My  esteemed blogging colleague, David Smart (aka ‘Ryft’), has written on two recent occasions now^[1], about a novel approach to the reading of the creation account in Genesis 1. It is a view promoted by John Walton in his book, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009).

I must be clear from the outset that this is not a book review. I have not read the book and must therefore rely on secondary citations and explanations of his thesis from people like David, and others. Yet, my attempts at digesting the idea have thus far been only moderately successful and the concepts presented still lack coherence in my own mind. To be as gracious as possible, I must at this point attribute this apparent incoherence to my own limitations. But I certainly look forward to further clarification.

On the surface, I can relate to objections from those who want to reject Walton’s arguments on the basis of historical theology. That is, if the early church fathers never thought Genesis 1 means what Walton thinks it means, how is it that we should now trust Walton’s interpretation? Well, we should trust it on the basis of a demonstrably sound hermeneutic I guess. This approach must necessarily presume nothing of what people like Augustine, Basil, Aquinas, Origen, etc., thought about Genesis, but focus on the Scripture itself. However, Walton’s conclusion then tends to require us to consider that the people who lived in the first few centuries after Christ lacked the recently recovered knowledge that Walton claims now makes it possible to receive this revelation in a new light. That at least, should give us pause. But just how long this ancient knowledge has been lost to us I do not know. Perhaps The Lost World of Genesis One has those answers.

Many of the online reviews of Walton’s book that I skimmed were quite positive on balance. But one review that has helped me get a foothold on this topic and  clear away some of the smog, is a critical piece by Dominic Statham, who wrote in the December 2010 edition of the Journal of Creation (JoC).^[2,3] (Note: All quoted material in this article comes from Statham’s review, unless stated otherwise. Any errors are most likely my own.) And of course, if Statham has misrepresented Walton in any way, my apparent moment of clarity may again be overcome by the smog. But let’s press on in hope.

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I have just recently finished my one year program at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and I’ve produced four essays for four different courses that I thought would be a good idea to publish online because of their value in Theology and Apologetics. I hope people find these articles useful in helping to better explain the issues at hand.

• The Christian Doctrine of God Explained and Defended for Muslims
• Contrasting Christian and Muslim Views on the Female Gender
• The Divine Logos: The Christology of the Gospel of John
• He Will Save His People: A Case for Particular Redemption

To the cross I look
And to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing
On it my Savior
Both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just

At the cross you beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees
And I am lost for words, so lost in love
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

What a priceless gift
Undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified
You called me out of death
You called me into life
And I was under your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled

At the cross you beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees
And I am lost for words, so lost in love
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous your redeeming love
And how great is your faithfulness

At the cross you beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees
And I am lost for words, so lost in love
I am sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

How Deep The Father’s Love For Us ~ Phillips, Craig and Dean

How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
And make a wretch His treasure
How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which marr the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the man upon the cross
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection
Why should I gain from His reward
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom

Why should I gain from His reward
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom

… It was my sin.

Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.

Matthew 27:37-42 (New International Version)

It wasn’t the nails that held him there, but, as the famous John Newton hymn goes, “It was my sin that held him there, until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life….” Despite the mocking challenge of the chief priests to get down and save himself, he stayed on the cross. He stayed there, held, not by nails, but by his own will.

“…I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

John 10:17-18 (New International Version)

Therefore, be thankful this Easter, for your Lord who laid down his life has risen for you who trust in him.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 (New International Version)

Yes, he is risen!

I know I’ve asked this question before on my old blog, but I thought it would be a good idea to ask it again here in the interest of generating conversation from a different crowd. And being Easter it ties in nicely.

Eating meat on Good Friday? Is it blasphemous to eat red meat on Good Friday? Where did the vegetarian/fish policy come from?

After speaking to a Catholic colleague; the custom has was originally adopted by the early church (and since maintained by the Catholic Church) from the custom on the Jewish Sabbath. Not only is the Sabbath a no work day but is also a no meat day. And fish is not considered meat to the Jews.

My own thoughts were that there is no problem with eating meat on Good Friday. Looking at the words of Jesus in Matthew 15:10-11, 16-20

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.

Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.

To me this is Jesus lifting all the Jewish food restrictions and saying “Whats food got to do with anything, its just food. There are more important things to dwell on.”

If, on the other hand, having a meat ban on Good Friday leads you to reverent reflection and remembrance of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross, then I don’t see any harm.

This evening I had my attention directed back to the article that Joshua Whipps had written at his web site, “On old-earth presuppositions.” [1] Since I had already read his article previously (and responded to it), [2] I decided to scroll down to the comments area to see what sort of discussion had taken place. While reading Whipps’ response to one of his visitors I found a couple of comments of his that I wanted to reply to.

In his an explanation of the presupposition which all “secularist evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, and old-earth creationists” share in common in one particular area (that is to say, “that which governs their theory of fact”), he asked the following question of his visitor: Where did the old-earth creationist “get the idea that he was supposed to be driving this direction?” In other words, where did he get the idea that facts should ever be governed “by naturalistic principle” at any point? [3] (Since he said that all three groups share the same presupposition, and the only presupposition he identifies is the “naturalistic principle,” I understand him to be saying that this is the metaphorical car they are all driving in.) Did the old-earth creationist get this idea from his own interpretation of the facts or from God’s via Scripture?

First, if a presupposition by definition is not a conclusion, then it cannot be something that an old-earth creationist derived from his own interpretation of the facts; not to put too fine a point on it but a “theory of fact” is precisely what governs the interpretation in the first place. So wherever he got it from, it was something that he brought to the interpretation, not something he got from the interpretation. Thus, the idea that he should be driving in this direction, that a naturalistic principle should be presupposed at any point in his world view, is something he got from God’s word as authoritative or from somewhere else which he autonomously deemed authoritative.

Second, and more importantly, I submit that Whipps committed the question-begging Loaded Question rhetorical device. Namely, just as the question, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” assumes that you actually have beaten your spouse, in the very same way his question assumes that the old-earth creationist actually shares the same idea in common with those evolutionists. Consequently, just as someone who has never beaten their spouse would take issue with the assumption lurking within the question about spousal abuse, so an old-earth creationist such as myself would take issue with the assumption lurking within Whipps’ question about old-earth presuppositions. The table could be turned with a sharp question for Whipps himself: “If you are assuming that all old-earth creationists possess this naturalistic presupposition at some point in their view with respect to creation, then what is your justification for doing so?” This assumption of his, after all, is either with or without warrant. And it certainly doesn’t follow that a naturalistic presupposition necessarily operates to some degree at bottom of all old-earth creationists, since I maintain an old-earth view of creation with biblical presuppositions grounding all inquiry including that one. I firmly stand on the very same ground that Whipps himself does; namely, all of Scripture, as well as its Author, is my presupposition. Are there old-earth creationists whose theory of fact and view of creation are in some way grounded in a naturalistic presupposition? Perhaps. We may grant that Whipps has encountered any number of such persons. However, that does not have any bearing on the fact that an old-earth view of creation may arise from the presupposition of Scripture and its Author and studying the texts exegetically. With respect to such old-earth creationists, his Loaded Question is deeply problematic. Just as his visitor pointed out, autonomous reasoning is not driving their conclusions.

~ * ~

Whipps claims that he doesn’t bring any ideas to the text in Genesis that are foreign to it, that the text not only states that the days of creation are six consecutive 24-hour periods but also demands that we believe it. To teach contrary to this, he says, is to deny the teaching of Scripture and impose autonomous man’s assertion of authority over the text. [4] I take no issue with this. I fully agree with him on this point. But he actually does bring an idea to the text that is not derived from it, that is foreign to it; namely, the idea that in the Genesis creation account God is bringing the world into material existence. He is assuming that creation in this text is a material activity, and I say that he is assuming it because nowhere does he perform any exegesis of the text to establish that concept. It is something he brought to the text (eisegesis), not something he derived from it (exegesis). If we receive the text as authoritative, then surely it is a grave error to claim of the text something it never intended to say. He needs to show using sound exegesis of the text that the creation in Genesis is a material activity, not simply assert it. And his appeal to “the history of the church” and “the confessions we adhere to” should be secondary, coming after he has made his case on an exegesis of the text grounded in the presupposition of Scripture and its Author.

1. Whipps, J. (2010, September 17). "On old earth presuppositions." RazorsKiss [blog]. http://razorskiss.net (19 April 2011).
2. Smart, D. (2010, September 19). “On old earth vs. young earth debate.” Aristophrenium [blog]. http://aristophrenium.com (19 April 2011).
3. Whipps, comment 24 September 2010, para. 1.
4. Ibid, para. 2 and 3.

The heart of this post, I hope, can be summarily found in a statement by James Emery White. “What decisively marks a Christian mind is that it is informed by revelation … and then proceeds to think in light of that revelation.” – White, J.E., Serious Times, (Inter Varsity Press, 2004), p.104

With that said I just want to make it clear that my main goal in this post is to demonstrate the natural consequences of biblical compromise. So while I do make many statements against an evolutionary worldview, my intention is simply to highlight the compromise position of the piece for Christian readers – being that it is allegedly written from a Christian’s perspective – and not to engage in great detail on the finite details of the evolutionary worldview. Therefore I do not intend to allow (or argue against) conclusions drawn by non-Christians, who do not accept such authority in the first place and have their own a priori materialistic paradigms and philosophies that will not, by definition, permit some of the conclusions I have made.^[1] Those discussions belong in a separate area.

The article (written a few years ago now) by Peter Sellick is titled “Intelligent Design – Damaging Good Science and Good Theology” – Friday, 9 September 2005. But it does represent a growing view among some evangelical Christians. For example, the recent book by Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? 

I have not dealt with every comment in Sellick’s article because it’s just too long. But I think I have captured and responded to the main points.

According to the On Line Opinion webpage, Peter Sellick is currently an Anglican deacon working in Perth (Western Australia) with a background in the biological sciences. This, I am sure, makes him far more qualified than I to speak on theology or science, but I humbly offer this criticism as one who cares about the truth of Scripture.

The idea of intelligent design is that the universe, particularly the life contained therein, is too complex to have happened by chance as the theory of evolution would have it.

A more complete representation of Intelligent Design (ID) would also mention the observation of what appears to be irreducibly complex systems and specified information with those systems.

Therefore its sole basis lies in a negative:

Keep in mind that this claim is right at the beginning of Sellick’s article and he immediately poisons the well. To the contrary, as many in the ID movement have pointed out, it is not some fall-back position that people cling to because they’re blinded to the wisdom of an evolutionary worldview. It is based on a positive: an innate ability to discern design in our world. It is supported by a historical knowledge of cause and effect, acknowledging that it is most reasonable to think that the source of information and complexity contained in living systems is due to the actions of an intelligent agent. This is a completely reasonable premise upon which ID can stand. It certainly does not lie ‘in a negative’.

On the other hand, evolution by natural selection (which Sellick seems to support) is a dysteleological process seen to act on systems already possessing the information and complexity that it is claimed to have produced, and therefore provides no reasonable basis to explain the origin of these systems in the first place.

the failure to imagine how natural selection could arrive at the complexity of life we see all around us.

Imagination isn’t the problem. Rationality is. Put simply, many people think it is more reasonable that complex information-bearing systems are the product of intelligence rather than the result of random mindless forces. If observation counts for anything in science, natural selection is extremely limited in what it can achieve. (See for example Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution). It simply acts on pre-existing complex systems. It cannot create them or add information to them. In fact, it is the contention of ID-ists like Phillip Johnson that natural selection has no demonstrable creative power at all.

“Darwinian theory insists that natural selection is a creative force of immense power … We have already seen that the hypothesis of creative natural selection lacks experimental support” [chapters 2 and 3] “and that it is disconfirmed by the fossil record. The molecular evidence adds further doubt … The hypothesis that natural selection has the degree of creative power required by Darwinist theory remains unsupported by empirical evidence … [But] Darwinist know that the mutation-selection mechanism can produce wings, eyes, and brains not because the mechanism can be observed to do anything of the kind, but because their guiding philosophy assures them that no other power is available to do the job. The absence from the cosmos of any Creator is therefore the essential starting point for Darwinism.” – Johnson, P.E., Darwin On Trial, (Inter Varsity Press 1993, 2nd edition), p. 95, 98, 117.

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[Last updated by Duane: 12 April 2011]

Every year as Easter approaches, you can be sure to find all sorts of opportunistic and inane stories in the main stream media (MSM) concerning the Christian world view. This annual religious tradition – referred to by some as “Christian bashing”, and having taken place for many years now – has left in its wake, a grand corpus of sorts; a body of writing that cannot be considered Christian thought. But can perhaps be loosely referred to as Neo-Christianity.

A few years ago, for example (cue the looney tunes music), the Sydney Morning Herald published an article suggesting that Moses was on drugs when he allegedly met with God on Mount Sinai and earlier when he spoke with God in the burning bush. The punch line in this particular story: The author of the theory “experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” after taking drugs!

A year before that, we had James Cameron claiming that he had discovered the very tomb of Jesus himself, bones and all.

During the lead up to Easter in 2009, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) aired a two-part Zeitgeistian program on “The Real Jesus” where the Christian record of Jesus’ life is challenged by examining similar parallels in the accounts of other ancient figures such as Horus, Mithras, Krishna and the Buddha.

Bill Muehlenberg has been observing this annual phenomenon of Easter attacks on Christianity (and for the most part, only Christianity) for some time. Take for example this summary of some of the programs aired by the ABC via its religious program, Compass.

I have already mentioned Easter 2009 and Easter 2006. How about a story on the “three faces of Christmas” – another interfaith push on Christmas, 2007; a three part religion hatchet job by Robert Winston (no friend of Christianity) over Easter 2007; a segment on “the real Mary” (we are told she was the “first apostle”) in Christmas 2004; “Did Jesus Die?” which questions his death, Easter 2004; “Children of Abraham” three common faiths, Easter 2002; “Testing Faith” critics assail Christianity, Christmas 2001; “Lives of Jesus” – another quest for the “real Jesus. Christmas 1999; etc.

- Bill Muehlenberg, The ABC’s War on Christianity

See also, More Artistic License, More Christ-Bashing.

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Earlier today, France has just put into effect a law banning the niqab and the burqa. This law was enacted about a month ago but has just been implemented now. It is the first in all of Europe, which is not surprising, given that France has the largest Muslim population in all of Europe (about 5 million of them at the very least).

Violations of this ban result in a fine of €150. Already, however, there are people within the Muslim community who are making efforts to undermine this law, such as Kenza Drider, who intends to travel from Avignon to Paris wearing a niqab. Another notable figure is Rachid Nekkaz, a tycoon who will be paying off the fines of the burqa law violators. So far, it seems that the French are keeping their word. Two women have already been arrested as a result of this burqa law.

So what are we supposed to make of all this? There are two ways of looking at the situation. The first way (which is the popular approach among those Liberal left and those who are steeped in political-correctness) is that this a violation of the French Muslims’ human rights. Funny since only 2000 women actually wear the veil. Also, if this was the case, then why do Muslims continue to immigrate in large droves to France? Truthfully, large sections of France have already been given over to them, as evidenced by the fact that there are now at least 751 no-go zones in France. Far from violating their rights, France has already bent over backwards to accommodate the Islamic population, and the latter seem to just want more and more.

The second way of looking at the situation is it aims to “protect women from Islamic fundamentalism and improve public security” (link). After all, what better symbol of Islam’s subjugation of women is there than the veil? Also, there is also the security concerns involved, since men have been known to disguise themselves with burqas to commit crimes (as in the case of two armed men in Sarajevo and one radical cleric in Pakistan). Finally, why the total face veil in the first place? For the vast majority of Muslim women in the west, the hijab is already sufficient, and it is only stricter interpretations of Islamic doctrine (the same stricter interpretations one would normally find groups such as the Wahabbis and Deobandis) that advocate going further than that.

Personally, I think the wearing of the veil does the exact opposite of what it’s alleged to do. Muslim apologists say it is for the sake of modesty and to divert attention away from the woman. Yet far from diverting attention away from them, it actually attracts the attention of many of those around them, especially when the women who wear the niqab/burqa is necessary. Also, France has made its move a little too late. The nation as a whole is already on the fast track to becoming a Muslim majority country (possibly the first to go in western Europe), and the burqa ban is just a small bump on the road for those who are advocating the implementation of Shari’a in France and the rest of Europe. Aside from the few instances where the police have successfully arrested offenders, I highly doubt that this law will be enforced with any degree of effectiveness.