J.I. Packer - An Evangelic Argument for Classic Theism

And now…kudos to J. I. Packer for this brilliant article

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/11/and-now-kudos-to-j-i-packer-for-this-brilliant-article/

by Dr. Roger Olson

posted November 7, 2011

Lest anyone think I hate Packer or disdain everything he’s written, I want to applaud him for one of the best basic theology articles I have ever read. It’s so good I copied it and have kept it in my files for years (since 1986!). The article is “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?” (Remember article titles are assigned by editors and not by authors; that may not have been Packer’s preferred title.) It was published in Christianity Today in (I think) September, 1986. (My copy does not have the exact publication date on it; I can see only the year–1986.)

This is a magnificent article decrying what Packer calls “mystification” of the doctrine of God. He calls for a cautious “retooling” of traditional Christian theism insofar as traditional theism (Augustine, Aquinas, et al.) has tended to downplay the personal aspects of God’s being. But he warns that any such retooling must purge “elements of mystification” from the doctrine of God. “By ‘mystification’ I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.”

In that section of the article headed “Exit mystification” Packer more than hints that God really does change his mind and that traditional theology has been wrong to say otherwise. Here is what he wrote: “To be specific, sometimes [in Scripture] God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a ‘victim’ of his creation. … But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the question: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actually misrepresent and so conceal God?”

There Packer sounds like an open theist! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was an open theist in 1986, only that this particular point about God changing his mind and the ways in which traditional theology have “mystified” those passages foreshadows an argument used by open theists.

Packer goes on in that section to call for biblical exegetes and theologians to take biblical allusions to God’s personal characteristics and interactions with creatures more seriously and not to dismiss them as mere figures of speech right out of hand. He also calls for theologians to discard traditional notions of God’s immutability and impassibility. Here is what he wrote about God’s impassibility: “Let us be clear: A totally impassive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong in Islam; he has no place in Christianity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosen-ness of God’s grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.”

Was Packer suggesting that a certain notion of God common among Christian theologians is an idol? Was he suggesting that he would not worship such a god (viz., one that cannot suffer)? Perhaps not, but it does sound that way. His language against divine impassibility (as traditionally understood in classical Christian theism) is very strong. What would Packer have said to this question asked of him right after he wrote that article: “Dear Professor Packer, if it were somehow revealed to you that God IS actually incapable of suffering, would you still worship him?” I suggest his answer is revealed in that statement that such a god might belong in Islam but has no place in Christianity.

Packer goes on to call for the purging of elements of rationalism in Christian theism. Most significantly, he says “theological triumphalism” is to be avoided because, although Scripture is authoritative, we cannot claim to have a complete grasp of God or ever think we have “enlisted him on our side.” He is clearly there talking about theologians who think they know too much about God beyond what is revealed.

I couldn’t agree more with Packer’s closing statement that reveals why he wrote this article. Talking about an expected coming syncretism of Christianity with other religions (something he was against) Packer concludes that “If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism–whether or not we are going to think about God the Christian way, or some other way–will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare ourselves along the lines suggested–just in case.”

I found this article extremely helpful in 1986 and I still find it helpful. I agree with almost everything in it. But if you remove the name “J. I. Packer” from it, someone might think it was written by a postconservative evangelical! In fact, I believe IF that article were to be published today WITHOUT the author’s identity attached, many conservative evangelicals would assume it was written by an open theist or a “leftwing evangelical” and attack it as dangerous.

Personally, I do not see how the article’s central thrust can be reconciled with classical Calvinism.Classical Calvinism is closely tied to classical theism. It certainly does not believe that God can change his mind or “make new decisions as he reacts to human doings.”

This is why I DO NOT SAY that Calvinists and I worship different Gods. Typical of most Calvinists I know, Packer was (at least in 1986) inconsistent. R. C. Sproul lets Arminians be Christians (just barely) due to a “felicitous inconsistency.” So I can say that my fellow evangelicals who happen to be Calvinists are Christians (not just barely!) and worship the same God I do due to a many felicitous inconsistencies. What I mean is that IF I BELIEVED WHAT THEY DO I would have to be more consistent and believe God is a monster and not worship him–something fortunately they do not believe so they can worship him. But the only reason they do not believe it is because they, like Packer, are inconsistent.

I hope this clears things up with regard to what I mean when I say the God of classical Calvinism is a monster IF Calvinism is pressed to its logical conclusion following out and embracing its good and necessary consequences, something almost no Calvinist does. I mean the same thing THEY MEAN about me and fellow Arminians when they say our theology, if pressed to its good and necessary consequences (which most of them acknowledge we don’t do), would amount to a man-centered false gospel of self-salvation.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

What Do You Mean

When You Say

God?

by J.I. Packard

September 19, 1986

Christianity Today, pp 27-30

What does it mean to say "God"? Many today would have to answer this question as Augustine did when asked for a definition of time: "When I am not asked I know very well, but when I am asked I do not know at all!”

The doctrine of God is a confused area in Western theology. Each of its three departments - the divine at­tributes, the Trinity, and God's relation to the world­ - is disputed territory. This is basically because agreement is lacking as to how the doc­trine should be constructed and defended. Different in­tellectual methods for doing this naturally produce dif­ferent theological results.

Hybrids often prove unsta­ble, and the Western heri­tage of theism is a hybrid. It grew out of the apologetic theology of the early centu­ries in which much was made of the thought that Greco-Roman philosophy was a providential preparation for the gospel.

This theism, which found its fullest statement when Thomas Aquinas formulated it in Aristotelian terms was a blend of reasoning from philosophy and the Bible, the former appearing to pro­vide the frame into which the latter has to fit. But that changed with the Kuyperian, Barthian, and neo-Lutheran movements of this [20^th] century. Each of these, in its own way, drew on Luther's and Calvin's criticisms of natural theology. But they pushed Luther's and Calvin's arguments to the point where it seemed that any appeal to reason to support or confirm scriptural rev­elation would be out of place. As a result, some as­pects of theism in its tradi­tional form have become widely suspect among main­stream theologians.

This means that when fac­ing challenges to theism, Protestant theologians have not always known what to say. They have sometimes been tempted to take up pan­icky and defeatist slogans like that fathered by the late John Robinson: "Our image of God must go." But that is not the way of wisdom. Certainly some rethinking is called for, but it is minor modification, not abandon­ment of traditional theism, that we need.

The anatomy of theism

It will help us to review the ingredients that make up his­toric Christian theism. Here is a check list of the usual items, expressed in as simple a way as the thoughts allow.

1.      God is personal and tri­une. God is as truly three personal centers in a rela­tionship of mutual love as he is a single personal deity. God is always Three-In-One and One-in-Three, and in all divine acts all three persons are involved. "He," when used of God, means "they" - the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2.      God is self-existent -and self-suffi­cient. God does not have it in him, ei­ther in purpose or in power, to stop existing. He exists necessarily. The an­swer to the child's question "Who made God?" is that God did not need to be made since he was always there. He depends on nothing outside himself, but is at every point self-sustaining.

3.      God is simple, perfect, and immutable. This means he is wholly and totally involved in everything that he is, and does, and his nature, goals, plans, and ways of acting do not change, either for the better (for, being perfect, he cannot become better than he is) or, for the worse.

4.      God is infinite, without body, all-­present, all-knowing, and eternal. God is not bound by any of the limitations of space or time that apply to us, his crea­tures, in our present body-anchored ex­istence. Instead, he is always present everywhere, though invisibly and imperceptibly. He is at every moment cog­nizant of everything that ever was, or ­now is, or shall be.

5.      God is purposeful and all-powerful. He has a plan for the history of the universe, and in executing it he governs and controls all created realities, with­out violating the nature of things. And ­without at any stage infringing upon ­the human free will, God acts in, with, and through, his creatures to do every­thing that he wishes to do exactly as he wishes to do it. By this sovereign, over­ruling action he achieves his goals.

6.      God is both transcendent over, and immanent in, his world. On the one hand he is distinct from the world, does not need it, and exceeds the grasp of any created intelligence that is found in it. Yet on the other hand he permeates the world in sustaining and creative power, shaping and steering it in a way that keeps it on its-planned course.

7.      God is impassible. This means that-no one can inflict suffering, pain, or any sort of distress on him. Insofar as God enters into an experience of suffering, it is by empathy for his creatures and according to his own deliberate decision. He is never his creature’s vic­tim. This impassibility has not been taken by the Christian mainstream to mean that God is a stranger to joy and delight. Rather, it has been construed as an assertion of the permanence of God's joy, which no pain clouds.

8.      God is love. Giving out of good will, for the recipient's benefit, is the abiding quality both of ongoing rela­tionships within the Trinity and of God's relationship with his creatures. This love is qualified by holiness (puri­ty), a further facet of God's character that finds expression in his abhorrence and rejection of moral evil.

9.       God's ways with mankind, as set forth in Scripture, show him to be awesome and adorable by reason of his truthfulness, faithfulness, grace, mercy, patience, constancy, wisdom, justice, , goodness, and generosity. For these glorious qualities God is eternally worthy of our praise, loyalty, and love. The ultimate purpose of human life is to render to him worship and service, in which both he, and we, will find joy. This is what we were made for, and are saved for. This is what it means to know God, and to be known by him, and to glorify him.

10.  God uses his gift of language, giv­en to mankind, to tell us things directly in-and-through the words of his spokes­men – [the] prophets, apostles, the incarnate Son, the writers of Holy Scripture, and those who preach the Bible. God's mes­sages all come to us as good news of grace. They may contain particular commands, even threats or warnings, but the fact that God addresses us at all is an expression of his good will and an invitation to fellowship. And the cen­tral message of Scripture, the hub of the wheel whose spokes are the various truths about God that the Bible teaches, is, and always will, be God's unmerited gift of salvation, freely offered to us in and by Jesus Christ.

Traditional theism under fire

Now, what are the present-day prob­lems with this venerable understand­ing of God? They come down to its sources and method. The positions them­selves, as stated above, are plainly bib­lical. But the Platonist-Augustinian-­Thomist tradition of philosophical theism has persistently held that knowl­edge of God's reality and of several of the above facts about him can, and should be, gleaned by rational analysis apart from the Bible's witness. This is where the uncertainty centers.

Karl Barth in the powerful Bible-­based reassertions of trinitarian theism of his Church Dogmatics, spurned the help of this kind of rational theology. (It has traditionally been called natural theology.)

This did more than any other twenti­eth-century contribution to produce a pendulum swing against attempts to wed theology to philosophy. To be con­cerned lest philosophy becomes the dominant partner in this marriage is right and proper. Barth, however, want­ed to go further, and divorce them - a different agenda altogether.

Barth himself would use philosophi­cal concepts as tools to help investigate biblical teaching. But he would not let these concepts become grids limiting in advance what God is free to say to us through Scripture.

Barth's protest, though justified with­in limits, threw the doctrine of God into great confusion. It opened the door to a selective reading of the Bible, free of coherent rational control; and operating without regard for any of the tradi­tional fixed points. That is what we face today in many quarters. The pendulum still swings between Thomist and Barth­ian extremes, and shows no sign of com­ing to rest.

Minor modification of traditional theism, rather than

abandonment, is what the present-day situation demands.

Karl Barth's theism

Barth's contribution, though disrup­tive in the way just described, paves the way for some clarifications of the doc­trine of God that we badly need.

Granted, his attack on the basis of natural theology - that is, the recogni­tion that our existence and God's have something in common - was certainly overdone. Granted, too, Barth's denial of general revelation through the creat­ed order was a mistake. (His refusal to recognize general revelation, apart from the gospel, in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:9-16, seems little short of perverse.)

Nevertheless, his polemic against the claim of natural theology, to establish for us foundation truths about God as a kind of runway for revelation, now ap­pears as a largely justified attack on nineteenth-century attempts to domes­ticate God. (Barth's break with liberal theology began around 1915, when prominent German theologians blithe­ly spoke of "using" the Christian faith “for purposes of conducting” World War 1.) And Barth's insistence that all our doctrine of God must come from the Bible was healthy and right.

So it will not be enough to dismiss Barth as eccentric and then slump back into traditional postures and parrot­ings. If Barth, with his type of biblicism, did not do well enough, we must try with ours to do better. To that end I now venture some comments on the doctrine of God as today's evangelicals have received it.

There are three important respects in which the traditional doctrine needs purging. It needs to be purged of ele­ments of natural theology, elements of mystification, and elements of rational­ism. Let me explain.

First, elements of natural theology need to be purged. Against Barth, I affirm that general revelation is a fact, and its impact will again and again produce thoughts about God that, so far as they go, are right. (Like those of Epimenides and Aratus that Paul cites in Acts 17:28.) Many are confident that rational apolo­getics (a form of natural theology) can, under God, trigger and crystallize such thoughts and insights. Unlike Barth, I see no reason to doubt their confidence.

Yet I contend that natural theology needs to be eliminated from our at­tempts at theological construction. There are five reasons.

First, we do not need natural theol­ogy for information. Everything that natural theology, operating upon gen­eral revelation, can discern about the Creator and his ways is republished for us in those very Scriptures that refer to the general revelation of these things (see Ps. 19; Acts 14:17, 17:28; Rom 1: 18-32,2:9-16). And Scripture, which we rightly receive on the grounds that it is God's own word of testimony and law, is a better source of knowledge about God than natural theology can ever be.

Second, we do not strengthen our position by invoking natural theology. On the contrary, claiming that biblical truths rest on philosophical founda­tions can only give the impression that the biblical message about God's re­demption is no more certain than is the prior philosophical assertion of God's reality. And God's reality on this sce­nario must be established by reason­ unaided by revelation. Thus revelation becomes distinctly dependent on philosophy.

Third, all expositions of the analogy of being, and all attempts to show the naturalness of theism - all "proofs" for God's existence and goodness, in other words - are logically loose. They state no more than possibilities (for probabil­ities are only one kind of possibilities) and can all be argued against indefi­nitely. This will damage the credit of any theology that appears to be build­ing and relying on these arguments.

Fourth, the speculative method for building up a theology is inappropriate. As Louis Berkhof has observed, such a method takes man as its starting point and works from what it finds in man to what is found in God. "And in so far as it' does this," Berkhof writes, "it makes man the measure of God." That, of course, does not "fit in a theology of revelation."

Fifth, there is always a risk the foun­dations that natural theology lays will prove too narrow to build all the em­phases of Scripture upon. Thus, for in­stance, in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica,  natural theology purports to establish that there is one God, who is the first cause of everything. But nothing is said about the personal as­pects of God's being. This personal dimension is central to the biblical revelation of God, setting it in stark contrast with (for instance) the divine principle in Hindu thought.

Thomas's approach, however, en­courages the theologian, to downplay the biblical stress on it, to treat God as an impersonal object rather than a per­sonal subject, and to see himself as standing over God to study him, rather than under God, to obey him.

It seems right to limit our use of natural theology to the realm of sup­portive apologetics (showing biblical faith to be reasonable), and not to give it any place in our attempts to state what the biblical faith actually is.

Exit mystification

In 'retooling traditional theism for to­day, we need, secondly; to purge elements of mystifications. By “mystifica­tion” I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand, and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring' tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate and necessary distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.

To be specific, sometimes God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a "victim" of his creation. As writes Louis Berkhof, representative of this view, "the change is not in God, but in man, and man's relations to God."

But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the ques­tion: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actu­ally misrepresent and so conceal God? In other words, how may we explain these statements about God's grief and re­pentance without seeming to explain them away?

Surely we must accept Barth's insis­tence that at every point in his self ­disclosure God reveals what he essen­tially is, with no gestures that mystify. And surely we must reject as intoler­able any suggestion that God in reality is different at any point from what Scripture makes him appear to be. Scripture was not written to mystify, and therefore we, need to ask how we can dispel the contrary impression that the time-honored, orthodox line of ex­planation leaves.

Three things seem to be called for as means to this end.

First, we need exegetical restraint in handling Scripture's, anthropomor­phisms (phrases using human figures to describe God). Anthropomorphism is characteristic of the entire biblical pre­sentation of God. This is so not because God bears man's image, but because man bears God's, and hence is capable of understanding God's testimony to the reasons for his actions. The anthropomorphisms are there to show us why God acted as he did in the biblical story" and how therefore he might act towards us in our own personal stories. But nothing that is said about God's negative or positive reactions to his creatures is meant to put us in a posi­tion where we can tell what it feels like to be God. Our interpretation of the Bible must recognize this.

Second, we need to guard against misunderstanding of God's changeless­ness. True to Scripture, this must not be understood as a beautiful pose, eternal­ly frozen, but as the Creator's moral constancy, his unwavering faithfulness and dependability. God's changeless­ness is not a matter of intrinsic immobil­ity, but of moral consistency. God is always in action. He enters into the lives of his creatures. There is change around him and change in the relations of men to him. But, to use the words of Louis Berkhof, "there is no change in his being, his attributes, his purpose, his motives of action, or his promises." When one conceives of God's immuta­bility in this biblical way, as a moral quality that is expressed whenever God changes his way of dealing with people for moral reasons, the biblical refer­ence to such change will cease to" mystify.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that

we have enlisted God on our side, and now have him in our pockets.

Third, we also need, to rethink God's impassibility. This conception of God represents no single biblical term, but was introduced into Christian theology in the second century. What was it supposed to mean? The historical answer is: Not impassivity, unconcern, and im­personal detachment in face of the cre­ation. Not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief, either. It means simply that God's expe­riences do not come upon him as ours come upon us. His are foreknown, willed, and chosen by himself; and are not in­voluntary surprises forced on him from outside; apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.

This understanding was hinted at earlier, but it is spelled out here be­cause-it is so important, and so often missed. Let us be clear: A totally impas­sive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong [in some other religion, but] he has no place in Christian­ity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosenness of God's grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.

Problems of rationalism

The final step needed to spruce up tra­ditional theism is to purge it of elements of rationalism. Just as the two-year-old son of a man with a brain like Einstein's could not understand all that was going on in his father's mind if his father told him, so it would be beyond us to under­stand all that goes on in the all-wise, and not in any way time-bound mind of God.

But, just as the genius who loves his boy will take care to speak to him at his own level, even though that means re­ducing everything to baby talk, so God does when he opens his mind and heart to us in the Scriptures. The child, though aware that his father knows far more than he is currently saying, may yet learn from him all that he needs to know for a full and happy relationship with Dad. Similarly, Scripture, [when] viewed as torah (God's fatherly law), tells us all that we need to know for faith and godliness.

But we must never-forget that we are in the little boy's position. At no point dare we imagine that the thoughts about God that Scripture teaches us take the full measure of his reality. The fact that God condescends and accommodates himself to us in his revelation certainly makes possible clarify and sureness of understanding. Equally certain, how­ever, it involves limitation in the reve­lation itself.

But we forget this, or so it seems; and. then appears the rationalism of which I am speaking. It is more, I think, a tem­per than a tenet, but it produces a style of speech that in effect denies that there is anything about God we do not know. By thus failing to acknowledge his in­comprehensibility beyond the limits of what he has revealed, we shrink him in thought down to our size. The process is sometimes described as putting God in a box.

It is certainly proper to stress, as against the sleep of reason in the world and the zaniness of subjectivism in the church, that scriptural revelation is ra­tional. But the most thorough-going Bible believers are sometimes required, like Job, to go on adoring God when we do not specifically understand what he is doing and why he is doing it.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that we have enlisted him on our side, and now have him in our pockets. Confidence in the teaching of God's written Word is to be main­tained all the time. But this stance of theological triumphalism is some­thing quite different, and is to be avoided.

God the image maker

This review of traditional theism, and suggestions for its possible refinement, has been heavy sledding. How can it all be pulled together? Can we focus our theism in a phrase? I welcome the sug­gestion that we should speak of God as the image maker.

This phrase binds together the main theistic thrusts that our secular world needs to face. Say "God," and you point to the infinite, eternal, self-existent, self-revealing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Say "Maker," and you point to the fundamental relationship between God and us. He is the Creator, we are his creatures.

Say "Image Maker," and you point to the basis and presupposition of our knowledge of God-namely, the fact that he made us like himself. Included in that image are rationality, relation­ality, and the capacity for-that right­eousness that consists of receiving and responding to God's revelation. We are able to-know God because we are think­ing, feeling, relating, loving beings, just as he is himself.

I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but it seems fairly clear to me that pressure on conservative theology is still building up from exponents of re­ligious relativism and pluralism. This is so both within the church (where some think that the more theologies there are, the healthier and merrier we shall be) and outside it.

*I expect over the next few decades to see the quest for a synthesis of world religions gain impetus, with constant attempts to assimilate Christianity into other faiths. We may expect a genera­tion of debate-on the program of mov­ing through and beyond syncretism to a nobler religion than any that has yet been seen. That notion, which has emerged more than once in liberal cir­cles, looks like an idea whose time, hu­manly speaking, has come; and coun­tering it, I predict, will be the next round in the church's unending task of defending and propagating the gospel. If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism-whether or not we are going to think about God the Chris­tian way, or some other way will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare our­selves along the lines suggested-just in case.

Reformational Theology vs. Emergent Theology

"Classic Reformational Theism vs. Emergent Christian Post-Theism"

When comparing Emergent Christianity to classic Reformational Christianity commonly practice within the halls of Evangelicalism one can see the direct influence of the one to the other, and within that correspondence understand the necessity for Emergent Christianity to continue moving away from Evangelical Christianity in a way that is deeply "reformational" as found within the Reformation's originating charters 500 years ago. In the sense that Emergents are revisiting every area of Reformed theology - much like Luther and Calvin had done with the Catholic Church's practices and dogmas - and updating it first in practice (orthopraxy), and secondly, in theological observations (orthodoxy), by de-emphasizing a soteriology of justification by faith and re-emphasizing a Christology of Jesus-first and the Kingdom ethics of benevolence and love.

One of the main disturbances to Evangelicalism is the Emergent doctrine of God's love and grace that somehow became lost in the Evangelic rhetoric of man's sinfulness and certain judgment of death-and-hell. As the latter ideas were lifted up God became more and more distant to the plight of human existence until man was fully regarded as damned and condemned, unworthy of salvation, and dismally lost. And though true, and without dispute, the Emergent Gospel re-emphasizes the first purposes of a God who creates and superintends in love and devotion to mankind; who seeks to impart grace and mercy to mankind's existence; who intends to invade heaven into man's hellish experience of sin and evil. Distancing Himself only from a church not preaching Jesus' Gospel of love and grace.

Moreover, as Emergent Christianity continues to evolve there is a renewed effort to revisit and critique every Reformational doctrine towards a Jesus-of-the-Gospel's rightness and orientation that when followed and practiced can only become deeply disturbing. Upsetting many of the church's current practices and teachings like Jesus did of old when questioning the religious establishment of His day as the Pharisees and Scribes shined-and-polished pet doctrines-and-beliefs. Consequently, Emergents have been questioning not only Luther and Calvin, but the Reformed Father's Grand Progenitor centered in Augustine hoary observation many centuries earlier. Questioning all of Reformed Theology's fundamental doctrines and teachings of Scripture that has created an Evangelic culture of a bible-within-a-bible (e.g., known as Biblicism); a religious subculture within what was intended to be a pervasive, globally-necessitated Apostolic Christian faith; and unnecessary dogmas filled with restrictions, harshness, callousness, set within a minutia of religious Reformed laws.

Partly, this effort is due to postmodernism's critical analysis of secular modernism begun during the World Wars, and again with Vietnam's institutional insurrections. And partly, to Evangelicalism's waywardness from New Testament Kingdom teaching of love-in-action to those in need, impoverished, and unempowered by society. Who are held in the affliction of misery, disease, desperateness, race, gender and lifestyle prejudices. But under a fresh re-reading of the Gospels in light of all these developments, then the Jesus discovered within them (especially as related to His Kingdom teachings) would de-emphasis a Reformed Pauline doctrine that has become too Calvinised by the church. Which then creates the consequential reaction to re-right the Reformed churches' Pauline understanding of the Gospel through the Christ event once again however paradoxical this may seem (for more on this area, please refer to the article Paul, whom I love, and other articles found within this website's sidebar entitled Pauline Theology).

It is submitted then that the only thing holding Evangelicalism together is not Reformational Theology but Emergent Theology's broader scope of God's love expressed through Jesus Christ that builds upon Reformational Theology's first principles of faith (vs. today's emphasis on justice 500 years later). Without Emergent Christianity's important new insights and emphasis for Jesus-first Christological practices, and a radically new re-interpretation of the Bible perceived through the Gospels themselves, Evangelicalism would continue to centralize itself within its own Reformational theologies blinded by their need of a Jesus revolution. Creating then a Calvinism of dogmatizing rhetorics and strict sectarian practices that are excluding the larger part of mankind from any form of acceptance and sympathetic outreach by God's overwhelming love. That would rather wish to see God's justice displayed in judgment-and-wrath upon a wicked world than to stand-in-the-breeches with a lost mankind beseeching Jesus' followers to preach-and-practice a God of loving justice who, when coming, will first sweep out His own house, to their own harm and destruction. Thus, is it more "just" to proclaimed-and-enacted God's love or to preach an unloving rhetoric of God's justice filled with hypocritical legalisms and self-righteous duties? Didn't Jesus say this same thing to the Pharisees of His day? Whose priests and scribes had tipped the theological cart towards an ungracious Judahizing of the Law than to a just-and-loving Gospel of God's benevolence to a lost mankind? Today's Calvinism stands in this same vein unless it re-discovers Jesus' faith declarations to go back to its first tenets and throw out all of its resultant rhetorical baggage built up over the past 500 years in the name of Reformational theology {see NT Wright, Simply Jesus  (October 2011) and How God Became King (March 2012)}.

Consequently, it is important to remember what Reformational theology has brought to modern day Christianity by reciting an older interview of Dr. J.I. Packer to a Baptist journal many years ago.... In an article from the Spring of 1994, Packer speaks to Reformational theology's God-centeredness, particularly as it relates to the themes of God's sovereignty (classic theism); the deep set nature of sin and man's complete inability to save himself, even down to the lowest levels of revelatory illumination (depravity and election); and the radical and transforming power of Jesus Christ to redeem sinners by his saving grace (redemption). To this Emergent Christianity is updating classic theism through it's own inquiries into open theology (also named open theism) and process theology and hopefully towards an admixture of both that this blog here is calling relational theism (see sidebars again).

Packer goes on further to recount his fear of (1) a modern-day humanism filling the evangelical church; (2) of arighting any Christian doctrines oriented towards a me-first, man-centric interpretation of subordination; (3) that God serves man's glory of religious entitlement and indifference to the plight of a lost mankind rather than man serving God's glory through practices of love and justice to the same; (4) of a God who exists for man, and not man for God, despite Reformational rhetoric that would protest otherwise while dunning its ears to the injustices filling the world around itself; and, (5) that God simply exists to serve at man's beck-and-call when in need of help and desperation. In response, Emergent Christianity is rewriting these  same observations from a relational understanding through all its liturgies, practices and doctrines using deconstructive / reconstructive terminologies and postmodernistic framing.

Packer then notes how modern Evangelicalism has splintered into various organizations emphasizing specialized goals beyond that of declaring the gospel of Christ and curiously declares that "the only thing that can unite evangelicalism is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider, and more-generally-agreed-upon theology that he only finds in Reformational Theology." In response, we see today an effort to re-declare these same doctrines through neo-evangelic and neo-reformed movements counter to the broader movement of Emergent Christianity seeking to go beyond the Reformation back to the days of the early Church's proclamations of Jesus teachings and Kingdom ethics. Hence, Calvinists and Emergents are at loggerheads with one another when we should be joined together in purpose and proclamation - one vying for traditional protestant legacies while the other is vying for early 1st Century church practices yet unformed, apostolic, refreshingly new, and built upon Jesus. One which emphasizes the singular doctrines of salvation (justification by faith), law (with an emphasis on rituals and dogmas), and political kingdom (enforced nationalism) while the other seeks an early Christology the affects the whole of soteriology, eschatology, anthropology, and wishing to bind these seamlessly together. Consequently, when these same doctrines are built upon Jesus they have a completely different flavor founded, and seasoned, by God's love in matters of faith, trust, devotion, worship, and affecting popularly preferred religious doctrines by turning them upside-down and inside-out.

Lastly, Packard rightly notes the need for Christians to better learn of their Christianity. To not only read their Bibles but to study and know its theological truths. Truths that relate to everyday wisdoms, personal behaviors, insights, philosophies; that practically give to us godly direction and thinking. Which is the very reason and purpose for this blog journal. To recite Emergent doctrinal differences from the recent past and declare the Christian faith in fresh, new ways that unwraps past denominational creeds and legacies in postmodern truths of enlightenment and understanding. Striped from religious folklores, dogmas and offences to the more liberating ideas of God's love and grace that were somehow misplaced over the past 500 years of post-Reformational doctrine and enlightenment.

Curiously, Emergent Christians would practice this kind of faith first-and-foremost apart from the dominant Evangelical / Reformed churches more popular dogmas of restrictive grace - which doctrine of faith was ironically the very foundation stone upon which the Reformation began! But to these same Emergent Christians, as to our Reformed brethren all-too-well-steeped in systematic doctrinal distinctions, it is as necessary to discern the faith that we practice as it is to know it. This is all the difference between studying a static biblical theology and discerning it into its various fashions of contemporary biblical theology. Consequently,  Orthopaxy and Orthodoxy must stand together as Siamese twins, and not as opposing opposites. Each one sharpening the other just as the conjoining Christian groups of Emergent Christian can do with our "entwined" Evangelical / Reformational brethren - and similarly, they to us. Not in a spirit of dissolution and synthesis, but in the spirit of true transformational - even radical! - change that could revolutionize our current contemporary theologies in a renewed Reformational movement of grace, truth and justice that may last for another 500 years! Let this be our prayer for unity and discernment.

R.E. Slater

January 9, 2011
Revised: September 24, 2013
 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

http://www.founders.org/journal/fj16/interview.html

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Dr. J. I. Packer

Spring 1994

Question: Dr. Packer, you have done a great deal of writing and speaking on the subject of the need for a new reformation, a new awareness of the sovereignty and grace of God in our day. How do you assess the condition of the state of evangelicalism as it presently exists, and what do you think we can do about that condition?

Augustine (4th-5th Centuries)

Packer: I see evangelical strength needing desperately to be undergirded by Reformation convictions. If you do not see deep into the problem, you do not see deep into the solution. My fear is that a lot of evangelicals today are just not seeing deep enough in both the problem and the need. But Reformation theology takes you down to the very depth of the human problem. And actually, the Reformation itself was a recovery of the tremendous contribution that the great St. Augustine made back at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries. He was the man who, more than anyone else in Christendom, saw to the heart of the real problem. He saw how much damage sin had done, how completely we were oriented away from God by nature. He is the one who left us that phrase 'original sin' which he got from the text of Psalm 51:5:

'Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.'

He also saw in response to our sinful condition, how great a work of transformation was needed by the grace of God in human lives. The sixteenth-century Reformers stood on Augustine's shoulders at this point. Of course, they clarified the great truth that justification by faith is the way in which the grace of God reaches us. We need, even today, a Christianity that is as deep and strong as that. And this, it seems to me, is where modern evangelicalism is lacking.

Question: Would you say that there is a connection or a similarity between the man-centered theology of evangelicalism and the general humanistic spirit?

John Calvin, 16th Century

Packer: Yes, although I think that it is an indirect connection. Secular humanism, you see, is very man-centered. It encourages every individual to regard his or her own personal happiness as the supreme value. And the kind of evangelical religion which does not challenge this self-centered, self-absorbed standpoint, but, rather, reinforces it by making one's religious experience the most important thing in the world, or God's gift of personal contentment, happiness, joy, good feelings, or that kind of thing, is simply echoing the tenets of this type of modern humanism. A Reformational emphasis, however, challenges this by asserting that God is the centre, not man. We must recognize that he is at the heart of things and that we exist for his glory, that is to say, we exist for him, not he for us. And it is only as we set ourselves to glorify him as the one who supremely matters that we are going to enter into the joy and fulfillment which being a Christian brings. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it so well: 'What is the chief end of men?' answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The enjoyment comes as we set ourselves to glorify God. But if our concern is with the enjoyment, then we won't be glorifying God.

Question: Dr. Packer, you mentioned just a moment ago, in referring to the proliferation and growth of evangelicalism, the lack of any real significant power of the cross and the gospel. Do you believe that modern evangelicals have lost their grip on the biblical gospel?

Packer: Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind's redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God's work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.

Question: Given the current trends of the evangelical movement, what do you see for the future?

Packer: I think that there is a big risk of fragmentation. Modern evangelicalism is simply too worldly, and the influence of the world is usually always a fragmenting influence. I think perhaps that evangelicalism has not yet learned the way of unity on anything except the outward trappings of united evangelistic efforts. And that in itself is only a shallow uniting factor because the gospel as understood by some doesn't correspond to the gospel as understood by others. And when it comes to all goals and objectives beyond evangelism, then I think that evangelicals are very seriously divided. There are some tightly connected with right wing politics, yet their are others, because of their emphasis on end times speculations, who really do not think that involvement in society is important at all. There are some who are only interested in the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit, such as faith healing or speaking in tongues, while others seem only interested in the implementations of psychology or self-help type programmes. So I see grave risks of fragmentation down the road. The only thing that can unite us is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider and more generally agreed upon theology. And I find that theology only in the Reformation heritage.

Question:If the theology is the only thing that will unite us, do you really think unity is at all achievable? Because from our perspective, the average evangelical, indeed the average Christian, it seems, is intimidated by theology.

Martin Luther, 16th Century

Packer First of all, theology simply means the study of God. This is something that every Christian needs to realize. I think the way that the word has been used in the past has frightened many Christians away from it, even though they never stopped to consider what the word actually meant. People got the idea somewhere that theology is the business of the seminary professors and the clergy, but has very little to do with the day to day living of the Christian life. It's something people seem to think you can get along without, provided that you read your Bible daily and think one or two guiding thoughts from your passage to keep you on the rails. I do not believe it is at all like that. But theology means the study of God, and if we are to love God, as we are commanded, with all our 'minds' them we need to be in the business of theology. So when I speak of theology, I am referring to the truth that God has given us all in Scripture which we all need to learn and digest. It is truth for life! Now, I am a professor of theology, but I must tell you that in all of my teaching and writing, I am trying to show that theology is supremely practical. If this could be seen, then I think people's fear of theology could melt away and they would appreciate, and benefit from, serious theological instruction. Again, if you will allow me to beat the drum once more, this is a Reformational emphasis. If you actually get around to reading the Reformers, such as Luther or Calvin, you will find that they did all their work from a pastoral standpoint, and at every point they are applying truth to the lives of people. What they were trying to do throughout their earthly lives was to build the people up in God's truth so their lives might bring glory to their Creator and Redeemer. It's as practical and down to earth, and as pastoral as that. That's what we need to get back to first, I think.

Hallmarks of a Jesus Movement

by Dr. Paul Pierson

Fuller School of World Mission

June 8, 2005

The list of factors observed in revival and renewal movements throughout history is flexible and some of these can be combined. Here is a list I've observed:

* They always begin on the periphery of the institutional church

* They are motivated by a transforming experience (grace) of God by an individual or group

* The result is the desire for a more authentic Christian life that often leads to concern for the church and world

* Face to face groups for prayer, Bible study, mutual encouragement are important

* New methods of selecting and training leaders become important. These are less institutional, more grass roots and lay oriented

* There are theological breakthroughs, that is, rediscovery of aspects of the Biblical message that have been forgotten or overlooked by the Church, usually they involve a focus on the gifts of every believer

* There is a leveling effect, distance decreases between clergy and laity, social classes, races, men and women, and denominations

* The movement is countercultural in some ways, often because it reaches out to those who have not been valued by their society

* Consequently there will be opposition by many in the dominant culture and church

* There will often be manifestations of spiritual warfare. Such movements sense the reality of evil and the need to recognize the vistory of Christ in the cross and resurrection

* At times there will be unusual manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit; healings, visions, glossalalia, miracles. etc

* More flexible structures of church and mission will be needed and often emerge, different from traditional structures

* The movement will be led to significant recontextualization of the Christian message, which will be communicated more widely by lay persons to those outside the church

* New music is often a characteristic

* Biblical concepts ignored by the traditional church but relevant to the hearers are often discovered

* There will be a growing concern for the marginalized, often expressed in ministries of compassion

* At a later stage this often leads to concern for broader social transformation

* As the movement matures there will be concern for the renewal of the broader church

* As the movement continues to mature many will see themselves not only as part of the particular movement but as citizens of the Kingdom of God, transcending their own movement

* Finally, every movement is less than perfect and often messy at the edges and sometimes, at the center. This is inevitable as long as sinful humans are involved

How God Created by Evolution: A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development

The Bible reflects the ancient cultures in which it was written,
and this very fact proclaims the glory of God.

January 6, 2012, Update

After re-reading the NPR story, "Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve" (found further below) submitted on August 16, 2011 (along with my initial opening comments, "Introductory Comments to NPR's Review")  I thought I might provide a simplified formula that might blend the traditional understanding of the Genesis Account to the evolutionary account confronting it. In this way both accounts stand true within their own systems and yet can find working agreement between each other. I had thought of this emendation when considering the impasse between classical physics of yesteryear and its more contemporary twin of quantum mechanics seeking to explain the "large" through terms of the "very small." Left unexplained, we have two separate scientific systems at loggerheads with one another separated by an unexplained paradox lying between them. Similarly with traditional Christianity's impasse of theology with today's evolutionary/scientific discoveries.

Consequently, the impasse that exists between the traditional and contemporary understandings of the Genesis Story could be more simply resolved by offering a small explanation that might recover God's creative acts to the theological satisfaction of both sides. Technically, this commentary should actually fall after the NPR report and not before it, as I am only now updating my thoughts several months afterwards. However, I am making it foremost before all else as a completely separate topic. And when given the time and opportunity I may later try to rewrite this entire section again from a more extenisve biblical, hermeneutical, theological standpoint. My proposal now follows...

R.E. Slater

January 6, 2011

HOW GOD CREATED BY EVOLUTION

------------

A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development

from a

Contemporary Christian Theological Perspective

A Suggested Plausible Theory Inter-relating Biblical Theology

with Evolutionary/Scientific Discoveries

by R.E. Slater

January 6, 2011

[This commentary continues from my earlier critique of a National Public Radio commentary submitted on August 16, 2011, listed further below and is titled "Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve." Because it created an unnecessary impasse to Christian theology I have consequently written a secondary response to it contained here in this present commentary.... - R.E. Slater]

Introductory Comments

"...In this writer's opinion, I consider Al Mohler's traditional sentiments (as quoted in an earlier NPR review) to be a "false positive assertion" spoken by a church traditionalist unwilling to integrate orthodox theology with present-day academic findings. And yet, by turning that very same traditional Christian sentiment around, I would further submit that we may be able to find theological agreement between (Mediated/Progressive) Evolutionary Creationism to that of the (Immediate/Spontaneous) Traditional Creationism position of late-20th century Evangelicalism. The former relies on present day sciences whereas the later relies on present day interpretive ideologies in order to retain orthodox teachings.

But in order to proceed with finding a corollation between both Christian positions it must be immediately understood that Evolutionary Creationism does not refer to Darwinian Evolution (or, Scientific Naturalism). This distinction has been addressed in another article which drew the conclusion that the former proceeds from a theistic foundation whereas the latter proceeds from an atheistic or agnostic foundation. Though each position uses the sciences, they too differ by ideological interpretation (sic, Differences between Evolutionary Creationism and Darwinian Scientific Naturalism).

To begin then, in this writer's opinion, traditional Christianity has a valid argument for their pointed misgivings regarding the following Christian doctrines as listed below:

1 - original sin and human depravity, known as the Fall, seems to have no initiating point;

2 - the uniqueness of humanity seems inspecific from the animal kingdom in regards to man's creation in the image of God when descending "as a population" from the lower primates;

3 - the origin of sin into the world is also inspecific when regarding Eve and her disobedience (including Adam's); their mutual eating of the fruit of the tree of life; and the involvement of the serpent's deception using human speech and logic. Consequently there is no specific point of disobedience when using the evolutionary model nor a similarly corresponding language of evil;

4 - the typologies of Adam and Christ references of the OT and NT no longer seem pertinent as viewed from within the evolutionary model of creationism.

To this list might be added other traditional theological doctrines of disagreement, however, the point is made here that contemporary theology's model of Evolutionary Creation must re-integrate these most basic of Christian doctrines back into the Christian faith if it were to be considered as a valid counter-proposal of God's creative activity. And so, how can we proceed beyond this impasse if we should attempt a reconciliation beyond the doctrinal watershed of orthodox Christianity's foundational theologies? I submit that it can, and must, be done using evolutionary discoveries couple with contemporary biblical research.


A Proposal

Importantly, let us first begin by saying that the Genesis story is an ancient Hebrew creation story used both for theologic and national purposes by Israel. That it was understood as part of Israel's historical legacy as witness to its oral traditions passed along from generation to generation. That it uses poetic and mythological elements to convey a literary construction. And that the lessons it teaches have importance to understanding Israel's monotheistic religion of God whom they knew by the name Yahweh (YHWH); and who declared Himself to be the "I AM whom I AM." From this interaction we understand then that God is the Creator of the world who judges sin. Who is declared to be "The Lord of all" and the "Almighty God" as witnessed by His actions. And whom the Hebrew's Creation Story declares to be their Savior when observing God's promises made to the man and the woman in the Garden of Eden whose offspring will wound the head of the deceptive serpent.

From these observations we may also say that the Genesis story in its early narrative passages (chp 1, chps 2-3, chps 4-11) is not allegorical (that is, symbolic language left to imagined retelling). But that it has a literal-historical content that relates a meta-narrative of the nation Israel's nationalized history as it bisects with God's own meta-narrative of bringing salvation to both themselves, as a nation, and to each man personally in the history of the earth. Nor is it mythological in the Greek sense of a polytheistic religion. It is, however, a monotheistic religion that can be said to be mythological both in the literary sense of historical genre as well as to the disbelieving non-Christian who considers the Christian God but mere myth. But to those who follow Jesus it is anything but that, as the Jewish faith (or,  Jewish religion) provided a spiritual depth and reality not usually found in any of the other world's ancient religions. But this is a discussion for another time and place....

So far we have declared the biblical creation story of Genesis to be factually true as an ancient comprehension of cosmogeny taught and passed along by the Hebrews to the next successive generations (much like the Church has done through the centuries of its teachings on Jesus). Thus, we are giving our support for a biblical hermeneutic that is historical, grammatical, and contextual. but not allegorical. Nor mythological (in the strict, polytheistic sense as used in the ancient Near-Eastern religions of that time). And not without support by Israel and its religious traditions. For Israel believed their creation account to be true and had drawn from it certain theological conclusions about God, man, sin and salvation as described in Genesis.

Consequently, here is my first proposal of theological/linguistic solidification - That "original sin" and "human depravity," typically used in describing "the Fall" by the Church in Christian literature, could possibly be described in present day scientific terms as the early formation and development of "human consciousness." Especially as it developed within the Homo Sapien branch of the hominid population evolving distant eons later into today's human populations. Whether human consciousness was learned, or innate (probably both), will be left to the anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and learning theorists to debate. But since Evolutionary Creation theory proposes God's purposeful and intricate relationship to the continuing formation of creation that we call evolution (even unto this present day!) than we can assume that God somehow (1) "sparked" that innate sense of consciousness, as well as (2) directed the earliest Homo Sapiens towards its learned acquisition and development. (I'm assuming earlier hominid forms may not have had this quality but there is no reason not to assume this either. Why? Because ape and chimpanzee studies seem to indicate a self-conscious awareness as well; as perhaps did other hominid groupings. Though not found to be as refined as it may have been within the succeeding Homo Sapien populations that were beginning to evolve 800,000 years ago. Especially in connection with the correspondent (and similarly evolving) concepts of "sin" and "guilt" that we as mankind bear today).*

*Most recently the concept of eusociality has come to light pertaining to the development of human consciousness and I would refer the reader to this more recent article entitled, Eusociality and the Bible, for a fuller explanation by Edward O. Wilson after completing your present study here - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/eusociality-and-bible-part-2-of-2.html].

Now some reports that I have read have put the branch of Homo Sapien closer to 160,000 years ago... but I suspect that this "inception" date to perhaps signify the "maturity" of that species away from Neanderthal man into its own more separate lineage (cf. sidebar articles under this topic). That said, I have toyed with the idea that sometime then - or later - God could have "breathed" His divine image in a specialised moment of interrupted creation which would appeal to Immediate Day Creationists who may be more open to the evolutionary development of man but are caught between the Genesis account and its theology of sin, death, disobedience, etc. Consequently, this idea could be allowed for we have no factual evidence that it couldn't have occurred. How could we? It is too far back to be proved. Nor could it be proved except on the oral tradition of Israel's processions.  However, in the view of Evolutionary Creationism, it seems an unnecessary interuptive act of God in the stream of human development's natural course. And as a point of rigorous scientific discipline it would be more credible to maintain an evolutionary perspective throughout the development of mankind and cede to the understanding that God subtended throughout the creation and development of man through a continual act of special creation. This avoids the instantaneously miraculous, per se, but extends the concept of the miraculous continually throughout the creative development of man, beginning all the way back to the creative spark of the universe itself. Why? Because if this is God's universe, and if God created it to share with free willed beings, then this is not incredible at all to believe despite sin, death, disobedience and the indetrminacy found within the heart of the cosmos (or in nature) - that God sovereignly rules through allowance and subtendance - as we've discussed in a variety of articles from process thought and open theism to evolutionary theory and indeterminacy.

So then, this is my first scientific + theological proposal in attempt to wed a human trait - consciousness - with the theological concept of - sin or guilt - and merge the two into one, thus bridging the gap between science and biblical doctrine. I also find Edward Wilson's concept of eusociality to be immensely helpful in regard to the development of man's social consciousness through primitive tribal groupings, posturings, and protection that were occurring in the Stone Age. And from this evolutionary concept I now intend to proceed to wed other theological concepts to it as a way to bridge the incendiary gap between Evolutionary Creationism and Traditional Creationism.

With consciousness comes humanity's uniqueness

One that God provided again by "tweaking" the mutation stream of the Homo Sapien gene pool to cause a more refined development within this more evolving hominid branch. Perhaps this quality began further back in earlier hominid lines (as I think it must) as hominid populations mutated further and further away from their common ancestral evolutionary line of apes. But eventually, after millions of years of evolvement - at the directing hand of God, or by God's most intricate involvement (cf. Evolution: Is God Playing Dice?) - a more refined sense of "self-understanding" grew through "societal interaction" between Homo Sapiens and the world around. All brought about by the scientific concept of "consciousness" that can now be used to not only describe sin and guilt, but the uniqueness of mankind from the animal kingdom. A uniqueness we may describe as the "image of God" found within man.

Thus far I am appealing to God's active presence and involvement  within the "process" and "mediation" of creation itself using the propositions of Relational Theology (see sidebars) coupled with Evolutionary Creationism's theoretical propositions. Simply, God is relational and thus we should find that same relational aspect within man which we call in theological terms as "the image of God." Moreover, God is independent of, but intricately involved with, His creation. That is, God is immediately and always involved with evolving not only mankind, but the earth, and the universe beyond. This continues even now to this day of modernised, industrialised mankind. God is here and present within the societies of men. We should not expect otherwise. Though this holds no meaning whatsoever for those who see the world as a cold, mechanistic place lurching haphazardly from one societal era to the next, devoid of the simple elements of love, peace and forgiveness. These are but adjectives for how we get along in life until we die and become nothing again held within that sterile space of void and darkness. But to those of us who vibrate with God's Spirit, who feel the flow and energy of God's love, peace and forgiveness, the world is a beauty place filled with the incense of heaven overflowing with God's presence, personage, perspective, and propitiation.

However, I am not proposing a panentheistic relation as process theologians think of God's relationship with this world. But am attempting to elevate a classic theistic position using appropriate parts of process thinking and describing it in terms of relational theology. Why? Because somewhere in the mix comes the vital aspect of "free will" as it relates to (1) God's self-image; to (2) creation in general - which seems to have its own kind of "free will" not normally acknowledged by latter day Evangelical theologians; and (3) to ourselves in the composition of our being. For now, I'm simply stating that free will is part-and-parcel of man's make-up of "consciousness." That free will is actually the true meaning of consciousness in that to be conscious of one's self is to be aware of one's determinative choices. If we could not choose, could we be self-conscious of ourselves and of the world about us? We see this similar trait of will and choice within the ape and monkey population. But again, not to as great a degree of enhancement as it lays within the Homo Sapien line of hominids. Further, we'll again leave it to the  anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and learning theorists to debate how will and consciousness are related to one another; or distinguished from one another; or are compounded definitions of the one to the other; or even which one gave birth to the other,... or to neither. I am simply saying that if man bears the scientific qualification of a conscience, than with it has come man's willfulness.

Thus science is married again to theology's terms of free will and the image of God in man. Evolutionary Creation describes these concepts in terms of process or development which are mediated by God into evolving traits and characteristics. Whereas Traditional Creationism declares man immediately formed with these traits and characteristics and without the necessity of a mediated process. That these were spontaneous qualities of man sprung from the heart and hand of God's own Image as mythologically described in Israels national account of its history written sometime between 500 and 1500 BC (should we wish to include both the first AND the second temple periods). Logically, evolution was occurring many millions of years earlier and would be impossible to be witnessed by the more developed species of ancient mankind in man's earliest hunter-gather phase. Nor certainly could it be witnessed from the much later bronze ages of the Israel's very recent temple periods 3000-3500 years ago. Why? Because that event is much to recent to such an old, old process occurring eons earlier. But traditional Creationism assumes this and so, these time differences must be noted. However, a Christian evolutionist would say that the Genesis Account simply was God's way of telling Israel about basic theological concepts that would distinguish God as God, and man as man, and give purpose to Israel's monotheistic religion as versus the polytheistic (and pagan) religions surrounding them. That the Genesis Account was not a scientific account of Creation but an consolidated theological account of Creation using poetry, mythology, and narrative. The Bible is still a real and true account. But it has a different interpretive value when faced with the prospects of scientific discoveries made in anthropology, biology, geology and cosmology.... Scientific discoveries which were not conceived of by ancient civilizations at the time of writing the book of Genesis.

Evil results as a by-product of human consciousness

That is, if ancient man was developing the sense of right and wrong, good and evil, and even that of choice, than it was all birthed because he had a conscience. Or a graduated conscience in the sense that it was becoming more pronounced through nearer and nearer mutations, innate development, and learned behaviors. The further we get away from primitive man and the closer we get to early/ancient man the more pronounced evil and sin has become to us as a species. As a simple illustration, the idea of slavery and exploitation is less desirable socially today than it was 2000 years ago. The same can be said concerning the contemporary concepts of social inequality between men and women, various types of race and cultures, of child or gender exploitation, and so on. Meaning that the longer we cohabitate together with one another in our evolving civilizations the more pronounced have become our concepts of right and wrong sociologically. And thus, we as a hominid branch, we are exhibiting graduated levels of a more pronounced social consciousness (which also reveals the truth of the continuing occurrence of evolution within mankind - and the world in general - today! Hence, we are generally less brutish with each other as versus more ancient Assyrian/Babylonian/Roman invasions; even though Spanish Inquisitions, Nazi genocide, and human slavery still occur in pockets of time and civilizations; yet social injustices and regional respect of cultural identity seem to be more of an overriding concern in today's technologically-evolving world). Consequently, we are witnessing evolution occurring, if not physically because of the long periods of time required, then socially amongst human populations, at the hand of God who chooses to evolve - or assimilate - our world into His own ethics of Kingdom and Kingdom living.

Similar argumentation may also be used of "God as light" in considering "sin" or "evil" as a by-product of consciousness: If God is light all else is darkness. God is not the opposite of darkness, but contains the absence of darkness. Or, said another way, sin is that which is not God. Or even, sin is that which is unGod-like. Or, God is without sin. As a result, the conscious level of awareness in primitive man is becoming more pronounced as his faculty develops in connection with his self-understanding, his connection to his environment, and with the other Homo Sapien evolving with him. This is not to say that other hominid populations were not similarly endowed with a self-understanding beyond that of a brute beast. But that God's image of light (and not darkness) had conveyed itself into the evolving stages of mankind's earliest development (and the Relational Theist in me says that God has been intricately involved with man's development throughout every level, every breath, and each-and-every stage of his mutational progress, right down to the personal level of mankind's individuality).


Consequently, Adam/Eve may be retained as Typologies

between the Christian Faith and Christ

The terms of "First Man" and the "Last Man" can be another way of describing some men who have died to sin and others who have lived in Christ. These are concepts of life, death, even sin. But better understood in relational contexts of man to himself, to his environment, and to others within his own species of hominids. As example, Caan's murder of his brother Abel was a reprehensible act to ancient primitive man. He was banished and isolated from the mutual help and support found in primitive communities. Ideas like murder were linked to concepts we call "sin." But in man's development of consciousness came the continuing pronunciation of this quality, or characteristic, through long millenias of hominid development, cycles of life and death, and the general evolution of the species. We see this with Neanderthal man being murdered by the Homo Sapien population as a competing threat to their limited environment due to glaciation and so forth. And perhaps because of bigotry or feelings of superiority by Homo Sapiens to the Neanderthals. Each lived in family and tribal collectives. But the Homo Sapien line was more adaptable to the changing environment. In other instances, both species intermingled and may have collaborated together. Still, the Neanderthal line died out due to environmental changes that the Homo Sapien line could better withstand and adapt to against these same factors. Whether due to biological superiority, mental or social acuity, etc, can only be theorized. But in terms of Pauline origin, this cannot be known. Only that the apostle Paul used the concept of Adam from Israel's creation narratives to describe Israel's Messiah.

Now admittedly my inference and reliance upon the argument of consciousness is simplistic and given as a quick illustration as to how to bring about a type of resolution between traditional arguments for Genesis as factually true against accusations of Genesis as simply allegory and myth. But it does draw upon modern scientific discoveries while arguing for a literal-historic Hebraic account of creation within an ancient mythological context that has elements both of good story-telling and universal truths within it. Moreover, it further accounts for God's story through the apprehension of ancient man (early civilizations) not endowed with scientific reasoning and resources. All the factual elements are there... from creation's order (given as days 1 through 7 now supported by cosmological and early earth studies) to its theologic imports of Creator, creation, man, sin, evil, etc....

In fact, I could argue that modern man in all of his "evolved" subtleties would be hard-pressed to come up with a better explanation of the Genesis account (first written in Moses' day... c.1626 BC?) than what the ancient Hebrew account has done. How could would we explain Homo Sapien history as it was occurring  between 1.2 million or 800,000 years ago (or even earlier branches of hominid development occurring many millions of years earlier than that!!) when even our own oral traditions have had a hard enough time simply retaining what it meant to be "a people of God" conceptually. Consider all the many nuances of that term and phrase as it morphed and changed within the Exodus and Wilderness eras; Israel's early tribal and first monarchy periods; Israel's divided kingdoms and exiles; the Second Temple rebuilding period; the inter-testamental times; then the era of Jesus and the early church; then the early church fathers era, to the middle ages, to the Renaissance, to the modern and postmodern eras. When taken as a whole, to be called "the people of God" had different meanings to each person living within each of those sublime eras. And this would account for roughly only 4000 years of human history (what we call man's "civilization period")! So how could we simply assume that a more detailed account of God's creative activity could be better preserved than it has been at present with a more elaborate story. No, God gave Israel a creational narrative that would be easier to pass down through the years than a more explicit one with more mitigating factualities. A narrative that could be ably preserved in simple literary terms. Not in exquisite scientific explanations and innuendo.

Conclusion

Thus, for ancient man in his early civilizations to account for his anthropological development at least a hundred thousand years earlier or more, through using oral traditions of earlier historical occurrences and theological teaching, would be rather exceptional even by our own standards of literacy today when we cannot even garner agreement from one year to the next between our own contemporary interpretations of society, industry, finance, and historical movement! The fact still remains that we work with what we have as theologians while studying ancient biblical literature and cultures and trying to integrate those understandings within present day science. And that we must be willing to adapt our more traditionally orthodox church-based theologies to present day findings into updated theo-sophical/scientific declarations that might be as valid as their counterpart scientific formulae and evolutionary assertions of human development. Of course this is assuming today's Big Bang theory and man's anthropological evolutionary in the fossil records still are valid a thousand years from now (I suspect that the Big Bang will be greatly modified! But I'm not so sure how to argue against earth's fossil records and geologic/biologic processes as interpretive source).

So here is my proposition for synthesizing the traditionally orthodox understanding of the Genesis record with today's more modern, contemporary Evolutionary Creation theories and concepts within a biblical/theological paradigm. By interposing the inspecific term of "consciousness" as the spiritual/behavioral modifier as the leap (or missing link, pun intended!) between an ancient Hebrew Creation Story to today's more radical understanding of man's ancient development we find a somewhat credible gap of continuity between the old and new. I would suspect better, more sophisticated, theories to  replace this simplistic idea, but for now it's one we can understand, accept and work off from. It supports the biblical revelation of the creation story. And it correlates early civilization views with today's scientific findings. And consequently we have an adequate marriage of Evolutionary Creation with that of Traditional Immediate Creation Theory. Thank you for your consideration.

R.E. Slater

originally posted January 6, 2012

later revised April 2, 2012

 

Related follow Up Article -

Eusociality and the Bible

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/eusociality-and-bible-part-2-of-2.html

 

 

 

 

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