For the past couple of days I've been reading the Biologos blog for a few days now. They had a recent post in which they discussed Albert Mohler's (prez of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) speech in which he defended a young-earth interpretation of Genesis and criticized Biologos for trying to cater to both science and faith. A transcript of Mohler's talk can be found here.
While I'm not sold on theistic evolution either, I do think Mohler is a bit off. Let me explain and compare N.T. Wright's way of thinking to his.
From what I can see, Mohler believes in 7 day young earth creationism, based on the common-sense/straightforward reading of Genesis. I think his interpretation and arguments are flawed, not just because of scientific evidence, but also because his exegetical and theological reasons for requiring a young earth interpretation are lacking (Biologos has more on those reasons here and here).
However, arguing further over this only makes a mountain out of a molehill - it eats up time researching and arguing, and at the same time only makes the rift b/w young earth and old earth and whatever else is out there bigger (and didn't Jesus tell us all to be as one?).
And this is why I like Wright. N.T. Wright doesn't directly subscribe to either old/young earth - he sort of sidesteps the question and asks a different one.
The video opens with him discussing different datings of Genesis; almost immediately after, he basically sidesteps the question and asks instead how Genesis was read by the Jewish people right before New Testament times. What was the action or impact of Genesis on the people Jesus came to reach?
In asking this question, Wright takes two steps:
- He takes interpretation of Genesis away from facts (which may or may not change lives) and back into the theological realm - how it was read by the Jewish people impacts how Jesus' message should affect us.
- Wherease Mohler's interpretation of texts was based on "common sense" readings, Wright gives a clear standard of interpretation for Biblical texts - Jesus and the nation of Israel that he came for.
A recent comment to a previous post on the subject - "do subsequent authors of the Bible take that view of Genesis, or do they have a more literal interpretation?" That's up to debate; I've heard both views taken. However, I do think that asking whether or not the authors believed one thing or not is kind of missing the point - Israelites may have believed lots of things which were factually wrong.
As an analogy, imagine trying to read "The Tortoise and the Hare" to a child. The kid might exclaim halfway through the story that hares and tortoises aren't intelligent enough to want to race each other in the first place. Yes, the kid is technically right in his statement, but that's not the point. A better analogy might be of cultural stories - most historians and anthropologists look beyond the question of whether they're true or false in order to ask the question, "what can this story tell me about the people that told it?".
Wright says it best at the end of the video - the whole debate on evolution/creation/etc in Genesis 1 has taken our attention from the larger picture and focused it on (possibly meaningless) details, so that the end message conveyed through our interpretation is something completely different than what anyone before the 19th century would have read. If Paul is right, and Jesus' death and resurrection are the grounds on which faith stands, then faith is grounded in a specific historical event and a specific person who lived his life as a message to a specific people. In order to understand more deeply what Jesus was preaching, I'd want to be as close as I could to his messages, and to do that, I'd need to walk there in Jewish shoes.
As a funny aside, I immediately thought of the mathematical concept of "weak formulations" after writing this post. If you're at all interested (please be interested) tell me and I'd love to explain it and how it relates in my mind to these arguments :D.
13 comments:
I'm SO interested.
"do subsequent authors of the Bible take that view of Genesis, or do they have a more literal interpretation?" That's up to debate; I've heard both views taken. However, I do think that asking whether or not the authors believed one thing or not is kind of missing the point - Israelites may have believed lots of things which were factually wrong."
This really interests me. I think it is legitimate (at least for argument's sake) to distinguish between (1)subsequent authors of the bible reading Genesis literally simply because they had no reason at the time to do otherwise and (2) subsequent authors feeling that a literal reading is theologically essential or that the first chapters of Genesis MUST be read literally.
I think the former is probably true, but the latter (the view that the old testament somehow falls apart without 7-day creationism) is more of a reactionary position to darwinism than an original position of the church. But of course, I'm no expert.
maybe its just me but wright is sounding kind of catholic. i honestly don't think the jewish people including those writing the books read genesis literally.
Hopefully things get well for you soon! i had no idea :(
but if you want this might be interesting to you
http://www.giftfoundationdownloads.com/nakedwithoutshame.html
Theology of the Body ftw.
and weak formulations are?
I'll first admit that I only skimmed Mohler's speech and the Biologos responses, so if I say anything which repeats or is answered by those three items, I apologize.
I agree that a debate such as this takes time, but I also believe that doctrine is important, so the time may not be wasted. Yes, we should aim at unity, but maybe an abiding unity brought by debate is better than a superficial unity by avoiding discussion of important differences.
Wright does neatly sidestep the question, but I'm not sure that step is justified. I agree that his theological exegesis of Genesis 1-3 is an important spiritual lesson for the people of God, but I don't feel that it's mutually exclusive with also taking the text literally (or finding about what else the text is trying to convey).
Let me explain: I believe most of the Bible is comprised of factual accounts that have moral implications. Moreover, the truth of those facts has moral and spiritual implications of their own. Doctrine is important because doctrine is necessarily a statement of the character of God, and we grow closer to God in part by knowing Him and the beauty of His character.
To illustrate, I think many more Christians would shy away from a position that the Resurrection of Christ isn't literal, but nonetheless has important spiritual lessons, and that's what we should focus on. The reality is that the truth of the fact of Christ's Resurrection has spiritual implications of its own that cannot be ignored.
So what are the theological and moral costs of an evolutionary view of Creation? Many, I think. First, and Mohler speaks to this, it implies that death is part of God’s plan for the universe, before the Fall (and presumably after it), since evolution has death as a necessary mechanism. Saying that its God’s desire and perfect plan for things to die is a huge statement about the character of God and the hope we hold within ourselves.
Second, and this might be closer to my heart than others, an evolutionary view of Creation makes no sense of Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” An evolutionary reading would suggest the understanding that the Ten Commandments, written by the finger of God, was confused about how the world came to be and, moreover, gives a completely false justification for the Sabbath.
I could list more things, but this comment is already too long. I will agree on one thing, though: if we lose other messages from Genesis merely because we’re too hung up on the creation/evolution debate, that would be a problem. However, I have not found that to be the case.
Oh and one more thing: yes, many things that Israelites believed were factually wrong, but I was referring to the specific writers of the Bible, who I believe were God-inspired to write what they wrote.
Mithun - Good to hear from you again, and glad to be back in the theological discussions with you (wish we had more time to have some when you were here!).
"Yes, we should aim at unity, but maybe an abiding unity brought by debate is better than a superficial unity by avoiding discussion of important differences."
- True, but I'd like to argue that beliefs on creation (while important) are far less important than thoughts on Christ (for one, Paul directly addresses the fact of the resurrection as being key to our faith).
"I agree that his theological exegesis of Genesis 1-3 is an important spiritual lesson for the people of God, but I don't feel that it's mutually exclusive with also taking the text literally".
- That's very true, and I think it's a great strength of Wright's method. His interpretation is a lot more flexible, and while that's no reason in itself to choose an interpretation, it has proven helpful in my personal walk (more on that below).
"The reality is that the truth of the fact of Christ's Resurrection has spiritual implications of its own that cannot be ignored."
- I'd posit that the reality of the Resurrection was (and is) much more important than the creation accounts. Reasons: IMO, it's fairly obvious that the world has "sin" of many sorts. Whereas creation accounts may tell us where this sin comes from (and doesn't tell us where to go from there), Christ's resurrection addresses this directly. i.e. one can be know the solution without ever needing to know how exactly the problem came about (though, as a mathematician, I always encourage finding out more about the problem background :P).
"So what are the theological and moral costs of an evolutionary view of Creation? Many, I think. First, and Mohler speaks to this, it implies that death is part of God’s plan for the universe, before the Fall (and presumably after it), since evolution has death as a necessary mechanism. Saying that its God’s desire and perfect plan for things to die is a huge statement about the character of God and the hope we hold within ourselves."
- I won't pretend to know the answer to this; other authors have talked about death in evolution as spiritual warfare (see Greg Boyd) but there's really no orthodoxy concerning this. However, I'd be wary of boxing God into our ideas of "good". After all, death was in his redemptive plan for us, and imagery in the Bible talks a lot about dying in order to live. FYI, these are just scattered thoughts, nothing concrete.
continued...
"An evolutionary reading would suggest the understanding that the Ten Commandments, written by the finger of God, was confused about how the world came to be and, moreover, gives a completely false justification for the Sabbath."
- I don't see how this needs to be true; with the day-age interpretation, the end lesson is that God took time off, and so should we.
"I will agree on one thing, though: if we lose other messages from Genesis merely because we’re too hung up on the creation/evolution debate, that would be a problem. However, I have not found that to be the case."
- I'll admit that it's more an issue for me, being a "scientist" (applied math counts, I hope :P) in higher academia. At the very least, I feel like I have to wrestle with this more often, and the more I do so, the more I am unsure about each of the creation accounts (and its kind of why I appreciate Wright's view).
to others:
1) sorry for the string of deleted comments, blogger kept giving me error messages.
2) I'll post something on on variational forms soon. glad to some people are interested :P.
Jose - I think that's the case, but I've only read 2 books on the history, and they dealt with the rise of creationism, not the theology of it. I'd agree with you though, at least in my readings of the rest of Scripture.
Wayne - thanks :D. Healing a bit every day.
I suppose my qualms with all of Wright's "sidestepping" is that, well, he sidesteps. It's not that he's flexible, he just merely ignores what might be an important issue because it's contentious and moves on. I mention the fact of Christ's Resurrection not because I think it's as important as the fact of creation, but only to illustrate that the trueness of certain facts presented in the Bible are important and that they do have spiritual implications. One can't merely sidestep them because the fact is contentious.
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