Science and the Trinity

"Science and the Trinity" (John Polkinghorne) - I picked up this book because Polkinghorne is a guest contributor at Biologos. It is very short (180 pages), but a very slow read (Polkinghorne likes big words).

Biologos says its goal is to get conservative Christians to accept evolution. I don't think this goal is served by having liberals address the issue! (It does lead me to believe that no conservatives really support evolution, or at least, are not willing to publicly support it. One of their favorite conservatives, BB Warfield, is dead!).

Polkinghorne is a scientist, not a theologian, which makes it difficult to pin down exactly what his theology is. But it is obviously very far from orthodoxy. Some examples, just on page 46:

"It is not surprising, therefore, that we find attitudes expressed in the Bible that today we neither can nor should agree with. These include an unquestioned patriarchal governance of the family... an unhesitating acceptance of slavery" (emphasis added)
"Those who attribute no abiding significance to these timebound attitudes are recognizing that the canon of scripture is not of uniform authority." (He actually goes on more in this vein...)
"the many New Testament passages that speak of fearful and fiery judgement [sic] are rightly interpreted as implying that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ requires the punishment of unending torture for those who have not committed themselves to some kind of Christian orthodoxy in this life." (into page 47)

That's just in two pages, fairly early! It doesn't get better.

Polkinghorne seems to embrace open theism, at least to some degee:

"God does not use the prophets to provide a detailed preview of what must inevitably come to pass... God does not yet know the unformed future" (page 54)
"cosmic history is an unfolding improvisation and not the performance of an already written score" (page 80)
"God does not have that future available for perusal beforehand." (page 108)

I could go on. Polkinghorne manages to pack a lot of error into a small space. I am concerned mostly with the consequences of his theology, and its impact on the Gospel.

First we see the embrace of a sort of universalism (or at least, conversion after death):

"Yet the divine love will surely not be withdrawn in that world [death], but will continue to seek to draw all people into its orbit." (page 158-159)

He also seems to deny "absent from the body, present with the Lord":

"The soul, as I understand it, possesses no intrinsic immortality. The pattern that is me will dissolve at my death... we have no naturalistic expectation of a destiny beyond death... It seems a perfectly coherent hope to believe that the pattern that is me will be preserved by God at my death and held in the divine memory until... the new creation."

This is comparable to the belief of Jehovah's Witnesses, that God will recreate someone very much like you in the resurrection.

He also embraces "the best of all possible worlds" (the idea that God created the world with natural evil, because He is too weak to do any better):

"The existence of free creatures is a greater good than a world populated by perfectly behaving automata, but that good has the cost of mortality and suffering." (page 165)

Yet again, the god of human free will calls for the sacrifice of God's power and knowledge (also, I have reference to the sacrifice of God's holiness on page 94). I will stop here.

JP2 on Evil

Some good points from John Paul II:

"Evil always exists in what is good."

This is awkwardly stated, a better phraseology would be (borrowing from C. S. Lewis) - "evil is a twisting or rejection of what is good". That is: good can exist in a vacuum, evil cannot. There is no "being evil for evil's sake" (despite the villains on Captain Planet). He says this later:

"Evil thus is not a thing but the lack of a good in a being in which what is lacking should be present."

"Suffering normally, however, is a sign that something is wrong in a real world."

That's precisely what I said in "The Problem of Evil".

It is interesting how Arminian he was:

"The possibility of evil is contingent on the possibility of freedom and love."
"Those who refuse the gift of grace, however many there be, are left with their choice. God cannot take that away from them. This is the limit of the divine mercy."

I thank God that He overrode my choice to reject Him! That He chose me, even when I was His enemy (Col 1:21).

Zarathustra

"Thus Spake Zarathustra" (Friedrich Nietzsche). I must admit, this book was terribly painful to read. I first checked it out before Thanksgiving, so it has taken the better part of two months...

The translator is Thomas Common, and he has gone with a sort of KJV version. It didn't really work for me.

On top of that, the style is all in parables. When Jesus tells a parable, you can figure out what He is talking about. Nietzsche just kind of mumbles.

It's sort of like Robert Heinlein's social commentary - is he seriously putting forth an idea, or is he playing straight with his ridicule? Hard to tell.

Nietzsche is always held up as the ultimate atheist (Ravi Zacharias says he was true to his beliefs - he died cold, alone, and insane). It must be me, but it is sufficiently vague that you can read a lot into it...

Page 8:

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman"

The most important idea in Nietzsche is that of the "Superman" (ubermensch). This is not a guy in tights, but a stage of evolution. The ubermensch, as it is usually retold, is the next stage of human evolution (I am unconvinced, but I am probably wrong).

His statements about Jesus seem to place him thoroughly in the unbeliever camp (page 77):

"He [Jesus] died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age!... But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth."

What about "God is dead"? He does say that (first on page 6). He also says (page 294) to "the ugliest man":

"thou art the murderer of God" (italics in original)

It is not evolution or rationalism which has killed God (elsewhere, he says "pity" killed God) - it is man's ugliness (what I would call sin).

And did God remain dead? Page 320:

"Only since he [God] lay in the grave have ye again arisen."

I am reminded of Galatians 2:20 "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me".
And as the book closes (page 366-368):

"slowly seated himself [Zarathustra] on the big stone... The doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the lion "
"'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin' [says the soothsayer]"

And with that, I believe, Zarathustra died (seated on the Rock, with the Dove, and the Lion).

So is the "higher man" the rational atheist? Or the man born from above?

I don't think Nietzsche understood Christianity. I think his intent is more mocking (he comments on laughter being a weapon). But I think he was familiar with the language and ideas. Also, he has harsh words for the preachers of his day. Yes. So would Spurgeon.

Models Again

Denis Alexander, at Biologos, has taken an aside from his model talk (which I commented on previously).

Alexander gives us a lot of insight into his thought processes, but I didn't find any compelling arguments for his case...

First:

"We have the possibility of fellowship with God through freely willed choice. Our nearest cousins, chimps and bonobos, to the best of our knowledge, do not."

I think this reveals a lot about his underlying assumptions (Arminianism). This is creating more problems for the Gospel at Biologos - as their train comes further off the tracks, and heads deeper into "trainwreckville".

He does seem to get something of the point:

"It is not Genesis that poses the questions, though Genesis is clearly relevant, but rather the Christian theology of creation, sin and redemption."

"the Retelling Model doesn’t do a very good job on the biblical notion of sin... the tendency is to think of sin more as unfortunate sociobiology, poor humans in thrall to the dictates of their genes, but fortunately ‘saved’ by evolutionary theories of altruism... But I think such accounts are profoundly deficient from a theological perspective. "

"In biblical thought, sin is a theological concept which only makes sense in relation to God and to God’s will. If there is no God then there is certainly no sin, and what you’re left with is human misbehavior, certainly not ‘evil’ except as a socially convenient label."

This seems to be his main point. That sin is sin because God says so (which is true - consider the eating the fruit of the forbidden tree).

However, the Law is supposed to be an expression of God's character - what pleases Him. So, how is it that when animals (and human animals before "Homo Divinus") do something, it is pleasing to God - but then afterward, it is not?

An interesting point on federal headship:

"the first sin impacting upon the world not through inheritance (as in Augustine), but via the theological notion of Federal Headship, involving a lateral rather than a linear fall-out."

I actually don't have much of a problem with this. As Jesus' perfect account is credited to us (without us being His physical descendants), so can Adam's faulty account be charged. I think the biggest problem is one of freely giving grace vs. unjustly accounting law breaking... (but this is actually one of the smallest problems in these Old Earth models!)

Finally:

"both Models have to give account as to how/why/when sin entered the world and in what sense sin ‘spread’ or ‘became relevant’ to the rest of humanity."

I hope Alexander goes into more depth in the future. This is actually a serious problem for the Gospel according to Biologos. As you spread the Gospel (including God's definition of sin) - you are making people previously exempt from the Law suddenly beholden to it!

Given historical conversion rates, this makes spreading the Gospel a very bad idea indeed!

Doctrines of Creation

An interesting introductory post to a new guest series at Biologos.

It's just making an outline at this point, little argument or conclusions. The big points I see:

• it [creation] has the kind of nature and functionality God intended it to have
• God could have made any kind of creation He wanted but chose to make this particular creation

The first will be the sticking point. Is a world full of death and sinful analogue behavior in animals the world God intended? If so, how does this relate to the Law? (Why does God give us a sinful nature - which is good in animals - then tell us it is bad, and not to obey that nature?)

The second is a good counter to those who preach a "best of all possible worlds" - that God was limited (usually by human free will) from creating a better world.

Imagination Failure

What amazes me most about the commenters at Biologos is how their imaginations function.

A man in the wilderness of Siberia finds a tooth! Their imaginations runs wild! They come up with a whole back story (and end story) for a whole race of peoples. Complete with language and dress, diet, mating and burial customs. They give them all names.

A Creationist suggests that there was no death before the Fall. Total brain-lock. "Where would all the animals live after a while?" There are more galaxies than there are people today, each with that many stars - I say. "How would the animals get to the planets around those stars?" Well, how about a nuclear powered rocket ship? And a space elevator.

I don't get it.

Anthropology at Biologos

(matching my first post on this subject)
Biologos has posted a continuation of their anthropology series. This one covering their "homo divinus" model.

This model fails to answer key questions, just like the first:

"In this model the Fall then becomes the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the expressed revealed will of God"

Here we must ask, "how is it that the revealed will of God is contrary to the 'good' behavior of all other humans at this time". That is, either Adam and Eve were particularly monstrous (which no one is suggesting) - or they were just like everyone else. And if everyone else is "good", why is God telling A&E to do differently?

An interesting point to draw in the previous post:

"According to this model, God in his grace chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in the Near East"

Most Old Earth models have a fairly stable human population - never less than maybe 100k, and usually 1e6 to 1e7.

Across 1e6 years, at 20 years per generation: that is 5e4 generations. At 1e6 people per generation, that is 5e10 people (50 billion). So you have 50 billion people living and dying before God decides to say anything to anyone.

In the Young Earth model, taking into account exponential growth (under exponential growth, the sum of all previous generations is equal to the current generation), roughly half the people who have ever lived are alive today.