An Important Question

Did God create this?



That's not my question, but leads to it indirectly. I have recently begun to suspect that the seventh day in Genesis need not necessarily end God's creative activity. I wonder if one could build a case for God creating certain kinds of creatures after the fall. I've thought of the Book of Hebrew's "spiritualizing" of the seventh day in passing in relation to this and thought it may be relevant.

Anyway, the question is: does the seventh day necessarily limit God's creative activity? Even with the knowledge that micro-evolution is true, it is hard to build a case that the Angler Fish pictured above came about from an ancestor that was - presumably - originally herbivorous. In other words, a young earth creation account (which I do not hold to) that limits God's creative activity after the 7th 24-hour day seems highly difficult for me to believe in the light of the theory of evolution. Any thoughts? More thoughts about evolution to come sometime in the future.

"The Myth of a Christian Nation"

I'm now a little over halfway through Gregory Boyd's book "The Myth of a Christian Nation" and I've really been impressed with his ideas. I would encourage everybody to read it though I suspect some readers would be incensed by his ideas. Still, these are things I've been thinking about for a while, the crux of the matter being what is and should be the relationship between the church and state? Why are so many Christians convinced that their zeal to create laws is supported by the Bible. Actually, I've been seeing that this isn't really anywhere in Scripture.

I really appreciate Boyd's emphasis on the central theology of Jesus' message as the "power under" kingdom of God in contrast to the "power over" kingdom of the world. By "power under" he means that the church's primary focus should be the presentation of the gospel through self-sacrificial love that does not force external conformity but seeks the inward transformation of the soul by God's doing. Whenever the church uses the "power over" method of the world, that is, coercion to regulate behavior, it betrays Jesus' message.

Indeed, before I read this book I was wondering about Jesus' apparent indifference to the politics of his day because the kingdom he came to set up was not of that nature. I also find other things I was thinking about in this book, such as the nature of one of the temptations of Jesus. Satan offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and Jesus could have truly been ruling over the world without having to go to the cross. But the Messiah wanted to do his Father's will and did not take the external, political path, but one which would transform hearts and ultimately make the kingdom of the world obsolete.

The early Christians got this right when, as a minority in a persecuting world, they saw suffering as the way to imitate their Lord. They did not really fathom regulating many things in the government because it was just not their circumstance. Then the church - and this is where Boyd really opened my eyes - when given the "power of the sword" became even worse than the kingdom of the world. The mentality then focused upon how to force others to do "in the name of the Lord" - yet it was all horrendously blasphemous.

Of course, being involved in politics today cannot even be compared to the church's atrocities in history. But Jesus' message and theology really does make me pause. I cannot think of the practicality of this yet however, and I'm hoping Boyd does clarify many things by the end of the book. This may all strike a chord with some readers so let me know what you think.

For any Clarkian/Van Tillian Presuppositionalists out there...

This is the best short statement concerning the comparison between deductive and inductive reasoning I've ever seen that indirectly corrects the common Presuppositionalist claim that their deductive reasoning proves a Biblical Christian worldview with absolute (Cartesian) certainty.

Moreland & Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, p. 59

"In a sound deductive argument the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises: if the premises are true and the inference form valid, then it is impossible that the conclusion be false. It is worth observing that an argument's having a deductive form is irrelevant to the epistemic status of the premises and conclusion. The difference between a deductive and an inductive argument is not to be found in the degree to which they approach demonstrative proof of some conclusion. A good deductive argument may make a conclusion only slightly epistemically probable if its premises are themselves far from certain, whereas an inductive argument could give us overwhelming evidence for and, hence, confidence in its conclusion. This fact is especially evident when we reflect that some of the premises in a deductive argument may themselves be established on the basis of inductive evidence. Thus, contrary to the impression sometimes given, an argument's being inductive or deductive in form is not an indication of the certainty of the argument's conclusion."

Random Thoughts: The Message Translation

I haven't posted for a while because I've been working like a dog. Seeing as I only have about 3 hours to myself a day, I haven't really made blogging a priority. This post will probably have no structure but that's the nature of my "random thoughts" posts. It's kind of like following my thoughts as I organize them at the moment. Well, here's a tidbit of what I've been thinking in terms of Bible translation.

I'm liking the Message Bible a lot more now. I know this won't sound so sweet to many people (especially of the Reformed tradition) but I'd like to organize why I've recently swung towards this position.

I've hesitated to bash Mark Driscoll again but I thought it was okay as long as I said that he is freaking amazing (that pretty much covers it). Still I obviously disagree with him on some points as a previous post made evident (I also disagree with his doctrine of divine humor but that's not so important). The point to be made here is he wrote somewhere - I forget where - that we cannot change God's words, thus, when he writes "man" anywhere in the Bible we are not at liberty to change that to "humanity."

I use this to illustrate what I've come out of. Basically my philosophy of language has changed. If someone else said "Man is totally depraved" and wrote it down as "men and women are totally depraved" would that destroy the meaning? Would I be perverting his words as so many opponents of the TNIV translation seem to suggest?

I suspect that many people who argue on these lines have not wrestled with the issues important to missionaries and how they can make the Biblical language relevant to a totally different culture. This is not tangential but is of utmost importance, I just simply cannot elaborate on it now.

Recently our youth group was reading about John the Baptist's announcement of Jesus where he says he's nothing and that the one coming after him was magnificent and that he was not even worthy to untie his sandals. The Message says (to paraphrase a paraphrase) that John the Baptist is only a mere stagehand and that Jesus is the show.

Now I've only been to a couple broadway shows, but reading this really made the text come alive because of my experience. Does this disrupt the meaning of God's words? Nope. Are they God's words? Well, sorta, just as much as a pastor's sermon concerning the same words are.

People who criticize the Message seem to forget that it is a paraphrase; it's like a Targum. It's no different than expounding the text through the use of a contemporary illustration to our audience.

Do we distort God's words when we write "humanity" when he explicitly said "man"? Depends on your philosophy of language. Really, God usually meant "men and women" as much as "the image of God in man" means in "men and women." Keeping the literal rendering sometimes actually hinders the "understanding curve" of many readers.

Any bilingual person could affirm the basic idea of what I've just said. Sometimes I feel like people who hold the NASB on a pedestal because it's so close to the original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek (in literal word transposition but not always accurate or relevant in meaning) only speak one language.