaller matter, we find at the beginning and the middle of the narrative indications of an ancient Near Eastern worldview. As the story is told, the flood was not merely the result of excessive rain, but actually the convergence of the waters above the earth with the waters below the earth. It is, as one translation puts it, as if the sluice gates at the deep and of the heavens were thrown open and water poured in from above and below. This is a consistent picture from the Old Testament of a three-tiered universe—a dome above the earth holding back the heavenly waters, a flat earth with water on its surface, and water under an earth which is held up by pillars.

That the story is told using the cosmology of its time should not be unduly unsettling, nor that the story is reinterpreted as new understandings of the universe come into favor. By way of example, consider John Calvin and his understanding of the structure of the universe. Although committed to the principle of sola Scriptura, Calvin recognized that the Bible would have been written in terms its original recipients would have understood.

Calvin inherited the medieval cosmology of his time, a way of viewing the world heavily influenced by Greek thought and one which was about to receive shocks from astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo. But not just yet. Calvin still subscribed to the common conception of his day in which the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—comprised the earthly sphere and possessed unique characteristics. The nature of air and fire was to rise, while the nature of earth and water is to sink. Earth, being heavier than water, should sink to the center of the cosmos and water should compose the next layer. Both earth and water are spherical, i.e., naturally form spherically around the cosmic center. Thus the heavier spherical element of earth should be encased entirely within the lighter spherical element of water.

Notice what this does to the flood story. For Calvin, the amazing thing is that the world isn’t constantly under water and subject to flooding. In the cosmology of Calvin’s day, it does not take an act of God to cause a universal flood, but rather an actively present and restraining hand of God to keep the waters back in everyday circumstances and make inundation by water something other than universal.

Obviously, Calvin was wrong. Or perhaps we should say that medieval cosmology was flawed and justifiably gave way to new conceptions of the universe. The answer is not to return to an ancient Near Eastern cosmology, but to reinterpret cautiously within new and better cosmologies and to pay closest attention to the text and the theology of scripture.

The geological and planetary sciences bring their own unique contributions and are of more interest than the latest expedition to discover the ark on Mt. Ararat. Is the flood story a universalization of a catastrophic regional event that burned itself into the psyche of ancient cultures in the Mediterranean basin? Various theories regarding a Black Sea venue for a catastrophic flood event are still in process of being sorted out. It’s intriguing. Or the question where the water on Planet Earth comes from? Was it always here as an emanation of vapors from the earth’s crust in its early formation, or has it accumulated over eons through the steady bombardment of earth by small, icy comets? It’s an intriguing scientific question that is in the midst of determination through testing.

Preaching Suggestions

When preaching on the story of the Flood, it is easy to get lost in the debates over particulars. As mentioned elsewhere, to tackle all the peripheral issues threatens to turn a sermon into a geology lecture. Other settings are better suited to addressing those questions, and those are best addressed open-endedly.

A brief explanation of ancient Near Eastern cosmology can be helpful to contextualize the story. If there are those who are tempted to think that a cosmology embedded in the Bible must be inspired and definitive, one can note that cosmology has changed by the New Testament. The Bible itself isn’t wed to a particular structure of the universe.

What is important is to keep the theology of the text front and center, and in that theology there are at least three non-negotiables from the flood narrative. First, human sin and violence threatens to undo a good creation (the flood is a de-creation event, a return of the waters mentioned in Genesis 1:2). Second, God remembers Noah, and never forgets his promises. Third, the end of the flood is a covenant with the whole earth regarding the stability and endurance of the natural order.

The script was written by biology student Joy Walters, with help from BioLogos president Darrel Falk.

(Click image for full resolution)

In a Nutshell

In Detail

Introduction

Astronomers and geologists have determined that the universe and Earth are billions of years old. This conclusion is not based on just one measurement or one calculation, but on many types of evidence. Here we will describe just two types of evidence for an old Earth and two types of evidence for an old universe; more types can be found under Further Reading. These methods are largely independent of each other, based on separate observations and arguments, yet all point to a history much longer than 10,000 years. As Christians, we believe that God created the world and that the world declares his glory, so we can’t ignore what nature is telling us about its history.

Age of the Earth from seasonal rings and layers

If you’ve ever seen a horizontal slice of a tree trunk, you’ve seen how a tree forms a new growth ring each year. In years of drought, the tree grows less quickly so the ring is narrower; in good growing seasons the ring is thicker. A tree’s age can be found by simply counting its rings. By comparing the pattern of thick and thin rings to weather records, scientists can verify that the method is accurate. This method can even be used on dead trees that fell in a forest long ago. For example, the last 200 rings in the dead tree might match up with 200 rings early in the life of the living tree, so the two trees together can count back many years. In this way, multiple trees can be used to build a master chronology for a forested region. European oak trees have been used to build a 12,000-year chronology.¹

The annual ice layers in glaciers provide a similar method that goes back much further in history. Each year, snowfall varies throughout the seasons and an annual layer is formed. Like the tree rings, this method can be verified by comparison to historical records for weather, as well as to records of volcanic eruptions around the globe that left thin dust layers on the glaciers. Scientists have drilled ice cores deep into glaciers and found ice that is 123,000 years old in Greenland² and 740,000 years old in Antarctica.³ These annual layers go back much farther than the 10,000 years advocated by the young earth creationists. The Earth must be at least 740,000 years old.

How can an old Earth be reconciled with Genesis? See Scripture Interpretation

Age of the Earth and solar system from radiometric dating

In your high school science classroom, you may have seen a large poster of the periodic table hanging on the wall. The periodic table shows the types of atoms that make up the world around us. An element in the periodic table can come in different flavors called isotopes. Some isotopes are unstable, and over time these isotopes “decay” into isotopes of other elements. For example, Potassium-40 is unstable and decays into Argon-40. As time passes, a rock will have more and more Argon-40 and less and less Potassium-40. Radiometric dating is possible because this decay occurs at a known rate, called the “half-life” of the radioactive element. The half-life is the time that it takes for half the radioactive sample to change from one element into the other.

Some isotopes have short half-lives of minutes or years, but Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Radiometric dating requires that one understand the initial ratio of the two elements in a given sample by some means. In this case, Argon-40 is a gas that easily bubbles out and escapes when it is produced in molten rock. Once the rock hardens, however, all the Argon-40 is trapped in the sample, giving us an accurate record of how much Potassium-40 has decayed since that time. So, if we find a rock with equal parts Potassium-40 and Argon-40, we know that half the Potassium-40 has decayed into Argon-40, and that the rock hardened 1.3 billion years ago.⁴

It’s hard to find rocks on the surface of the Earth that have not been altered over time. Most old rocks have been eroded by wind and water or submerged by continental plates. The oldest reliably dated rock formation is in Greenland, where several different isotopes were used to find an age of 3.6 billion years.⁵ Scientists also recently dated zircon grains (which resist erosion) in Western Australia to 4.4 billion years old.⁶ To find older rocks that haven’t been eroded, we need to look beyond Earth. Meteorites are rocks from the solar system that have fallen to Earth recently and haven’t suffered much erosion. Their pristine interiors give an age that dates back to their formation at the beginning of the solar system. Nearly all meteorites have the same radiometric age, 4.56 billion years old.⁷ Thus, the solar system, including the Earth, is about 4,560,000,000 years old.

PLEASE READ THE REST OF THE ANSWER HERE.

Notes

1. Davis A. Young, ”How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods – Part One: Relative Dating, Absolute Dating, and Non-radiometric Dating” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol 58 No 4 (2006), p. 264. (PDF)
2. Roger C. Weins, "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective", The American Scientific Affiliation (2002). See also North Greenland Ice Core Project Members, “High-resolution Record of Northern Hemisphere Climate Extending into the Last Interglacial Period,” Nature 431 (2004): 147–151, which reports ages back to 123,000 years. (web article)
3. EPICA Community Members, “Eight Glacial Cycles from an Antarctic Ice Core,” Nature 429 (2004): 623–628.
4. Young earth creationists reject radiometric dating methods, including claims that decay rates are not constant. For a critical review, see Randall Isaac “Assessing the RATE Project”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, vol 59, no 2, June 2007, p.143-146. (PDF)
5. See Wiens and references therein. (web article)
6. Wilde et al. “Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the earth 4.4 Gyr ago,” Nature (2001) 409, 175-178.
7. See Davis A Young, ”How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods—Part Two: Radiometric Dating: Mineral, Isochron and Concordia Methods” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol 59, No 1 (2007) and references therein (PDF)
]]> Sat, 14 Jul 12 05:02:55 -0700 http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-over-and-above-naturalism-part-2?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-over-and-above-naturalism-part-2?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Barkley suggests that material creation is not the end of our understanding (as Naturalists think), but a beginning that unveils the majestic and power of a Creator who loves us. -->

In part 1 of his sermon “Over and Above Naturalism”, Joseph Barkley explained that science does not reveal the greater purpose to life. He also looked at Naturalism, a philosophy that depends on atheistic assumptions and scientific knowledge, stripping the material world of higher significance. In part 2, Barkley suggests that material creation is not the end of our understanding (as Naturalists think), but a beginning that unveils the majestic and power of a Creator who loves us. Exploring the grand dimensions of the Milky Way galaxy as well as our unique solar system, he points to the greatness of God and smallness of humanity. However, the most profound truth is God’s incomprehensible love for each person that leads us into a divine relationship with him.

Barkley first suggests that all scientific discoveries, rather than confirming the absence of a God and divine purpose, affirm the presence of an intelligent God with a plan for his creation. Each new fact about nature is just another “clue,” he says, to God’s splendor. This is clearly taught in Psalm 19: 1-2 (NIV): “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” Though some argue that Bible does not accurately describe the natural world, Barkley affirms the infallibility of Scripture in revealing truth about God and the purpose of his creation.

Barkley demonstrates his point by recounting stunning details about the Milky Way, just one of billions of beautiful galaxies. Within it, stars are birthed and others die, planets are pulled toward stars with great gravitational force, and other celestial bodies are also always in motion. He focuses on the mind-blowing detail of the galaxy’s length, which is so vast that it requires the measurement to be in light years. It is 100,000 light years wide, and each light year represents 5.88 trillion miles. What is more, the Milky Way is only a middle-sized galaxy! God rightly declares through the prophet Isaiah, “‘So—who is like me? Who holds a candle to me?’ says The Holy One. Look at the night skies: Who do you think made all this?” (Isaiah 40:25, The Message translation). As Barkley puts it, “that is the question the creation is presenting to us today—who could have possibly made all this?”

Not only does creation reveal God’s grandeur, but it also speaks of how “unimaginably small” we are in comparison. In fact, when the Voyager space probe produced sixty separate pictures to capture our solar system from 4 billion miles away, planet Earth appeared as “a little mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” (Figure 1) according to Carl Sagan. If our entire planet—holding the entirety of human life—appears as a speck of dust, then how much more inconsequential does humankind itself appear? This comparison helps to “right-size” humanity in relationship to God. We are infinitely small and God is endlessly vast, and yet he deeply loves us in the midst of our weakness.

Finally, creation stirs the human heart with longing to know the “who” behind the “what” in this world. For thousands of years, God revealed himself to Israel through the Law and the prophets, but when God decided to present the clearest, most perfect picture of himelf, he sent his beloved Son, Jesus Christ (Figure 2). Colossians 1: 15-17 confirms this truth of Jesus Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” With this, Barkley addresses the question of greater significance. A scientific mindset might lead us to search for worth in our function, but Barkley says this is a mistake. In reality, he says, we were created not just for a function, but for a person. That person is Jesus Christ, the perfect image of the Triune God. Ultimately, Barkley affirms that one could fathom all scientific knowledge and still not discover his or her own purpose, which flows only from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

]]> Sat, 26 May 12 06:38:43 -0700 http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-over-and-above-naturalism?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-over-and-above-naturalism?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Pastor Joseph Barkley of Ecclesia Church extols the greatness of the God who has brought forth incredible works and engaged humankind in relationship. In the first part of the sermon “Over and Above Naturalism,” Barkley admires the factual knowledge unlocked by science, and yet reminds the Church that those material descriptions fail to answer the question of ultimate significance.

The full sermon can be downloaded from Ecclesia Church's website.

Pastor Joseph Barkley of Ecclesia Church extols the greatness of the God who has brought forth incredible works and engaged humankind in relationship. In the first part of the sermon “Over and Above Naturalism,” Barkley admires the factual knowledge unlocked by science, and yet reminds the Church that those material descriptions fail to answer the question of ultimate significance. There are people who do not believe in the greater meaning of life or a higher being, but rather cling to scientific analysis as the sole source of understanding about the universe. Barkley explains the outcomes of such naturalism, and later (in part 2 of this sermon) suggests that material creation is not an end, but a beginning that speaks of its majestic and powerful Creator who loves us.

Barkley first highlights amazing facts about the human body to demonstrate God’s ingenuity. Human bones, for instance, are five times stronger than a piece of steel with the same density and length. He then focuses on a picture of DNA looking down its long axis from top to bottom. That image reveals order and beauty in an arrangement that looks strikingly similar to a stain-glass window. During a visit to Italy, Barkley surveyed such intricate stain-glass windows in cathedrals, as well as masterful art pieces in museums, and yet, to him, none compare to the incredible structures that were hidden deep within the human body long before we were able to discover them or their beauty.

This age of modern science has unveiled much about our world, answering some of the “biggest questions we have.” However, Barkley affirms (along with most good scientists) that science cannot answer all questions by itself. He offers a simple analogy articulated by writer John Lenox:

Aunt Matilda makes a beautiful cake. It is then sent to the laboratories of a nutrition scientist, a biochemist, a physicist and a mathematician. No doubt one will receive a report of its nutritional value, its composition of molecules, and the behavior of the molecules, but all scientific analysis will never reveal to the investigators why Aunt Matilda made the desert to begin with. She brought it into existence, and alone can answer why.

Just as these experts could not describe why the cake was made, so scientific knowledge does not reveal the point of existence—why there is something rather than nothing. This answer is not inherent within the created thing, but is dependent on its Creator. Therefore, if there is a why, there must also be a who. People have more recently asserted that there is neither why nor who. This is naturalism: the faith that there is no who which could generate significance (a why) beyond sensory observation.

This worldview requires the universe to be the product of countless undirected events with no intent behind them. Furthermore, it requires that humans have no purpose to their existence, and that death is their final end. Such ideas, says Barkley, logically affect people’s behavior: “If nothing happens when we die and there is no grand design and we are not accountable to an absolute morality (as many people tend to think more and more); if we are not ultimately responsible for those things, then what motivation, logically, what motivation do we have to self-sacrifice, to love, to be kind?”

Some posit the idea of a collective consciousness that leads humans to act for the survival of the human species on the earth. According to Barkley, this still implies there is something beyond the physical occurring; that we are not the purely material beings that naturalism declares. He then suggests that naturalism relies just as much on a faith in empirical science as a Christian relies on faith in a creator God. At the conclusion of his argument, Barkley plants a seed of wonder by asserting that all the great scientific discoveries are not just describing a purposeless world, but are rather hinting at the greatness of the One who formed it.

]]> Sat, 19 May 12 10:48:56 -0700 http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-gloriously-functional?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-gloriously-functional?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Is Genesis 1 describing material creation or functional creation? Pastor Richard Dahlstrom of Bethany Community Church beautifully articulates the insights he has received through John Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One and probes deep into the Biblical text with us.

Today's sermon is from Richard Dahlstrom, senior pastor of Bethany Community Church in Seattle, Washington. The full sermon can be found here.

Is Genesis 1 describing material creation or functional creation? Pastor Richard Dahlstrom of Bethany Community Church beautifully articulates the insights he has received through John Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One and probes deep into the Biblical text with us . In his sermon “Gloriously Functional,” he highlights key Hebrew words that are often misunderstood by post-Enlightenment thinkers in order to generate a proper framework through which to grasp the original meaning of the text. He then examines each day of creation, explaining the function of the various created elements such as light, water, plants, animals, and people, according to the account. This enriching exercise brings the question of “Why has God made this very good, functional creation to begin with?” Dahlstrom affirms along with Walton that Genesis 1 is indeed about God making a temple to dwell in with His people, who he has ordained as priests, stewards over all creation. This is most clearly seen in the striking parallels between the creation narrative and the building of the earthly temple of God in the ancient Hebrew culture.

In addition to this clip from Dahlstrom’s sermon , there is a brief commentary by John Walton himself, which speaks about the functionality rather than materiality of Genesis 1. He states that the creation story is not one of material origins. If this is so, he explains there is no need to defend a Biblical account against an evolutionary account; the two are compatible with each other. What the creation story does offer, however, is a theology on the physical existence of what God has made; it reveals the divine purpose of God for his masterpiece, the universe.

]]> Sat, 18 Feb 12 04:00:54 -0800 Richard Dahlstrom http://biologos.org/blog/series/he-who-has-ears?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/series/he-who-has-ears?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Scholar and musician Jeff Warren addresses the questions of how music is meaningful, and where that meaning resides, by looking at the popular ideas that musical meaning is entirely subjective to the listener and that the meaning of music can be universal. He also explores the recent trend of attempting to explain music via neuroscience. Finally, he looks into the reasons why music continues to play such a critical role in the worshiping life of the Church. A few months ago a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses came to my door. Upon learning of my profession, they pulled out one of their recent magazines with the cover article “Music: How does it affect you?” This is a question that has been asked for a long time, going back at least to the disagreements between Plato and Aristotle about how different musical scales affect moral development, and forward to the current lineup of ‘Baby Mozart’ edu-toys and the ongoing “worship wars” over what kind of music is best suited to be played in our churches. As with arguments in the past, our contemporary discussions about how music affects people reveal underlying assumptions about the function and meaning of music that are ultimately tied to ideas about artistic creation; and varying perspectives on the source of artistic creation eventually take us back to a discussion of our ideas about God’s creation—the natural world and its inbuilt systems, including evolution—and God’s creativity, something we reflect in community as part of the imago dei, not least through music.

Humanity is marked by the biological capacity for musicality. Every known culture has something like music. Understanding how we experience and create music in the present gives us clues to why and how music emerged as one of the defining features of human culture (and, therefore, of humanness itself) in the past. But thinking carefully about music and evolution can also help us reassess how we use music now: in the wider culture, collectively as the church, and even within our own homes. In a nutshell, then, this essay will examine how views on evolution impact how one assesses music’s effects and meaning. In many cases, problematic views about evolution and artistic creativity result in problematic views about music, but my argument is that an appropriate evolutionary view of music—one that looks at how music becomes meaningful within social relationships—is a view that actually enriches our appreciation of this most human endeavor, rather than trivializing it. In this first part I explore common discourses about the meaning of music and their relationship to ideas of creation. In part two next week, I suggest that understanding the role that music played in our biocultural evolution helps correct some of the myths that have made their way into popular discourse, especially with the growing popularity of trying to understand music via neuroscience.

Let’s begin by looking at a couple of popular ways of answering the question, “Where does musical meaning come from?” beginning with the idea that “music is in the ear of the beholder.” One thing that is clear from years of teaching classes of first-year university students is that they are musical relativists. They have ‘their’ music that they enjoy and even use to demark their identities, but are perfectly willing to allow others to like other music. After all, music is all about enjoyment, right? Historically, this cultural trope developed out of the post-Kantian argument of musical autonomy, the often-fashionable argument that music’s meaning is strictly musical and does not relate to other parts of the world. It is also reflected in Steven Pinker’s argument that music is ‘auditory cheesecake’. For Pinker, music used to be useful for things like attracting mates, but now we have evolved out of needing music: it’s not necessary, but is a nice extra. I might like cheesecake, but you might prefer ice cream. Either way, it won’t change the survival of the species, so we can enjoy what we like. This argument may have a harder time standing up when music is used as a means of torture at Guantanamo Bay, but it remains popular none-the-less. Like many ideas of creation and the arts, the idea of music as primarily pleasure (determined by individual taste) is a post-Enlightenment development.

This musical relativism takes a slightly more exacting form in another popular idea, that meaning is embedded within the ‘music itself’ not in the taste of the listener. This view of meaning is the starting point of Plato and Aristotle’s disagreement about the effect of certain modes, the disagreements in the early church about the usage of certain musical instruments, and the arguments of the detrimental moral impact of certain forms of popular music (which, by the way, is an argument not just limited to the 20th or now 21st centuries). It is also the foundation of the statement from one of my former conductors that if we played well enough, we would summon up the ‘spirit of Haydn’. In other words, ‘proper’ participation can reveal the meaning of the work—be that the composer’s meaning or another idealized meaning.

Musical autonomy in this case refers to the view that music stands apart and has no relations or meaning outside of itself. Many philosophers and musicologists rely on this view in an unreflective way, represented by Peter Kivy’s statement that music “is a quasi-syntactical structure of sound understandable solely in musical terms and having no semantic or representational content, no meaning, and making no reference to anything beyond itself”¹. For Kivy, the heart of the autonomy argument is that music is completely self-contained. Such a view is possible because of the historical development of ‘absolute music’, referring to music without a text or narrative, typified by the development of the symphonic form in the late 18th century. It is no accident that between 1750-1850, the form of the symphony developed, Kant theorized the idea of genius, and Schopenhauer claimed music to be “pure will.” In the 19th century, music came to be considered the highest of the arts, and even at the turn of the 20th century Kandinsky claimed that all art should try to achieve the autonomy and abstraction of music.

The idea of musical meaning somehow residing within the musical work is based on an assumption that the more one can isolate and analyze something, the more can be known about it. We can certainly learn much about a rock or plant by isolating it and putting it under a microscope, and those who take music to be autonomous believe that music can also be known most thoroughly by placing it ‘under the microscope’ through close analysis of a score or recording, or through close listening. It is through such pseudo-scientific analytical acts that knowledge about music is thought to be accessed. This is also the guiding ideology of ‘music appreciation.’ But while much can be gained by close examination of rocks or music, much more can be gained by studying how a rock or (especially) music is used by people—a central point to which we will return.

It is more than a little ironic, then, that a further example of the belief in an intrinsic musical meaning is the argument that music is ‘universal’; that is, that at least some music can cross cultural barriers and mean the same thing to all people. Often this view assumes a primacy of the Western canon, as it is believed that Mozart has a universal meaning but Chinese qin (zither) music does not. In a globalized world where many cultures listen to and value Mozart, people who do not share a common language or view of the world may find Mozart a common point of contact. But finding Mozart a point of contact is not caused by the music having a universal meaning. Rather, it is an example of the way music can become a shared space where people enter into a relationship via art. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (a project of Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said) is an example of music being a common ground where people from different views of the world can connect, not an example of universalized meanings of music.

Indeed, there are many situations when music’s meanings are not shared, showing that meaning is most definitely not universal. Martin Lodge recounts the encounter of Dutch explorers and the Maori people of New Zealand in 1642. When the parties got close enough to see (and hear) each other, each group signalled with trumpets. The Dutch, thinking they were successful in making contact, sent a boat of unarmed sailors to shore. The boat was met by Maori warriors who killed more than half of the sailors. This misunderstanding was caused by not sharing a musical meaning: “The Maori trumpeting in this case was the music of war, an invitation to fight. On the other hand the Dutch trumpets played a variety of tunes intended to be welcoming.”² Musical meanings are often shared, but are not universal or ‘in the music’.

As we have begun to see, considering music as culturally embedded lets us recognize something quite different from the arguments that musical meaning is either subjective or encoded within the music itself. Music does allow for subjective response, but not truly autonomous response—our experience of music occurs within the bounds of cultural norms. Since music’s significance cannot be abstracted from it’s embeddedness within social relationships, an attention to culture and human intentionality (not just a reductionist sense of biology) must inform the ways that music is studied, whether in contemporary culture, in neuroscience, and with reference to human evolution. Unfortunately even many Christian views of music have relied upon some of these problematic views of musical meaning, aligning ideas like individual artistic genius and the “meaning in the music” concept with theologies of creation ex nihilo. As Bruce Ellis Benson discusses in an essay in the journal Verge (and in a shortened version here at BioLogos), this combination or paralleling of genius and ex nihilo creation complicates the church’s understanding not only of music, but also about the Creator God, downplaying the essential element of community and interpersonal relationship inherent to both.

Next week, we’ll look at a similar tendency to abstract and quantify the way music makes meaning in the burgeoning field of neuroscience (from the “Mozart Effect” to fMRI scans), and return to the way that thinking about music within the evolution of human culture might give us a deeper appreciation of music—even of worship—within the church. In the meantime, here are some questions to consider:

How do my own assumptions of the way music is meaningful affect the ways I conceive of and use music?

Are there negative consequences stemming from these assumptions?

How have problematic views of musical meaning affected the use of music as personal identity? Or in the church? Or in the media? Or in popularized science?

Notes

1. Kivy, Peter (1990) Music Alone (Cornell University Press: Ithica, NY): p. 202.

2. Lodge, Martin (2009) 'Music Historiography in New Zealand' in ed. Zdravko Blazekovic, Music's Intellectual History (RILM: New York): p. 627.

]]> Sun, 22 Jan 12 04:00:50 -0800 Jeff R. Warren http://biologos.org/blog/science-and-faith-from-collision-to-collaboration?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/science-and-faith-from-collision-to-collaboration?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication in Genesis two, God calls humankind to know and study the surrounding world. The scriptures say that Adam took on the God-given task of naming the animals, which is, in fact, science: the exploration of the natural world.

Today's sermon is from Richard Dahlstrom, senior pastor of Bethany Community Church in Seattle, Washington. The full sermon can be found here.

In this sermon, Pastor Richard Dahlstrom of Bethany Community Church in Seattle Washington disbands the warfare mentality surrounding science and faith as he explains that God’s truth is seen both in his written Word and his creation. Throughout, he provides clarification about proper Biblical interpretation, background on the history of science and scripture, and finally the context in which the Biblical creation story took form.

The beautiful creation story in Genesis one and two captivates the heart and mind, providing revelation of God’s character and his divine relationship to all creation, especially humans. Although it is an ancient writing from a culture with limited knowledge of the world and its place in the cosmos, many Christians have used these passages to scientifically describe the birth of the universe. While the passages do reveal the origin of all created things—God—they do not necessarily reveal the natural mechanisms used by God to accomplish his will. This is where the work of the scientific community has come into play. Studying God’s handiwork always offers a deeper understanding of God himself, but the Church, unfortunately, has not always accepted its findings.

At the beginning, Dahlstrom opens with a challenging quote from the famous church father Saint Augustine. He believed that Christians should not be found ignorant on scientific matters, and so appear darkened in understanding to the outside pagan world. The pastor too affirms that Christians should not use God’s Word to challenge scientific matters and so turn a non-believer away from faith in Jesus Christ since it unnecessarily draws a line between faith and reason, pitting one against the other. Dahlstrom explains that the idea that science and scripture conflict stems from a view of Genesis one and two as a scientific description. Talking about Biblical interpretation, he affirms that plain reading of the text is best in most cases. Still, there are instances where the Bible speaks in metaphors. For example, in the gospel according to John, Jesus identifies himself as the door. Immediately one discerns that Jesus is not describing himself as a literal door made of wood, but rather is describing himself as the only Way to God the Father. When it comes to the creation story, then, is a literal or metaphorical reading the best method of interpretation for the passages? In light of certain details that appear physically contradictory—such as morning and evening existing before the creation of the sun on the fourth “day” although the earth’s rotation around the sun creates day and night— it seems logical that Genesis is portraying something other than the physical processes of creation.

As Dahlstrom continues, he makes a profound point: in Genesis two, God calls humankind to know and study the surrounding world. The scriptures say that Adam took on the God-given task of naming the animals, which is, in fact, science: the exploration of the natural world. It is a wonderful gift to men and women to study the surrounding world and so discover more about the God who is its Creator. Unfortunately, the Church has not always accepted the ideas formulated through scientific discovery. This was clearly seen in the Church’s rejection of a heliocentric or sun-centered solar system as postulated by both Copernicus and Galileo. The following five hundred years, however, softened this tension, and acceptance of a heliocentric system was welcomed. Currently, the issue among Christians revolves around young versus old earth creationism and instantaneous creation versus evolution. Indeed, there are Christians in both camps. Pastor Dahlstrom affirms here that it is possible to view God as the master Creator and sustainer while still accepting evolutionary theory. This perspective acknowledges that science is not man’s truth contradicting God’s truth; there is no distinction, but all truth belongs to our Lord.

The sermon goes on to place the creation narrative in the context of the story of Gods’ people. Dahlstrom explains that Israel is about to enter the Promised Land where they will be surrounded by pagan cultures with their own gods and circulating creation myths. It is in this time that Moses writes down the true account of creation as revealed by the God of Israel. The story of Yahweh creating the heavens and the earth clearly contrasts the other Mesopotamian versions at the time, and demonstrates the uniqueness of Israel’s God. The story in Genesis resonates with the deepest longing of the human heart, proclaiming that humans were made for beauty, stewardship of creation, and relationship rather than slavery, war and suffering. This displays and speaks of the love and goodness of the one true God.

In his concluding thoughts, Dahlstrom brings the discussion back around to three particular points. First, he identifies the idea that “God is other than his creation.” In other words, God brought the world into being, but he is the uncreated One, and therefore, different than all finite things. Next, there is the theme of separation in the creation account. For example, light is separated from darkness, the land from the sea, and animal life from human life. Although they consist of the same materials, there are different forms. This speaks to the profound unity in the midst of diversity established by God. Finally, it presents the nature of humanity. It speaks of our calling to steward the earth, our failure in fulfilling that calling, and the need for our redemption, which comes through Jesus Christ. All these themes ultimately unite us as believers despite the different interpretations of Genesis one and two.

]]> Sat, 03 Dec 11 10:23:31 -0800 Richard Dahlstrom http://biologos.org/blog/gratitude?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/gratitude?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Of all the blessings to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, none of them surpasses the riches of the eternal blessings which the Lord has bestowed on his sons and daughters in Christ Jesus.

Today's sermon is from Pastor Mark Swarner of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, CA. You can hear the full sermon here.

Of all the blessings to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, none of them surpasses the riches of the eternal blessings which the Lord has bestowed on his sons and daughters in Christ Jesus. Pastor Mark Swarner of Menlo Park Presbyterian emphasizes this point as he looks at Psalm 103: 1-4 (NIV):

“Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion…”

The benefits are “life-changing” and “soul transforming.” Unlike most where there are exclusions and various requirements, these are freely given through Christ, and no one is disqualified based on pre-existing conditions. In fact, God desires that people come to him in all their imperfections that he might renew and heal them.

The first benefit deals with the major problem of the human heart: sin. In the Psalm, King David, who knew what it meant to be forgiven for deeply wrongful acts, boldly speaks of the love which God has for his people such that God does not deal with us according to our past actions. Rather, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Regardless of a person’s past or future mistakes, God’s love is stronger still. We are, above all, forgiven people and with that "we enter his gates with Thanksgiving in our hearts.”

In his second point, Swarner examines the power of God available for healing. The verse is not claiming that one will never become sick, but it does indicate that God has the power to heal. The all-important assurance in this passage is that God will take our brokenness and weakness, and through him, ultimately, we will be whole. We are, above all, a people filled with hope, and with that "we enter his gates with Thanksgiving in our hearts and we come into his courts with praise.”

The third benefit the Psalmist declares is that the Lord “redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.” There is a sense in which we all—like Joseph in Genesis 37—have experienced life’s pit of despair. We, like Joseph, emerge from the pit to a new life crowned with the confidence that we are loved, and with that we, ourselves, become agents of God’s love and channels for God’s compassion. We are, above all, a people redeemed by love, and with that "we enter his gates with Thanksgiving in our hearts and we come into his courts with praise.....This is the day that the Lord has made and we will rejoice for He has made us glad.¹”

1. See Psalm 100:4 and 118:24:

]]> Thu, 24 Nov 11 05:55:43 -0800 Mark Swarner http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-the-failure-of-religion?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-the-failure-of-religion?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication 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.

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.

]]> Sat, 19 Nov 11 04:00:47 -0800 Tim Keller http://biologos.org/blog/centered-the-language-of-science-and-faith?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/centered-the-language-of-science-and-faith?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In a recent interview with the Sirius XM radio show Centered, Karl Giberson sat down with host Don Belanus to discuss the book The Language of Science and Faith.

In a recent interview with the Sirius XM radio show Centered, Karl Giberson, co-author of BioLogos' The Language of Science and Faith, sat down with host Don Belanus to discuss the book and the interplay between science and faith. Among the topics they cover are what constitute the "genuine questions" of science and faith mentioned in the title and whether the age of the earth should be a top priority for pastors to discuss with their congregations.

]]> Fri, 18 Nov 11 05:56:02 -0800 Karl Giberson http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-the-flood?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-the-flood?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Pete Shaw highlights the story of Noah to explore how the story would have been understood in ancient times and from there he goes on to explore how we might consider it today. 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 features Pete Shaw, who is the senior pastor of Crosswalk Community Church in Napa California. The full sermon can be downloaded here. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

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/saturday-sermon-science-the-enlightenment-and-god?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-science-the-enlightenment-and-god?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Pete Shaw, the senior pastor of Crosswalk Community Church in Napa California, offers a brief history of the interactions between science and faith in the first segment of his sermon.

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.

Pete Shaw, who is the senior pastor of Crosswalk Community Church in Napa California, offers a brief history of the interactions between science and faith in the first segment of his sermon “The Flood. ” In this excerpt, he explains how the Church adopted Enlightenment thinking and advocated the scientific method as a way to verify God’s created order in nature. However, as science became more sophisticated, scientists began to question whether or not God intertwined with the natural world or even existed. In other words, they were asking the Church, ‘How can you prove God scientifically?’ Although the Church identified God as the first cause that led to all other causes in creation, scientists remained skeptical. At this, “the Church retreated, not recognizing that maybe they needed to change their perspective or widen their understanding of how we define what is true and what isn’t--beyond the scope of science.” Pastor Shaw appropriately concludes with this challenge: be willing to acknowledge the lens through which you see the world and be willing to be grown by God. The full sermon can be downloaded here. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

One of the primary things that I am trying to bring to your attention is that in our present day, we have a certain proclivity toward how we approach the Bible, and it is a post-Enlightenment perspective, which means that when we look at just about anything in our world, when we read anything in our world, we read it as if it was literal historical fact: ‘it is true if it is verifiable.’ And we adopted that mindset—you didn’t vote on this—but our forefathers in the church adopted this mindset in the 17th century when Enlightenment started to come into play. The Church initially saw Enlightenment as a wonderful ‘brother in crime,’ so to speak, because Enlightenment was starting to come up with great scientific discoveries which were pointing to organization in the created world, and things developed in a very orderly way. Things could be proven that they turned out a certain way, and immediately, the Church Fathers looked at that and said, ‘that’s great news for the Church because science is proving that God exists.’ So, for 150 years, 125 years, we rode in that cart together, but science is indiscriminate in terms of how it approaches whatever its subject is—it doesn’t care about what subject it addresses.

So, when it came to God, science was starting to wonder if we need God at all, and was curious since they were figuring out so much about the created order and how things worked together and the explanation of so many things—they were taking mythology out of a lot of things, and so they were asking the Church: ‘how can you prove God?’ By this time, the Church had already adopted the scientific method saying, ‘It’s only true if you can prove it.’ And so, they were left with this question of how do you prove God scientifically? And the best thing that they could come up with was what is called the first cause, which simply means that science can identify that something happened to get this whole creation thing going, and the Church rallied and said ‘Yes! That something is God—God is the first cause that started all the other causes since, and he has been involved in the process.’ But science came back and said, ‘you know, just the fact that we don’t really know that doesn’t prove that you are right.’ So, the Church retreated, not recognizing that maybe they needed to change their perspective or widen their understanding of how we define what is true and what isn’t--beyond the scope of science. We held to our guns, and that has been the predominant voice in American Christian culture for the last 200 years or so—so strong, in fact, that a lot of what I have been sharing with you in last couple weeks seems incredibly new and disturbing. You may be wondering, ‘Where did this guy come up with this stuff?’ Well, the fact is that I am not really giving you anything new, I am giving you stuff that is very, very old. Because what I have recognized (because I have researched this stuff) is that the greats of our faith who lived centuries ago, when they looked at this book [the Bible], they looked at it very, very differently than we do, and they have something to say. So greats in the early Church like Origen, you know…names that you kind of remember from history class…St. Augustine, these kinds. Some of the Catholic greats that we know of through history, they had something to say, and all of what they said happened long before the Enlightenment when the Church decided to define what is true extremely narrowly.

So, my challenge to you is: can you, in a way, come to grips with the fact that your worldview, your vision, has been shaped significantly by the time you’ve grown up in and by the world in which we live? I am telling you it has, and I am also stating with great confidence that until we identify how the lens has been crafted through which we see everything, we are trapped and bound by it. In fact, we are shackled by it. Until we can see ourselves for who we are, understand our biases and how they shape everything we think about, those things keep us where we are, and we literally will not be able to hear anything new because it just won’t fit—that is a real problem when it comes to walking with God because God is continually wanting to grow us and stretch us in new directions, and if we don’t have room for that, we really don’t have room for God.”

]]> Sat, 29 Oct 11 06:42:21 -0700 Pete Shaw http://biologos.org/blog/series/maker-of-heaven-and-earth-series?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/series/maker-of-heaven-and-earth-series?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In his sermon, Dave Swaim discusses the early chapters of Genesis that seemingly contradict scientific evidence, and he suggests that Christians have simply asked the “wrong questions” about this ancient text, which has led to warfare between the two. In light of this, Swaim wraps up his sermon with the three concluding points that he feels sums up the Biblical truth of creation: there is an all-powerful God, he has a perfect plan, and he has given us his love through Jesus Christ.

Introduction

Today BioLogos begins a series that we think ought to have significant impact on evangelical churches far beyond the local congregation in Arlington, Massachusetts where it was first delivered. A recent editorial in Christianity Today stated that many Christians likely face another "Galileo moment." In that earlier era, finding that the earth moved around the sun--and not the other way around--caused the Church to reorient its understanding of certain scriptural passages. Today, interconnecting strands of evidence all of which lie at the heart of biology, geology, physics and astronomy require segments of the Church to carefully evaluate its magnificent creation narrative--it needs to be certain it is hearing God's message in the way that God intends for it to be understood. It is healthy for the conservative wing of Christianity to be carefully examining the genre of the creation narrative. It has had to do this once before and, it is appropriate to prayerfully seek clarity once again. Christians are truth-seekers and God's Spirit will guide the process as we sincerely seek that wisdom which is from above.

Oratory, at its best, has long been an important key in opening the door to new and dramatically important insights. Pastor David Swaim of Highrock Church in the Boston suburb of Arlington illustrates this poignantly. In fact his sermon is so significant, we've asked permission to post it in serial form so that each of us can deeply reflect on his words in a protracted fashion. We encourage you to let others who are conflicted over this issue know about the series so that they can follow it. Indeed, we believe It will be a great series for small group discussions--we need to lovingly support each other as we seek God's guidance in coming to understand God's truths.

In this sermon, Swaim discusses our belief in God as creator, or “Maker of heaven and earth”, as the Apostle’s Creeds so poetically states. To begin, he reminds us that some passages in the Bible, like the parable of the prodigal son, convey deep truths even though they are not historical accounts. Asking “the wrong questions”—questions that focus on arbitrary details—about such stories can cause us to miss out on their intended message. In a similar way, he says, it is possible that we might be asking the “wrong questions” about the opening chapters of Genesis. In recent years, conflict has erupted because a literal reading of Genesis seems to contradict the findings of science. Swaim suggests, however, that accepting scientific evidence about things like evolution and the age of the earth need not rule out faith in Scripture.

If you wish to jump ahead and hear the sermon in its entirety, you may do so here.

Introduction written by the BioLogos editorial team.

"Maker of Heaven and Earth" (transcript)

One of my favorite parables is that of the lost son. There’s a lot to it. Basically, it’s a story that Jesus told about a young man who insulted his father by demanding his share of the inheritance early, then ran off to spend that money on wild living, and found himself destitute when the money was gone. In desperation, he returned to his father, asking to work as a servant. But instead of being angry, his father joyfully embraced his lost son and threw a huge feast to celebrate his return. It is a great story that Jesus tells to help us understand God’s amazing grace.

How many of you know this story? Raise your hand, if you would. Okay. Now I want to make sure I’m clear…that’s a lot of you…I don’t mean just like, you know it because I just told it to you. I mean you know it because you’ve heard a sermon on this before, or maybe you’ve read it on your own. Raise your hand high if that’s true of you. Wow, still a lot of you. That’s perfect because I actually have a couple of questions maybe you can help me with. You see, it says that the father saw the son while he was still a long way off. Can anybody tell me how far off was the son at that point? Anybody know that? Because, you know, they didn’t have glasses back then, and the father was really old, so how far could he really see? It just doesn’t really add up for me. Can anybody tell me about that? Nobody? Okay. Well I have another question. Maybe this one’s easier. What town did that family live in? Does anybody know that? No? Nobody? What town they lived in? People, this is one of the greatest stories of all time! This is a story that has changed thousands of lives, including many of yours! How can you say that you know this story, that you understand this story, if you don’t even understand these basic facts? Okay, well maybe this is easier. Speaking of family, the Bible’s into family values, so I want to know—where’s the mother? Can anybody tell me? Is this family not intact? What’s wrong? Did they get a divorce maybe? And how come the father ended up with the custody of the sons? And why did they only have two? Families back then had much bigger families. Maybe they just got divorced too early? But I mean he seems so nice—why do you think she left? Anybody know these things? I mean I just don’t get it. You all tell me you know this story, and yet you don’t understand just these simple things about it.

Obviously, my questions miss the whole point of the story. There was no mother, or for that matter, no father or son either. This never actually happened. It’s just a parable. It’s one of the many marvelous stories that Jesus told in order to help us understand something that was hard to see. Now does that make it so that this story isn’t true? No, it is true. This story communicates some of the most important truths in the universe—about God’s nature, and the way that we relate to him. There are many passages in scripture that promise God’s love, or praise God’s love, or even try to explain God’s love. But this passage helps us grasp that truth in a way that’s much more effectively communicated than just through direct reporting. This way helps us feel it. This event never happened, but it’s one of the truest stories in the world. And what a shame for someone to dismiss it as irrelevant because it’s not literal history, or miss the point by asking the wrong kinds of questions.

Now I bring this up because just like my questions miss the point of the lost son parable, so, I fear, many of us ask the wrong questions about the beginning of the book of Genesis, which we read from just a few minutes ago. Not only does this generate needless confusion and division, it also makes us miss the point, miss the life-changing truths that we could see if we asked the right questions. Right now we’re in a sermon series studying the Apostle’s Creed, an ancient declaration of faith in the God of the Bible. And today, we’re considering the word “creator.” So, Genesis seemed like the right place to go.

Like the story of the lost son, most of you know the basic outline: God created the universe in six days and then napped on the seventh (so those of you who nap through my sermons every Sunday, you’re in good company!). But by adding up all the names of the people mentioned in Genesis, and throughout the rest of the Bible, seventeenth century Bishop Ussher determined that the creation of Adam and Eve, and everything else, happened in 4,004 BC—about 6,000 years ago. And that’s great. But you’re probably also aware that this creates some tension with contemporary scientists who suggest a different timeline. Considering the evidence offered by the size and expansion rate of the universe, plate tectonics, fossil evidence, and genetics, their best guess is that the universe was created by a big bang about 13 billion years ago, the earth appeared about 4.5 billion years ago, and the earliest humans existed about 200,000 years ago. In the past 300 years, this has become a very heated debate. Apparently, we need to choose whether we believe in science or in scripture. At least that’s the claim made by the most strident voices on each side, so the general population seems to have accepted that if you believe in God you can’t believe in evolution, and if you believe in evolution then you can’t believe in God.

This topic arouses passions and anxieties in many people, including some in this room. No matter what your perspective is, I’m probably going to say something today that you’ll disagree with, and might even make you angry. There’ll be plenty of time for you to set me straight in the coming weeks. But for the next half hour, in order to allow the possibility that we might hear something new, or even learn from the Holy Spirit, let’s lay aside our defensiveness so that we can at least consider why we are so attached to whatever ideas we have, and evaluate whether our devotion to one truth may be blinding us to others. As scientists have discovered more and more evidence supporting the basic evolutionary theory outlined in Darwin’s Origin of Species, Christians have responded in a variety of ways.

Science has been right about so many things, so some Christians have embraced evolution and felt forced to abandon their trust, not only in the truth of Scripture, but also in the God it describes. Other Christians, including many renowned scientists, have fought back by pointing out the many flaws in evolutionary theory and proposing alternative theories of their own. These include Young Earth Creation, which asserts that the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago, and offers thoughtful explanations to reconcile the findings of science with the words of Genesis 1. Old Earth Creationists do the same thing, but contend that each of the days in Genesis could represent an epoch, or a million years, or whatever amount of time, instead of just a 24-hour day. This is linguistically legitimate—it’s a fine interpretation of the Hebrew word “day” in Genesis—and it recognizes that it’s hard to measure a day before the invention of the sun in day four, anyway. So, Old Earth Creationism opens up many possibilities to reconcile scientific claims about the age of the earth with a literal interpretation of Genesis. Theistic Evolution takes further steps to accommodate evolution while still honoring God as the one who created heaven and earth and everything in them through the evolutionary process. This is attractive because it eliminates the conflict between science and scripture, but it requires a very different way of reading Genesis. They suggest that, like I did with the parable of the prodigal son earlier, perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions about Genesis so that we’re inventing an unnecessary argument, and even worse, we’re also missing what the first chapters of Genesis really are all about.

In the next installment, to be posted tomorrow, Pastor Swaim goes on to discuss the Genesis passage in detail.

]]> Thu, 27 Oct 11 05:00:06 -0700 David Swaim http://biologos.org/blog/art-worship-creation-and-imaginative-engagement?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/art-worship-creation-and-imaginative-engagement?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication We should not be ashamed of the fact that our faith integrates spirit and body; our faith calls us to regard the stuff of creation in all of its materiality as good, and thus offers the best starting point for the practice and pleasure of art. In this chapel presentation, given at LaTourneau University in Longview, Texas, Ken Myers, founder of Mars Hill Audio, addresses the importance of art in both our worship and our understanding of creation. While some view the realms of the church and the arts as completely separate, Myers notes that both have suffered from a “diminished appreciation for the meaning of creation”. Creation is not simply a collection of materials for us to manipulate; rather it is a reflection of God’s own creativity. Creation is “an epiphany”.

While some may wonder what a discussion on art and worship has to do with science and faith, we feel Myers’ message is important for all Christians to hear, especially for its thoughts on creation and on our worship of God, the Creator.

Opening Prayer: “Will you join me in prayer as we focus our hearts and our minds on the Lord this morning? Let us pray. Take a minute and just speak to God yourself, and speak to him about your love for him and your thankfulness for his love and grace and mercy in your life—Father you are good and your love endures forever, your faithfulness to all generations. Thank-you for your faithfulness in our lives, thank-you for your grace that is sent to us, especially sent in the form of your son Jesus. Lord help us to continually appropriate that grace, to continually seek after you. Lord we ask that you would take this time to grow us, to spiritual form us. Amen”

Ken Myers: “Morning. I am in east Texas. The original invitation was to give some lectures on the subject of beauty. I am lecturing in Tyler beginning tonight and tomorrow morning, and when an opportunity came up to speak to you all here at Le Tourneau, I suggested that I might want to talk about a related topic, and so my topic this morning is going to be about the arts and worship.”

“I started working at National Public Radio just before I turned twenty-two. I went to work in the arts and performance department, and I was editing interviews with and commentaries about some of the most creative people in the world. Now, during that time I was also attending an evangelical church I had been at since 5th grade, and that meant that I was spending Monday through Friday with people who were intensely involved in the arts, but pretty much indifferent to, if not hostile to, the practice of Christian worship, and on Sunday’s I worshipped with people who often regarded the arts rather nervously, if not with hostility. It was like when worlds collide, and it was my life.

“During this period in my life on Sundays, I spent time with people who believed in creation, while during the week I worked with people who believed in creativity, and often their lives didn’t seem to overlap. My church friends were deeply committed to the first clause of the Nicene Creed: ‘I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.’ These people believed in a creator. They described the world as a creation, but, in general, like most Christians for most of the Church’s history, they were often more eager to defend the fact of creation than they were to explore the consequences of creation’s nature and meaning in their everyday lives.

“My colleagues at NPR, on the other hand, and the people with whom I was pursuing my vocation, were all people who did not believe there was a maker of all things—they believed in nature, but not creation, and certainly not a creator. But they did believe, and sometimes in an almost religious way, in creativity. In fact, some of them were willing to ascribe almost redemptive power to creativity as made evident in the arts. The arts made life worth living. The arts fulfilled meaning in otherwise meaningless lives. In a world that was essentially chaotic, in which everyday life was dominated by bureaucratic, mechanistic institutions, the arts were great refreshment. They were a source of hope and joy and peace and even possibly moral guidance. The arts rendered us human, many of my friends believed, and delivered us from mere bestial or mechanistic existence. Some of them may have gone so far as to say that the arts imparted a spark of divinity into our lives.”

“Now I was used to living between these two worlds—I majored in film studies as an undergraduate, and I didn’t have a lot of colleagues in my department at the University of Maryland who took religion very seriously either. And I dealt with this conflict early on by starting to read as much as I could lay my hands on about Christianity and the arts. In 1975 (when I started at NPR), there wasn’t a lot written—you all are lucky that there is a lot more great stuff to read now on subjects like that—but I was beginning what turned out to be a life time of reading and study and writing and interviewing to try to understand how we had gotten to the point: how was it that the Church had generally allowed its concern with redemption to eclipse the theme in both Old and New Testaments of the goodness and givenness of creation? Why didn’t we attend to the structure and form of creation that much? …and how was it that modern western culture outside the Church had abandoned its belief in a creator, in a creation that was ordered and given meaning by its maker even while it tried to sustain a belief in human dignity and creativity?

“And over the years, as I have studied this and read about it and thought more about it, I came to realize that both the church and the world of the arts suffered from a diminished appreciation for the meaning of creation. Modern Christians often assume that they could relate to God apart from any deliberate relation to the stuff of creation, and modern secularists assume that they can relate to creation without recognizing or honoring the creator in any way. For both sides, creation is just a lot of raw material; creation isn’t inherently meaningful. It is meaningless and awaits our creativity to achieve significance. Modern Christians, moreover, have tended to pursue an understanding of God that was more and more abstract. It focused his attributes, on invisible realities rather than history, and as theology has aspired to be more like a science, it has assumed that we can think about God apart from his relationship with creation.

“ Of course, God’s identity is not determined by creation, but it is through God’s actions in and through creation that we know him. The Psalms make this very clear. He reveals himself through creation and his supreme revelation of himself involved his entering into creation in a sensory and perceivable way. Creation is an epiphany, it is a revealing…it is a revelation. The heavens declare the glory of God, and God’s eternal power and divine nature can be perceived in the things he has made…that is a remarkable statement. Throughout the Scriptures, especially in the wisdom literature and the Psalms, creation is depicted as an active and evident witness to God’s identity, and all of creation bears witness to God in a chorus of worship. In Psalms 89 we read the very heavens shall praise thy wondrous works and thy truth in the congregation of the saints. The heavens and the earth are depicted as testifying to God’s nature and to his coming triumph over evil. In Psalm 96 we read ‘let the heavens be glad, let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let the fields exult and everything in them, then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Creation bears witness that those with ears to hear can hear, but to hear we have to approach creation with a well-ordered imagination.”

“There is a wonderful poem by Gerard Hopkins “God’s Grandeur,” and I mean it is wonderful in the strictness sense. It is full of wonder. He begins by insisting that the world is charged with the grandeur of God, and he goes on to suggest that modern men and women fail to perceive the grandeur of God. They fail to perceive what is revealed there because we are so preoccupied with practical things. All is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and all wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell. We are too preoccupied with getting things done to actually attend to the glory present in creation, and as I have suggested, where the Scriptures present creation as an epiphany, a revelation, modern culture and a lot of modern Christians see creation as a lot of raw material resources. It is inert, meaningless stuff awaiting our creativity to become meaningful.

“So, the world is commonly regarded as material to which we do something, and not a source from which we receive something. I think that this attitude toward creation is contrary to how we should pursue the Arts, but also to how we ought to proceed in worship. Our worship should recognize that God the Maker of all things reveals himself in what he has made and that he calls us toward a receptive and grateful posture toward creation, not just toward the redemption he has provided…and that is really the posture of faithful artists. Both worship and the arts serve the function of reorienting our minds, our imaginations, and our practices so that we can properly perceive what creation is and what our position in creation should be. Art is a way of admiring and marveling and wondering at, as well as engaging in, meaningful and wonderful creation. God presents us in creation with materials and forms that artists transform, but they are always tethered to some order that is implicit in creation itself.

“Theologian Peter Lighthart has observed that the artist is always transforming, but this transfiguration is an attempt to get at dimensions of what is really there. It is not an abandonment of what is really there. Even if the artist is aiming at fantasy, art attempts to highlight patterns, correspondences, and dimensions to reality that are usually missed in our everyday experience and to force us to look again at the sunflower or the pipe or the chair. As the Russian formalists say, one of the purposes of art is to de-familiarize the familiar. The reason we do that is so that we can see it for what it is. It has become too familiar for us to recognize what it is. The artist is always responding to the reality of creation in some way—even the most abstract artistic forms—and the best artists are open to receiving something from creation before they can transfigure it. An artist has to sense creation with an exceptional acuity.

“Catholic philosopher Joseph Piper has a little book of essays called “Only the Lover Sings”—art and contemplation—only if you love something do you sing about it. Only if you delight in it, do you rejoice in it, and he is talking about the kind of rejoicing that is evident in works of art. He says there that to contemplate means first of all to see, not to think, and he is advocating a contemplative approach to creation so that we can see what it is, and then express what we have seen…a kind of seeing that is receptive and open, and not just accurate. That is the kind of seeing that is practiced by artists, and it is not unlike the tradition of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, and that gives us a link between worship and the arts.

“When I say the artist perceives creation, I don’t just mean trees and birds and colors and sunsets, but I mean all of the components of creation—shapes and sounds and textures—as well as various human activities within creation: the way our bodies inhabit space and time, the way words work with all their intriguing textures and resonances as well as the shape of our inner life—what sorrow feels like or sounds like or looks like. Memory, grief, affection—all of the aspects of nature and human nature have to be attended to lovingly and then reassembled or reconfigured or remixed in some way. Human creativity is not as God’s creativity ex nihilo—creation out of nothing—it is creation out of something, and it is a something that God, the God that we worship, has already blessed with meaning. Creation is meaningful revelation, and its revelation can be perceived as we are imaginatively involved with the stuff of creation. The God we worship, the maker of heaven and earth, has made as creatures whose lives are fulfilled when we engage creation well.”

“I have to confess that I get nervous when I hear Christian artists or other religious artists talk about the relationship between faith and art only as if art is an expression of spirituality or art is a gateway to the transcendent. It may be that, but I think they run the risk of presenting Christianity in disembodied terms. We should not be ashamed of the fact that our faith integrates spirit and body, but our faith calls us to regard the stuff of creation in all of its materiality as good, and thus offers the best starting point for the practice and pleasure of art.

“Christian worship has always been involved imaginatively with the stuff of creation. The poetry of the Psalms was recited by our Lord and his disciples so that he was engaged with the sound of words as well as the meaning of words. Music was a part of Christian worship—at least since choirs of angels greeted the nativity of the incarnate Christ and possibly earlier. Whether Mary sang her wonderful song which we call the Magnifica, a wonderful song inspired by her miraculous pregnancy or whether she simply spoke it we don’t know, but it is still sung week after week in churches around the world. Artful expressions and worship have been present in less obvious ways. It is notable that the communion table contains bread and wine, not wheat and grapes. It is not organic material in its most natural state that serves as a memorial meal that unites us with God, bread and wine are the products of human creativity. They are not simply of the natural blessing of God’s harvest, even grain and grapes require attention and care to bring them to fruition. Wine is an even more artful product and bread demands attentiveness to the details of creation. Bakers and vintners are not people we usually think of as artists, but what they do has a lot in common with what artists do: they take the stuff of creation and transform it into something newly delightful and beautiful. Bread, wine, and art all serve practical purposes, but they often go beyond necessity toward delight.

“Again, theologian Peter Lighthart has observed that art is a making that imitates the making of God, and it is most God-like when it is purely gratuitous, when it is not meeting a need—creation is gratuitous, it is not something that God needed to do, but we rejoice and give thanks both in worship and in the arts that he chose to do so. In worship, we honor the creator for the gift of creation and of salvation. In works of art we imitate God’s act of delighted and gratuitous making, and in the Lord’s Supper we receive a great feast, a table set for us not because we deserve it or even because we need it. God’s salvation could have been less extravagant, more perfunctory than a feast, just as the wine that Jesus made from water could have been merely passable rather than a really good wine. The wedding guests thought it was any way, and the inspired texts of the gospel seem to remind us of that. The gifts that God has given are given generously as well as gratuitously. Now, when we receive a great gift, we are delighted in the gift, and in the generosity of the giver, and so it is with a reception of a powerful work of art.

“When I hear the thoughtful and attentive performance of a carefully crafted piece of music or when I watch a masterfully constructed film, I often have a sense of gratitude not just to the performers and the composer or the director, but to God! I am grateful to live in a world where such joys are possible. The gratitude felt by the recipients of a gift resonates with the delight known by the giver of the gift. It is win-win, and that is a pattern built into creation since creation is the work of a dynamic three-personed God and the members of the Trinity enjoy an eternal giving and receiving of love among themselves. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us of the personality and dynamism of God…qualities suggested in the ancient term applied to the Trinity by theologians [is] perichoresis. Perichoresis refers to the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity, and by extension it refers to God’s relationship to the world whereby everything is in him and has its being in him. The ‘chor’ in perichoresis, by the way (if you have studied any Greek), may recognize that it shows up in our word choreography. Perichoresis literally means dancing around. So, the relationship among the persons of the Trinity is a dance—Father, Son and Holy Spirit dancing around each other and the Christian life which involves God in us and we in God is our entry into that dance.”

“What I am trying to do with all this theology is to make a case that artistic and imaginative and creative activity is not simply a pleasant and rewarding ornament that we might use to decorate our worship services or to increase enthusiasm to make them less boring, artistic activity is evidence to us of the kind of creatures we are, the kind of creator that God is, and the kind of world that we live in, a world that he has placed us in to love and serve him and others as we exercise our stewardship over that world. Since worship is in the words of one writer “the school of the Church,” our hearts and our minds are shaped through the experience of worship to properly perceive things as they are, and not only spiritual things, but all aspects of creation. After all, when Jesus commissioned the Church with the task of making disciples, he begins by declaring his authority over heaven and earth, not just their spiritual lives…and when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask that God’s rule over all earthly things would become more and more evident on earth as it is in heaven. And so in worship we learn to perceive and name reality in a Christian way, and works of imagination can assist in those lessons.

“Since I have already mentioned the subject of music briefly, an observation from theologian and musician Jeremy Begby is appropriate here. In his book Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music, Begby notes that in the western musical tradition guided by the Church quote “we have been placed in a world vibrant with its own God-given integrities and with the opportunity of interacting fruitfully with those integrities and that music is one means we have been given to do just that. When churches order their ministry of music with those kinds of integrities in mind, then music becomes a tool to reshape our imagination and to renew our minds.

“Art provides us with ways of perceiving reality aright. Not all art does this, or very well, and not all of us have allowed our imagination to be encouraged that kind of perception—we are in too big a hurry or it doesn’t seem practical enough; we have other things on our plate. Just as our thinking can be taken captive to worldly conclusions, so our imaginations can become preoccupied with novelty or with the merely interesting or with something that is trivializing or flattering. Just as we can surrender our bodies and the various consequences and configurations of our life in the body to patterns of disobedience, so we have the opportunity to present out bodies and all that we do in our body life in worthy and thoughtful sacrifice to God. The orienting of all aspects of our embodied life to God is the worship that we owe him.

“We learn that from Romans 12. And so, the use of our hands and our eyes and our ears and our voices in creativity activities that resonate with God’s own music in creation is a most suitable offering to bring him. In Romans 12, Paul warns about being conformed to this world and in no matter are we more in danger of worldly conformity than in our posture toward creation. All sorts of intellectual and social pressures suddenly persuade us to ignore the Biblical testimony of God’s identity as creator as well as the nature of our engagement with creation. The rationalism of the Enlightenment, which guides modern science and technology, encourages us to assume a god-like stance over the material world and at the other extreme, modern materialism suggests that we are at the mercy of something utterly different and incomprehensible.

“The Gospel picture of creation is radically different. Theologian Colin Gunton has said that we can know the world, not infallibly, not with a name of a kind of omniscience because we are both a part of it and able to transcend it through our personal powers of perception, imagination, and reason…and perception, imagination, and reason come together most intensely in artistic modes of knowledge and expression. The world is a creation intended for us to inhabit. It is not simply a meaningless, cosmic accident, and thus art can be powerful, it can resonate deeply in our lives, and even people who believe that the world is the product of a cosmic accident often cannot help when they work creatively to behave that way. Imaginative expressions in the visual arts and poetry and music have existential power because at some level, they convey to us something about the various connections and likenesses that God has placed in creation.

“This is especially evident, I think, in poetry where metaphor is involved in the recognition of likenesses, and it is an idea that came up in a conversation that I enjoyed a number of years ago—someone less famous than Johnny Cash—Richard Wilbur, who is probably our greatest living poet. Wilbur and I talked about the centrality of metaphor and poetry, how poetry works by likening one thing to another. In Psalm 1, a righteous person is compared to a tree sustained by its life and fruitfulness in life-giving water. The power of metaphor, Wilbur observed, “puts almost every poet in danger of being religious. If anything can be compared to anything else, if the world can be seen as a linkage of similes and metaphors and figures, then poetry itself comes very close to declaring that all things are co-natural, that they are of one nature and that brings you to the threshold of saying all things have had a maker.” Wilbur went on “I remember ages ago reading the final book of poems by poet Joseph Warren Beach, who claimed to be an atheist, and I took it around to him and he was in Cambridge at that time, and I said Joseph look at these two lines. Don’t you think that they amount to a religious affirmation? He read them and said ‘well, I can see that they do. I must say that I seem simply to have submitted to the spirit of poetry at that moment. It is an awesome thing to submit to the spirit of poetry even if for a moment.’”

“Worship that avoids imaginative expressions runs the risk of reducing our religious experience to mere ideas or mere therapy, when in fact our religious experience is rightly understood as cosmic. The scale of the Christian story incorporates the intensely intimate and the vast incomprehensibles of the cosmos, and we need works of imagination to convey that whole story to us, to refresh our gratitude to God, to reorient our engagement with all that he has made, and to baptize our imaginations. Art that resonates with the order in creation conveys to us a deeper character of our creator and the character of the order he has placed there.

“In Isaiah 45, there is this wonderful passage where we read of God: “For thus says Yahweh, the creator of the heavens, he is God who shaped the earth and made it, who set it firm. He did not create it to be chaos; he formed it to be lived in. I am Yahweh and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in some dark corner of the underworld; I did not say offspring of Jacob search for me in chaos. I am Yahweh. I proclaim saving justice; I say what is true.” In closing, I want to comment on that observation from Eugene Peterson in his recent book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. He says at the beginning of that book…and that line by the way “Christ plays in ten thousand places” is from a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins—I think it is the poem the “King Fisher,” which is about the glory evident in a bird…Peterson writes, ‘it is the task of the Christian community to give witness and guidance in the living of life in a culture that is relentless in reducing, constricting, and enervating life’ [repeated once more].

“I think that with that task in mind the Church and its ministry in discipleship and mission should proceed in three steps. First, we need to identify the ways the culture around us has misshaped or misunderstood how to live life well in God’s creation, how it has sundered what should be united. Second, the church in its teaching and discipling should encourage the convictions and practices necessary to restore a proper wholeness to life, which includes recognition of all the glories and wonders of creation. Third, motivated by the need to love our neighbors, care for widows and orphans in their misery, and having demonstrated to the world the ways in which redeemed humanity is a fulfilled humanity, the church has to find the false gods under whose captivity people are suffering. I am afraid in our time there are a lot of false ideas that penetrate the world of the arts, and part the task of the church is to recognize those false ideas so that we can, in fact, be liberated. This is a problem that should concern the church, and not just those in Christian arts—thank-you very much.”

]]> Sat, 15 Oct 11 02:20:34 -0700 Ken Myers http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-male-and-female-he-created-them-in-the-image-of-god?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-male-and-female-he-created-them-in-the-image-of-god?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In this message, John Piper, one of America's most loved pastors explores the sense in which creation "begs for completeness."

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. John Piper, author and Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 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 downloaded here. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

Genesis 1:26-28 states that God created human beings and placed his image within them, both male and female. Although these Biblical statements are not exclusive to Christian belief, Dr. John Piper argues that they point to Christianity. In this eloquent sermon, he examines these related, but distinct truths in Scripture (creation, creation-in-the-image-of God, and creation-as-male-and-female) and demonstrates how they obtain completion and significance in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Piper begins with a discussion about God’s purpose in the creation of humankind. The assertion that God designed people pleads the question: for what purpose or end have all human beings been formed? The Old Testament indicates that humanity was made to steward the things of the earth and to reflect the glory of God in the world. It speaks of being created to show forth the glory of God (Isaiah 43:7). It also speaks of how the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. (Habakkuk 2:14). However, the Hebrew Scriptures end with creation utterly unfinished and the hope of glory still to come. Stopping the story there, begs for the rest to be told, and it is, but only in Christ:

For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone this light in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (II Corinthians 4:6 NRSV.)

Then, Piper speaks about how God has created us in his image, and this, he says, must have something to do with why we are here. His purpose in making us must have something wonderful to do with our uniqueness. We, alone out of all his created beings, are made in the image of God. The current state of the world, however, shows what a mess we have made of this dignity. We have marred God’s image “almost beyond recognition.” This causes one to wonder: can a person truly be in the image God when evil abounds? Piper answers this by referring to the words of God to Noah in Genesis 9:6: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image." This verse fully affirms God’s likeness in humanity. Even in a world where sin abounds, humankind is still created in God’s image—badly distorted, true, but still the image of God. Piper expounds:

Do you feel that you are like God in the way you should be? So here again the belief that we were created in God's image begs for a completion—in this case a redemption, a transformation, a kind of re-creation. And that is exactly what Christianity brings. "By grace are you saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works . . . Put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 2:8–10; 4:24 RSV).

So knowing that we were created in the image of God, our dilemma begs for an answer. And Jesus, he says, is that answer; he begins the reclamation project called sanctification that will end in the glory that God intended for humankind in the first place.

Next, Piper focuses on how God created us male and female. And this too, given the alienation depicted as the story of Adam and Eve comes to a close, begs for completion and points to Christ. How? It does so in at least two ways. The first comes from the “mystery” of marriage. The other comes from the historical ugliness of male-female relationships when sin abounds.

First is the mystery. While Genesis 2: 24 sets forth the institution of marriage saying, “…a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh,” it does not fully explain the significance of it. For this reason, the Apostle Paul describes marriage in Ephesians 5: 31 as a great mystery. Paul then describes how marriage is symbolic of Jesus Christ’s covenantal relationship to the Church. The story of man and woman in marriage begs for completion, and it is only fulfilled in Christ’s covenant with his people, his commitment to the church. So that’s the mystery, and it is only fully realized with the coming of Jesus.

Second is the ugliness that too often characterizes male/female relationships in sin. Piper goes all the way back to the beginning where in Genesis 2:24 Adam disgustingly blames woman, not himself, for his sin. There, Piper says, is the beginning of all domestic violence—man blames woman for his own failures. One consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin is a curse upon man and woman’s relationship in Genesis 3: 16(NASB): “…In pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Piper makes it clear that the model of a domineering man and a devious woman is the result in marriage when sin has its way. However, Jesus came to reverse the curse and heal the twisted relationship between men and women that has created inequality and oppression. In 1 Peter 3:7, Peter describes man and woman as fellow heirs of the grace of life that is found in Jesus. Therefore, it is in Christ that equality, complementarity, harmony, mutual respect, and love exist between man and woman.

So the fact of being created in God’s image in Genesis, cries out for completion as the Old Testament ends.

1. Humankind is created to manifest the glory of God, but the work is clearly unfinished.
2. The image of God has been deeply marred by self-centered rebellion against God (sin). The work of God cries out for completion
3. The male/female relationship is damaged by the desire to dominate, but it points to completion in the mystery of Christ and the bride for which he gave his life—the Church.

In all cases, creation only moves to completion, as we are “utterly and radically and uniquely devoted to the Lord.”

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1, 2, NASB)


Full Sermon

]]> Sat, 01 Oct 11 13:19:27 -0700 John Piper http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-heart-of-darkness?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/saturday-sermon-heart-of-darkness?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication 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.

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.

]]> Sat, 24 Sep 11 10:24:42 -0700 Tim Keller http://biologos.org/blog/surrogate-arguments?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/surrogate-arguments?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In this video, Brian McLaren discusses the idea of surrogate arguments, in which a debate over one thing is really a means for arguing something completely different. According to McClaren, the argument over the age of the earth is one such argument.

Today's video is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

In this video, author and pastor Brian McLaren discusses the idea of surrogate arguments, in which a debate over one thing is really a means for arguing something completely different. According to McClaren, the argument over the age of the earth is one such example, in which an apparent scientific debate is actually a discussion over the nature of religious authority and how previous generations have understood how we should interpret the Bible. Such debates can lead to two crises: one of confidence and one of ethics. While some have the confidence to differ with the views of the generation that raised them in the faith, McLaren points out that some are not able to overcome the ethical challenge of differing with grace and love. When this happens, he notes, the end result is damage to the Church and a retrenching of the views of the older generation. Managing the crises well requires courage of convictions while also respecting tradition and maintaining a gracious spirit. Anything less, is not only unwise, it is also unfaithful.

]]> Wed, 21 Sep 11 09:11:52 -0700 Brian McLaren