First, he sets the stage with a foul video that his daughter saw as the apparent example of the critique of Wokeness. Interestingly he compare it to a “Mark Driscoll impersonation”, a person strongly embraced by SEBTS leadership at one time.
Then he made a broad, unevaluated claim that “The whole anti-woke and anti-critical race theory trope strike me as not so much interested in opposing progressive authoritarianism and its divisive racial politics as much as it serves to deny ethnic minorities have any grievances and white churches have any responsibility to do anything about it.”
He then aims his rhetorical guns at the sin others he seems to perceive as those opposed to the Woke Movement:
“If you want to talk about evangelical whoring it applies just as easily to churches who have tethered themselves to white supremacy who have fattened their hearts in the days of slaughter who messianize politicians and Caearize Jesus who crave war like a baby craves its mother’s milk who engage in a form of civil religion that combines the worst of racial prejudices with myths of national infallibility.”
And to those he uses terminology, not blatantly offensive as Durbin’s, but in the same rhetorical vein – demonizing those he sees as opposed to what he embraces.
“That evangelical is the false prophet who leads others to bow down and worship the beast with feet made of Darwinian economics legs comprised of corporations and colonies a stomach of moral indifference to the suffering of others arms made of confederacy and misogyny and a head made of the military-industrial complex.”
And lastly he makes the too common charge that those who are opposed to the Woke Movement are ignoring the biblical mandates when in fact they are not – it is the foundational methodology and actions that are being opposed, but he ignores that kind of in depth evaluation and just chooses to paint with a broad condemnatory brush –
“Let me be clear love of neighbour requires you to be concerned for the just treatment of your neighbour whether they are Black Hispanic First Peoples LGBT migrant Muslim working-class or even Baptist. Any derogation of a Christian’s duty to be concerned about the welfare and just-treatment of their neighbour is an attack on the biblical love command itself.”
I myself know of no one who is opposed to the Woke Movement that is becoming so pervasive in the SBC that is a racist or any other “anti-someone” that he implies. Myself and others who are opposed to the Woke Movement are so because of the clear philosophically flawed underpinnings. We have long recognized the biblical injunction and by and large have lived by it our whole lives with no other motivation than God’s work in our lives and our recognition of the image of God in all. We do so from a biblical foundation and without false motivation and actions that do no more that attempt to make people guilty for things they have not done nor would ever consider doing. He would have done better by very directly and pointedly aiming his critique to Durbin and not broadstroking the whole “Anti-Woke.”
Irish is who we are. I was told that all me life…my life. Me…my father was Irish. My mother was Irish. My grandparents were Irish. Irish Catholic.
There’s a moniker worth being labeled.
My brother Shawn and I were altar boys. We were altar boys when being altar boys was cool. Going to a Catholic school in the early 60’s, being Irish, we were shoe-ins. But, being the early 60’s it had its “trials of the soul”.
When we started altar boy training, the Catholic mass was still said in Latin. Consequently we had to memorize all the prayers in Latin. All the prayers.
Then Vatican II happened. I didn’t know there was a Vatican I, much less that you could make more. The consequence of Vatican II was that the Catholic Mass would now be said in the native tongue of the participants.
You guessed it. We now had to relearn all the prayers in ENGLISH. This has nothing to do with the story; I was just fishing for sympathy.
Any way, we were altar boys at a small, I’d like to say run down, but I believe “humble” is more appropriate, parish in urban Columbus Ohio. Shawn and I were great at serving the Latin mass, all you really had to do was begin with Dominae, and end with Deum Nostrum, with a lot of passionate and sincere mumbling in between. As long as you “hit your mark” on stage (the altar), rang the chimes at the appropriate time, let the priest determine how much wine goes in the chalice, don’t giggle at the participants sticking their tongue out for the host, you were a “Knight of the Altar”.
With the advent of English prayers, depending on the priest, you could squeak by or be the recipient of a glare that you knew meant, “You’ll obviously never amount to anything, AND will probably spend the better part of eternity roasting in purgatory”. But we were successful, and obviously preferred as supporting cast members in the celebration of “The Passion of The Savior”, brought to you every Sunday at 7, 9, 10:30 and noon. I used to believe we were so good at it that we were requested, but in reality, it may have been because Father O’Keefe knew the Maddens always came to 9 o’clock mass and that they always brought a pair of trained altar boys who could be drafted for the masses that may or may not have servants attending. In the hierarchy of altar boys, the older and more experienced were the ones who got to do the large productions like “High Mass”, high holy days in the church, weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Shawn and I were grunts. Merely foot soldiers in the trenches. We never did the really elaborate pageants of faith.
Except this one time.
I believe the scheduled acolytes were unavailable due to weather or illness, but at the end of mass one Sunday, Fr. O’Keefe asked Dad,( we had no input in the decision), if Shawn and I could do a funeral, scheduled at 2pm that day.
“Of course, my boys would be honored father.”
Now a Catholic funeral involves a grand procession down the center aisle led by two altar boys, with hands folded, followed by another altar boy bearing a tall staff affixed with a crucifix, and the priest, followed by two more altar boys (me and Shawn). When we all arrived on stage, those not actually serving the mass, sat, kneeled, stood and bowed on cue, on a bench to the left of the altar. That is where my brother and I were.
Keep in mind this was 2pm, Shawn and I had been at church since 8:30.
A Catholic requiem mass has a great deal of chanting, singing, incense and oration. If you don’t have a leading role in the event, and you’ve missed you’re traditional after church pancake breakfast, and lunch, it is understandable that at some time during the solemn chanting and incense burning, you might tend to doze.
While returning to conscience at one point, I realized everyone else was kneeling, and here I was enjoying a little nap time on my little bench right up there in front of God and everybody. I quickly fell to my knees, or that’s how it started. I actually had my cassock (the black robe), caught under my left foot, and as I threw myself forward, the front of the robe jerked me down prostrate on the dais. Now, my knees had the robe pinned to the floor, pulling my upper body down toward my belly button, with my forehead solidly in the carpet. Sister Mary Nevergetsmad, whom we all loved, said I looked like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus when Our Lord called on him.
Sister Beatrice Scaryperson had quite another take on the event. The glare from Fr. O’Keefe threw doubt on my chances of even making Purgatory. From here it just went down hill.
Most of the remainder of the Mass for the Dead swims in my memory as a slow march of doom. Even Shawn, who was more than familiar with my short comings in anything requiring strict adherence to protocol, ceremony, and sanctity, was trying to distance himself from the inevitable fallout of his brother’s nincompoopery.
The conclusion of the formal service is followed by a similar procession by the troupe back down the center aisle, leading the pallbearers and the casket of the dearly departed out the front doors of the church.
However… Fr. O’Keefe, wanting to avoid the possibility of this solemn event collapsing into something that might warrant the attention of the Bishop, told Shawn and I “you boys tend the bells”
Shawn and I had never “tended the bells”. Not even for the simple noon ringing that used to be common back in the day.
There we stood. Both of us staring at the rope.
What do we do? I don’t know, just pull it. O.K., how hard? I don’t know, I’ve never done this. Don’t look at me, I ain’t done it either.
Shawn reached up and pulled down steadily on the rope. A very slight “pong” came from some where above us.
This is harder than I thought. Gimme a hand.
Both of us grabbed it and gave it a mighty hove. BONG-BONG-BONG. The rope went up, we both jumped up and grabbed it pulling it down while we bent our knees, and landed on the floor in a squatting position while still grasping the rope.
BONGBONGBONGBONGBONG.
Ohhhh yeah! We got it now by golly!
Up we went, grinning like gargoyles.
BONGBONGBONGBONGBONGBONGBONG.
The door crashed open. There stood Fr. O’Keefe. His white hair which is always combed and properly slicked to his head, stood out in thick strands looking just like the Great and Powerful Oz. His eyes bulged, I know this because I had never seen bulging eyes before, but the sight of his eyes confirmed my mental image was dead on. Though there was no possibility of wind in the belfry, his robes and vestments were flowing as if by a mighty tempest.
JAYSOOS MAUREEE EN JOUSEFFFF, WHAT IN DE NAME O GOD ARE YE BOIS DOIN?????
He stepped up grabbed the rope, stopped it in mid swing, the bells went BAbonk.
ONE RING, SAY ONE HAIL MARY, ANOTHER RING, SAY ONE HAIL MARY, A THIRD RING, SAY THREE HAIL MARYS AND START OVER!!! CAN YE DO THAT BOYS?
…yes father.
ARE YE BOTH SURE O THAT?
…yes father
Alright then boys, keep that up till someone comes to tell you to stop. Remember, one Hail Mary between rings, three rings, three Hail Marys and start again. Got it right?
…yes father
To this day I know, I mean I KNOW the proper sequence of bell tolls for a Catholic Requiem Mass. Not that I ever got the chance to do it again.
I remember a story my grandfather told me once; well, actually, I remember a lot of stories he told me – he called himself “Veracity,” to lend credance to these stories he tells his grandchildren.
Well, as I was saying, I here repeat the Story of Ole Blue, as he told us by the grand fireplace in Haney’s Castle in the Land of LawCo.
As you might suppose, it is about a dog named Blue and he was a huntin’ dog. It does seem that a lot of folks from the hills and mountains along the Great Ohio named their huntin’ dogs Blue. Go figure.
In any event, it seems when he was a youngun in that wondrous land he was out hunting one day, rabbits if I remember correctly, getting on in the years that I am, and anyway, Blue was hollerin’ and bellerin’ up a storm as befit the good time that old dog was having chasing those whily rascals as it had been a good bit since he had been out riding the land of them as it had been raining a good bit at that time.
Ole young Veracity said that it was a Sunday and he know’d he should have been in ‘going to meetin’’ but the sun had come up so bright that he stole out early with Blue and decided to do his worshipping oout in the woods scarin’ up rabbits and squirrles.
As I was saying, Blue was running every which where, running this way and cutting back that way – just having a plain good time out in the morning sun flushing out rabbits, birds and anything else that had decided to take it easy and warm themselves in the early morning sun.
Well, Veracity weren’t but a bout ten but had had been hunting with his dad, Adonirum Judson, since he was three and so before long he and Blue had quite a few of the unfortunates in the bag when behind a felled tree came the most God awful scream he had ever heard!
He ran voer to that tree as fast as he could as just before Blue has bolted at high speed in that direction.
As he cleared the felled tree he stopped dead in his tracks.
Blue was halved completely in two from his nose all the way down to the end of his tail.
It seems that blue had jumped the log after the rabbit and had run dead over the axe that my story teller had inadvertantly left embedde in fallen trunk.
And that is where the sin lay.
It was bad enough having a hunting dog halved but boy! when his pa found out about him leaving the axe out, Lord have mercy!
He could return the axt to the shed where it should have been but still he had the family dog now split in two to explain and there weren’t no explanation but the truth that would fit. And being raised as he was, if asked, the only thing that would come out of his mouth was what had actually happened.
Well, he had to do something and do it fast.
The first thing to do was to get old Blue and that weren’t going to be easy.
It seems that he had caught that rabbit after he had been halved and now both of him were fighting over the rightful ownership of the unfortunate rodent, which showed how stupid that dog was, for it belonged to him no matter how many there were of him.
After first snatchin’ up the rabbit, my grandfather picked up both of Blue and stuck each side under each arm and headed back to the house.
He had a little time for he knew that everyone should be at church (which he was not), knowing his mother as he did.
Halfway to the house he remembered his friend Cory. Cory and him were pals and he knew Cory would be home because he had told him once that his father was an atheist and didn’t believe in going to church. Cory like animlas and had often hurt critters and put them back together agains and if anyone could git Blue back in one piee Cory could, but he had better hurry because church was getting out soon and Blue was fighting up a storm with his stupid self in grandpa’s young arms. Dumb dog.
Well, Cory did good.
He got out his sewin’ kit and stitched old Blue back together again. Then Veracity got a curry comb and covered up the stitches with Blue’s fur.
It didn’t do no good though.
As soon as he got home, he came around through the field to allay any suspicions, his maw laid into him. He figured on that though and took it as a matter of course.
What killed it though was his daddy pettin’ his beloved ole Blue – he was fond of that stupid dog, and feeling the stiches and following them down his back to his tail.
He immediately figured it out cause he knew that only something as sharp as a razor and as big as an axe could to that to his dog, and he kept his axes razor sharp.
He also deduced that the axe was left out in the field by his not too bright son and that put the topping on the cake and the brush to the seat of ole Veracity’s pants.
And, if you don’t believe this like I didn’t (brother Kevin did), you can to this day see ole Blue stuffed and sittin’ in my Haney’s Castle in that wondrous land of Lawco, scar down the back and all.
If you want a fairly thorough academic delineation of the Jewish canon at the time of the Incarnation, see Duane L. Christiensen, “Josephus and the Twenty-Two-Book Canon of Sacred Scripture.” JETS 29/1 (March 1986) 37-46. Among other things you will find early church writers listed who endorsed this listing and canon. He lists, Origen (c. 250), Hilary of Poitiers (c. 254), Eusebius (c. 320), Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 250), Athanasius (c. 360), the Council of Laodicea (360-364), Epiphanaius (c. 368), Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 370), Jerome (c. 380) and Rufinus (c. 390). He was citing M. Stuart, Critical History and Defence of the Old Testament Canon (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1872) 255 and A. Sundberg, The Old Testament of the Early Church (Cambridge: Harvard Univerysity, 1964) 134-155.
The TNK/OT canon was fixed before the Incarnation. Josephus states this in his Contra Apion This is shown by Josephus’s use of the Letter of Aristeas in his Antiquities12.12ff where he writes, “38 For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, {g} which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine;
39 and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years;
40 but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books.
The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. (Apion 1:38-40 JOE).
As I noted in my chart we have Luke 24.44 where Jesus notes, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you– that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Lk. 24:44 CSB17). That is the TNK canon – Torah (Law of Moses), Nev’im (Prophets), and Kethubim (Psalms the first of the four books noted by Josephus). For the historical note, in Matthew 23.35 Jesus makes a historical note that excludes the Maccabees; “So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” (Matt. 23:35 CSB1). The canon of the NT writers was the Jewish canon which is also the protestant canon. We use Jesus’s canon.
The whole discussion of the use of the term “Septuagint” regarding the concept of canon is laid out nicely in Edmon L. Gallagher’s “Suddenly and the Gradually: The Growth of the Septuagint and its Canon” in JBL 143, no. 2 (2024): 303-322. If you are near an academic library you should read it.
The Jewish scriptures at the time of Josephus were divided into three distinct sections; the Torah or Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.[1]. In the modern translations of the Old Testament, the book of Daniel is numbered with the Prophets. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the standard Hebrew Bible in use in schools puts Daniel in the section of the Writings.[SM1] This dichotomy will be dealt with later.
The books of the prophets contain much detail concerning the history of the Jewish people. Josephus, in his Contra Apion (1.37-43), lists twenty-two books; five of Moses, thirteen of the prophets, and “the remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.”[2]. The prophets extend historically from the time immediately following the Exodus (anywhere between 1500-1200 B.C.E.) to just after the return from the Babylonian exile. Josephus spends much of his time in this period of Israel’s history and it is curious that he devotes as much time as he does to the book of Daniel, moreso than any other of the major prophets.[3].
[1].Josephus himself gives this division in C. Ap. in 1.37–43. It is also found in the New Testament (Luke 24.44).
[1].Thackeray’s note (p. 179, n. b) list the prophets as probably Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezekiel, Minor Prophets, Daniel. The “four” he lists as Psalms, Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Sid Z. Leiman is in agreement with this numbering in his “Josephus and the Canon of the Bible” in Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, Josephus, the Bible, and History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 53–54. This differs with the arrangement found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia which, though containing the same books and recognizing the same tri-partite division (Law, Prophets, Writings), places Job, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles among the writings. Baba Bathra 14b (Babylonian Talmud, ~200–500 C.E.) is the source of this arrangement.
[1].Concerning the major writing prophets, Josephus mentions Isaiah eight times; Jeremiah nine times; Ezekiel five times. In the former, non-writing prophets, the prophet Elijah is referred to seven times, and Elisha is mentioned six times. Daniel, however, has a major portion of an entire chapter devoted to his work and prophecies. Feldman notes on page 630 that among the biblical figures that Josephus gives his attention, he focuses a proportionately large amount of space to Daniel. He notes that “the ratio of Josephus to the Hebrew text for Joseph is 1.63 (1.20 with respect to the Septuagint; 5.45 [3.75 with reference to the Septuagint] for the episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife; 3.26 [2.38 with reference to the Septuagint] for the narrative dealing with Joseph’s dreams and subsequent enslavement; 4.09 [2.97 with reference to the Septuagint] for the pericope comprising the final test of Joseph’s brothers), the ratio for Daniel (Ant. 10.186-218: 537 lines in the Loeb Classical Library; 407 lines in the Hebrew Aramaic text of Daniel, chapters 1-6 and 8; 790 lines in the Septuagint text of Rahlfs) is 1.32 with respect to the Hebrew and .68 with respect to the Greek.”
[1].Josephus himself gives this division in C. Ap. in 1.37–43. It is also found in the New Testament (Luke 24.44).
[2].Thackeray’s note (p. 179, n. b) list the prophets as probably Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezekiel, Minor Prophets, Daniel. The “four” he lists as Psalms, Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Sid Z. Leiman is in agreement with this numbering in his “Josephus and the Canon of the Bible” in Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, Josephus, the Bible, and History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 53–54. This differs with the arrangement found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia which, though containing the same books and recognizing the same tri-partite division (Law, Prophets, Writings), places Job, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles among the writings. Baba Bathra 14b (Babylonian Talmud, ~200–500 C.E.) is the source of this arrangement.
[3].Concerning the major writing prophets, Josephus mentions Isaiah eight times; Jeremiah nine times; Ezekiel five times. In the former, non-writing prophets, the prophet Elijah is referred to seven times, and Elisha is mentioned six times. Daniel, however, has a major portion of an entire chapter devoted to his work and prophecies. Feldman notes on page 630 that among the biblical figures that Josephus gives his attention, he focuses a proportionately large amount of space to Daniel. He notes that “the ratio of Josephus to the Hebrew text for Joseph is 1.63 (1.20 with respect to the Septuagint; 5.45 [3.75 with reference to the Septuagint] for the episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife; 3.26 [2.38 with reference to the Septuagint] for the narrative dealing with Joseph’s dreams and subsequent enslavement; 4.09 [2.97 with reference to the Septuagint] for the pericope comprising the final test of Joseph’s brothers), the ratio for Daniel (Ant. 10.186-218: 537 lines in the Loeb Classical Library; 407 lines in the Hebrew Aramaic text of Daniel, chapters 1-6 and 8; 790 lines in the Septuagint text of Rahlfs) is 1.32 with respect to the Hebrew and .68 with respect to the Greek.”
by Shawn C. Madden Former Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Abstract: Genesis 1 has been an enigma to exegetes and scientists since man has read the text and read the heavens. Attempts to reconcile or match the two sources of the creative 1activity of God has garnered discussion and debate, often very heated, for millennia. Each time a new way of interpreting the text or peering more closely at the heavens has advanced the discussion and the attempts at finding or recognizing agreements between the two books God has written – Scripture and Nature. While the books have remained unchanged, the hermeneutical tools aimed at evaluating each, linguistics and science, have advanced. This paper is an attempt at providing yet another effort at seeing the agreements in the two books of God. The long history of such endeavors tempers this effort and the author knows that this will not be the end of the discussion and that this paper may achieve no more than to find itself as another item in the catalog of efforts of the creature attempting to understand and proclaim the glory and majesty of the Creator.
Key Words: Genesis 1:1-3, hermeneutics, text linguistics, discourse analysis, creation, Big Bang, science, physics, Hebrew grammar, day, cosmology, universe, earth.
The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go. Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642) in his open letter to the Dowager Grand Duchess.
[It is the] glory of God to cause the hiding of a thing and [the] glory of kings to search [for the] thing. Proverbs 25.2
Introduction
Though I have read through the Proverbs many times, 25.2 never stuck in my head until my son-in-law mentioned that it was his favorite verse. It strikes me as particularly pertinent to the issue at hand, evaluating and looking for harmonization between the two great works of the God of Abraham, Nature, and Scripture. It appears to indicate that there is curiosity created into the nature of man; a curiosity that sets him on the trek of uncovering what God has covered as part of that nature and its quest. This can be seen in the Scriptures concerning themselves in the plethora of prophecies concerning peoples and events, especially the coming of the Promised Messiah that many point out first appears in the Proto-Evangelium of Genesis 3.15.
This paper will be a short evaluation of the history of hermeneutical approaches to these two texts that God has presented for us to observe, ponder, and interpret. Scripture is understood as the Books of the Christian Bible which includes the thirty nine books of the TaNaK and the twenty seven books of the Gospels and Letters.[1] The key tool employed to interpret and understand Scripture is linguistics and its subcategories and tools. The key tool to interpret and understand Nature is science and its subcategories and tools. The history of both approaches involves the development of knowledge and instruments. This review will be necessarily brief but should, hopefully, give a solid account.
[1] These terms are used as the terminology “Old” and “New” can convey a preference for the New over the Old and the Scriptures are not to be so seen and separated.
A quick definition from the world of theology and biblical studies that I believe applies nicely with scientific advances in light of Prov. 25.
The term “progressive revelation” is a well known one in especially Christian studies in the Bible and theology. It says that “we understand God to have worked in a process of accomplishing redemption for humanity, revealing himself and his plan gradually, . . .”[1] Often this comes in advances in manuscript discoveries, literary studies, and linguistics. My foray into this subject, having led me to the hard sciences associated with cosmology, shows that it too applies to scientific inquiry, especially in observing technological advances that have allowed us to dig and peer deeper into the processes of the LORD God of this universe in which he has placed us.
[1] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 132ff.
Scientific Advances
A black hole physicist notes that
One of the biggest misconceptions about [the scientific definition of] the Big Bang theory is that it is a theory of the creation of the Universe, but it’s not. The Big Bang Theory describes how the Universe went from an incredibly hot and dense state to evolve to give us the distribution and different shapes of galaxies we see today. It doesn’t explain what happens at the first moment of ‘creation’ when time = 0. Our knowledge of physics allows us to rewind all the way back to when the Universe was a scant 10-36 seconds old (a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second), but before that all our known laws of physics break down.[1]
[1] Becky Smethurst, A Brief History of Black Holes (London: Macmillan, 2022), 261.
This position is the latest in the field of science that seeks to understand the universe in which we find ourselves. Man has been looking to the sky and observing the sun, moon, and stars since the beginning and he has been contemplating what it is and what it means. And, how it is.
There are several possible approaches to review scientific endeavors and advancements that demonstrate how man has sought to understand and determine his place in the universe he sees all around him; I am going to primarily focus on the cosmological aspect as I find more interest in it than the biological or geological approach, both of which are as equally insightful.
I have been fairly unlearned in this area and just of late have I taken a deeper dive into it, albeit not into the deep waters which require skill and understanding of the more mathematical (especially calculus) approaches. But enough so that I am not drowning.
My primary teachers have been the books by Dean Overman, Andrew Liddle, David Schultz, and Hugh Ross. I first bumped into Dean Overman’s book several years ago when teaching a Sunday School class and the creation topic came up. I was looking up something concerning theology and science and was researching Wolfhart Pannenberg[1] in this realm – I knew out that he had an interest and expertise in this area. I learned that he had written the foreword to Overman’s A Case Against Accident and Self Organization. I ordered and read it. I found it to be an excellent and thorough treatment of the statistical problems that are the heart of the fine tuning and intelligent design understanding and arguments.
More recently, as I began this more in-depth research, I found Andrew Liddle’s, An Introduction to Modern Cosmology[2] which served me as a good introduction to the terms, concepts, issues, and names in the scientific study of the universe. It does have math/maths but not so much that it interferes with a good understanding of the narrative.
In addition, I found another good guide to accompany this trek in David Schultz’s delineation of the history of the cosmological journey in his The Andromeda Galaxy and the Rise of Modern Astronomy.[3]
My own interest in astronomy began in the 1980s when my wife bought me a small, 4 inch reflector telescope. With that I and the Royal Ambassadors of First Baptist Dallas observed Halley’s comet in 1986. I later traded that telescope in for a more capable one (still a 4” reflector) and observed Jupiter and Mars and the moon. My life got busy enough such that I could do little more and as such did not get back into astronomy until 2021 when I traded recreational flying for astronomy as a hobby. I began with an 8 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain and have since added a 127mm and a 51mm refractor and an 8 inch RASA. I have also acquired several astrophotography specific cameras to go with them to image the not very dark Dallas, Texas night sky.
My foray into the field is a bit illustrative of Schultz’s narration. He recounts how what man has gained from looking at the night sky millenia ago has been materially influenced by advances in technology. For me, in addition to the availability of more time due to my semi-retired state, it has meant that, unlike my first telescopes which were manually operated, my newer ones are fully computerized. Even in the brief time in which I have been more seriously involved in the hobby, the technology used to orient the telescope (polar align) and then find the object of my interest (plate solve) and to track it (guiding) has made several leaps and advances. Additionally, I began astrophotography just shortly after advances in more affordable and advanced cameras. The technology has grown such that in many instances amateur astronomers, even those with equipment such as mine, have been making regular cosmological discoveries, including, comets, supernovae and a never before seen blue nebula in the foreground of images (meaning, in our own galaxy) of the Andromeda Galaxy M-31.[4]
Schultz notes that, “We wonder who created the universe, when, why, and for what purpose. Or perhaps we think, as was the case for eons, that humans occupy a central role in the universe.”[5]Man has been pondering the sky since the very earliest times. A recent discovery from the “ancient Nineveh library” revealed “a 5,500-year-old Sumerian star map” which depicted the “Köfel’s impact event observed in 3300 BC.” The clay tablet that was the medium for this depiction, revealed itself to be “an early astrolabe, the segmented star chart offers a glimpse into the celestial knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia, revealing a sophisticated understanding of the night sky.”[6] This shows that even in the most ancient of times man was taking a very serious look at the night sky and trying to depict, analyze, and understand it and our place in it while displaying very sophisticated depiction and evaluation skills.
Schultz provides a review of the people and literature that recorded man’s effort to understand what he saw above him and our place in that vastness. Ancient writers include Aristotle, Thales, Socrates, and Anaximander. Hesiod’s Theogony was a Greek attempt to explain the origins. From the Jewish writers, Moses emerges with the most well know explanation and subject of this paper, Genesis chapter 1.
For most of history, man’s viewing of the universe above his was restricted to his eyes and the quality of the sky conditions above him. Even with such limitations, achievements were made in observing and describing the heavens above.
The greatest technological advancement came with the invention of the telescope. The first patent for one was first submitted by an eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands in 1608. It was a refracting telescope meaning that the light from a distant object passed in a straight line to the observer through a series of glass lenses. The design was further improved by Galileo who also applied it to his astronomical investigations. In that same century, improvements were made by Johannes Kepler and Christian Huygens. Also in the 17th century, Isaac Newton built a reflector telescope and Laurent Cassegrain took Newton’s design and modified it. Reflector telescopes bounced and concentrated the distant light before passing it through a viewing lens. Since that time, improvements have been made in each of these earliest designs.
One other major innovation that helped cosmological investigations was the invention and employment of cameras to supplement the use of telescopes. Earlier observers, such as Galileo and Newton, would make hand drawn sketches of their observations. In 1840, the first astrophotography was taken by John Draper. He made a twenty minute long daguerreotype photo of the moon using a five inch reflector telescope.[7] This was followed by an image of the solar eclipse in 1851 by Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski. Spectroscopic images were made shortly thereafter and in 1880 the first image of the Orion Nebula was made. In 1883 a much better image was made of the same nebula which also revealed stars that were not visible to unassisted observations.
What is striking is how recent all of this is. Not much over one hundred years from the present we get the first fairly clear and detailed images of celestial objects. This step would lead to increased recognition of the enormity of the universe in which we find ourselves resident. These two tools, the telescope and the camera, would open up the world of scientific investigation to an unprecedented level which looks to be expanding continuously and gaining momentum. At the time of this writing, the James Webb telescope is one million miles from earth and taking the most detailed images of the universe to date with a wide variety of cameras. There is also a camera drone on Mars flying around and taking photographs!
The simple observations were expanded with scientific inquiries using spectroscopy, especially concerning light waves of elements. So too it was possible to observe and measure the doppler shift of the spectroscopic signature of distant objects with an eye to determining their distance and the extent of the universe we were observing. This was coupled with the recognition of the Cepheid varible class of stars by Henrietta Levitt which became a major measuring tool for distant objects and allowed Edwin Hubble to determine that the Andromeda Nebula/Galaxy was in fact outside of the confines of the Milky Way galaxy and very distant from us.[8]
In a similar vein, but looking more to the micro scale, Nucleosynthesis, Stellar Nucleosynthesis, and Super Nova Nucleosynthesis revealed the source of the different elements in the universe. This was a major milestone in that scientists came to realize that the creation of all of the elements ranged from hydrogen coming in the first process of the Big Bang and the heavier elements needing the explosion of stars of ever increasing densities to be formed.
In October 1957 a paper, “Synthesis of the Elements in Stars” by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle in Reviews of Modern Physics showed that heavier elements found their origins in the hearts of stars – different elements being produced in different types of stars. The wikipedia site notes that:
Nucleosynthesis is the process that creates new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons (protons and neutrons) and nuclei. According to current theories, the first nuclei were formed a few minutes after the Big Bang, through nuclear reactions in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. After about 20 minutes, the universe had expanded and cooled to a point at which these high-energy collisions among nucleons ended, so only the fastest and simplest reactions occurred, leaving our universe containing hydrogen and helium. The rest is traces of other elements such as lithium and the hydrogen isotope deuterium. Nucleosynthesis in stars and their explosions later produced the variety of elements and isotopes that we have today, in a process called cosmic chemical evolution.[9]
As described by Hugh Ross,
The fusion of most life-essential heavy elements must await the gravitational collapse of gas clouds into giant stars. Only in such collapses can the temperatures necessary for nuclear fusion be achieved again. And only in the cores of such giant stars can elements heavier than boron (such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus—the building blocks of life) be manufactured. In fact, two generations of such stars must burn up in order to build a density of heavier elements sufficient to make life chemistry possible. That is, the universe much be old enough to have produced a third generation of stars, but it must not be too old . . . . .[10]
To state it succinctly, recent discoveries and advances concerning the origin of the universe have noted that within the first moments of the beginning of the universe the light elements emerged and it was only after the formation and destruction of successively heavier stars that we get progressively heavier and heavier elements, many of which are necessary for life.
Combine this with the discovery or confirmation that there is a universe outside of the Milky Way and we have reached a point markedly different than previous exegetes have had and now have at our disposal much more specific material discoveries to more closely and specifically evaluate the text of Genesis 1.
For me, this was material in forming my scientific hermenuetic of the Beginning. It greatly informed my linguistic hermenuetic when evaluating the conundrum that is Genesis 1.1-3.
[1] I had read his Jesus-God and Man years ago and found it to be an outstanding work on Christology.
[2] Andrew Liddle, An Introduction to Modern Cosmology, 3rd ed. (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2015).
[3] David Schultz, The Andromeda Galaxy and the Rise of Modern Astronomy (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2012).
[4] Koichi Itagaki discovered SN2023ixf, a supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M 101). I have taken a picture of it myself with my equipment. The blue nebula (Oiii emission arc) associated with Andromeda Galaxy (M 31) was discovered by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, Yann Sainty, Sean Walker, Stefan Kimeswenger, and Robert Fesen after 180 hours of imaging using amateur equipment.
[8] Schultz, 125-7. E. Hubble, “A spiral nebula as a stellar system, Messier 31.” Astrophysics Journal 79.8 103-64.
[9] Wikipedia contributors, “Nucleosynthesis,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed October 5, 2024). Article and chart.
[10] Hugh Ross, A Matter of Days, 2nd ed. (Covina, CA: rtb Press, 2015), 230-1.
Linguistic Advances
Standing at the head of arguably the most important book in our possession, Genesis 1.1-3 has received its fair share of investigations and comments. The extent of this paper does not allow a review of those investigations but will rather introduce what I find to be the best tools to investigate and analyze the text. The key to textual hermenduetics is linguistics. Most have been familiar with the orthographical, phonological, and grammatical aspects since childhood. Each of these has been employed to dig deeper into the text. Only of late has a very powerful tool emerged that I have found absolutely essential in this endeavor.
In the field of linguistics, a system known as discourse analysis or text linguistics has emerged and been employed. In my case, its aspect as presented by Robert Longacre in his Joseph: A Story of Divine Providence is paramount.[1]
Robert Longacre was most noted for his developed work in discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is distinguished from the more traditional methods of looking at and analyzing a piece of text in that it goes beyond the bounds of the clause and sentence and attempts to view the text within a larger context, that of the whole pericope within a defined genre. It argues that only from that perspective might the use of grammatical forms and their relationship with each other be best understood. Longacre notes that “A piece of text, especially a literary text . . . cannot be understood by myopically inspecting it verse-by-verse without the study of the whole informing the study of the parts”.[2] In his dissertation, Ray Clendenen (one of Longacre’s students and a linguistic master in his own right) notes that “Discourse typology has been a major emphasis of Longacre, who argues that it is an essential step [my emphasis] in any linguistic analysis of a discourse, ‘Characteristics of individual discourses can be neither described, predicted, nor analyzed without resort to a classification of discourse types. It is pointless to look in a discourse for a feature which is not characteristic of the type to which that discourse belongs.[3] So determinative of detail is the general design of a discourse type that the linguist [or exegete] who ignores discourse typology can only come to grief’”.[4]
To cut to the chase of Longacre’s position and theory, he begins part 2 of his Joseph with a note toward the doing of Hebrew grammar: “Traditionally, within a grammar of a given language all the uses of each tense/aspect or mode of a language are listed and described en bloque in the same section of the grammar”. He presents “a challenge to this time-honored way of describing the functions of the verb forms of a verb system within a language” by positing that “(a) every language has a system of discourse types (e.g., narrative, predictive, hortatory, procedural, expository, and others); (b) each discourse type has its own characteristic constellation of verb forms that figure in that type; (c) the uses of a given tense/aspect/mood form are most surely and concretely described in relation to a given discourse type”. [5]
Longacre goes on to note that, “. . . variation in a text is not random but motivated. In brief, where the author has a choice in regard to a lexical item or a grammatical construction, his particular choice is motivated by pragmatic concerns or discourse structure.” [6] To put it succinctly, the biblical writers knew what they were doing and what they did they did with purpose and on purpose and with purposeful precision. Our lesson is to take the text seriously from linguistic, literary, and theological positions and to glean as much as we can from what the author intended to convey and how he intended for it to be used.
This way of understanding and evaluating a text provides a valuable tool that approaches a text as a whole, an approach that recognizes paragraphs, episodes, and book levels. This is well above the singular verse or clause that so many grammars restrict themselves to when doing orthographic or syntactical explanations. My observation has been that there is a severe limitation to the endeavor if those who approach the text restrict themselves to only those tools.
Concerning the text, Genesis 1 is a narrative discourse type with interspersed hortatory discourse passages. Though recognized as a narrative text, many see a poetry to that narration in how the text is presented in the larger structures, especially centering around the term “day.” As such it is best to evaluate it as such and to note how the hortatory passages fit in. Of course, the text is in Hebrew and the evaluation of the text must start there.
A quick note before the detailed evaluation, I am going to be following, for the most part, the Analogical Interpretation of the “days of Genesis 1” as expounded by Mark E. Ross. In his article he references Meredith G. Kline, where he notes Kline’s comment,
“Exegesis indicates that the scheme of the creation week itself is a poetic figure and that the several pictures of creation history are set within the six work-day frames not chronologically but topically. In distinguishing simple description and poetic figure from what is definitively conceptual the only ultimate guide, here as always, is comparison with the rest of Scripture” (Italics added). “Commentary on Genesis,” 82.[7]
Noting that explanation, I would add that its usage appears to be a method of using a well known word to denote and describe a period of specific activities. Of course, the length of that period is key to the discussions swirling around this part of the issue. I find myself in the camp of very long periods of time – millions and billions of years. I also note that the text of Genesis one is very clear and specific concerning what we call a 24 hour day – the means of utilizing that measurement is not mentioned until day four and their mentioning is less of creation than of assigning purpose, i.e., “for signs and for seasons and for days and years.”
Robert Longacre provides the following table presenting the structure of biblical narrative discourse based on verb types and their function in a passage. This table is followed by his cline for Hortatory Discourse. I have presented these two as they are the two discourse types found in Genesis 1.1-5.
[1] Robert LongacreJoseph: A Story of Divine Providence, 2nd ed., (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003). I agree with Ray Clendenen (Revised Malachi) who notes: “I prefer the term text linguistics (or text linguistics) to discourse analysis because of the ambiguity and breadth of the latter term, which is sometimes used of the study of oral speech.” For a helpful survey of various approaches to text linguistics, see Noonan, Advances in the Study of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, 145–69. The appeal to me of Longacre’s approach is especially (1) its attention to linguistic levels above that of the clause and sentence, (2) its attention to both form and function in language, that is, both grammatical structure and semantic structure, (3) its attention to linguistic universals, that is, what the study of the world’s ancient and modern languages have in common, and (4) its insistence on meaning-in-context rather than meaning-in-abstract. While Longacre’s focus was on the nature and significance of discourse types, neither he nor his method ignores “other important discourse features, such as discourse relations and information structure,” as Noonan observes (p. 155).
[2] Robert E. Longacre, Joseph: A Story of Divine Providence. 2nd ed. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), xii.
[3] Longacre, following Pike, speaks of tagmemes and syntagmemes; the tagmeme being a constituent element of the higher syntagmeme. He represents it like this: Σ = {T1 . . . Tn}, Tf: (Σ). Robert Longacre, The Grammar of Discourse, 2nd ed. (New York: Plenum Press, 1996), 274.
[4] E. Ray Clendenen,. “The Interpretation of Biblical Hebrew Hortatory Texts: A Textlinguistic Approach to the Book of Malachi” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Arlington, 1989), 45.
[5] Robert E. Longacre, Joseph: A Story of Divine Providence, 2nd ed. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 57.
[7] Mark E. Ross, “The Framework Hypothesis: An Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3.” In Joseph A. Pipa, Jr., & David W. Hall, editors, Did God Create in 6 Days? (Powder Springs GA: The Covenant Foundation, 1999, 2005),114, n. 1 and 117, n. 6.
I will be utilizing his scheme for evaluating the text of Genesis 1 and for this paper, I will deal only with the first three verses.
In Hebrew narrative discourse, the mainline of the narration is indicated by the use of the vayyiqtol verb form with the other verb forms providing different levels of separation or support for the mainline. [1] This is what I see as I exegete Genesis 1. In the following pages I have laid it out with the Hebrew text to more visually display the discourse level indentations. I have included a column to show the Chapter/Verse/Clause/Phrase of each line. So too I have included a column to indicate the Discoure Type and Level. As I go through the detailed evaluation I will comment on the linguistics and attempt to coordinate it with my, albeit amatuer, understanding of the Big Bang physics that the text indicates.
The discourse that Longacre in his Joseph first evaluates is the narrative. It is one of the most abundant (if not the most abundant) discourse types in the confines of the Hebrew Bible and thus warrants the closest attention. Moreover, it is consistent enough to serve as an introduction to the concept.
Longacre notes that
A chain of (necessarily verb-initial) clauses that contain preterites [wayiqqtols] is the backbone of any Old Testament story; all other clause types contribute various kinds of supportive, descriptive, and depictive materials. In the cases of clauses that begin with a noun (and therefore cannot contain a verb in the preterite), such background material serves to introduce or highlight something about the noun in question, whether it refers to a participant or to a prop in the story. Clauses that begin with a non-preterite (perfect) verb portray secondary actions; for example, actions what are in some sense subsidiary to the main action, which is described by a following preterite. On occasion, a verb in the perfect (whether or not [the clause] begins with a noun) is repetition or paraphrase of some action already reported as a preterite on the storyline.[2]
He also notes “The special status of hāyâ‘be’” by writing that “It is immediately necessary, however, to qualify the above hypothesis in one important particular. The verb haya, ‘be’, even in its preterite form wahi ‘and it happened’, does not function on the storyline of a narrative. In this respect, the behavior of Hebrew is similar to that of a great many contemporary languages around the world. . . . This is simple [sic] a peculiarity of the verb be in many languages past and present.”[3]
Below I have just the text laid out according to Longacre’s model in Hebrew and English and then Transliterated Hebrew and English. That is followed by my intertexual evaluation and comments.
[1] The old term was qal imperfect with a vav/waw consecutive. My preference is to designate the form of the word (qatal, yiqtol, vayyiqtol, etc.) without assigning any grammatical value to those structures without reference to a discourse type.
Concerning vs. 1, The term, “Heavens and Earth” is labeled by many as a merism but I see it more as a specific description of the relationship between the two. The mass and math from the “heavens” are there to make possible the “earth” and the living creatures whom God will call into existence. Cf. esp. Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core (Covina, CA: rtb Press, 2022) and Dean Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1997). Stephen Hawking stated, “If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.”[1] In this view, all of creation began at 1.1 and this includes the heavens (or universe) that is necessary for the creation of the earth which will be the focus of God here and in the rest of Scripture as that is where man, his greatest creation, will live. The separation of the two terms is strengthened particularly in chapter 1 as the two are dealt with separately. The use of the terms “the heavens and the earth” do not necessitate that Moses means the final form. In the laying out of the text, this is an introduction to what will follow and is a note that all that will be began here. Think of the conception of a child – that one, first cell is that child, that youth, that adult.
[1] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam, 198), 26.
What is then depicted in vs. 2 is, as I see it from what I have read on the Big Bang Theory, a “. . . seething plasma of subatomic particles” before they “cooled to form hydrogen, the first atoms” as noted above. For me, this is analogous to Jeremiah 1.4-5 where we read, “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the belly[1] I knew you, and before you were brought out from the womb, born I concentrated you . . .” (my translation). The first two phrases are pure nominal clauses simply stating that initial state of the earth, a mass of subatomic particles – formless and void. And in a state of darkness. The third phrase contains a participle, məraḥep̄eṯ, hovering, which some commentators have likened to a hen brooding over her chicks. One of the keys for me was noting the word “waters” and then seeing that stated as a description of the plasma state. “The initial result of the Big Bang was an intensely hot and energetic liquid that was around 4 trillion degrees Fahrenheit (2 trillion degrees Celsius) and existed for mere microseconds. This liquid contained nothing less than the building blocks of all matter. As the universe cooled, the particles decayed or combined, giving rise to … well, everything.”[2]
[1] There are two Hebrew words in this verse in Jeremiah that the Greek, KJV (Hebrew word here, btn), refers to both the body parts of the man and of the woman to provide their contribution to the formation of a new human being, Jeremiah in this case.
What is then depicted in vs. 2 is, as I see it from what I have read on the Big Bang Theory, a “. . . seething plasma of subatomic particles” before they “cooled to form hydrogen, the first atoms” as noted above. For me, this is analogous to Jeremiah 1.4-5 where we read, “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the belly[1] I knew you, and before you were brought out from the womb, born I concentrated you . . .” (my translation). The first two phrases are pure nominal clauses simply stating that initial state of the earth, a mass of subatomic particles – formless and void. And in a state of darkness. The third phrase contains a participle, məraḥep̄eṯ, hovering, which some commentators have likened to a hen brooding over her chicks. One of the keys for me was noting the word “waters” and then seeing that stated as a description of the plasma state. “The initial result of the Big Bang was an intensely hot and energetic liquid that was around 4 trillion degrees Fahrenheit (2 trillion degrees Celsius) and existed for mere microseconds. This liquid contained nothing less than the building blocks of all matter. As the universe cooled, the particles decayed or combined, giving rise to … well, everything.”[2]
[1] There are two Hebrew words in this verse in Jeremiah that the Greek, KJV (Hebrew word here, btn), refers to both the body parts of the man and of the woman to provide their contribution to the formation of a new human being, Jeremiah in this case.
It is in vs. 3 that matter as we see and know it presently “appears” as that is when the material of creation cooled sufficiently to produce atoms and photons. Once I recognized the production of photons in the cooling process I became convinced that it was significant. One physicist described this as a time before the universe became “transparent.”[1] She goes on to note that at that point we have “the first light in the universe . . . in what we call the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [CMB].” I want to ask, as a liberal arts guy, is this also when Einsteinian physics begins – i.e., space and time? CMB is landmark evidence of the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. If my understanding of what I have read is correct, in the Big Bang cosmological models, during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an opaque fog of dense, hot plasma of sub-atomic particles. From Wikipedia, “As the universe expanded, this plasma cooled to the point where protons and electrons combined to form neutral atoms of mostly hydrogen. Unlike the plasma, these atoms could not scatter thermal radiation by Thomson scattering, and so the universe became transparent. Known as the recombination epoch, this decoupling event released photons to travel freely through space – sometimes referred to as relic radiation. However, the photons have grown less energetic due to the cosmological redshift associated with the expansion of the universe. The surface of last scattering refers to a shell at the right distance in space so photons are now received that were originally emitted at the time of decoupling.”[2]
According to standard cosmology, the CMB gives a snapshot of the hot early universe at the point in time when the temperature dropped enough to allow electrons and protons to form hydrogen atoms. This event made the universe nearly transparent to radiation because light was no longer being scattered off free electrons. When this occurred some 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe was about 3,000 K. This corresponds to an ambient energy of about 0.26 eV, which is much less than the 13.6 eV ionization energy of hydrogen. This epoch is generally known as the “time of last scattering” or the period of recombination or decoupling.
The two great books of the LORD, Scripture, and the cosmos, were written and completed by God and were intended to be read by man. But, as the gulf between the two is great and severe, it should never be nor ever have been understood to be easily read and understood in the first encounter. This is where Proverbs 25.2 is key. I think that it could be safely argued that part of God’s design of man was a need to investigate and discover – a work that he set out before us. Though beyond our complete comprehension, he did provide the impetus to devise and to discover the means to gain a better and fuller understanding of the wonders he laid out before us that declare his glory.
For the book, this development involved the use of language, and then the move to make it written. Then came the desire to observe and evaluate what others had said and written and in that quest came the recognition of the various forms of words, phrases, sentences, and beyond. And then the investigation and comparison of how the various peoples from this side of the tower of Babylon expressed that grammatical and discourse variety. That was then followed by compilations and coalations of patterns of useage that helped to better determine the meaning of the author. This endeavor is ongoing. Most recently many are recognizing the field of discourse grammar/text liguistics as a vital tools in this inquiry and investigation.
For the cosmos, learning and understanding it has been a quest of millenia. Pure eyeball observation and recording (language helps!) was followed and greatly aided by the invention of the telescope which was followed by improvements and enlargements – the eyeball got bigger and better! This was followed by the invention of the camera which too had its “improvements and enlargements” and today we find ourselves with a telescope and multiple cameras parked one million miles into space designed to peer as deeply back into time as was never imagined much less possible even a few decades ago.
In all of this hermeneutics is key. What has been laid down before us in Scripture is absolute but often it gets poorly exegeted by us. So too nature. There is an absoluteness to it but it too often gets poorly interpreted in man’s approach to it – science. Both these cases are born out by the histories of theological and scientific descriptions since men have approached and observed. As such, I find myself in disagreement with Galileo.
Bibliography
Collins, C. John. Genesis 1-4. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006.
Collins, C. John. Reading Genesis Well. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018.
Hubble, Edwin. The Realm of the Nebulae. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Kant, Immanuel. Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. Trans. Ian Johnston. Arlington: Richer Resources Publications, 2008.
Liddle, Andrew. An Introduction to Modern Cosmology. 3rd ed. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2015.
Overman, Dean. A Case Against Accident and Self Organization. New York: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997.
Pipa, Joseph and David W. Hall, editors. Did God Create in 6 Days? Power Springs, GA: The Covenant Foundation, 1999, 2005.
Ross, Hugh. Designed to the Core. Covina, CA: rtb Press. 2022.
During Capt. Shawn C. Madden’s Deployment to Desert Storm/Norway
Two months ago my husband was a simple schoolteacher and I a simple bank employee. Along came Desert Storm and he is called up to proudly answer his country’s call and I the adoring spouse stand back with handkerchief and tears to send him off to Jacksonville, N.C. My husband is a Captain in the United states Marine Corps. I am a 36 year old wife, mother and secretary by day, and now sole commander and chief by night of our 2,500 square footage that the mortgage company graciously allows us to call home.
Never in a million years do I pretend to minimize the agony that our spouses of the brave military personnel that actually are s-erving in–combat face. I can only write- about the experiences I encounter. We do have the luxury of knowing our husbands (and wives) are safe and to me that is a major plus, yet we still must face the decision making alone, the children alone and the nights alone. My children seem to be taking their father’s absence with little strain after all in today’s busy world children see very little of the “bread winner” as it is. We come in from school, have dinner, baths and bedtime. Didn’t USA Today quote a survey that said working parents if lucky give their children 22 minutes of quality time a day. But most children don’t have a “super dad” and mine do. He provides a strong presence, security, and above all paternal love that goes unspoken.
But, the separation takes a lot out of the remaining spouse, no one to help break up the day to day routine, that you alone as the remaining spouse must face and no one to talk to on an adult level, no one to take over when you are tired, and no one to help with the loneliness of being the one in charge. You are the good guy and the bad all rolled up into one. My daughter tried to catch me in a weak moment and challenged a recent decision with “Daddy would let me go” and “I wish daddy were here”. And with steely determination I held my ground but over the months my ground is getting shaky. Late the other day I had just finished cleaning three bathrooms and reorganizing our daughter’s room when he called! I run to the phone pulling off the rubber gloves and try to sound upbeat and cheerful all the time smelling like pine cleaner. This is hard, I have to carry the entire responsibilities of the home and hearth and yet I must give him uplifting and happy phone conversations that allow him to go back to his bunk contented. I have no control over when I hear from him. The ability to call home isn’t even his, he has to rely on the time schedule of training and the line outside the pay phone.
Sour grapes you say, well maybe but we who were left behind have to change our train of thought and think in terms of one not two. Shawn and I were active duty for twelve years, he spent eight years in the active reserves before Desert storm and when the activation came all my old ways and feelings had to be taken from storage and dusted off, could I go back to the days when this was our way of life? I have never considered myself a dependent woman in the terms that all resolves around the man, I believe in my soul that a military wife must be independent or the military way of life will be intolerable. I am a survivor. I deeply believe happiness is a choice. I love my husband and support him with my life. I am very proud of him for answering his country’s call without even a whimper of the inconvenience it may cause.
John 6.24.-71 – The problems with a literal/physical/transubstantive view
Shawn C. Madden
Within the various ‘traditions’ of the Christian faith, some take a literal view of John 6 and when referencing the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist argue that Jesus’s body is physically present and that we are to physically eat his flesh and physically drink his blood. I do have to add a side note in that in practice the drinking of his blood is very often omitted and it is usually argued that in the host/bread there is present Jesus’s “body, blood, soul, and divinity” thus precluding Jesus’s command to “drink his blood.” That is emblematic of just one of this issues with the transubstantive position. Briefly, the substantiation position argues that the “substance” of the bread is changed to the actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus while the “accidents” or outward appearance remains as bread.
The first problem with this while arguing from John 6.24-71 is that in vss. 49-51 Jesus makes a contrast by comparing himself to the manna in the desert from Exodus. He notes that “your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they [physically] died” and then he contrasts that with “I am the living bread that came out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” To be consistent, if, in his contrast Jesus is making a one to one physical comparison with himself and the manna, and if what we find in the mass is a direct reenactment of what Jesus said in these verses and that the bread is transubstanted and then becomes the physical “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus then you would, to be consistent, have to argue that anyone who physically eats his body will physically live forever. But that is not what we find is it?
In the text of John 6.57-58 Jesus says, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
The second problem is a bit cruder. If in fact it has been argued that the host is the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus to the point that, as when I grew up, if a host is dropped the only proper person to pick it up and retrieve it is a priest, and there is also the argument that there are accounts of some hosts actually bleeding thereby confirming what it is actually the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus. People are arguing now for a catholic return to requiring the host to be taken on the tongue and not the hand as it more shows that the recipient is taking in the actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus.
Then one has to ask, after ingestion, how long does the transubstantive bread remain to actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus? Does it cease to be somewhere along the alimentary canal? Does it remain so even to Jesus’s point in Matt. 15.17 – “that whatsoever entereth into the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy? (Matt. 15:17 DRA)” and then, do the “accidents” continue to actually be “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus even through the sewer and remain so as the disconnected molecular pieces of the “body of Christ”?
These then are the problems I see with the transubstantive argument that finds itself being argued using John 6. I notice that John 6 is actually tied back into John 3.16. Jesus makes that point clearly at the beginning of the pericope. In vs. 40 Jesus says, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believing in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” Believing, having faith in him is where one finds eternal life. He reemphasizes that in vs. 63 with, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
John 6 is a continuation of 3.16 and points entirely and solely to faith, not physical eating. Those taking the transubstantive position completely miss that Jesus is giving a metaphor of faith with eating. The crowd was seeking a sign and he gave them one.
“Matriarch:” ‘tis a title of which I have always held in disdain. It was common with the American Indians. My ancestral Clarks, Lees, Henrys, Haneys, etc. and my wife’s ancestral Barrons, Gildeas, McDonoughs, etc., recognized a certain authority and even a domination by their wives in the dim past of Gaelic history.
And ‘tis me, a young vigorous man not yet seventy-one years old, lying flat on me back, with me sixty-five year old snip of a wife parading around ordering me to stay in bed where she put me, even making me put on pajamas. But I still had me pipe handy, though it didn’t taste right. Of course I was intendin’ to do that very thing, so it was not as if I was takin’ orders from the likes of her.
We had come a-visiting to this eighty acre farm to babysit with our three grandchildren, while our daughter and her slave, another downtrodden “Mick,” took a business-vacation trip to a warmer climate. They had left without a care, knowing that hickory-tough grandpa would be after taking care of everything.
We had arrived in typical Ohio January weather, as the temperature cooperated with the snow as it continued to fall.
The bugs got me down shortly after they had left, but I would not admit it until everyone turned against me, including two of my sons who were on their way home and happened to stop by. They each outweigh me by once and a half, but I can still whip them even if they don’t know it. And, bad cess to the both of them, they always take sides with their mother. So, nothing would do them but haul me away to a hospital where they had a doctor take a faked-up picture of me rugged chest, and I’ve no doubt that they bribed him to order me to bed on a diet of nasty medicine, after punching around on me 1 with his needle. And this, with all the good whiskey they could have bought me for a lot less money. They even went to the extent of calling my daughter in Dallas, Texas, who is a registered nurse, and the other of eight spalpeens. And the likes of her, me own daughter, giving me orders over the telephone.
‘Twas a sad day for the O’Haney, with her telling me what to do, and what not to do; as if I wouldn’t know what to do about a little thing like pneumonia.
And with all this scheming and behind the back planning, they dealt me the underhanded blow; they put the Matriarch in charge. And them knowing all the time that I would be doing the proper intelligent things without someone having to tell me to do this and not do that.
But I have the advantage of them. I’m remembering that the seventeenth of March is not far away and that me and my Leprechaun will be King for a day; so their domineering ways do not affect my sweet imperturbable nature.
I was watching “The Matriarch” this morning from my bedroom window, which is upstairs where the three grandchildren are under my stern eye while she is out. She was at the barn feeding the nine head of cattle, the two horses, and a pony. “Jesse,” the ever guardian Doberman, was with her, having an eye to the animals, stalking them with that proud, fearless demeanor of challenge, that dared even “Sampson,” the two thousand pound bull, to question the least desire of the Matriarch. The calico cat was also in attendance; a sort of “Maid in Waiting.”
And a vision appeared. The scene was bathed in early morning sunshine. The mockingbird we’d fed each day had ‘lighted on the pasture fence. The Matriarch’s pitchfork became a scepter, the slouch-hat became a halo-like tiara, the too-big coat was robes 2 of velvet and fine spun gold, and the mockingbird’s song became the soft strains of a harp. It was top o’ the mornin’ for the O’Haney and a proud day for himself.
